Fandom Voices: Impact of the Films by Dawn Felagund
Posted on 13 May 2022; updated on 25 November 2022
This article is part of the newsletter column Cultus Dispatches.
With Amazon's Rings of Power series on the horizon, many Tolkien fans wonder—or worry—how the new show will impact the fandom communities they are a part of. This is not the Tolkien fandom's first experience with major media adaptations, however—far from it! With two blockbuster trilogies part of its history within the past two decades, the fandom has ample experience to draw on in considering how The Rings of Power will (and won't) change the fandom.
In March, we published an article that analyzed how the films affected initiation into the fanfiction community, using data from the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey. This month, we take a different approach, asking fans who were part of the fandom before the two trilogy releases to share their experiences of the changes they saw in the fandom following each trilogy release. The survey was open to everyone—in fact, it's still open, so if you want to share your experience or memories of how the films impacted the fandom, you can do so here, and we will periodically update our response collection with new responses.
In this first section, we'll share some of the trends we noticed in the responses we've received so far, with minimal commentary, followed by the complete collection of responses.
The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy
The debut of the Lord of the Rings (LotR) film trilogy might be the single most impactful event in the fandom's history to date. The films ushered in thousands of new fans, turned a niche community into an online megafandom, and shifted fandom cultures in important ways.
Fandom Population Boom
Many respondents noted that the films brought an onslaught of new fans into the online fandom. Elwin Fortuna was the founder and a moderator of the tolkien_slash mailing list and Least Expected fanworks archive, both which pre-dated the films. They recall:
The release of The Fellowship of the Ring meant that, within days, our small mailing list saw hundreds of people joining. Fanfic and fanart exploded in numbers. I also noticed many new mailing lists and some new archives being created, some that lasted for years, others that disappeared fairly quickly. … This all happened within the space of a few months post December 2001.
TheXPhial, who was a participant on Tolkien forums—particularly The Barrow Downs—prior to the films, recalls a similar experience:
When the movies started coming out, membership at the forum and in the chat room really ballooned. It was like a massive influx of new faces and voices. Mostly they were younger than the original population of the forum, and new threads and whole new sections were added to discuss the movies. We got a lot of younger women who were brought in through crushes on Legolas. I mean, all the main characters had fangirls, but by far most of them were there for Legolas. The younger, newer fans were eager to prove their cred. Most of them started reading the books and the appendices.
Another respondent also noticed how new fans rose to the challenge of a fandom that prided itself on its encyclopedic and detailed knowledge of Tolkien and related fields, like medieval studies:
What I liked was the "after", once everyone had watched the films and grumbled about all that was left out, when lots of people, new to Tolkien fandom, began writing and talking about such obscure nuances as why Orlando Bloom had a slight Welsh accent, and if it was because Welsh archers were the best in medieval times ...
Lyra, active before the films on www.herr-der-ringe-film.de and www.elbenwald.de, also recalls pre-film fandom and the boom that followed the 2001 release of Fellowship of the Ring:
[Before the films,] there was also a lot of shared love for the books, the occasional fanfic (though never called fanfic!) or fanart, RPGs, as well as some muted hope for the movies. Regional or even nationwide offline meet-ups were an important fixture, with attendance ranging from under ten to about thirty people, while the forums had a membership in the low triple digits. You generally knew the other active users at least by name.
This changed drastically after the movies premiered, although I don't remember the exact timeframe in which user numbers rose! But there was a huge influx of new fans, bringing with them bright-eyed excitement and discussions ranging from "Why don't the Ringwraiths just ford the river?" to "Isn't Legolas the sexiest?"
A New (and Easier) Entry Point for Fans
What TheXPhial noticed about "newer fans … eager to prove their cred" was observed by others, who saw one of the major impacts of the films as providing a new entry point for fans, who maybe wouldn't have committed to the books otherwise but, through the films, found themselves transported to Middle-earth, with no wish to return.
Daniel Stride sees the films as reversing how fans encountered the books and adaptations made from them. "Prior to December 2001, the standard entry point into the fandom was via the books," he writes. "Adaptations (Bakshi and Rankin-Bass) did exist, but generally speaking, one read the books and only then checked out adaptations. Since Jackson, I would suggest that most people see the movies first, and then follow up the books later."
Multiple respondents noted that the films made Tolkien's work accessible to more people, moving it from "nerd culture" to "popular culture." John observed that the films "opened the whole world of Arda to a new set of people who would have been reluctant to get into the written trilogy ... which, it has to be admitted, can be pretty dense. These are not beach-read materials. The trilogy demands your attention."
Megan Abrahamson writes, "I could finally get my IRL [in real life] friends interested in reading the book!" while Rebecca notes how Tolkien became more mainstream with the films: "The movies made the fandom bigger and more mainstream. Before the movies, when I would tell someone I was a Tolkien fan, I would wait half a beat to see if I needed to explain what that was. I don't need to do that any more."
PhoenixRisesOnceMore observes that veteran fans often supported new film fans who wanted to read the books: "I mainly remember an environment of almost 'Tolkien mentorship' in which older fans introduced younger fans who had mainly (or solely) experienced the films to the wider Legendarium."
Even among existing fans, the films impacted not just their fandom participation but their reading of the books. Neverwhere notes that she started reading fanfic because of the films but also felt a new passion for the books. "I liked the books before," she writes, "but the films really helped me *love* them."
John also identifies the films as an opportunity to connect one's fannish and nonfannish social worlds: "I had been a fan of the novels since I was a child, long before the movies were made. So when friends who were never into the books saw the movies and were enthralled, it gave me the opportunity to say, 'See? THIS is why I love the books. Now you see what I see.'"
Friendships and Social Connections
Several respondents recall that the films allowed them to connect with the many new fans brought online by the films. (Two respondents even noted that they met their spouses in post-film online Tolkien fandom!) One participant recalls the dual movement of fans online and the popularity caused by the films as opening more opportunities to connect with other fans:
I was a solitary fan before the films after having started reading Tolkien in the mid 1970's. I desperately wanted to participate in the Tolkien Society moots, but never had the money to travel to them, and I did not live in an area where people were active. I ran across rumors of a possible film of The Lord of the Rings in early 1998, then discovered TheOneRing.com and TheOneRing.net in 1999 and was very pleased indeed to be able to interact with fellow fans online. Thankfully, the films brought fellow Tolkien fans out of the woodwork, even in my geographic neck of the woods, and I was finally able to join other folks to share our love of the Professor's works. I have the films to thank for that and I am grateful.
Spiced Wine makes a similar observation:
I started reading Tolkien in the '80s and, apart from a few people and friends, had no-one to discuss the books with. … [B]ecause of the internet people could suddenly discuss Tolkien almost in real time across the world. After being a quiet fan for so long, I was both intoxicated and a bit overwhelmed.
Responses among fans around before the films sometimes expressed this tension: gratitude for increased opportunities to connect but also a feeling of being overwhelmed. Bunn, who was active in pre-internet fandom via Middle-earth Roleplaying and fanzines, writes of the films:
To be honest, the whole thing got a bit over the top. What had been a book fandom full of nerdy enthusiasts became a megafandom filled with pretty much everyone, and that was a bit much. I was pleased so many people were having fun, but I'd already been moving away from that phase of my life, and all the RPF [real-person fiction] and loud arguments, drama and shipping maybe gave me a bit of an extra push in that direction.
The Tolkien fandom that burgeoned after the films had a life-changing impact on many of the fans who were a part of that experience. One respondent writes:
I only read LotR for the first time when I got it for Christmas in 2000. I was thirteen at the time and bullied in pretty much all of my social circles, so offline it was an amazing means of escapism. I actually made one of my best friends when she said she was a fan of The Hobbit and reading LotR.
I looked for a fan community online and made my "home" at herr-der-ringe-film.de, as well as an eight-person rapid forum. … Generally it was a very welcoming place though; got me interested in linguistics; helped me study abroad; sparked a lifelong passion for roleplaying, reading, writing and drawing; changed my musical taste forever; and ultimately introduced me to my best friends, one of which I'm lucky enough to have married. I'm extremely glad for that very online, very LotR-heavy time in my life. I wouldn't be the same without it.
Ithiliana likewise sees the films as a personal turning point:
I'd drifted away from Tolkien as an angry young feminist. Jackson's films brought me back to Tolkien *and* to fandom (LiveJournal) because I was recruited by friends at an academic conference to join LJ. Though I was protesting I would never write fanfiction, I started writing my first RPS [real person slash] on the flight back from the conference and soon started writing FPS [fictional person slash] as well. So my experience is that the films (and the internet) had a fantastic effect on my fandom experience, and the fandom communities available to me. It was life-changing.
Conflicts
Of course, throwing together thousands of strangers from around the world, with varying levels of experience with Tolkien and online communications, some of whom loved the new films and others of whom loathed them, was not going to always be an avenue of roses. Fandom (as all social activities) is at least partly defined by tensions and conflicts among its members. Pre-film fans had their conflicts too, but some respondents observed that those conflicts changed as the release of the films approached and especially once the films were in theaters. TheXPhial offered one perspective:
Before the movies, most of the disagreements were over classic Tolkien questions like, do Balrogs have wings, and do Hobbits have pointed ears. After the movies, the questions and debates shifted somewhat. They were much more about changes that had been made to the story. Many people were annoyed that some characters, like Merry, got short shrift in the movies, or were changed to the point of not being recognizable. Other people were worried about changes to Arwen's storyline.
