The Tolkien fans I spoke with seem reconciled to the idea that the trilogy's involved plotlines will inevitably be truncated and smoothed out for the silver screen. But there is bound to be trauma when their private mythopoetic realm, for so many years the unchallenged province of dreamy girls in granny skirts and bearded grad students, is forcibly dragged under the halogen lights of mass culture.

I haven't read Tolkien since I was in high school, but I still had an awful sinking feeling in my chest when I first saw the new action figure representing the Lord of the Nazgūl -- leader of the nine fearsome Ringwraiths who pursue Frodo and his friends -- now selling for $19.95 at online toy stores. ("Without the need of batteries, the eyes of the Lord of the Nazgūl will light up! Order now before it returns to Sauron!")

To someone who has never been under the spell of Tolkien's books, it's impossible to explain why a harmless toy should seem so disheartening, even sacrilegious. I suppose that for Tolkien enthusiasts his world and its characters have a profoundly mythic seriousness that can only be grossly devalued by translating it into the world of children's playthings. The Nazgūl scared the crap out of me as a child. They are meant to be emissaries of soul-destroying terror; they're not tricked-out vaudeville villains out of Lucas' plastic universe or the World Wrestling Federation.

What's next? Action figures of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu, which drive you mad if you look at them? Satan from "Paradise Lost"? Judas Iscariot, with his little plastic pieces of silver?

Cindy McNew, who explores the running themes of Tolkien's fiction in her columns as "Anwyn" on TheOneRing.net, sighs heavily when I bring up the "M" words -- marketing and merchandising. McNew, who is 25 and just took a job teaching choir in a St. Louis public school, says she's "cautiously optimistic" about the Jackson trilogy, although she's troubled by the reports about Tyler's role. "Knowing that it's going to become a mass-marketing phenomenon is, well, a different thing," she says. "I'm going to feel the worst when I find out what fast-food chain has the 'Fellowship of the Ring' tie-in. When I see Galadriel on the side of a plastic soda cup."

As Broadway adds, "No one within American pop culture, the world of Britney Spears and Pokémon, has really ever been exposed to 'Lord of the Rings.' Well, that's about to change, isn't it?" Despite mixed feelings about the prospect, he's trying to stay focused on the upside: Many more people will now read Tolkien's books.

"It's about time that millions and millions of people should be exposed to the source, to this brilliant man and what he created," he says. "It's about time that we had more than pockets of fans on college campuses." Then his tone becomes a bit more rueful. "Part of me thinks this is going to be fun and silly and great," he continues. "Then there's this other voice inside my head asking, What kind of disaster is this going to be, turning something that is so epic and so deeply revered into another piece of American pop junk?"

Whether Jackson's version of "The Lord of the Rings" is a smash or a flop -- and even the skeptical Hockensmith is rooting for it, saying, "I hope it makes 'Star Wars' look like 'Battlefield Earth'" -- it's worth remembering that over the long haul Tolkien's work will endure regardless. Dave Smith, a 45-year-old Chicago-area librarian who writes for TheOneRing.net as "Turgon," reminds me of the case of "The Wizard of Oz." The classic movie musical with Judy Garland is quite different from L. Frank Baum's original novel, but the film's popularity hasn't stopped generations of kids (and their parents) from reading and rereading the book. And perhaps, Smith suggests, I have forgotten the 1903 theatrical version of "The Wizard of Oz," written by Baum himself. Toto was left out entirely and Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz with her pet cow, Imogene. It was a big hit.

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