The best lines from the Lord of the Rings movies that aren't in the books

Many years ago now, I wrote about the ten things from the Lord of the Rings movies that drove me the craziest. They mostly involved changes to the books that I thought departed thematically from their source material, rather than just on a straight plot level, to the ruin of all. Since the coming week is going to feature both the second coming of a man I can't believe was ever taken seriously as the chief civil servant along with super cold temperatures, it's going to be a bleak couple of days. I thought I'd try to inject a little hope by returning to the work that I think is more about hope than any other I've ever read seriously, which is Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey said, if there is one image that best captures what LoTR is about, it's a trumpet braying in defiance. So let's defy this week by considering Tolkien and the movies he inspired a little bit. 

Since the goal this week is to spread hope, I'd like to find something to celebrate in Jackson's trilogy, rather than something to be annoyed by. If earlier, I wrote about changes to the source material that I thought changed the theme in ruinous ways, this time, I'll write about good changes made that were appropriate to the medium of film, changes that either preserved the original themes or even advanced them in new ways.

Here are the rules

I'm only dealing with new material on a dialogue level, meaning I'm looking for best lines that are in the movies that aren't in the books. Of course, with Jackson's movies, "not in the books" is a little bit difficult to decide upon. A characteristic of all three movies is that they often include dialogue that is in the books somewhere, but not in the place where it appears in the movie, or even in the exact words or spoken by the same character. 

One example is the very opening lines of the movie. There is a voiceover by Galadriel that begins, "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air." In the book, these lines are spoken almost exactly like the ones in the movie, but they are spoken to Galadriel, not by her. It is the Ent Treebeard who says them. And he isn't saying them near the beginning of the story, but near the very end, after the ring has been destroyed.  

A second example is spoken by Gandalf to Pippin to comfort him as he is afraid during the battle with Mordor in Minas Tirith. Pippin says he didn't think it would end like this, and Gandalf says: 

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it....White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."

Part of this is invented whole cloth, and part of it is taken from narration, not spoken dialogue, that occurs early in the books. Frodo is in the house of Tom Bombadil (a section that I think was wisely excised from the movies), and Frodo has a dream. In the dream, he sees a pale light..."growing to turn the veil (of rain) all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise." Much later in the book, we realize that this was foreshadowing Frodo's journey across the sea to Valinor, because once he is away, he recalls the dream, only now he adds "white shores" to it. So in the movie, Gandalf is making explicit what the books only ever hint at darkly, which is some hope of a destiny beyond death for humans and hobbits.

It's sort of a subjective call, then, to decide whether lines from the movies are "not in the books" or they are. I don't aim to be consistent. If it feels to me like the line is new enough, I'll count it.

As far as criteria for best, that is subjective, too, obviously, but I'm looking for something that stands on its own as good enough dialogue that it was worth inventing it. The line should reveal character, move the plot, or develop the themes of the story. I will also be awarding bonus points if the line in question has become a fruitful source of LoTR-related memes. I'm not a huge meme fan for the most part, but the memes from LoTR are still top-notch twenty-five years later, and I will honor some of the lines for having created their own secondary art form. 

The list

These are in no particular order, except for the last two, which I consider the best.

What about second breakfast?

This line, spoken by Pippin before he has quite processed what it means to have agreed to accompany Frodo on his flight from the Shire, does a great job of establishing both Pippin's pre-heroic-journey priorities as well as developing our understanding of hobbit lives. The list he enumerates after second breakfast of other hobbit meals often forms the backbone of the menu during LoTR watch parties. The line is loveable and funny and comes with a good sight gag from a mildly annoyed, mildly amused Strider. Sadly, the expression "second breakfast" is not in the books at all, although you could easily infer its existence from both LoTR and The Hobbit. 

One does not simply walk into Mordor

The king of all meme-creating lines. The king of all lines from the movies that one ends up twisting into other sayings in real life. The king of lines that show us the temperament of Boromir, who is brave and noble, but who thinks that everyone not from Gondor just doesn't know shit about what it's like to face real fucking combat, man, so fuck all you civilians. 

...and I'm coming with you!

Ah, Sam. Such a familiar character from the moment we meet him, and yet so true and faithful that by the time the story is over, he's taken the archetype he fits into and broken it and remade it into his own image. When Frodo tells Sam that he is going to Mordor alone, Sam's response, "Of course you are, and I'm coming with you," tells us many things about Sam. One, it tells us that he had already guessed Frodo's mind, which he usually does. Second, it tells us everything we need to know about what Sam's core principles are and where his head is going to be at for the rest of the movies. 