Arwen's character and role was mentioned by multiple respondents. Daniel Stride specifically observed that the arguments over Arwen "bore more than a bit of resemblance to current furore about the upcoming Rings of Power series, and often the same sort of pseudo-political arguments ('Political Correctness!') were getting wheeled out."
Conflicts transcended the filmmakers' choices, however. With more people in the fandom, bringing a more diverse range of interests, fandom groups sometimes sought to limit what was and was not permissible within their spaces. Elwin Fortuna, remembering the meteoric rise of fandom groups, notes that "[t]here were also 'anti' mailing lists as well, and archives were founded that didn't allow slash." Lyra also remembers gatekeeping, tied to a variety of motives:
There was quite a bit of gatekeeping, partly born from the frustration of having to explain "basics'' repeatedly because many new users weren't just new to the fandom, they were also new to forum culture and didn't bother to see if perhaps the thread they felt like opening already existed, and partly from people just liking to feel superior for having been there before LotR became cool and mainstream.
Another participant remembers a similar sense of superiority among some of the fans who knew Tolkien from before the films and comments about "how none of the new fans had any reading ability at all."
Fan Cultures
Conflicts were sometimes instigated by changes in the fan cultures that the new fans brought. "Before the films the fandom was much more concentrated and concerned with academia," writes OnTheTrail. TheXPhial remembers a similar shift on the Barrow Downs: "The biggest change to the chat room was that the age of most chatters shifted younger. We had a lot more teenagers and young adults than before. The chats became sillier, and less formal, which most people tolerated or enjoyed."
These demographic shifts were one of the most lasting legacies of the films. Several respondents noted that fandom skewed younger and welcomed more women. "There was a great sense that LotR fandom wasn't the sole purview of the fanboys," says Elwin Fortuna, "but now belonged to the fangirls as well."
The definition of canon also shifted after the films. "All of a sudden there were fans everywhere," writes one respondent, "some of whom took PJ's films as canon." Bunn recalls that, after the films, fans became more interested in texts other than The Hobbit and LotR, which resulted in the fandom compartmentalizing as it had not done before:
Though Tolkien was already a big name, most people who had read him had only read LotR or The Hobbit, and stories from The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales felt really obscure, a sort of shared secret among people who were real enthusiasts. But I don't think we really had separate parts of the fandom then, I don't think the term 'Silmarillion fans' would have resonated. There was just Tolkien fandom, and some people were deeper into it than others.
Fanworks
The fanworks being produced changed as well. Elwin Fortuna traces several new forms and genres of fanwork to the post-film era, including real-person fiction (RPF) and fanvids. Some of this was driven by platform changes: "I think the rise in popularity of LiveJournal was also a huge factor in LotR fandom. As LJ became more and more the home of fandom, hundreds of communities sprang up, and in turn icons and photomanips became very popular."
The films also exerted an influence on the look and style of fanworks being produced. This was not without conflict. Rebecca recalls:
I remember a few people on rec.org.sca (or maybe it was alt.tolkien) getting very, very, very upset because anyone who came into the fandom through the movies would have their image of the characters set by the movies, instead of developing their own. They never articulated to my satisfaction why that was a bad thing.
"Characterizations in fanfiction were altered," remembers another respondent. "Fanart especially went from extremely diverse renderings of the characters to almost universal representation of them with the actors' faces." Daniel Stride uses Legolas as an example of the one of the more lasting film-driven changes: "Certainly, the notion of Legolas being blond-haired was very much a Jackson-driven thing—plenty of people before Jackson saw him as blond on account of his father, but we have now reached the point where it is genuinely rare to see a dark-haired Legolas in fan representation."
Fanfiction gained new genres. As Daniel Stride also recalls:
It might also be anecdotal, but I think one other impact the Jackson movies had on the fandom was in the fanfiction trends. So-called Tenth Walker fics were always popular, but the movies sparked an upsurge in Legomance fics (romances involving Legolas), due to the fascination that young women had with Orlando Bloom's performance as Legolas.
But writing styles also became more diverse. "People started writing fanfic in their own styles," writes Elwin Fortuna, "rather than even attempting to create pastiches of Tolkien's."
And it wasn't just fanfiction and fanart. The imagery and style of the LotR films pervade other areas of fandom as well. Speaking of cosplay, in addition to fanart, Lyra writes:
Before, costumes (as they were sometimes worn at meet-ups or depicted in fanart) had been inspired by various medieval fantasy sources, from "Mittelaltermarkt" (German RenFaire) aesthetics to Prince Valiant. Now, the movie costumes influenced the picture everybody had of Middle-earth.
If one trend pervades the recollections of fans who remember the fandom when the LotR films arrived, it is of not just expansion but diversification: more and more diverse fans, more places to connect with other fans, more and more diverse fanworks, more discussions, more debates, more ways of approaching Tolkien. Then, a decade later, the fandom would do it all again, this time for the Hobbit trilogy.
The Hobbit Film Trilogy
Unlike the LotR trilogy, the Hobbit films arrived amid an existing online fandom. While this trilogy generated its share of innovations, fans who were present in the fandom when the Hobbit films opened recall less impact on the fandom and more in the form of shifting the culture in subtle ways rather than creating parts of the fandom from whole cloth, as the LotR films helped to do.
Impact on Fandom … or Not?
Respondents differed on the impact the Hobbit films had on the Tolkien fandom. Many people responded that the Hobbit trilogy had little to no impact on the fandom. TRiG writes that
as far as I can tell the Hobbit films sank with barely a trace. I presume that Tauriel fanfic exists, but I have not yet come across it. … Interestingly, the Jackson LotR films are acknowledged, even in book-focused spaces—ACOUP's blog posts on war tactics, for example, or /r/tolkienfans on Reddit—but the Hobbit films are mostly ignored.
Others noted that the impact was demographic, bringing in more and younger fans into the fandom. "I think that the Hobbit films brought a new wave of fans and a younger generation of fans in particular into the fandom," says one participant.
Other respondents, however, saw the films as highly impactful. "The Hobbit is a turning point in my opinion," writes OnTheTrail. "I think the community split somewhat and defenders of The Hobbit started to become aggressive in their defence of the movies." Rishika Aggarwal makes the case that the Hobbit fanfiction fandom owes its existence to the films:
The movies completely changed the way the events of The Hobbit and the characters were seen by the fandom. The biggest impact was undoubtedly on the characters of Bilbo and Thorin, who were immediately shipped together in a relationship. When sorted by kudos, for example, the top Tolkein-related fics on Archive of Our Own are generally related to the events of The Hobbit (or a fictionalised version of the time right after the events of the book/movies) and either feature Bilbo/Thorin as the main pairing or as a background pairing. Additionally, nearly all were written after the release of the first movie, and most after the release of the entire trilogy, which is why I'd argue the online fanfic fandom as it exists today can trace its existence to the Hobbit movies.
Elwin Fortuna offers a humorous anecdote that supports the idea that the Hobbit fanfic fandom originated with the films: "I recall pulling a little trick with one of my fanfics, written years earlier, which had a little Hobbit-based content in it. I simply listed it in The Hobbit category on AO3 shortly before the first movie came out and then watched the kudos roll in!"
So were the films turning points for the fandom or did they sink without a trace? The difference in responses seems linked, at least in part, to the fan communities to which respondents belonged. Bunn notes that a lot of the significant activity around the films occurred outside of many existing fan communities: "My impression is that Hobbit movie fandom mostly does its own thing in slightly separate space, so it felt less overwhelming than the arrival of LotR movie fandom did." Spiced Wine observes the same: "It didn’t seem to impact the fandom as much as LotR did, or that was my impression. At that time my fandom home was the fandom-specific Faerie Archive and not so much AO3 (where there might have been more reaction fic-wise)." Lyra likewise notes that the division of the fandom by source text—a change that Bunn ascribes to the post-LotR boom in the fandom (see the section on the LotR films above)—played a role: "In my corner of the fandom, the Hobbit films didn't have a significant impact. However, as my preferred fannish haunt is the Silmarillion fandom, that may simply be because there's next to no overlap between my bubble and The Hobbit (either book or movies)."
A New Entry Point
As shown in the LotR section above, multiple respondents observed that the LotR film trilogy made Tolkien accessible in a way that the books alone had not been able to do. While the increase in fandom participation speaks to the Hobbit films playing a similar role, remarkably few respondents explicitly identified the Hobbit films as easing entry into Tolkien's books. Of course, the relative difficulty (and commitment) of LotR versus The Hobbit likely plays a role here. In fact, one participant identified existing familiarity with the book as a reason why the films didn't have the same impact: "I don't think the Hobbit films impacted the fandom as much as the LotR films did. Most of the people I knew who watched the films had already read the book."
