Bored of the Rings: the Tolkien industry has gone far enough

In 1969, Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, future founders of National Lampoon, published a satirical takedown of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, entitled Bored of the Rings. It holds up remarkably well today as a closely observed parody of Tolkien’s more windy stylistic tics. One critic, David Bratman, remarked: ‘Those parodists wrought better than they knew. I think it is highly significant how close Tolkien came to inadvertently writing the parody version of his own novel – and how completely, in the end, he managed to avoid it.’

Yet recent news that the ‘official’ Lord of the Rings series is to have yet more film adaptations made of it should not only send any right-minded cineaste into a fit of despair, but make us wish that Beard and Kenney might return with another near-the-knuckle parody of what has become an increasingly unwieldy and sprawling Tolkien industry. Warner Brothers and New Line have announced that ‘for all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R.