I've said before that one thing I don't like about the movies is that they switched many characters from having a flat arc to a positive one, because that's what movies usually do. Aragorn is the biggest example. But Sam is the one character whose pre-adventure character is the same as it is at the end. Except for maybe getting up the courage to ask Rosie Cotton to dance. 

I would have followed you....my captain, my king

I used to be kind of indifferent to these lines, but they've grown on me. It's important that Boromir isn't just a throwaway character who is only there to convince viewers that the ring really can corrupt and that maybe not everyone will get to live to the end of the story. Boromir deserves to be mourned, and it's worth taking a beat to acknowledge that he was a worthy man done in by evil. In the books, the three walkers Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli take an insane amount or time, under the circumstances, to sing a funeral song for him. I think the movie is right to redeem him fully in the eyes of the audience by telling us that if it had come to it, he would ultimately have welcomed the return of the king.

Those without swords can still die upon them

This is one of those lines I'm taking liberty with, because Eowyn does say them in the book, but in a very different place. She says these lines while in the houses of healing in Gondor after she awesomely slays the Witchking of Angmar because he is the absolute baddest of bad asses in Tokien's supposedly misogynistic story. She wants to go out and join those assaulting the Black Gate, and she is frustrated that her healers will not allow her to go. I think the movies needed to leave out most of the houses of healing scenes just for time purposes, but it was important that they include this line somewhere. Having Eowyn say it to Aragorn allows us to know her mind before and during her fateful decisions, rather than after. 

I have been working on and off for a while on a long paper concerning disobedience to orders in LoTR. There are at least five times in the story where someone disobeys an order and if they had not done so, Frodo's quest would have failed. Eowyn is as good an example as any, and this line shows that she has the clear, internal moral vision that is necessary to make the incredibly difficult decision to follow one's internal orders over those of authority. 

Elrond's warning to his daughter that Aragorn will still die

Holy Jesus, if you want to read something sad, read the full story of Arwen and Aragorn's love from the annexes to Return of the King. In the movie, Elrond is borrowing from that part of the annex. I was glad that it was worked into the movies in some way, and I also love the use of some of Tolkien's archaic, noble language here, the reference to the enormous past that Middle Earth has had, as in "splendor of the kings of men undimmed before the breaking of the world." I'm not a huge fan of a lot of choices the movies made with Aragorn and Arwen, either individually or as a couple, but I was fine with adding in Elrond's resistance to their marriage mostly because it led to this insertion. 

There won't be a Shire, Pip

Of the three movies in the trilogy, Two Towers is easily the weakest. There are some questionable choices of manufactured conflicts meant to give arcs to characters. One of those conflicts is the one the two "other" hobbits, Pippin and Merry, face. They stumble across Ents, who are very strong and could be powerful allies in the war. They try to convince the Ents to join the war, but the Ents originally aren't interested. They eventually change their minds, but in the space between the Ents' decision to sit out the war and the decision to get involved, Pippin thinks that maybe he and Merry should just hightail it back to the peaceful Shire. Merry rightly observes that unless evil is stopped, the Shire will soon be as bad as everywhere else. 

I've said this line about a million times, every time someone brings up leaving the U.S. now that Trump is president again. The fires of Isengard will spread unless they are stopped where they are. This isn't quite explicit in the books, mostly because the Ents never actually reject the notion of going to war, but I was fine with making it more of an explicit theme in the movies. I think Tolkien would have agreed with the sentiment. With confronting all manner of evil, there are times to "fly, you fools," and there are times to turn and confront the evil. 

So it begins

This isn't an especially good line. It's kind of boilerplate action movie fare. Chosen for its extreme memeability alone. 

Share the load

Also chosen mostly because of the memes it has inspired. I’m not a terribly huge fan of how the Smeagol/Sam/Frodo relationship is made into a love triangle in the movies. This line is part of that whole indulgence, but at least it’s one that leads to funny comments.

I give hope to men/I keep none for myself

I'm not the only person not crazy about how Aragorn is changed in the movies from a guy who knew he wanted to be king to a guy with a crisis of identity because he doesn't want to be one. So I don't really like that one scene that many people love where Elrond comes to Aragorn to give him the sword (that he had already had for two whole books in Tolkien's version) and convince him to "put away the ranger" and "become the king you were born to be." 

