{"id":7244,"date":"2019-05-10T12:17:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T19:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=7244"},"modified":"2019-05-12T17:47:15","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T00:47:15","slug":"the-true-story-behind-tolkien-is-just-as-interesting-as-lord-of-the-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/tolkien-movie-true-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The True Story Behind &#8216;Tolkien&#8217; Is Just As Interesting As &#8216;Lord Of The Rings&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When author J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973 at 81, he left behind a family, an academic career, plenty of friends, and esteemed peers. But what the world remembers of Tolkien to this day are his\u00a0<em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> novels, along with\u00a0<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hobbit <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and\u00a0<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Silmarillion.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>While legions of fans keep discovering <em>LotR<\/em>, the author&#8217;s life before he became famous for introducing us to Middle Earth is the subject of this weekend&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/tolkien\/265583\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which stars Nicholas Hoult as the author and Lily Collins as his lifelong muse and wife, Edith Bratt.\u00a0<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">explores the author\u2019s childhood through his years at Exeter College, Oxford, his service in World War I, and the beginnings of his literary career.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8CRSFEwqyEA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">marks the first time we\u2019ve gotten a look at the man behind the novels, and his story is just as interesting as the one he wrote.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Tolkien\u2019s Love of Literature Started Early<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien showed an interest in literature and proficiency in languages beginning at the age of four. His mother homeschooled Tolkien and Hilary, teaching Tolkien the basics of Latin, encouraging his appetite for books and botany, and making sure her sons were as well-rounded as possible. In his teens, Tolkien would make up constructed languages with his cousins, Mary and Majorie Incledon. They taught him their own made-up language, Animalic, and together they created a language called \u201cNevbosh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Who Were The Inklings?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While studying at King Edward\u2019s School in 1911, Tolkien met Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Christopher Wiseman.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The young men formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society (\u201cT.C.B.S.\u201d for short) because the young men enjoyed drinking tea in, among other places, the school library in secret. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien stayed in touch with Gilson, Bache Smith, and Wiseman throughout the years. But this friendship group and secret society was a predecessor to the most formative of literary groups in Tolkien\u2019s life, The Inklings. Existing at Oxford during the 1930s and \u201840s, the informal literary group counted Tolkien and his friend, author C.S. Lewis, as members. Additional members including scholars, poets, critics, and authors like Owen Barfield; Adam Fox, the Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford; New Zealand scholar J.A.W. Bennett; Lewis\u2019 older brother Warren Lewis; and Tolkien\u2019s son, Christopher Tolkien. Readings of members&#8217; works-in-progress (Tolkien shared his earliest <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LotR <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">drafts with the Inklings) and discussions were held in Lewis\u2019 rooms at Magdalen. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2>WWI Left An Impact On Tolkien<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien joined the British army shortly after WWI, when the war reached England in mid-1914. He delayed going into the army under a special rule that allowed him to finish his degree at Oxford first. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By 1915, with protest and pleas from his family to join getting more insistent by the day, Tolkien finally enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Tolkien and Bratt married during his 11 months of training at a Staffordshire camp. In 1916, he soon learned he would be heading to the front lines in France. Tolkien was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_the_Somme\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">present at the Somme<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and saw the greatest amount of action in his war career during this time. Tolkien\u2019s harrowing experiences during this time are chronicled in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He also\u00a0credited his wife, Edith Bratt, as the inspiration for several characters in his books, most notably L\u00fathien Tin\u00faviel in <i>The Silmarillion<\/i>, and Arwen Evenstar in <i>LotR<\/i>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1090px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/TolkeinMovie1.jpg\" width=\"1080\" height=\"675\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Credit: Fox Searchlight)<\/p><\/div>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2>His Literary<i>\u00a0<\/i>Legacy Is a Big Deal<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien\u2019s impact on the English literary canon cannot be overstated. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His contributions to the modern, collective imagination are invaluable. We know the names Frodo Baggins, Gandalf, Rivendell, Aragorn (and all the rest) because Tolkien sat down to bring them to life. High fantasy exists because of him. Tolkien survived so much that many of us cannot imagine surviving in order to get back to England, to his family, and to his passion for the written word. If we had to guess, his work will live on and continue to influence us for years to come. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get your tickets for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolkien\u00a0<\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/tolkien\/265583\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When author J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973 at 81, he left behind a family, an academic career, plenty of friends, and esteemed peers. But what the world remembers of Tolkien to this day are his\u00a0Lord of the Rings novels, along with\u00a0The Hobbit and\u00a0The Silmarillion. While legions of fans keep discovering LotR, the author&#8217;s life before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":4405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[40,37],"class_list":["post-7244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","tag-featuredpage","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7244"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7321,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7244\/revisions\/7321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}