Quote Originally Posted by Mewtarthio View Post
That only reinforces my point.
No. It really doesn't.

What's LotR about? A bunch of hobbits fighting the Lord of the Rings! Clearly, he initially intended to capitalize on The Hobbit by making a new book with four hobbits instead of just one.
No. That's wrong too. Tolkien didn't want to work on a sequel to the Hobbit after it was done. He wanted to focus on other literary works concerned with Middle Earth. He was compelled by his fans and publisher to write a sequel he didn't what to do.

Now, had he called his original work A Hobbit, he could have called the new work Several More Hobbits and been done with it. Too bad for him Bilbo Baggins was already established as the hobbit. He had to come up with an entirely new noun for his title and shoehorn in an extra plot about people with noble claims over jewelry to justify it.
Or he just could have called the sequel the Hobbits.

As a side effect, the new work was so different that he was compelled to cut Bilbo altogether and replace him with a "nephew" named Frodo, lest readers get confused as to why Bilbo was the star of two separate franchises.


You're seriously saying the only reason Bilbo wasn't the protagonist in the Lord of the Rings is because it's a completely different franchise from the Hobbit and that would confuse people? You clearly underestimate people. I think people can accept the fact a character goes on to star in other works. Here's a little secret: it happens a lot in fiction. Look at comics and every spinoff that ever existed. Heck, I'm this dates all the way back to ancient civilizations.

Granted, he could have saved himself the trouble if he'd just called the trilogy The Hobbit II: The Hobbit Versus the Lord of the Rings, but that would have just been silly.
Yeah, I'm sure J.R.R. Tolkien - a man who mastered Old English and even invented his own language - was too dumbstruck to think of a more creative and original title. I'm sure that's the only reason the Lord of the Rings wasn't about Bilbo: he couldn't think of a cool enough sequel name for the Hobbit.