However, that scene does contain another reference pulled from the appendices. It's actually Aragorn's mother who said she kept no hope for herself, although she had given it to men by bearing Aragorn. (Aragorn's name as a child is Estel, meaning "hope.") I said above that LoTR is more about hope than any story I've ever thought about a lot, and it is, but part of its message concerning hope is that a realistic appraisal of the world will mean having to carry on without hope sometimes. I just can't think of a better message for this week.

Pippin's "Home is Behind" song to Denethor

If you've read the books, you know they're just crammed full of songs. It would have been impossible to put even a quarter of them into the movies, but the movies do want to reassure viewers who love the books that yes, they're aware that it's sad to leave all of that out. There are a few moments when the songs and poems work their way in, even if in shortened form. Aragorn sings part of the Lay of Luthien, and he also sings of the ancient story of how his ancestors arrived upon the shores of Middle Earth. Treebeard sing-songs about the lost Ent-wives. Maybe the best use of the musical/poetic material from the books is when Pippin sings for Denethor, who has lost most of his mind and is about to lose the rest. Once again, the writers of the movies wove the song in from other places in the books. In the books, Pippin still sings the lines heard in the movie, but in a very different context. He sings them while the hobbits are traveling and still in the Shire, not yet fully aware of their peril. 

The song in its full version from the book concerns a traveler who is thinking about all of the places in the world he hasn't gone yet, and the traveler decides for the moment to delay seeing them and to head home to fire and lamp and meat and bread. In the movie, using only that one verse from the song, it takes on a different meaning. Tolkien used some songs repeatedly in his work, changing them slightly as the context of the story changed, and the movies did the same thing. "Home is Behind" was the best example of it, and so I single it out here as an example of something the movies do well throughout. 

The journey doesn't end here

I wrote about this one in the introduction above. I'm okay with making the movies more overtly Christian-ish and marginally less pagan-ish. It's there in the books, just not quite so confidently stated. If anyone is going to tell humans and hobbits that there is a chance they survive death in some way, it's Olorin-Gandalf, who learned mercy from Nienna herself. Although Tolkien's legendarium is pretty vague on the fate of men beyond death, I think it's possible Gandalf actually knows what he's talking about. Nienna was the sister to Mandos, sort of the Hades of Tolkien's world, and she lived on the borders of Mandos' kingdom. It's possible Gandalf wasn't just making that up to make Pippin feel better. 

That still only counts as one

Most of Gimli's D&D dwarf yuk-yuking in the movies annoys me. This one doesn't.  

Aragorn's inspirational speech at the black gates

Almost none of this is in the books. The one line that is, "Stand, Men of the West," has a totally different meaning. Aragorn isn't saying "stand your ground and fight," he's instead saying, "Look, Frodo just finished the quest, so quit fighting and stand still." I don't find this speech all that great, and Viggo Mortenson's voice sounds a little funny in parts, but I think it was probably important to show Aragorn being, I don't know, kingly in battle or something. Since they had to write a speech from scratch, they did a good job of at least making it sort of within Aragorn's character, understanding the weakness of others and trying to reason with them rather than order them. 

Okay...now the two best ones

Second place: A wizard is never late, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.

Wait...this isn't in the books? The line feels so natural in the movie, it seems like it must be in the books, but it isn't. When I heard this line in the movie way back in the day, I felt like I was home, and I enjoyed the ride for the next three hours. But it's not in the books. Check me on this. 

There are some observations in the books on how Gandalf comes and goes as he pleases. Maybe the closest the books come to the pith of what Gandalf says is when Gandalf arrives in the nick of time at the Battle of Helm's Deep. Aragorn, meeting Gandalf at last, says to him that "Once more you come in the hour of need, unlooked-for." Gandalf replies that it shouldn't be "unlooked for," because he had said that he would return and meet him here. In other words, you should have trusted that I would show up when I was needed. 

I'm not sure what made the movie's writers put this line in. Maybe after reading and re-reading the story, they themselves were struck by how many times Gandalf seems to arrive just in the nick of time. It's certainly true in The Hobbit. 

It's also sort of a foreshadowing. Gandalf is NEVER late, but later on, he's not going to show up when he promised Frodo that he would. He 'broke tryst" as he will say at the Council of Elrond, and that has never happened before. So it's setting up what happens later, which Tolkien does all the time. Oh, yeah, and it also establishes that Frodo is one of the few people close enough to Gandalf to be able to trade banter with him. Great addition. 

