So in my fervor to denounce Jacskon's movie--and more than a little morbid curiosity about the approval of the general public--I checked into the most interesting and best-designed of the Tolkien discussion-board sites I could find, Imladris.net. Here I spouted at great length, and since I spent so much time on it, I'd like to save the best of my remarks for posterity, since Ambiguous seems likely to outlast what must be a site with a significant overhead. To clarify--and with luck, to save myself from sounding like an utterly unmitigated ass--I'm only recording my own remarks here because it seems ethically iffy to steal anybody else's, even though lots of people said wonderfully insightful things and in many places I'd prefer to record entire stretches of conversation.
In general I slowly got a bit of perspective about the fact of the movie, although I don't really judge the movie any differently. Beyond that whole discussion, though, I've found it a powerful and unexpected pleasure to have a whole forum of people who've read my favorite author more or less as extensively as I have and who know what I'm talking about at my very geekiest.
I think I'm about through with the forum... I've been pulling back for a while just because it was eating my life. For me, Lord of the Rings is pretty much an inexhaustible subject. I've probably offered as much as I can to that crowd, and I need my time back to do things like update my own site. For example.
But although I won't steal their words without permission, I do want to express fond thanks to the best of the disputants--fellow naysayers like Frodoze, Maria, and Ted Sandyman (who sports the brilliant tagline "then Hal can't have seen one!"), and (far more numerous) honored enemies like darling Pearl, danjerboy, fangface, demonslayer, and The Purist (a good egg though he must have named himself in a frenzy of Orwellian contrariness).
my opening salvo
how same is same?
Aragorn's toughness
in defense of my casting critique
racism and sexism
more isms
WereBilbo and Nuclear Galadriel
scouring the Scouring
movies vs books and Terence Stamp
suspension of disbelief
somebody called the book unsubtle
subtle take two
challenged to justify using the word "lousy"
Glorfindel/Arwen switch
geeking about Frodo's Elvish
the persistent "can't do on film" idea
matters of interpretation
horrifying confession
Nice to see a little diversity of opinion.
Til now I've pretty much been hearing a stunningly unanimous roar of approval for the movie. Some nice, thoughtful, gentle rebukes around here if you look for a little while. Not many, overall, but they're present at least.
Honestly, in retrospect I think this movie could have looked like almost anything and been greeted with enthusiasm; all it had to have was the title. Like cat people who coo over refrigerator magnets or whatever as long as they have pictures of cats on them, the fans are so excited by the idea of a Lord of the Rings movie that they respond chiefly to the vision in their own minds.
Jackson knew this, naturally. I've seen a couple posts around that tell purists to "leave the books at the door." How can we, if he won't leave the book out of the title? But if he did that he'd have no crowd at his movie.
This isn't the first movie attempt, and my comfort is that it won't be the last. Just as nobody before Kenneth Branagh would take the trouble to film Hamlet in full and in order, nobody has yet made any effort at all to film the book as it was written. But maybe somebody will in the future. In the meantime, this thing is going to be distant memory in ten years. Why? Because it doesn't have the depth of character or quality of writing to stay in the mind.
A director who retells an old favorite, but scrambles it, is tacitly claiming to be a better writer than the one whose book he's retelling. Or else he's just making plain that his aim was a big-money movie with cool effects all along.
I've written quite a long review that won't fit here: check it out if you like at http://www.ambiguous.org/robin/opinion/lord.html
As with everything, use your own best judgement....
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by BT Shire
The major plot points remain the same:
...plot points listed...
This same summary can be used for the film OR the book. It is the same story. Only the details vary.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, sure. By that reckoning, though, Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are one and the same. And any novel is identical to its "Cliff's Notes."
Somebody--I think Frodoze--compared it to the "stations of the cross." The same events, in sequence, summarizing the story of the crucifixion, just as a lot of Christmas carols recite the traditional details of Jesus' birth. The events are there, but that doesn't make it the Bible.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
Must we call him "Tolks?" How about "Tolkster?"
