'Tolkien' fails to capture any of the magic that makes J.R.R. Tolkien so beloved

The work of J.R.R. Tolkien is an astoundingly detailed achievement unmatched by any other fantasy author in history. It’s too bad that the biopic Tolkien doesn’t even have half the passion that the author brought to his own fictional world.

Tolkien explores the life of one of the most impactful authors of all time, focusing on his tumultuous youth, his college years, and his time in combat during World War I. It attempts to piece together some of the moments that inspired and impacted his crafting of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the rest of his writings on Middle-earth and beyond.

Unfortunately for the movie, the moments that inspired John Ronald Reuel Tolkien to create his stories don’t really make for a compelling movie.

Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult), who became orphaned at the age of 12 along with his brother after their mother died, spent the majority of his childhood around Birmingham, England. The movie jumps back and forth between his life as a student forming friendships and his time as a signals officer on the Western Front of World War I, framing his involvement in the Battle of the Somme as the major turning point of his life.

During his time in the war, Tolkien developed trench fever, which the movie embellishes by portraying Tolkien hallucinating images of dragons, evil, sword-wielding cavalry, and giant shadowy figures that resemble one of the primary villains of Middle-earth: Sauron.

Amidst flashes to the brutality of war, Tolkien dives into Tolkien’s relationships with his three best friends and his budding romance with his future wife Edith Bratt (Lily Collins), whom he met and lived with at a boarding house. Meanwhile, there’s an undercurrent of Tolkien’s obsession with languages throughout these formative years.

While Tolkien’s various relationships were nice, they aren’t very compelling on screen, and the moments that do resonate are few and far between.

At this point in time, the work of Tolkien has an almost mythic status of its own, and to try and capture the impetus of his imagination is an impossible task. If anything, Tolkien shows us that inspiration doesn’t necessarily come from specific moments, but from a lifetime of experiences and learning that adds up to a pretty mundane whole.

Tolkien ends with the author, now a married professor with children, writing the iconic first line of The Hobbit, the first book he ever published about the world of Arda (upon which Middle-earth sits in the middle of).

It’s a wholly unfulfilling moment.

Tolkien succeeds (in a non-entertaining way) in showing how regular people’s lives can inspire great works, but it utterly fails in showing the importance and impact of the work itself, which is why we’re actually drawn to the man.

The whole movie feels like a setup to a big moment, but the moment isn’t shown. Instead it relies on viewers to either continue the story in their own head from what they already know about Tolkien and his work.

If you’re not a Tolkien fan, Tolkien is completely pointless. If you are a Tolkien fan, Tolkien is a good lesson in how inspiration can come from pretty much anywhere, and sometimes that's boring.

As someone who has pored through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings over and over again since childhood and has relished in the worlds and deeds described in Tolkien’s posthumous works including The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin, the movie Tolkien was a letdown. It captures almost none of the spirit and beauty that emblazons the pages of these books and fills the nooks of the world of Arda.