Tolkien

For some reason the writers elected to have J.R.R. Tolkien’s story center around his horrible experiences in WWI. He saw carnage almost unimaginable to me, and came down with trench fever at the Battle of the Somme, which almost killed him. (Oddly, two other famous fantasy writers also suffered from it: C.S. Lewis and A.A. Milne. You think the virus is attracted to initials?) It seems an odd choice, given what the rest of his life was like. We do see him as a young man, plunged into poverty by the death of his father. He was home schooled by his mother until she died when he was twelve. He had an amazing knack for languages, and of course he became a world-famous author. Certainly a better story could have been mined from all that potential. Though the look of the film and the acting are quite good, I put this one down as a missed opportunity.