Similarly, Lyra saw the Hobbit film fandom as assimilating more quickly with the existing online fandom: "I had the impression that the Hobbit (movies)-only fandom quieted down a lot quicker than the LotR movies fandom. People were either sucked into the larger Tolkien fandom, or moved on to different pastures."
Controversies and Conflicts
As in the early days of the LotR films (and observable now as the hype about The Rings of Power heats up), the arrival of the Hobbit films provoked controversy and consternation from existing fans. Many respondents noted their dislike of the films, with several acknowledging that they didn't finish the trilogy due to disappointment with the earlier films. However, Bunn also offers an observation questioning whether memories of fan reactions to the films always match their actual reactions:
I remember a disapproving feeling of 'how very uncanonical and awful these movies are' floating around, particularly in the terrible reviews for the last movie—but checking back on my LJ comments at the time, many of my very-long-term Tolkien-enthusiast friends seemed to have loved them, as I did myself.
Daniel Stride observes that the nature of fans' objections to the Hobbit trilogy differed from objections to the LotR films:
Whereas the earlier trilogy had split the community along Purist/Revisionist lines—essentially the question being whether the priority was to create stand-alone art or remain faithful to Tolkien's text—The Hobbit movies saw far less emphasis on fandom Purism (except possibly over Tauriel), and much more criticism over perceived narrative bloat. People reacted poorly to them because they were seen as bad movies, rather than as poor adaptations of Tolkien.
Jacob J. points out several elements of the Hobbit films that earned fans' early ire, as well as aspects of the films that others looked forward to:
The fandom was divided. Many were enthusiastic about the cast (particularly Freeman, Armitage, and Pace) and returning to Middle-earth. However, others were frustrated by deviations from the source material, the choice to do a trilogy of films, the reliance on CGI, and the cartoonishness of the action compared to Jackson’s LotR films. I remember personally enjoying each film (while acknowledging flaws) but seeing many fans vocally disappointed on forums such as TheOneRing.net.
Not all misgivings concerned the narrative and filmmaking choices of Jackson's team, however. "Legolas was blond; Tauriel was canon; Elves are vegetarian," writes one participant, suggesting that she saw Jackson's more controversial changes become canonical to some fans. Another respondent recalls:
There was some controversy about Tauriel as an original female character from the outset (welcomed by some, but rejected by others), which intensified when the love triangle was revealed. I seem to remember some early fanworks of Tauriel. There was widespread criticism of some features of the trilogy from the canon point of view, especially the portrayal of some canon characters (Radagast, for instance).
But the conflict generated by the new trilogy wasn't without its benefits either. John writes that "there are some fan-made edits of The Hobbit which makes the series FAR better than what Jackson was forced to release. And on a positive side, I think it engaged a lot of fan creativity on what they would have done to make the films better." And PhoenixRisesOnceMore saw Hobbit film fans using other fans' negativity to fuel their own love for the films:
I also got the sense that there was a contingent of fans who very much loved The Hobbit films who were energized by the fact that the films veered as much from the source material as they did in terms of adding scenes and expanding characters etc. I also got the sense that some of this love for the films was framed or perhaps engendered partly as a reaction to those who felt the opposite about the films, be those fans who loved the books but didn’t like any of the films or fans who liked both the books and the LotR films but hated The Hobbit films.
Gatekeeping and Inclusivity
One effect of the LotR films, described above, was in opening the fandom to women fans. Several respondents remember that the fandom boom that followed the Hobbit films likewise had the effect of welcoming more diverse fans and fanworks to the fandom. "Everybody was cool with teh gays all of a sudden," recalls one participant. Elwin Fortuna makes a similar observation:
By 2012, fandom was a lot more shameless about kink than it had been in 2001, so a lot more kinky fanfic was written early on for the Hobbit movies than there had been for the LotR movies. As well, much more was written about gender, including changes to stated gender or writing specifically transgender fic, and also a lot more emphasis on queerness and queer community in Middle-earth.
Another respondent credits the Hobbit films with "more representations of Dwarves, especially Dwarven ladies."
Rishika Aggarwal also describes Tauriel—a character multiple respondents identified as controversial—as playing a pivotal role in making the Hobbit films appeal to women. In what she calls "the curious case of Tauriel," Rishika writes:
While there have been numerous debates regarding the creation and inclusion of the character into the Tolkien canon, it's undoubtedly true that she caught the interest of a major chunk of the fandom. The Lord of the Rings books had a canonical female presence (Éowyn, Galadriel, Arwen) that The Hobbit did not. By adding the character of Tauriel and making her more than a passive romantic interest, I'd argue that Jackson caught the interest of a section of fans that would otherwise have paid little attention to the Hobbit film series. Indeed, she remains a popular supporting character to add to Hobbit and LotR-adjacent fanfics, and rarely in a way that is critical of the development of her character.
One respondent specifically recalls that the gatekeeping that some recall as a hallmark of the early LotR fandom online was much-diminished post-Hobbit trilogy, ushering in a new level of openness to diverse interpretations across the fandom:
It may have been the spaces I frequented, but I also noticed a greater desire to openly discuss and create transformative works that were challenging or subversive of cishet or amatonormative readings of the texts, and Eurocentric readings of the texts too. It's not so much that these fans originated those ideas (they definitely didn't) but I started to see them normalised as part of fandom discussion across spaces (not confined to one community). It didn't feel like the LotR online fandom where there seemed to be a clear divide between people who loved diverse readings and discussions versus people who were gatekeepers and/or prejudiced. The Hobbit fandom almost had a homogeneity of sorts that allowed a crosspollination of fandom culture between spaces that I hadn't really seen in other corners of online Tolkien fandom.
But existing Tolkien fans didn't necessarily welcome those brought to the fandom by the film with open arms. Independence1776 writes:
[My predominant memory] is of going into the #Hobbit tag on Tumblr the day the first movie was released and reading back twenty pages to find the first post that *wasn’t* negative toward new fans. It was literally twenty pages of “new/movie fans suck.” I ended up making a little “Be like Elrond, kind as summer” banner to push against that mindset, though it didn’t get all that much traction.
And just as online LotR fan spaces sometimes struggled with how film fans who didn't always understand their community norms, a respondent identifies tagging norms as an issue that sometimes created tension between existing and new fans: "There sometimes seemed to be a bit of disagreement about how many references to any book source a Hobbit movieverse fic needed to contain, proportionally, before some non-movie fans were happy to see it tagged for that source on AO3 …."
Fan Cultures
In the section above, several participants identified a major cultural shift as a growing openness to interpretations and fanworks about women, LGBTQ+ characters, and characters of color. Another cultural change involved platform shifts. Writing of her return to fandom after the Hobbit films, PhoenixRisesOnceMore observes that the
online fandom landscape had changed *immensely* in that time. Social media sites had overtaken message boards as the primary way of interacting with fans. AO3 existed. Many of the smaller fanwork archives from the late '90s and early '00s were gone. The sheer diversity of fan representations of Tolkien’s world had *greatly* increased.
The consolidation of participation onto fewer and larger platforms also brought Tolkien fans in closer contact with other fandoms. Independence1776 writes that the Hobbit films
had a lasting impact because they (along with the general fandom shift to Tumblr) brought Tolkien fandom closer in culture/contact with general Western media fandom and that changed how many people interacted with fandom and the canon, both movie and book. There started becoming more of an assumption that everyone was multifandom and conversant with the norms of non-Tolkien fandom without realizing that Tolkien fandom has long had its own subculture, especially because a lot of the newer fans seemed to be or outright were dismissive of long-time fans and our experiences. This also marked the shift away from Tolkien-specific fic archives to AO3 dominating.
Another respondent also saw cultural changes originating with platform shifts:
I think that the Hobbit films brought a new wave of fans and a younger generation of fans in particular into the fandom. The generational difference meant that fandom activities also took place on new spaces like Twitter, and took on the cultural norms of these spaces too. "Stan Twitter" just has a different energy from LiveJournal or Tumblr or the various old forums.
An interesting side note about the responses concerning the Hobbit films: No respondent mentioned that the Hobbit trilogy helped them connect with other fans or make new friends. In light of the responses by fans who recall the LotR trilogy—some of whom met their spouses or had other life-changing experiences due to the Tolkien fandom—the Hobbit trilogy seems far less impactful on people already participating in fandom when it was released, possibly because much of the fandom's infrastructure was already in place and fandom in general had become much more normalized.
Fanworks
Participants in the fandom prior to the LotR films recall that a major effect of the films was to homogenize how people viewed and visually represented the characters (see the section on the LotR films above). Respondents observed an even more drastic effect of the Hobbit films: They brought characters and groups that had been largely ignored for over a decade into the limelight and altered how fans perceived them. One respondent writes, "Again, fanart became very standardized," but many participants noted the radical shifts in perception of Hobbit characters and the popularity of the Bagginshield ship. Rebecca observes, succinctly: "Dwarves became sexy." Elwin Fortuna sees a similar phenomenon in how Bilbo was perceived and written:
Bilbo had previously been seen as the uncle or as someone older and thus less sexy prior to the Hobbit movies. They changed how he was perceived too, and he began to get a lot more explicit content, especially with the rise of Bilbo/Thorin, which is a Hobbit movie ship from whole cloth, specifically sparked by the hug they share at the end of the first Hobbit movie.
