Brewin, Austin (2024) Religion from Page to Screen in The Lord of the Rings. Bachelor thesis, Bachelor Religiewetenschappen.
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Abstract
The Lord of the Rings is J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1954-1955 fantasy trilogy set in Middle-earth. The books are The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), and The Return of the King (1955). A follow up to his 1937 novel, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings deals with an epic quest to destroy a ring in order to defeat an evil supernatural being who is threatening to conquer the world. A summary of the books and their events will be given in the following section. The trilogy was extremely well received but initial attempts to create a film version failed or flopped. In 1978 an animated adaptation was made, however it was poorly received and the planned sequel was dropped. In the late 1990’s, New Zealand director Peter Jackson started working on a live-action three part adaptation of the books, eventually released between 2001 and 2003 to enormous critical and commercial success. This paper will demonstrate the presence of religious themes and elements in the books, both stated and implied, and then analyze the differences in the film adaptations and what they do to the religiosity of the story. As a note on the use of language in this paper, the books and films are referred to individually by name and collectively as “The Lord of the Rings,” in a manner which is hopefully clear but in questionable situations, the medium being referred to is added in brackets. A second note on language is that Tolkien is very consistent with his use of “men” as the name for humanity. While this is an outdated practice, it will be used in this paper for the sake of both clarity and consistency. Furthermore, the roles and functions of gender and race in both the books and their film adaptations will not be explored in this paper, however there is much to be said on this and it warrants extensive further research. This paper will be in three general sections, the first talking about the books as well as giving some background on the life of Tolkien, and examining the religious themes present. The second section will treat the film adaptations and the process that went into making them, as well as going into some of the differences and why they occurred.. The third section will be focused on comparison and the elements that have changed between the mediums, particularly in regard to the presence or absence of religion, using Character development, Christ-figures, and the theme of resurrection, as well as going into the chapters of the books that were cut in entirety and what this does to the narrative of the films.
| Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) | ||||||||
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| Degree programme: | Bachelor Religiewetenschappen | ||||||||
| Academic year: | 2023-2024 | ||||||||
| Date of delivery: | 03 Feb 2026 11:14 | ||||||||
| Last modified: | 03 Feb 2026 11:14 | ||||||||
| URI: | https://rcs.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/813 |
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