First place: My friends! You bow to no one. 

I get angry in the books when the hobbits go back to the Shire and nobody seems to understand that Frodo is the goddamn savior of the planet. I know, I know. It has to be that way. Frodo even says so, in some of the most poignant words of the whole trilogy: "I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them." But do all those dumb hobbits really have to go about not realizing who Frodo is? It angers Sam, and it angers me, too. 

Frodo may be stoic about not fitting in around the Shire when he comes back, and of course, he never wanted to be treated like a hero. But he is a hero. He's the hero of heroes. 

The book does grant him a good deal of being treated like the hero he deserves, just not in the Shire. When he awakes after nearly perishing in the fires of Mount Doom after completing the quest, Frodo is told of the honor he and Frodo will be held in: "The clothes that you wore on your way to Mordor...even the orc-rags that your bore in the black land, Frodo, shall be preserved. No silks and linens, nor any armour or heraldry could be more honourable." There are festivals in honor of Frodo and Sam, and minstrels write songs about them, and the people go so far as to use quasi-religious terms about them: "Praise them with great praise!" 

The movie was never going to include a long segment on the Scouring of the Shire or all the other things that happened in the books to the hobbits when they returned home. It wasn't going to have a segment with a minstrel singing "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" (although the much shorter animated version did include this song). But you know what? Frodo suffered for our salvation. He deserves his moment. So does Sam. If Merry and Pippin happen to get honored along with them, fine. They're kinsmen of Frodo. His kinsmen can have my praise and thanks, too, just for having been related to him. It's a necessary scene, not so much for the movie, but for me to feel whole. There is a moment when everyone recognizes that in spite of all the heroism that went on, the only two real heroes are the ones who slogged it out to the finish line in a land far beyond hope. 

The flat arc, Lord of the Rings, and going the distance

We're almost a week into the new year, meaning, according to all research, that a fair number of people have already abandoned their New Year's resolutions. People can be forgiven for thinking there is some magic to keeping a resolution; we're often fed the notion that change only comes as a result of some great epiphany at the end of unusual events. The character arc of most fiction, be it in books, movies, drama, or TV, follows this formula. A character is stuck in some place, then events come along that crescendo until they finally reach a point where the character realizes something that prompts a change. The change allows the character to overcome the thing that has been preventing him or her from finding happiness.

Three kinds of arcs

(Caveat: I'm definitely plagiarizing someone in this section. I'd be happy to cite the proper source, but this is now so widely circulated, I don't really know where the following classification of character arcs began. I'll have to just be content with saying this isn't me.)

Generally, the trajectory or arc a character follows in a narrative can be classified as one of three types of arc:

The positive arc: Most of us are pretty familiar with this one. It's what I just described above. We meet a character and learn about that character's traits, which are a blend of positive and negative. The negative traits are causing some kind of problem in the character's life. (This is sometimes called "the lie the character believes.") The character faces a series of challenges that force her to face up to the weakness (or to see through "the lie") and change. The moment of change is the climax, and it is followed by the denouement, which shows us how the climax allows the character to resolve the issue.

One reason I really like Finding Nemo is that you can teach a lot of narrative concepts easily from it. It follows a perfect narrative cycle of rising action-climax-denouement. It also has three characters who clearly have positive character arcs.

The negative arc: This is an artsier example, at least for main characters. Stories in which the main character gets worse instead of better tend not to satisfy, so we usually relegate the negative character arc to a secondary character. In a negative character arc, the person has a chance to change for the better, but fails to. Sometimes, this just means retreating into the negative traits that cause the problem (continuing to believe "the lie"), but it can also mean the character actually goes from good to bad or bad to worse. Charles Foster Kane from Citizen Kane is one familiar example of a main character with a negative arc.

The flat arc: In a flat arc, the character doesn't essentially change. We might see the character dealing with challenges better in some sections than others, but the character's view of how one ought to face challenges doesn't really change. Often, it is a secondary character with a flat arc. This character is not changed by events nearly as much as the character causes change in others. This character comes into the story knowing something, and this knowledge unlocks the mysteries another character (usually the main character) needs to unlock, or helps the main character see through "the lie." Once in a while, a story will be about this "impact character," and the story becomes about how the main character changes others, rather than is changed. Chauncey Gardner in Being There or Amelie from the movie of the same name come to mind.

