Continuing the Tolkien Legacy (29.01.14 by Jamie Slater) - Comments

In writing The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R Tolkien set himself up for a massive fan base. The fantasy world he created in his books is amazing interesting and the story has gathered thousands of diehard fans around the world. At this point, the story had a loyal following, but it was nowhere near as widespread as it is today.

The Movie Trilogy

The interest in the story was heightened following the release of the first movie, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. When this movie was released in 2001, even those who had not yet read the books fell in love with the film. Whether it was Frodo struggling on his quest, that horrible, but lovable, Gollum or the epic orc battles, Lords of the Rings become massively popular around the world. Also, as far as films go, the first one was quite a big deal. They by no means scrimped on the production of this one. It marked the start of an epic journey (which would be completed over the course of three movies) and it needed to make its mark.

The second instalment of the trilogy, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, blew the first one out of the water. Even longer, at three hours long, this one made us all go Tolkien crazy, again.

The third and final movie in the trilogy came the following year, in 2003. This film was just as impressive as the final and sparks a huge Tolkien buzz amongst his loyal fanbase.

Lords of the Rings Console Gaming

Around the same time as this, a series of console games were released for the PlayStation and Xbox systems. These games were also massively popular and used similar graphics to the blockbuster movies. For example, they featured Elijah Wood as Frodo, Orlando Bloom as Legolas and Vigo Mortensen as Aragorn.

Following on from these movies and console games being launched, there was not a great deal going on. For a good few years, things were quiet on the Tolkien front, until the announcement that him and Peter Jackson were to put together another movie for Tolkien’s prequel, The Hobbit. As you can imagine, this was awesome news for Tolkien fans around the world. However, the news of the fact that they were planning on stretching it into three movies had mixed reactions. Some people were happy at being able to enjoy more hours of film, whereas other thought that stretching a small book in such a way would detract from its quality. The first two movies have now been released and they received an excellent reception.

Lord of the Rings Bingo Boards

If you are looking to have some tolkien-related fun and do not want to wait for the next movie to be released, you can make up your own bingo games! The best thing about this is that the process for doing so is really straightforward. All you need to play when is a pen, some paper and some friends who are also Tolkien fans for you to play against.

To make your cards, the first thing you need to do is to make a grid on the paper. You can do this on a computer of by hand; just make sure that it is a five by five grid. Once you have done that, you can actually fill the card. Enter a character, or a line from the film, in each of the boxes and your friends can cross them off while watching one of the films!

If you like playing bingo, but you don’t want to have to go through the hassle of making your own cards, you could always just sign up to an online bingo site. Today, there are loads of different bingo sites for you to play at. Even with over 400 sites available, we are still seeing new bingo sites launched regularly. The themes used for these sites are sometimes so ambitious that it is a surprise that there is no Lord of the Rings-themed bingo site!

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