The Bagginshield ship, in particular, was a monumental outcome of the Hobbit films. "The burgeoning of Bagginshield fics was predictable," recalls one respondent, "but the numbers, quickly growing on AO3, nevertheless took previous fans by surprise."
Nor were these the only characters and ships to receive more attention post-Hobbit film. "Certainly the rash of Kili fanfiction (a throwback to the Legomances of an earlier era) was entirely a product of these movies," writes Daniel Stride. Other participants identified Legolas/Gimli—a LotR ship—as receiving a boost due to the attention paid to Legolas's character and Dwarves in general in the Hobbit films. "Legolas/Gimli, despite arguably having incredibly shippy content in the book, wasn't written very much," says Elwin Fortuna. "The Hobbit movies changed that, and changed the way that fandom perceived Dwarves." Rishika Aggarwal traces some of this interest to the Hobbit films' focus on Legolas, noting that "while Legolas is not part of the original book, giving him a greater depth of character through his inclusion in the Hobbit movies has been largely appreciated by the fanfic fandom."
Putting It All Together
If two film trilogies show anything, it is that adaptations of Tolkien will generate interest in the Tolkien fandom. But the responses of fans present before the LotR films compared with fans who were around before the Hobbit films show that this interest doesn't necessarily take a predictable shape and other factors come into play.
The film trilogies did shape what some fans saw as canon, but this was not their biggest effect. Both trilogies generated a good deal of inventiveness in fan communities and especially in terms of fanworks. Both also opened the boundaries of who felt welcome to identify as a Tolkien fan.
The Hobbit trilogy, however, was on the whole less impactful. Where online LotR fandom arose alongside the films, fans drawn into the fandom by the Hobbit films found existing fan communities that they joined (or didn't). In other words, where some of the aforementioned inventiveness for the LotR films involved building online fan communities by LotR film fans, the Hobbit films did not have the same effect. Likewise, the Rings of Power series will emerge into a fandom already constructed, already with many of its norms in place, and even more mature and set in its ways than the fandom the Hobbit films found a decade earlier.
Responses: The Lord of the Rings Films
If you were part of the Tolkien fandom before the Lord of the Rings films were released in December 2001, how do you think the films impacted the fandom? What other experiences/memories do you have related to the films and the fandom at this time?
All responses we've received to the above question are collected here without curation or commentary. Responses have been lightly edited.
Were you a part of the fandom before one or both films? We're still collecting responses and will update this page as new responses come in.
I started reading Tolkien in the '80s and, apart from a few people and friends, had no-one to discuss the books with. I knew it was huge, the mountain in fantasy literature that couldn’t be ignored (if you liked fantasy!) I watched the old cartoon film endless times and read and reread the books, but I suppose I didn’t realise how much the films brought LotR into the spotlight. This was just after I came online. I realised that because of the internet people could suddenly discuss Tolkien almost in real time across the world. After being a quiet fan for so long, I was both intoxicated and a bit overwhelmed.
~ Spiced Wine, response collected on 24 March 2022
All of a sudden there were fans everywhere, some of whom took PJ's films as canon.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 25 March 2022
Before the films the fandom was much more concentrated and concerned with academia. It was still fun but there was less general talk.
~ OnTheTrail, response collected on 27 March 2022
Prior to December 2001, the standard entry point into the fandom was via the books. Adaptations (Bakshi and Rankin-Bass) did exist, but generally speaking, one read the books and only then checked out adaptations. Since Jackson, I would suggest that most people see the movies first, and then follow up the books later. Many such people still do actually prefer the books, of course, and indeed it was not unknown for people to read The Lord of the Rings in, say, 2002, and then become a Purist for the remaining Jackson movies—despite the first movie being their own entry point into the fandom.
The major fandom dispute in the lead-up to December 2001 was Arwen replacing Glorfindel at the Ford of Bruinen. It cannot be emphasised enough how much of a lightning rod this was within the online community. It bore more than a bit of resemblance to current furore about the upcoming Rings of Power series, and often the same sort of pseudo-political arguments ("Political Correctness!") were getting wheeled out. The matter largely died once the film was actually released, and people saw Liv Tyler in action ... though I do find it hilarious that Jackson Purists are now a thing, and criticise The Rings of Power for diverging from the movies.
Personally, I am actually looking forward to The Rings of Power diverging from the movies precisely because after twenty years, I actually want to see the story get out from beneath Jackson's shadow. I do genuinely appreciate that the Jackson trilogy are excellent films—or at least the first two are (I will never forgive what they did to Denethor), but they are far from perfect, either as stand-alone art or as a representation of Tolkien's vision. I also do not think that it has been an entirely good thing for my home nation of New Zealand, but that is another story.
It might also be anecdotal, but I think one other impact the Jackson movies had on the fandom was in the fanfiction trends. So-called Tenth Walker fics were always popular, but the movies sparked an upsurge in Legomance fics (romances involving Legolas), due to the fascination that young women had with Orlando Bloom's performance as Legolas. Certainly, the notion of Legolas being blond-haired was very much a Jackson-driven thing—plenty of people before Jackson saw him as blond on account of his father, but we have now reached the point where it is genuinely rare to see a dark-haired Legolas in fan representation.
~Daniel Stride, response collected on 27 March 2022
I think it opened up the fandom greatly. I never expected a one-to-one filming experience with the LotR trilogy. Film and prose are very different mediums so there's never a perfect transfer from one to another. But something I loved was how closely it followed the details and spirit of the books. And it opened the whole world of Arda to a new set of people who would have been reluctant to get into the written trilogy ... which, it has to be admitted, can be pretty dense. These are not beach-read materials. The trilogy demands your attention.
I had been a fan of the novels since I was a child, long before the movies were made. So when friends who were never into the books saw the movies and were enthralled, it gave me the opportunity to say, "See? THIS is why I love the books. Now you see what I see."
~ John, response collected on 27 March 2022
I think the films drew new fans to Tolkien's work who may not have been introduced otherwise.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 27 March 2022
I remember the doubts, the almost certainty that the films couldn't get even close to what Lord of the Rings was as a story. Then it was the hype, about the cast, about New Zealand. Then, of course, once the films were released, opinions, all kinds of them, from "how awful" to "brilliant" and everything in between. What I liked was the "after", once everyone had watched the films and grumbled about all that was left out, when lots of people, new to Tolkien fandom, began writing and talking about such obscure nuances as why Orlando Bloom had a slight Welsh accent, and if it was because Welsh archers were the best in medieval times ...
~ Anonymous, response collected on 28 March 2022
The films dominated discussions and still do to this day—to the point where there seems to be distinct groups of fans: those who have only watched movies, those who like discussing the books, those who enjoy both, those who like one and not the other. The films dominate most Tolkien conversations.
~ The Red Book (Steven), response collected on 28 March 2022
I was a solitary fan before the films after having started reading Tolkien in the mid 1970's. I desperately wanted to participate in the Tolkien Society moots, but never had the money to travel to them, and I did not live in an area where people were active. I ran across rumors of a possible film of The Lord of the Rings in early 1998, then discovered TheOneRing.com and TheOneRing.net in 1999 and was very pleased indeed to be able to interact with fellow fans online. Thankfully, the films brought fellow Tolkien fans out of the woodwork, even in my geographic neck of the woods, and I was finally able to join other folks to share our love of the Professor's works. I have the films to thank for that and I am grateful.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
Things definitely changed. Characterizations in fanfiction were altered. Fanart especially went from extremely diverse renderings of the characters to almost universal representation of them with the actors' faces.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
I only read LotR for the first time when I got it for Christmas in 2000. I was thirteen at the time and bullied in pretty much all of my social circles, so offline it was an amazing means of escapism. I actually made one of my best friends when she said she was a fan of The Hobbit and reading LotR.
I looked for a fan community online and made my "home" at herr-der-ringe-film.de, as well as an eight-person rapid forum. A lot of fic was only available in English, so I improved my English. I also learned that being queer is an option (in theory, for other people). I helped translate the chapter on the aorist for a Quenya course into German.
Most of the fandom vibes I remember were jokes about teenage girls finding Legolas hot (as a teenage girl finding Legolas hot, I of course immediately distanced myself from that), the most reasonable and cerebral takes on why Arwen at Helm's Deep was an abomination and Liv Tyler should feel bad (as a reasonable and cerebral being, I regret nothing like the vitriolic nonsense I started spewing then), and how none of the new fans had any reading ability at all.