There can be mixed arcs. Frodo Baggins has basically a flat arc: he is able to endure from beginning to end because he is basically humble and true and good from beginning to end. However, he is wiser at the end. So are all of the hobbits, and while their basic character remains the same at the end as it was at the beginning, they have also changed enough that they are able to defeat Saruman and his lackeys in the Scouring of the Shire.

Lord of the Rings and the flat arc

Nearly all the main characters in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings have flat arcs. There are a few exceptions, like Saruman, Boromir, and Gollum (all negative arcs), but most of the characters are very much the same at the end as they were at the beginning. The movies changed this for a couple of characters, because the movies needed to make money and people really love positive character arcs. I understand why everyone loves positive arcs. It's important for us all to believe we can change. That's a good thing to believe. If you didn't it'd be hard to get out of bed in the morning.

But I'm a big fan of the flat arc. The fact is that most of us don't really need an epiphany to get past the hurdles in our lives. We just need to do the damn work. Most people who resolved to lose weight or run a 10K this year or whatever know what they need to do to accomplish their goals. Lack of knowledge isn't keeping them from losing the weight. It's lack of tenacity. One of the great secrets to life that isn't really a secret at all is how important it is to put your head down and keep on going.

Aragorn, the movie

There's one character arc in LOTR in particular I'd like to look at a little closer. Owing to the influence of the movies, Aragorn has come to be seen as an example of a classic positive character arc. Kristen Kiefer on her writing blog makes this very mistake while discussing--go figure--the subject of character arcs.

Aragorn is sort of a fantasy George Washington in the movies. He's happy fighting wars, but reluctant to assume the responsibility of ruling. Afraid he might not be worthy to be king because of mistakes made by his forefathers, Aragorn spends much of the trilogy denying the mantle of hope for mankind that others are trying to put on him. This "lie that he believes" is chipped away at bit-by-bit, until finally he decides to become the king he was born to be when the father of the woman he loves tells him it is the only way to save Aragorn's love.

It's a nice story. The trilogy itself came out right after 9/11, and America immediately read its current political situation into the challenges faced by the Fellowship. We saw Frodo's reluctant resolve to do what needed to be done to stop evil as our own story of facing up to extremism. So making Aragorn over into a Washington resonated with us, as well.

Tolkien's Aragorn

But that's not Tolkien's Aragorn. Tolkien's Aragorn was two when his father Arathorn was killed fighting orcs. Aragorn was taken to Rivendell by his mother, where Elrond took on the role of father to him. While in Rivendell, he was given the name "Estel," Elvish for "hope." No one spoke of his true name or lineage in order to protect him from the enemy. When he became full-grown, though, Elrond told Aragorn who he really was and "delivered to him the heirlooms of his house."

This included the shards of the sword Narsil, the one that cut the ring from Sauron's hand. Aragorn is, in fact, carrying this broken sword with him when he meets the hobbits in the books, because it is part of his destiny to carry it as the heir of Elendil.

The only heirloom Elrond does not give to Aragorn is the sceptre of Annuminas, which he says Aragorn needs to earn by way of a hard and long test. This test becomes Aragorn's whole life, which he spends in wandering and fighting the enemies of the free people of Middle Earth. His wandering is not something he does to avoid being king; it's what he has to do to earn the right to be king.

The day after Elrond told Aragorn who he was, Aragorn met Arwen, Elrond's daughter, and immediately fell in love. (Arwen had been away for many years at Lorien, which is why Aragorn had never met her before.) Elrond, sensing Aragorn's true feelings, tells him this:

"Aragorn, Arathorn's son, Lord of the Dunedain, listen to me! A great doom awaits you, either to rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil, or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin. Many years of trial lie before you. You shall neither have wife, nor bind any woman to you in any troth, until your time comes and you are found worthy of it."

The next day, Aragorn begins his long test. He wanders for thirty years, learning about the world as he does, becoming friends with Gandalf, and "uncovering the plots and devices of the servants of Sauron." He then sees Arwen again in Lothlorien, and she falls in love with him. She believes he will achieve great things. He does not know if he will be able to live up to her hope, but he says he will "hope with her hope."

When Elrond learns of Arwen's choice, he is grieved. He tells Aragorn that he will agree to lose his precious daughter to him, but only if by doing so, he can help to restore mankind. He will not allow Arwen, therefore, to marry him unless he becomes the king of a reunited Gondor and Arnor.

