Sauron's War
Like Visualizing Middle-earth, Understanding Middle-earth includes one formally written essay, "A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men". This piece was originally written at the request of the publisher of a now-discontinued Tolkien journal. It would have been included in the last volume of Arda, but the project was never finished.
For a few years, Michael kept the essay in his files, hoping to include it in a general history book about Middle-earth. But the history book was set aside in favor of other projects. While writing for Suite101, Michael saw a period where he would be too busy to meet several deadlines. So, he took the "Last Alliance" essay and divided it into three parts, publishing each part as a weekly essay.
Readers around the world responded enthusiastically to the essay, which is still regarded as the most thorough treatment of the numerous brief references to events in the last war of Tolkien's Second Age.
The scale of the war was visually depicted at the beginning of Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring". Huge armies of Elves and Men mass against an army of Orcs, Trolls, and other creatures in Sauron's service. "It is close to some of my own ideas about how Tolkien may have envisioned the war," Michael says of Peter's battle scene.
While doing some research for an employee of Weta, Michael mentioned the War of the Last Alliance in his notes. The discussion concerned Aragorn's sword, Anduril, but Michael characteristically ventured into the history of the peoples whose fates had been touched by Anduril and its predecessor, Narsil, the Sword of Elendil.
After describing the events of the last war of the Second Age in one email, Michael received an excited reply. "Peter has read your notes and he has rewritten the prologue to the movie!"
"I had to wait for almost three years before I could see that prologue," Michael sighs. "And when the night finally came, I had to remain in doubt about how much of what I was seeing that owed anything to my email." Still, the battle scene is impressive. The opening prologue covers in a few minutes' time a vast, intricate history.
Was it worth the wait?
"Absolutely," Michael says. "I have criticized the movies about some points. But there have been many magic moments in all three films for me. The prologue was one of them, because I knew that -- whatever came after it -- Peter would be faithful to the idea that all of Middle-earth was caught up in a horrendous struggle. People were afraid the war would be minimalized. How, after all, do you depict something that massive when most of the action in the story concerns a few individuals? I think the prologue set the pace. People saw immediately that the stakes were high. If I had a part in bringing that to the screen, then I'm glad I did."
NOTE: In subsequent years fans learned that there were, in fact, three prologues for the Peter Jackson movies. The first prologue was the one Peter is alleged to have rewritten in response to Michael's research. The second prologue, however, was eventually dropped from the movies. But then New Line Cinema insisted -- just a few weeks before the release of "The Fellowship of the Ring" in late 2001 -- that a prologue be included. Peter scrambled to assemble something which, presumably, may have used some of the material from the second Prologue.