Generally it was a very welcoming place though; got me interested in linguistics; helped me study abroad; sparked a lifelong passion for roleplaying, reading, writing and drawing; changed my musical taste forever; and ultimately introduced me to my best friends, one of which I'm lucky enough to have married. I'm extremely glad for that very online, very LotR-heavy time in my life. I wouldn't be the same without it.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
I was more active in the fandom in the early 90's, in the pre-internet days, though I kept up with friends who were more active into the 2000s. Though Tolkien was already a big name, most people who had read him had only read LotR or The Hobbit, and stories from The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales felt really obscure, a sort of shared secret among people who were real enthusiasts. But I don't think we really had separate parts of the fandom then, I don't think the term 'Silmarillion fans' would have resonated. There was just Tolkien fandom, and some people were deeper into it than others.
Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) from Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) was popular in my circles during that period, with a strong focus on the Third Age. Really beautiful material was written, developing on the Third Age setting with fabulous maps and additional place names and material written for role-players with considerable scholarly care. I knew Chris Seeman, who was involved with MERP, and also ran the short-lived Other Hands zine.
Then, in 1999, Tolkien Enterprises (not the Tolkien Estate, but the company that owns the movie rights) pulled the license from Iron Crown. No more MERP. They later sent Chris a cease and desist order, so no more Other Hands, either. And that was because there were movies on the horizon, and suddenly the beautiful, detailed, heavily-researched, and almost academic style of MERP wasn't commercial enough. There was more money to be made elsewhere. And that was the end of ICE, and Other Hands. This was not popular.
I can remember seeing the appeal going around to join the movie fan club and raise funds for the movie project. On Usenet, I think? Or perhaps from friends on email. The people who donated got their names added to the end of the movie, and that does, I think, reflect the earlier world of the fandom, of there being a sort of sense of shared ownership, even while at the same time, it was one of the biggest and most expensive movie projects ever.
I think about half my friends in the fandom weren't really interested in going to see the movies. They felt the graphics couldn't be as good as what was in their heads. The other half watched them enthusiastically as they came out. I was one of those, though I was nothing like as enthusiastic as many of the new fans who came flooding in at that time.
To be honest, the whole thing got a bit over the top. What had been a book fandom full of nerdy enthusiasts became a megafandom filled with pretty much everyone, and that was a bit much. I was pleased so many people were having fun, but I'd already been moving away from that phase of my life, and all the RPF and loud arguments, drama and shipping maybe gave me a bit of an extra push in that direction.
~ bunn, response collected on 29 March 2022
I entered the German online fandom on the brink of the movies, in early 2001, on two forums—one already dedicated to discussion of the movies (www.herr-der-ringe-film.de), the other for general fandom activity (www.elbenwald.de), although there was a lot of overlap both in topics and in the userbase. At the time, the upcoming movies were already a huge part of the discussion—speculations about possible changes, discussions about the choice of actors, and analyses of leaked or promo material from the movies were widespread. For instance, there was great concern that the "splatter director" Peter Jackson would turn the story into a bloodbath, that he wouldn't care for Tolkien's messages of friendship and hope against hope, etc. The choice of New Zealand as location was also hotly discussed, as many people doubted that such an "exotic" place would be suitable for the pseudo-European landscapes they envisioned. Another discussion that dominated the German fandom at the time was the "new translation", which was generally hated for being too modern (Krege, the translator, had decided to let the Hobbits use 1990s slang, for instance). This makes the fandom sound like a very negative space, but of course there was also a lot of shared love for the books, the occasional fanfic (though never called fanfic!) or fanart, RPGs, as well as some muted hope for the movies. Regional or even nationwide offline meet-ups were an important fixture, with attendance ranging from under ten to about thirty people, while the forums had a membership in the low triple digits. You generally knew the other active users at least by name.
This changed drastically after the movies premiered, although I don't remember the exact timeframe in which user numbers rose! But there was a huge influx of new fans, bringing with them bright-eyed excitement and discussions ranging from "Why don't the Ringwraiths just ford the river?" to "Isn't Legolas the sexiest?"
There was quite a bit of gatekeeping, partly born from the frustration of having to explain "basics'' repeatedly because many new users weren't just new to the fandom, they were also new to forum culture and didn't bother to see if perhaps the thread they felt like opening already existed, and partly from people just liking to feel superior for having been there before LotR became cool and mainstream. The "old guard" was busy in tearing apart changes made to the book (where is Tom Bombadil? where is Glorfindel? why does Arwen threaten Aragorn with a knife to his throat, however playfully?), although some aspects of the movies were very well received (the casting of the Hobbits, Aragorn and Gandalf proved very popular, as well as the costume design and Howard Shore's epic score). After a while, there was a sort of parallel culture going on: Part of the forums were dominated by movie discourse, while other parts deliberately focused on discussing book lore. Nonetheless, even those parts adapted the visuals of the movies. Before, costumes (as they were sometimes worn at meet-ups or depicted in fanart) had been inspired by various medieval fantasy sources, from "Mittelaltermarkt" (German RenFaire) aesthetics to Prince Valiant. Now, the movie costumes influenced the picture everybody had of Middle-earth.
By and by, the differences between the two camps grew less, or at any rate less noticeable—many movie fans acquired book knowledge (through reading or osmosis) and many book fans softened towards the movies, although there are corners that chose to ignore the movies (or dismiss them as irrelevant) even today.
~ Lyra, response collected on 29 March 2022
Made the fandom bigger! I could finally get my IRL friends interested in reading the book!
~ Megan Abrahamson, response collected on 29 March 2022
The movies made the fandom bigger and more mainstream. Before the movies, when I would tell someone I was a Tolkien fan, I would wait half a beat to see if I needed to explain what that was. I don't need to do that any more.
I remember a few people on rec.org.sca (or maybe it was alt.tolkien) getting very, very, very upset because anyone who came into the fandom through the movies would have their image of the characters set by the movies, instead of developing their own. They never articulated to my satisfaction why that was a bad thing. My initial exposure to Tolkien was the Rankin-Bass The Hobbit, and the Bilbo in my head didn't look like the one from Rankin-Bass about five minutes after it ended.
The movies also put paid to the interminable threads about who you would cast in the movie. Not sorry about that. They got tiresome.
I also think the purpose of the casting threads is now met by face-claims and drawings. It wasn't really possible to share images over Usenet—I know it was technically possible, but is it really a thing if it's so much of a pain in the neck that people only bother with it for porn?
~ Rebecca, response collected on 29 March 2022
I was mostly involved in the Tolkien fandom through forum sites, primarily The Barrow Downs, which was a forum dedicated to the books before the films came out, and then shifted to accommodate new fans once the movies started coming out. There was an IRC chat room associated with the forum, and that is where we mostly hung out and talked.
When the movies started coming out, membership at the forum and in the chat room really ballooned. It was like a massive influx of new faces and voices. Mostly they were younger than the original population of the forum, and new threads and whole new sections were added to discuss the movies. We got a lot of younger women who were brought in through crushes on Legolas. I mean, all the main characters had fangirls, but by far most of them were there for Legolas. The younger, newer fans were eager to prove their cred. Most of them started reading the books and the appendices.
Before the movies, most of the disagreements were over classic Tolkien questions like, do Balrogs have wings, and do Hobbits have pointed ears. After the movies, the questions and debates shifted somewhat. They were much more about changes that had been made to the story. Many people were annoyed that some characters, like Merry, got short shrift in the movies, or were changed to the point of not being recognizable. Other people were worried about changes to Arwen's storyline. On the whole, though, most book fans also loved the movies, watched them multiple times, and wanted them to do well. And most movie fans that stayed at The Barrow Downs became a lot more educated on the books. The forum had roleplaying games based on things not covered in the movies, so if people wanted to participate and roll up a character, they needed book background.
The biggest change to the chat room was that the age of most chatters shifted younger. We had a lot more teenagers and young adults than before. The chats became sillier, and less formal, which most people tolerated or enjoyed. We increased the number of mods in the channel and several offshoots of the main room started being made for more serious discussion. The talk shifted in the main room to being primarily about Elves, because, as mentioned earlier, many of the new members were very enamored of Legolas and so they started reading and exploring more about the Elves, including reading The Silmarillion. There were several fights about if Elves or humans were better or more interesting. The Dwarves also had fans, but fewer. The Barrow Downs was a fairly formal Tolkien site before the movies, and I think most people who stayed there post-movies were still older and more book-oriented than the average Tolkien fan space at the time, but that is my experience with the shift, at least.
On a personal note, I met many amazing, wonderful people in the chat room post movies, including my wife.
~ TheXPhial, response collected on 2 April 2022
In September 1999, I started a mailing list, tolkien_slash, and a fanfic and fanart archive, Least Expected, specifically for m/m, f/f, poly, and generally queer fanworks. Over the next two years, the mailing list and archive became a small, friendly community, achieving many "firsts" in Tolkien fandom, such as the first m/m and f/f LotR and Silmarillion fanfics publicly available on the internet.
The release of The Fellowship of the Ring meant that, within days, our small mailing list saw hundreds of people joining. Fanfic and fanart exploded in numbers. I also noticed many new mailing lists and some new archives being created, some that lasted for years, others that disappeared fairly quickly. From one mailing list for all Tolkien-based slash, the community blossomed into hundreds, some specifically for different characters, pairings, or even races, some for specific kinks or types of fic, some for fanart, personal or author-based mailing lists, and much more. There were also "anti" mailing lists as well, and archives were founded that didn't allow slash. This all happened within the space of a few months post December 2001.
