Customer Reviews

Secrets of Middle-Earth - Inside Tolkien's "The Hobbit"

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This DVD should be called "The Life an Times of J.R.R. Tolkien"
It is interesting enough, however..... The description leads you to beleive that this DVD will offer you an in depth study of the story and characters in the Hobbit when in fact it does not. It tells you alot of interesting facts about Tolkien and gives a few opinions about his inspirations for writing the Hobbit, but nothing that you wouldn't be able to arrive at through your own thoughts. I was disappointed because I was under the impression that there would be "secrets" revealed about the events and characters in "The Hobbit" and there were none. If you are interested in Tolkien's life then this is for you, however I'm sure that there autobiographies out there that would prove to be more useful.

I'm not sure I remember Bilbo's name being mentioned in this hour long + dvd. Suppose he must have been mentioned in there somewhere....

Good stuff: entertaining and informative interviews with Tolkien himself, John and Priscilla Tolkien, Rayner Unwin, Tom Shippey, and Humphrey Carpenter.

Not so good stuff: way too much of an inane narrator of the Tolkien bio, way too much of the Hildebrandts talking. No noticeable focus on The Hobbit as opposed to LOTR. And a strange segment on the music of Middle Earth.

Borrow this one.

I found this DVD to to be helpful and interesting. I am a huge tolkien fan and I love The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This DVD had some interesting facts bt it was mostly about Tolkien which I am a huge fan of. Bravo.

I'd been hoping for at least a somewhat intelligent discussion of Tolkien and his works. However, this documentary is fairly superficial. . It doesn't go into the story in any depth, and even gets some of the basic plot points wrong. Much of the background is stuff that any Tolkien fan would know (how many times have you heard Tolkien's story about grading papers and writing "Hobbit" on the page?). The artwork is mostly that done by the Hildebrants, which is good but more of a kid-lit style (which even they admit). Still, the documentary does get an extra star for containing some really unique footage of Tolkien reading passages from LOTR and even some Elvish. For this alone it might be worth watching, if not buying, the documentary.