One of the most amazing things about The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is how many readers return to it time and time again. Most doorstopper-sized books, no matter how wonderful, are read once and promptly shoved on bookshelves to serve as something of a trophy. Samuel Johnson’s take on Milton holds true of many tomes. “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again,” Johnson wrote. “None ever wished it longer than it is.”
The same could be said of many other books but not about Tolkien’s masterpiece. Tolkien was shrewd enough to give readers a satisfying – if melancholy – conclusion while offering hints of the future. Readers are left with questions, many of which Tolkien doesn’t answer in the various appendixes.
Tolkien was sharp enough not to go too deep into the Fourth Age despite writing a handful of pages when he considered doing a sequel. The New Shadow would have been set decades after Sauron’s defeat and there were hints of a growing cult in Gondor, including children playing “orc games” and even destroying trees. Frankly, it sounds like it would have been awful and Tolkien did the right thing by pulling the plug on it. He simply did not have much more to say about Middle-earth after the ring-bearers sailed out from the Grey Havens.
This is near unthinkable today where publishers and studios seem to want to launch series and universes before the first book or movie is even released. With blockbuster films costing so much to create, studios are increasingly growing more cautious, which leads to endless arrays of sequels. That being the case, there are still risks, even with the most beloved and established franchises. Witness last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, the first time a movie set a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away bombed. Even the Potterverse seems to be losing its magic as Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald brought in less than any other movie in the series and garnered jeers from the critics.
The same often holds true with books. Dune by Frank Herbert is rightfully considered one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune generally hold up well, but the three other sequels Herbert penned seem to run out of gas. As for the more than a dozen “Dune” books his son Brian wrote with Kevin J. Anderson, even the better ones are, at most, forgettable. While The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is rightfully considered a classic, that series certainly did not merit fourteen novels in addition to a stand-alone prequel in The New Spring. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman gave their Dragonlance series an excellent conclusion at the end of the “Chronicles” trilogy, only to offer yet another solid finish in Dragons of Summer Flame, before undermining both of them with a rash of other books set on Krynn. Writers should take a lesson from Tolstoy who ended War and Peace with Pierre and Natasha enjoying life with their families and friends. Thankfully, Tolstoy decided not to write about Pierre joining the Decemberists some two decades before the novel opened.
Of course, Christopher Tolkien has taken his father’s notes and drafts to create many books. But none of them are sequels to The Lord of the Rings. Instead, The Silmarillion and the books carved out of it – The Children of Hurin, for example – just flesh out the world. The dozen volumes in The History of Middle-earth offer a detailed and informative look at Tolkien’s creative process. None of these books tell us about Frodo’s life in Valinor, King Elessar’s reign, or what Gimli did to become Lord of the Glittering Caves.
Tolkien realized his story was finished and decided not to go forward with The New Shadow. That’s a lesson many of us can learn, especially as we continue to be bombarded with endless The Fast and the Furious, Hotel Transylvania and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels.
While Tolkien did not care for his work, Walt Disney said it best. When asked if he could make a sequel to the “Three Little Pigs” cartoon, Disney simply replied, “You can’t top pigs with pigs.” Of course, he made sequels to the “Three Little Pigs”, which turned out to be pretty forgettable. Still, there’s a lesson there. Sometimes, you just need to wrap up a story at the right spot. Frodo, Bilbo, Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf sail away. Pierre and Natasha raise Prince Andrei’s son as their own. Things go south when stories drag on. Indiana Jones rides off into the sunset in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…only to come back twenty years later and deal with aliens.
As Samuel Johnson noted, nobody wanted Paradise Lost to have another word added to it. But then again, Paradise Regained by Milton ranks as a stinker of a sequel right up there with The Godfather III, Rocky V, Jaws: The Revenge, Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow and Highlander 2: The Quickening (the sad part is, I can go on here). Tolkien did the right thing in ending his story where he did before his gold turned to green from tarnishing.