From my personal perspective, the films unleashed a vast flood of creativity in fans, to the point where it was almost overwhelming at times. People started writing fanfic in their own styles rather than even attempting to create pastiches of Tolkien's. Many people I knew from other fandoms came to spend some time in LotR fandom creating fanworks. The fanworks they were creating were usually based on the movies, but generally with at least superficial knowledge of the books, and over time, people tended to integrate book knowledge with movie style to create this hybrid style where it couldn't be stated clearly whether the fic was book-based or movie-based. A lot of the fanart tended to take on the "movie" look. The first fanvids appeared around 2002.
A huge RPF fandom also sprang up alongside LotR fandom; many people I knew were part of both. (Early on, I had to make a decision that tolkien_slash and Least Expected were to be for fiction only, not because I was opposed to RPF, simply because I felt that it would be far too much for one mailing list to handle and it wasn't necessary or indeed possible to be all things to all people.)
I think the rise in popularity of LiveJournal was also a huge factor in LotR fandom. As LJ became more and more the home of fandom, hundreds of communities sprang up, and in turn icons and photomanips became very popular. There was a great sense that LotR fandom wasn't the sole purview of the fanboys but now belonged to the fangirls as well.
~ Elwin Fortuna, response collected on 4 April 2022
The first things I talked about online were Tolkien and sport. I found a lot of awesome boards and zines for Tolkien and had a great time. I remember the usual glut of Mary Sues and the reactionary snobbery. (And the homophobia. I'm ashamed to admit that I nodded along with the whole "it's NOT CANON" bullshit even though I shipped Frodo/Sam and Maedhros/Fingon since before I found online Tolkien fandom. I remember getting shouted at for liking Mae/Fin because "SLASH YUCK" and "THEY COUSINS".
~ Anonymous, response collected on 26 April 2022
Before the films the only proof you were part of the fandom you could have were the 'Frodo Lives' badges that had been popular since the '60s, and it was deeply uncool to be a fan. After the first film it was suddenly extremely cool, and that was great! Plus at long last we had merch! I loved that bit. The influx of new people sharing ideas was wonderful, and film fans reading the books and discovering how much they loved the mythology of Arda was the best. There were so many new ideas and discussions on the forums, and new ways of expressing fandom joy on LiveJournal and websites. I never read LotR fanfiction before the films but I certainly did during and after they came out (and still do). My most precious memory is attending TheOneRing.net's RotK Oscar Party, watching the show live with a thousand other fans as we swept the Oscars and all crying about it together, and being front-row centre stage (you can just about see me there in the crowd) for Billy Boyd singing, Elijah and Dom rapping, and Peter, Phillipa and Fran coming direct from the ceremony to our party to celebrate the film's epic win. Absolutely one of the highlights of my life. I liked the books before but the films really helped me *love* them.
~ neverwhere, response collected 29 April 2022
I was not part of a formal/focused Tolkien fan group during my time in offline fandom (1976-1992), and had sort of drifted away from fanac between 1992 and the film release (mostly because I got tired of the sexism in the conference and APA fandoms I was active in which were more general in focus but included Tolkien fans). In fact, I'd drifted away from Tolkien as an angry young feminist. Jackson's films brought me back to Tolkien *and* to fandom (LiveJournal) because I was recruited by friends at an academic conference to join LJ. Though I was protesting I would never write fanfiction, I started writing my first RPS [real person slash] on the flight back from the conference and soon started writing FPS [fictional person slash] as well. So my experience is that the films (and the internet) had a fantastic effect on my fandom experience, and the fandom communities available to me. It was life-changing. It was not utopian—there were major differences/conflicts around book vs. film fans, around Silm vs. the other novels, around awards for fanfic, and around the fan focus (Elves fans, Men fans, Interspecies fans, etc.). But it was soooooo much better than my previous experiences in (offline) fandom!
~ Ithiliana, response collected 30 April 2022
My experience of Tolkien fandom prior to the announcement of the films was entirely through books, mainly art collections that featured or included artists’ depictions of Tolkien’s work as well as essays by fans or authors that appeared in more generalized fantasy/sci-fi publications. One -on-one interactions weren’t something I had with other fans outside of two family members and one close friend.
My first broader experience of personal fandom interactions happened in the summer of 1999 when I was let loose in a library with an internet connection. My very first use of the internet while not under the guidance of a teacher showing me how to use it for academic research was an AltaVista search for “Tolkien.” The first search result I remember seeing was information about Peter Jackson’s films, then beginning production. I had no idea film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings were even being made until this moment. I slowly found my way onto various websites and message boards, including what I believe was the newly created TheOneRing.net. These online spaces are where I first encountered Tolkien fandom in a more conversational setting. This is also the time during which I first encountered transformative works and learned what fanart and fanfiction was.
Naturally, because of the timing, much of the discourse was about the films, but, as the films had not been released yet, it was almost entirely being had by book fans who were either very excited for the films or very skeptical of them, and featured debates about each new scrap of available information as it came out. The major divisions among fans that I remember (other than the excited/skeptical dichotomy) had to do with which Tolkien works a fan had read. I also got the sense that this correlated (to some degree) with the age of the fan, where older fans were more likely (though to what extent I couldn’t say) to have read The Silmarillion (and possibly the extended Middle-earth books like UT or HoMe as well as Carpenter’s biography, Letters, etc.—I remember feeling somewhat out of place as a teen fan who had read all of the above).
Once the films were released there was *definitely* an influx of new fans onto the boards who had come with a desire to talk about the films but also with a desire to learn more about Middle-earth. With this influx came a new sense of social hierarchy among the fan groups I remember, where “pre-film” fans definitely seemed to outrank “post-film” fans, and some “pre-film” fans looked down on “post-film fans,” particularly those who had not yet read the books. It has been over twenty years, so my memories may not be the most accurate, but I don’t remember this boiling over too much at the time, and while the divisions between “pro-film” and “anti-film” was definitely there, I mainly remember an environment of almost “Tolkien mentorship” in which older fans introduced younger fans who had mainly (or solely) experienced the films to the wider Legendarium.
There was also an explosion of transformative fanworks. For this new fanart, the aesthetic was very clearly (and unsurprisingly) based on the design of Jackson’s films. There was also, suddenly, a surprising amount of slash fic, even a small amount of slash fic which included one or more of the villains as a member of the pairing (I specifically remember an Aragorn/Sauron fic which I was surprised to find).
My participation in fandom started to fall off around 2004 and didn’t really pick up again until 2015, so I can’t comment on much between those dates.
~ PhoenixRisesOnceMore, response collected 1 May 2022
The films have certainly had an important and major impact, both then and over time. (Personally, I think it was mostly for the better.) Offline, I somewhat followed what fan and non-fan anticipation and reactions were like before the premiere. More crucially, my biggest engagement before the films was regularly listening to the six-part first season (series) of a brand new and wonderful radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically) in my native language, months before the film premiered.
~ Anonymous, response collected 25 May 2022
At the time I thought the films were a negative. Too much Mary Sues. Too much stupid crack. Eventually, I came to enjoy it. I liked very much OFFUM and parodies. I also liked old SilmFics.
~ Anonymous, response collected 18 September 2022
Responses: The Hobbit Films
If you were part of the Tolkien fandom before the Hobbit films were released in December 2012, how do you think the films impacted the fandom? What other experiences/memories do you have related to the films and the fandom at this time?
All responses we've received to the above question are collected here without curation or commentary. Responses have been lightly edited.
Were you a part of the fandom before one or both films? We're still collecting responses and will update this page as new responses come in.
It didn’t seem to impact the fandom as much as LotR did, or that was my impression. At that time my fandom home was the fandom-specific Faerie Archive and not so much AO3 (where there might have been more reaction fic-wise).
~ Spiced Wine, response collected on 24 March 2022
I was actually out of the fandom from 2006 to 2021, though still enjoying and consuming Tolkien's works on my own. With such a long absence, I obviously noticed a lot of changes and I am sure many are related to the Hobbit movies. In particular, the way the fandom seems to have folded in some non-canon aspects of the Hobbit movies (like Tauriel as a character). Personally, I tried to enjoy the Hobbit movies and hoped they would reinvigorate my love of Tolkien fandom, but they were disappointing enough that I still haven't watched the third one.
~ polutropos, response collected on 24 March 2022
Legolas was blond; Tauriel was canon; Elves are vegetarian.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 25 March 2022
Many people I know that were/are fans of Tolkien's works were very disappointed with the Hobbit trilogy. While I think that both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies have helped to make the books more accessible and more widely known, I think the biggest impact the most recent trilogy has had is the wariness most people I talk to feel as the new series approaches.
~ Salyene, response collected on 27 March 2022
The Hobbit is a turning point in my opinion. I think the community split somewhat and defenders of The Hobbit started to become aggressive in their defence of the movies.
