Tolkien

Dome Karukoski builds the film on four schoolboys: Tolkien, Gilson, Wiseman and Smith, whose club it names as the TCBS, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society. The project was first attached to James Strong as Middle Earth; he left and Karukoski was hired in mid 2017. He says the Birmingham of Tolkien’s childhood was unusable, bombed and altered out of existence, so he worked in Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford, shooting the Somme in a field in Manchester. The dragons and shadows over the trenches are not in the script; Karukoski says he brought most of them in himself during production and the edit. He also shot scenes showing Tolkien’s faith, which failed to hold early audiences and were cut; hence the complaint that his faith is missing. Shortly before release the Tolkien Estate announced that family and estate did not endorse the film or its content. Made for 20 million dollars, it opened in America on 1,425 screens for 2.2 million, finished ninth and closed at 9 million worldwide. A good fit if you came for four boys and a literary club broken apart by a war rather than the romance with Edith. Not for anyone hoping to watch The Lord of the Rings get written; the film reaches the desk only in its last scene.