I read Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth years ago, back when The Fellowship of the Ring was filming. I remember being sort of just stunned at the depth of insight in the work. It added whole new layers to the Middle-Earth story for me. Shippey has since gone on to be recognised as the world’s foremost Tolkien scholar.
Tom Shippey was one of Peter Jackson’s film consultants – which I did not know. I also missed that Shippey has given a talk on the process of taking the written material for Middle-Earth and turning it into filmic material. You can listen to the full 50 min talk here.
Also, just for fun, here’s a panel from the recent Comicon full of epic fantasy luminaries. You may want to skip the first 15 min of this panel talk, as the conversation really only gets started at about the 14.45 min mark.
Both the Shippey talk and Comicon panel are via tor.com.