~ OnTheTrail, response collected 27 March 2022
The fandom was divided. Many were enthusiastic about the cast (particularly Freeman, Armitage, and Pace) and returning to Middle-earth. However, others were frustrated by deviations from the source material, the choice to do a trilogy of films, the reliance on CGI, and the cartoonishness of the action compared to Jackson’s LotR films. I remember personally enjoying each film (while acknowledging flaws) but seeing many fans vocally disappointed on forums such as TheOneRing.net.
~ Jacob J., response collected on 27 March 2022
Whereas the earlier trilogy had split the community along Purist/Revisionist lines—essentially the question being whether the priority was to create stand-alone art or remain faithful to Tolkien's text—The Hobbit movies saw far less emphasis on fandom Purism (except possibly over Tauriel), and much more criticism over perceived narrative bloat. People reacted poorly to them because they were seen as bad movies, rather than as poor adaptations of Tolkien. I also suspect that casual fans were disappointed in that The Hobbit did not measure up to the original trilogy, whereas the veterans who had been around before 2001 arguably felt a bit "over" Jackson. I suspect the Del Toro Hobbit would have been received rather differently.
(Again, as a New Zealander, there are also certain things about law changes from the era I could talk about, but that is a bit out of the scope of the question).
In terms of fanfiction, I think Hobbit fic was rarer prior to the movies than what would come later. Certainly the rash of Kili fanfiction (a throwback to the Legomances of an earlier era) was entirely a product of these movies.
~ Daniel Stride, response collected on 27 March 2022
Well, honestly I had no confidence in the Hobbit trilogy once I heard it was going to be a trilogy and Del Toro was out as director. At that point, I kind of felt it was going to be a "studio" movie, meaning a LOT of interference from people who shouldn't. So seeing it at last was not so much a letdown as it was a confirmation of what I thought was going to happen. It was a tragedy because the casting was spot on, everyone obviously put their everything into it, but it was hobbled by what editing made of it.
I don't think it put anyone off at all from the fandom, and there are some fan-made edits of The Hobbit which makes the series FAR better than what Jackson was forced to release. And on a positive side, I think it engaged a lot of fan creativity on what they would have done to make the films better.
~ John, response collected 27 March 2022
I don't think the Hobbit films impacted the fandom as much as the LotR films did. Most of the people I knew who watched the films had already read the book.
~ Anonymous, response collected 27 March 2022
I'd argue that the movies shaped the way the fandom (especially the fanfiction fandom, and to a certain point the fanart community as well) looked at The Hobbit characters. Prior fanfics included characters that appeared in both books (Bilbo, Gloin, etc.) in very minor ways. Other characters were included in terms of their relationships to the main LotR characters (the Elvenking as Legolas's father, the line of Durin in their relationship to Gimli, etc.). Only Gandalf escaped this treatment due to his major roles in both books.
The movies completely changed the way the events of The Hobbit and the characters were seen by the fandom. The biggest impact was undoubtedly on the characters of Bilbo and Thorin, who were immediately shipped together in a relationship. When sorted by kudos, for example, the top Tolkien-related fics on Archive of Our Own are generally related to the events of The Hobbit (or a fictionalised version of the time right after the events of the book/movies) and either feature Bilbo/Thorin as the main pairing or as a background pairing. Additionally, nearly all were written after the release of the first movie, and most after the release of the entire trilogy, which is why I'd argue the online fanfic fandom as it exists today can trace its existence to the Hobbit movies.
Additionally, there's the curious case of Tauriel. While there have been numerous debates regarding the creation and inclusion of the character into the Tolkien canon, it's undoubtedly true that she caught the interest of a major chunk of the fandom. The Lord of the Rings books had a canonical female presence (Éowyn, Galadriel, Arwen) that The Hobbit did not. By adding the character of Tauriel and making her more than a passive romantic interest, I'd argue that Jackson caught the interest of a section of fans that would otherwise have paid little attention to the Hobbit film series. Indeed, she remains a popular supporting character to add to Hobbit and LotR-adjacent fanfics, and rarely in a way that is critical of the development of her character.
Similarly, while Legolas is not part of the original book, giving him a greater depth of character through his inclusion in the Hobbit movies has been largely appreciated by the fanfic fandom. While the Legolas/Gimli ship has existed long before the movies were released, the release of the movies resulted in a greater interest in the ship—some of it being a natural progression of the popularity of the Bilbo/Thorin ship, while another portion being due to the interaction with the Dwarven race pre-LotR that Legolas has in the movies but lacks in the books.
The main critique of the films among the fandom in terms of characters and character development, I'd argue, was the hinted romance between Galadriel and Gandalf. It is one that much of fandom finds hard to swallow, given that it comes out of nowhere and Galadriel is canonically married to Celeborn (which, it should be noted, was shown in the LotR movies). Similarly, Gandalf's status as a Maia and the all-knowing teacher/mentor that he has in both film series seems to limit the ability of fans to see him as a romantic prospect, again making the hinted relationship seem wildly out of left field and often a space for mocking.
~ Rishika Aggarwal, response collected on 27 March 2022
I don't think the impact of the Hobbit films was as huge as before. Maybe they didn't attract as much attention as the Lord of the Rings ones, or maybe because I had already moved a little away from fandom and fanfiction.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 28 March 2022
The poor quality of the Hobbit movies seem to have left a sour taste. It made people appreciate the Lord of the Rings trilogy even more, even if they aren't great adaptations. I remember really disliking these movies and delayed seeing the third part as long as I could. They showed that all the money in the world can't make a good adaptation if you stray so far from the source material.
~ The Red Book (Steven), response collected on 28 March 2022
I was a Tolkien fan well before the Jackson LotR films, but I was not at that time part of fandom, which I discovered more recently (albeit before the Hobbit films). The fandom I see (both fanfic and articles) is definitely book-focused, and as far as I can tell the Hobbit films sank with barely a trace. I presume that Tauriel fanfic exists, but I have not yet come across it. There were some articles written at the time of the films' release, but not really many retrospectives. We all kept happily chugging along and pretended they didn't happen.
Interestingly, the Jackson LotR films are acknowledged, even in book-focused spaces—ACOUP's blog posts on war tactics, for example, or /r/tolkienfans on Reddit—but the Hobbit films are mostly ignored.
~ TRiG, response collected on 28 March 2022
I'm sure the Hobbit films brought even more people into Tolkien fandom, considering the first one was released nine years after The Return of the King. A lot of friends and fellow fans of my acquaintance were very eager to see the films, but I was indifferent. PJ and Company managed to screw the pooch in a few unforgivable ways in their Lord of the Rings films (for me, at least) and I just never bothered to see the Hobbit films.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
A huge chunk of younger people joined the fandom, I think. There was a surge of interest for Thranduil, and the Bagginshield ship gained enormous popularity. Again, fanart became very standardized, but then there were more representations of Dwarves, especially Dwarven ladies.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
Thobbit shipping. Everybody was cool with teh gays all of a sudden. Tauriel was treated almost as criminally badly as Arwen, but at least she didn't have most of her scenes cut, so ... yay.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
I wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek review of the first Hobbit movie on LJ, which was co-opted by friends into publication in the Amon Hen fanzine. So, I guess I was part of Tolkien fandom at that point, though rather peripherally so.
I remember a disapproving feeling of 'how very uncanonical and awful these movies are' floating around, particularly in the terrible reviews for the last movie—but checking back on my LJ comments at the time, many of my very-long-term Tolkien-enthusiast friends seemed to have loved them, as I did myself.
The last Hobbit movie pretty much coincides with me starting to slide back into active Tolkien fandom, though the part I slid into was First/Second Age rather than Hobbit. My impression is that Hobbit movie fandom mostly does its own thing in slightly separate space, so it felt less overwhelming than the arrival of LotR movie fandom did. Or perhaps we were just more used to blockbuster movies coming down crashing in the general area by then.
~ bunn, response collected 29 on March 2022
In my corner of the fandom, the Hobbit films didn't have a significant impact. However, as my preferred fannish haunt is the Silmarillion fandom, that may simply be because there's next to no overlap between my bubble and The Hobbit (either book or movies). There were a few fannish discussions that were brought on by the movies—one being the potential antisemitism in the depiction of the Dwarves in the book, and whether or not the movies counteracted that; another one being the introduction of Tauriel as a character, and as a love interest—and I'm fairly sure that few people were "seriously" (i.e., out of crackfic or PWPs) shipping any members of Thorin's company, but particularly Thorin and Bilbo, before the movies. The costume design was once more influential, with the notable exception of the Dwarf women—who in the movies are barely bearded and clothed in Renaissance-like gowns, whereas most of the fanart I've seen prefers to depict the Dwarf women as sporting long, elaborate beards and armour just like the male Dwarves.
I had the impression that the Hobbit (movies)-only fandom quieted down a lot quicker than the LotR movies fandom. People were either sucked into the larger Tolkien fandom, or moved on to different pastures.
~ Lyra, response collected 29 on March 2022
Bagginshield was I think the only good thing to come out of the Hobbit films and even that's just so-so. Actually I didn't even see the whole trilogy. I don't think the fandom as it was was impacted that much by the Hobbit trilogy.
