Oxonmoot 2024

This screening will aim to show episodes 2-3 for those who missed the fist night screening.

Once again, we have the pleasure of of starting Oxonmoot on the same weekend as the release of the new Rings of Power TV series season. For those who wish to have a communal in-person experince, we will put the episodes on in the lecture theatres. Details of this event may change as we learn more about episode length, etc.

A meander through the audio adaptations of The Hobbit - including readings of the text, dramatizations and even some television. We'll take a look at some of the wonderful artists and beautiful artwork that make up these recordings and you should be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale.

In March of 2004, Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King won the Academy Award for Best Picture, becoming the first fantasy film to do so.  While Viggo Mortenson did not take home an Oscar for either best actor or best supporting actor, his portrayal of Aragorn was nonetheless key to the success of the Lord of the Rings movie franchise. Mortenson’s performance was defined by new scenes, written by Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, that made him appear as a diffident candidate for kingship and a reluctant lover.  These scenes are worthy of study in their own right, but they also serve to highlight the radically different Aragorn found in Tolkien’s original book series. This presentation will deploy the movie Aragorn as a foil to the literary Aragorn, differentiating between the contrasting models of heroism and leadership upon which they are based.

Tolkien’s legendarium features numerous over-sized creatures (trolls, dragons, stone-giants, ents, eagles). Precedence can be found in the folklore, medieval literature, and paleontology with which Tolkien was familiar, as well as the popular media of his time, including H.G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods (1904) and King Kong (1933). Publication of LOTR (1954-5) coincided with the start of the kaijū movement in popular culture, featuring giant, sentient creatures demonstrating agency and intention, rather than being merely mindless brutes. Starting with the re-release of King Kong in 1952 and the original Godzilla (1954), kaijū films continue to dominate a portion of the popular culture market and impact audience expectations for the depictions of giant creatures. In light of the June 2024 limited re-release of Jackson's remastered film adaptations, I examine Jackson's Shelob, Balrog, and Watcher in the Water, alongside their representions in the novel, through the lens of kaijū theory

Panellists TBC.

So what did we make of the first 3 episodes of Season 2, and how does Season 1 hold up after 2 years?

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy brought a new generation of fans to Middle-earth, and is undoubtedly one of the greatest cinematic achievements of the 21st century. However, more than 20 years on, the films’ depiction of Middle-earth still dominates fans’ perception of Tolkien’s world, despite the many significant differences with Tolkien’s own imagination.

The ArdaCraft team is made up of people who almost exclusively discovered Tolkien’s world through Peter Jackson’s films, but who are now collectively discovering a new vision of Middle-earth. In order to do this, they are drawing on Tolkien’s writings and sketches, but also their own research into botany, geology, topography, historical architecture, farming methods, ancient ways of life, and more. By working in a heavily modified version of Minecraft, they hope to achieve the most detailed version of Middle-earth that has ever been made.

This talk will be a whistle-stop tour through our work over the last ten years.