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I have always wanted to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R Tolkien. I remember when I was in 5th grade I got all the books as a Christmas present from my mother. At that time, I was really into Harry Potter but wanted to explore the Lord of the Rings books. I was so hooked on Harry Potter that I never read the books I got as a gift. Maybe one day I will read the series, but I am lazy when it comes to reading, so maybe that won’t happen.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels were released many years ago, but still remain popular to this day. It would only be a matter of time that a biopic about the author would be released. Nicholas Hoult stars as J.R.R Tolkien who found friendship, love, and artistic inspiration while being an orphan among a group of fellow outcasts at school. His experiences with his ‘fellowship’ and being in World War I inspired him to write his famous Middle-Earth novels.
I am not too familiar with Tolkien’s life outside of writing the Middle-Earth novels, so everything I learned about him was through this movie. The film offered a lot of Tolkien’s life from being an orphan, meeting Edith Bratt, played by Lily Collins, and his strong friendship with his classmates. The moments with his classmates were the strongest parts of the film because they carried the most weight and offered many dramatic scenes. I have seen The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies plenty of times and I could see how the moments at school inspired him to create the novels. The fellowship, as Tolkien called it, had a huge impact on his life which was used for part of the title for the first Lord of the Rings novel.
Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins were perfect in their roles as J.R.R Tolkien and Edith Bratt. Their relationship also meant a great deal to him, which he would also use as inspiration for his novels. Hoult is a great actor and I associate him with the X-Men movies now, but he did a fantastic job in his role as a creative man who found a lot of joy in his life.
One thing I was surprised about when watching the film was how beautiful it was shot. Cinematographer Lasse Frank Johannessen handled the moments that inspired Tolkien to write the novels very well. Many scenes felt reminiscent of how Peter Jackson shot his Middle-Earth movies.
With a movie about Tolkien and how certain life-events inspired him to write the Middle-Earth novels, I expected more writing from the movie, maybe going as far as the post-publishing process. As Tolkien found things interesting in his life, the movie did a good job capturing that moment that inspired certain elements in his novels. The film took advantage in those moments by adding a lot of detail and building great conversations with friends, but I would have liked to see those moments translate into him writing the novels. The movie ended where I expected it to, but I wish I would have seen more of the writing aspect and how he found success with that.
Tolkien was a decent flick that explored much of his life, but not the moments I was expecting. Tolkien is most popular for his Middle-Earth novels and I think the movie would have had much more of an impact if it featured more moments of him writing his novels. Besides that, Tolkien was a well-shot film with great acting that any fan of the Middle-Earth movies and novels should check out.
Tolkien has a run time of 1 hour 52 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some sequences of war violence.
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