Unfortunately I think it's extremely difficult for any writer today to really capture Tolkien's view of Middle-Earth, because Tolkien's sensibilities were so different from those of today. I get the idea of making things more accessible, but if you destroy the essence of the thing in the process, have you really gained anything?
For example, I do not think the Peter Jackson movies, despite the monumental effort that went into them and Jackson's genuine interest in the material, actually capture what Tolkien was trying to capture. I have written about this here:
I have not even tried to watch the TV series (I didn't even watch Jackson's The Hobbit movies), because it just looks like an even worse job of capturing Tolkien's viewpoint.
I wonder if even Tolkien's own works would preserve the 'essence' that people see in LotR...
Imagine you took someone who had just read _The Hobbit_, and you gave them a copy of the _Silmarillion_ carefully scrubbed of any identifying information and all of the critical apparatus, just the barebones fiction itself, and with a cover story like 'I got this off Ao3, you might like it'. I wonder how many people would realize it was even in the same fictional universe, much less by the same author?
Someone who had read only The Hobbit would have a hard time seeing the relationship, yes. That's because Tolkien himself didn't conceive it when he wrote The Hobbit, and even when he started working on LotR; the latter was originally just another story about hobbits, since people had told him they wanted more hobbit stories.
But, as he says in the foreword to LotR, that story got irresistibly drawn towards the older world, and became a story of its ending and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. (I don't know if I'm giving what he said in the foreword word for word, but I think I'm pretty close.) So someone who read the LotR in its published form would see the connection, if for no other reason than some of the same characters (Elrond, Galadriel, Cirdan) appear in both works. And of course anyone who read the Appendices in detail would see even more connections, because Tolkien put them there on purpose.
(Btw, after the publication of LotR, Tolkien went back and reworked some parts of The Hobbit, notably the encounter with Gollum in Riddles In The Dark. That reworked version is what most people now have read. The really original version, published before LotR, is even less related to the legendarium.)
I skimmed over your blog post, and I think you should give The Rings of Power a look despite your feelings about Jackson's films. It's a polarizing series, and you might end up not liking it, but it's very different from the films. The visual style is heavily influenced by them, but the storytelling is much more nuanced and surprising IMO.
I can't really provide details without spoiling the series for you, but if you watch the first season to the end[1] and then review your own blog post, I think you'll at least understand why I thought you might really like it.
FWIW, although he didn't live to see the finished work, apparently Christopher Tolkien liked what he saw of the preproduction, despite his dislike of Jackson's films.
[1] This is important, but again, spoilers. Even if you end up disliking it, or disagreeing with some of the choices they made, I'm confident you'll agree that the writers love Tolkien's writing as much as you obviously do.
Follow-up to my previous reply: after looking through what's available online about The Rings of Power, I realized that this is the series where (a) Galadriel takes a ship back to Valinor, but then changes her mind and jumps overboard just before it arrives, and swims back towards Middle-Earth; and (b) Galadriel is picked up by Elendil and taken to Numenor, meaning that the whole story of the Rings of Power now happens near the end of the Second Age. (And don't even get me started about a "Stranger" falling to Middle-Earth on a meteor who is obviously intended to be Gandalf.)
I had heard of those things before, and my reaction was "ick", and it still is. (a) is completely inconsistent with everything Tolkien wrote about Galadriel. (b) is a huge change in the timeline of the Second Age, for no good reason that I can see except that TV audiences are not supposed to be able to follow a story that covers such a long expanse of time. Which I think Tolkien would have had the same "ick" reaction to that I have. (I'm not sure what to make of Christopher Tolkien's reaction, but I suspect his reaction was much more nuanced, or else he didn't see enough of the preproduction.)
I get that people like to, so to speak, play around with an imaginary world they like. I have no objection whatever to people watching Jackson's films and liking them, or watching this series and liking it. I just don't think the world they are seeing portrayed in Jackson's films is the same world that Tolkien imagined and wrote about. And based on the above, I suspect I would feel the same about The Rings of Power.
As far as loving Tolkien's writing goes, there are many different ways of doing that. I have no doubt that Jackson sincerely loves Tolkien's work. He just doesn't in the same way I do, since what he did with it is nothing like what I would have done. And again, based on the above, I suspect I would feel the same about the people who made The Rings of Power.
> I do not think the Peter Jackson movies, despite the monumental effort that went into them and Jackson's genuine interest in the material, actually capture what Tolkien was trying to capture.
I don't know why this remotely is a controversial opinion. When I went to the cinema, the audience laughed when Gollum fell into the volcano, as Jackson clearly wanted them to. Would Tolkien have wanted that?
We're treated to a long scene of Gollum falling with the camera following him and him waving his arms and kissing up to the ring. Then the ring (of gold) floats on the lava and Gollum (of hobbit flesh) sinks. It turned into pure cartoon in the most dramatic scene in the series. It's not the only scene in the film with a "90s computer game cutscene" feel to it either.
Another scene from the books that is totally absent in the movie, which I didn't discuss in my blog post, is the one where Gollum comes upon the sleeping Frodo and almost caresses him, as if he's reconsidering his whole plan of sending the hobbits to Shelob and taking the Ring for himself--and then Sam blunders in and ruins it.
This is always my argument with "fangames", which frequently get nuked by the copyright/trademark owner. Like, you put years of effort into making a game from scratch, the code is all original, the design is new, why ruin all that by putting in Mega Man or whatever?
LOTR is great because it's a unique product of who Tolkien was, with his background in linguistics and experience in World War I and his Beowulf scholarship. Be your own interesting person and make your own stuff.
Fun. Because it's fun. Because we, as humans, generally like to tell stories, especially about shared culture. Making a tribute of an artifact is another way to appreciate it. It's another take, an amateur singer sharing a moment with their friends, singing a song from fiddler on the roof. I myself love recreating props from movies and games. It connects me to the author and other fans. I appreciate small details of its construction more. I perceive the steps the original craftsperson took. I understand, through a small window, the monumental effort it took to create the original greater creative work. I'm not saying not to create something new. Simply that it's fulfilling to some of us to experience our shared culture by contributing our own point of view.
A new thing is great, not saying it isn't. Certainly, tributes of recent works are not a good commercial strategy. I personally haven't truly appreciated a great work like lotr or Chrono Trigger or Jurassic Park or what have you until I've recreated a small part of it out of love. Of course, this rant is limited to fan derivatives made out of passion. Attempts to deceive are another thing.
I'm sorry if I'm rambling and come off as angry, I'm not and appreciate your point. But I find this suggestion to leave out the tribute part in fan works to kinda be missing the point. For my stuff I'd rather have made it and have it taken down, over not having made it at all.
I never understood why people put so much effort into fangames, fanfiction, etc. I mean - great, they're inspired! No copyright infringement there. Share it with the world.
I feel like these days, real creativity is punished, and only 'meme'-able things get rewarded.
This is where free expression and intellectual property butt heads. Had our subject merely distributed his writings openly (free), it would be much harder to shut him down.
LoTR itself drew heavily on existing culture, to the point that some at least hinted that Tolkien had plagiarised. Good cultural works don't happen in a vacuum, they build on what came before.
For example, I do not think the Peter Jackson movies, despite the monumental effort that went into them and Jackson's genuine interest in the material, actually capture what Tolkien was trying to capture. I have written about this here:
http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/tolkiens-ring.html
I have not even tried to watch the TV series (I didn't even watch Jackson's The Hobbit movies), because it just looks like an even worse job of capturing Tolkien's viewpoint.