~ Megan Abrahamson, response collected 29 on March 2022
Dwarves became sexy. For fans of the LotR movies, Gimli was too old to be interesting. The only member of the Fellowship with fewer ships with his fellows was Gandalf. Then Thorin/Bilbo happened. I knew as soon as I saw that hug on the Carrock that was going to be a huge ship.
~ Rebecca, response collected on 29 March 2022
Most fans who were already in the fandom seemed to be interested, but not wholeheartedly enthusiastic or even outright sceptical, especially once it was revealed this would be a trilogy. There was some controversy about Tauriel as an original female character from the outset (welcomed by some, but rejected by others), which intensified when the love triangle was revealed. I seem to remember some early fanworks of Tauriel. There was widespread criticism of some features of the trilogy from the canon point of view, especially the portrayal of some canon characters (Radagast, for instance). Film jokes and memes spread very quickly and became beloved, even if the memes were about elements that had been criticized in the films (like Thranduil's elk). The burgeoning of Bagginshield fics was predictable, but the numbers, quickly growing on AO3, nevertheless took previous fans by surprise. There sometimes seemed to be a bit of disagreement about how many references to any book source a Hobbit movieverse fic needed to contain, proportionally, before some non-movie fans were happy to see it tagged for that source on AO3 (and have it appearing in the tag), although I think there is some uncertainty about tagging for sources more generally, of which this was part. I think established fans were often not aware of the development of some fannish Dwarven lore (starting with the movies but taken further by fans) until relatively late, until they began encountering these in a more fully developed form in fanworks: neo-Khuzdul, for example, dwarrowdams, and other such elements. Eventually the older strands and the newer movie-related began to mingle more often, though, and some of these elements grew more familiar, even though they were not necessarily adopted.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 29 March 2022
My short answer is: they had a lasting impact because they (along with the general fandom shift to Tumblr) brought Tolkien fandom closer in culture/contact with general Western media fandom and that changed how many people interacted with fandom and the canon, both movie and book. There started becoming more of an assumption that everyone was multifandom and conversant with the norms of non-Tolkien fandom without realizing that Tolkien fandom has long had its own subculture, especially because a lot of the newer fans seemed to be or outright were dismissive of long-time fans and our experiences. This also marked the shift away from Tolkien-specific fic archives to AO3 dominating. (The longer answer would probably be an unsourced essay based on my opinions and observations.)
As far as memories: my predominant one of larger fandom (as opposed to my group of fandom friends reacting to the movies) is of going into the #Hobbit tag on Tumblr the day the first movie was released and reading back twenty pages to find the first post that *wasn’t* negative toward new fans. It was literally twenty pages of “new/movie fans suck.” I ended up making a little “Be like Elrond, kind as summer” banner to push against that mindset, though it didn’t get all that much traction.
~ Independence1776, response collected on 1 April 2022
They have huge influence on the fandom since I knew how Two Towers and Return of the King had made me devour all the books and pertinent info about Tolkien afterwards, so I definitely think of Peter Jackson's movies fondly and really my gateway to whet my appetite about Middle-earth in the highest form possible.
~ periantari, response collected on 2 April 2022
Caveat that the majority of my fandom experiences have been online.
I think that the Hobbit films brought a new wave of fans and a younger generation of fans in particular into the fandom. The generational difference meant that fandom activities also took place on new spaces like Twitter, and took on the cultural norms of these spaces too. "Stan Twitter" just has a different energy from LiveJournal or Tumblr or the various old forums.
It may have been the spaces I frequented, but I also noticed a greater desire to openly discuss and create transformative works that were challenging or subversive of cishet or amatonormative readings of the texts, and Eurocentric readings of the texts too. It's not so much that these fans originated those ideas (they definitely didn't) but I started to see them normalised as part of fandom discussion across spaces (not confined to one community). It didn't feel like the LotR online fandom where there seemed to be a clear divide between people who loved diverse readings and discussions versus people who were gatekeepers and/or prejudiced. The Hobbit fandom almost had a homogeneity of sorts that allowed a crosspollination of fandom culture between spaces that I hadn't really seen in other corners of online Tolkien fandom.
~ Anonymous, response collected on 3 April 2022
Before the Hobbit movies, fanfic based on The Hobbit was relatively thin on the ground. I recall pulling a little trick with one of my fanfics, written years earlier, which had a little Hobbit-based content in it. I simply listed it in The Hobbit category on AO3 shortly before the first movie came out and then watched the kudos roll in!
On a more serious note, prior to the Hobbit movies, Dwarves got short shrift in fandom. Gimli was seen as "unsexy," and Legolas/Gimli, despite arguably having incredibly shippy content in the book, wasn't written very much. The Hobbit movies changed that, and changed the way that fandom perceived Dwarves.
Bilbo had previously been seen as the uncle or as someone older and thus less sexy prior to the Hobbit movies. They changed how he was perceived too, and he began to get a lot more explicit content, especially with the rise of Bilbo/Thorin, which is a Hobbit movie ship from whole cloth, specifically sparked by the hug they share at the end of the first Hobbit movie.
By 2012, fandom was a lot more shameless about kink than it had been in 2001, so a lot more kinky fanfic was written early on for the Hobbit movies than there had been for the LotR movies. As well, much more was written about gender, including changes to stated gender or writing specifically transgender fic, and also a lot more emphasis on queerness and queer community in Middle-earth.
~ Elwin Fortuna, response collected on 4 April 2022
I'm not sure if more people read The Hobbit after the films than after seeing LotR, but I think the fanfiction really exploded, partly to fix some of the problems in the film but mostly of course because Bagginshield was a very writable ship. :)
~ neverwhere, response collected 29 April 2022
My participation in online fandom fell off in 2004 and didn’t pick back up until 2015, but the online fandom landscape had changed *immensely* in that time. Social media sites had overtaken message boards as the primary way of interacting with fans. AO3 existed. Many of the smaller fanwork archives from the late '90s and early '00s were gone. The sheer diversity of fan representations of Tolkien’s world had *greatly* increased. Unsurprisingly, there were far more depictions of Dwarves than I had ever seen. Bagginshield was a pairing I had never encountered before the Hobbit films. Radagast was a character I had rarely seen depictions of in fandom until The Hobbit films.
I also got the sense that there was a contingent of fans who very much loved The Hobbit films who were energized by the fact that the films veered as much from the source material as they did in terms of adding scenes and expanding characters etc. I also got the sense that some of this love for the films was framed or perhaps engendered partly as a reaction to those who felt the opposite about the films, be those fans who loved the books but didn’t like any of the films or fans who liked both the books and the LotR films but hated The Hobbit films.
~ PhoenixRisesOnceMore, response collected 1 May 2022
I had a certain sense of déja vu concerning a new wave of complaints about the changes in the adaptation, polemics about faithfulness, or whether the films are running too long, and such ... Similar debates were occurring in the very early 2000s, with the gradual premieres of the first film trilogy. Overall, in the early 2010s, I had an impression the fandom was largely positive about the second film trilogy. (Speaking for myself, I felt "glad to be back in Middle-earth".) I think everyone reasonable acknowledged the second trilogy has to stand on its own, partly by necessity, as the stakes and tone of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are often vastly different. Reconciling the two (tone and stakes) in adaptations that are part of the same continuity is always going to be difficult. I think the creators handled it far better than I expected with both trilogies as first-time live-action adaptations. Personally, while I can write down a long list of minor objections I have to changes or portrayals in all six films, I think neither of the trilogies fail as adaptations. My biggest "issue" with both film trilogies, ironically enough, is that I need to be in the right mood to watch them from start to finish. All six extended editions are fairly long films, and as much as I enjoy them, they're not something I'd rewatch every week or month, or maybe even year. However, certainly something I would gladly rewatch every now and then.
~ Anonymous, response collected 25 May 2022
I don't remember there being very many stories about the Dwarves prior to the Hobbit movies. Also, it seemed like genderbending characters became more common after the Hobbit movies came out (i.e., stories featuring a female Bilbo, female Thorin, etc).
~ Elfhild, response collected 19 June 2022
So much stupid. "Dwarrrows" = DUMB. So many eager stupid children coming in and then whining about getting crit. I block all dwarrows because is so wrong and I hate the SJW fandom.
~ Anonymous, response collected 18 September 2022
Fascinating again
Thank you Dawn for such an interesting piece on the effects of the films on Tolkien fandom. It was more or less all new to me, having withdrawn from Fantasy and SF fandom in the early 80s, as it was (a) very male, and (b) felt quite vicious/cruel towards newbies or anyone who questioned the books from a feminist or radical perspective. I did enjoy the films, but it was in spite of all the changes or omissions from the books. And I only ever discussed the films with my children....
My first thought, which is…
My first thought, which is very in-character for me, is to ask if we can chat sometime about those SFF fandom experiences because there were respondents on the survey who identified similar experiences, and I'm now wondering the extent to which this influences fandom participation down the road! XD
(No obligation to say yes or even respond of course, but I can't help but ask ... I'm shameless!)
Thank you for reading and commenting. This was my first time working with this particular kind of research; it was fun!