This is critical to understanding Aragorn. He wants to become king more than anything, because only by becoming king can he have what his heart desires, which is to marry Arwen. At no point in his story does he ever waver from his determination to become king. What we see in him is not reluctance to be king, only an uncertainty about whether he will be able to pass his test. He does, it is true, remain long hidden, and he keeps many false identities. But this is a strategic decision on his part to delay coming forth until the time is right, not born out of a concern that he might somehow have the same moral failings his forefather Isildur did when Isildur failed to destroy the ring. Aragorn refers over and over again to his wish to return to Gondor as heir to the throne, beginning as far back in the trilogy to the Council of Elrond, when he explains Boromir's dream thus:

For the sword that was broken is the Sword of Elendil that broke beneath him when he fell. It has been treasured by his heirs when all other heirlooms were lost; for it was spoken of old among us that it should be made again when the Ring, Isilur's Bane, was found. Now you have seen the sword that you have sought, what would you ask? Do you wish for the House of Elendil to return to the Land of Gondor?

And, in fact, the ring having been found, it is Aragorn who has the sword remade--not Elrond--and Aragorn does this before the Fellowship leaves Rivendell on the quest. He sees the quest as the end of his long trial. It's the denouement to a catharsis he had decades ago, not a moment of new revelation.

Most of our lives are flat arcs

One of the questions about literature I most often ask myself is whether it's ultimately good for people who spend a lot of time reading it. Certainly, I think that believing we can make our lives into positive-arc stories, ones in which we change and overcome our challenges, is a healthy belief. But we might also end up in long and futile cycles of waiting for some kind of enlightenment to strike us before change can happen. In reality, most of us are in a story that's more like the Aragorn of the books than the Aragorn of the movies. We don't have some great moment of revelation where we suddenly see we've been doing it all wrong. We've known for a long time what we were trying to do with our lives, and we know what we need to do to accomplish it. It's not a mystery, it's just hard, and we might fail at it.

Aragorn doubts himself. Four times, after the Fellowship breaks, he criticizes his own decision-making and puts the blame on himself for the group's difficulties. But he doesn't doubt his ultimate goal, just his ability to accomplish it. There is no catharsis in Lord of the Rings for Aragorn, no moment when he stops "believing the lie." He's got a game plan from very early on, and the story for him is just that game plan developing over a long time.

As we try to accomplish our dreams in our own lives, this arc is more likely what we need to succeed. We don't need a great unmasking of some truth. We don't need to learn some secret we don't already know. We don't need a new plan; we just need to do better at the plan we've had all along.

Looks like I'll finally get that Silmarillion TV series

After weeks of rumors, it was confirmed that Amazon is going to create a series that will cover "previously unexplored" stories from the Tolkien legendarium. To me, that means the Silmarillion. A lot of Tolkien fans have been hoping, ever since the success of Game of Thrones, that HBO would take on the series, but this is probably nearly as good. At least Peter Jackson won't be directing it, most likely. I don't hate what Jackson did, really. But part of Tolkien culture had always been the existence of many visions and many interpretations of Middle Earth. That seems to be what Tolkien himself wanted when he said that he originally envisioned that "the cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." I'd have liked it if a different director had done each LOTR film (and then only one film had been made for The Hobbit).

I'm very interested in how Amazon will end up plotting out the seasons. If I had to do a quick guess, I'd say:

One season: The creation of the world to the rebellion of Feanor
Second Season: Feanor and his brothers in Middle Earth up to the fall of Melkor (this could maybe be two seasons, depending on how much major story lines get spun off themselves).
Third Season: There was a mention in the article of a spin-off. There are a couple of stories that could be a complete separate season, the most obvious being the love story of Beren and Luthien.
Fourth Season: Sauron among the Numenor. There's actually a lot of room to come up with original, non-canonical work here. There's a really long period after the fall of Melkor where Sauron rules a good chunk of Middle Earth.
Fifth Season: Up to the last alliance and the fall of Sauron.

Much like with the movies, I'm just really looking forward to seeing scenes I've loved for a long time as someone else imagined them. Fingolfin battling Morgoth has the potential to bring me to tears. I'd lament that soon, I won't be the only person in the office who knows all the children of Finwe, but where I work, there are so many nerds that I'm already far from the only person who knows this stuff.

Very exciting news.