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by erendis
The Uruk Hai on Amon Hen? I'm afraid I don't remember Tolkien having any tactics there. In fact Tolks doesn't say much at all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The difference is in whom the Uruk-Hai meet at all. They met two halflings and a big human. Their orders are to take the halflings unharmed, which they do; they are free to kill anybody else they find, which they do.
PJ has everybody in the fellowship meet them; this, I think, is where Ted is suggesting they would most likely die. There is, by either account, a substantial crowd of bad guys here. The Three Hunters survive without breathing hard here, presumably because they have too much to do in the rest of the narrative.
Or maybe because PJ wants them to be even tougher than they were, or perhaps he doesn't think too much about what it would mean to be that tough. Aragorn is plenty tough in the original, but he's not suicidal this way, charging into a crowd of thirty enemies.
We do see a lot of Aragorn being bold. At Helm's Deep, he leaps into a breach and holds it--but just for a moment, long enough to get everybody out, and then he scoots for safety, arrows breaking on the stones around him. A similar display later in the night, as he steps up on the wall for a parley. Earlier, he confronts Eomer and all his men in a similar style. Or earlier yet, twice diving into the fray against multiple Ringwraiths--he's in over his head and he knows it. Contrary to Jackson's vision, the Nazgul are not likely to have gone about drenched in kerosene. Aragorn may well be expecting to die at Weathertop; he just doesn't have a choice in this extremity. If they get the Ring, everyone will die.
He's bluffing more than anything. He's tough, and he can dare these moments of exposure, but he doesn't volunteer to fight a platoon singlehanded if there's no need for it.
Same sort of reasoning goes for Legolas and Gimli; Gimli may relish combat, but he knows better than to dive into overwhelming odds without reason. Legolas--well, the movie's Legolas is clearly a ninja, so maybe he's safe.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
Re: And now for Robin Skyler [yikes!]
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Pearl
All four seemed to inhabit their roles admirably. Sir Ian McKellan's Gandalf is less authoritative than Sir Michael Hordern's Gandalf in the BBC LOTR radio play, but he is wonderfully warm and humane.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never heard the radio play. I want to stress that I adore, I revere, I fawn over McKellen because of other roles. Cold Comfort Farm, Gods and Monsters, and above all Apt Pupil which would have been a snore but for him alone. Hearing that he was cast was the thing that made me stop dreading the movies when I first heard about them, and started me hoping.
But: I think the movie's Gandalf is a sad substitute for Tolkien's. Whatever Gandalf is, he's almost never uncertain. He knows a lot about everything; he's usually playing a reckless game but he always knows what his strategy is and has good reason to bet on it. And he's crotchety, dammit, never letting anybody forget he told them so; this unkempt Gandalf seems to live in a mire of self-doubt. We see Gandalf rattled, a couple times in Moria. Never before or after. He might be grim, musing, or saddened, but never lost--he is vigorous and decisive and relentlessly devoted to his campaign. He was decidedly not the sweet old man who would give with a groaner like "now, isn't that an encouraging thought?"
I blame PJ for this, but I'm sad that McKellen did nothing to stop it.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Galadriel cold and belligerent? This was the real Noldorian Gladys we were watching! Feanor's feisty niece who braved the gruelling journey over the Grinding Ice!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm another of those readers, I know her dossier. But perhaps because she patently has no need to prove anything to anyone, she doesn't glower at people and make like Poltergeist at them. People meet her and fall in love with her. They ache for her and her safe haven for months after parting ways. Boromir alone saw her as suspicious, and the others as much as told him he was nuts for it.
Sure, Galadriel should be forceful. But that doesn't mean she has to be snotty. I think her power could easily have been conveyed without making her so inexplicably hostile. Did anybody ever doubt Glinda was powerful, of Ben Kenobi, or--sorry to say it--Dumbledore?
I think Galadriel's malaise is just a specific case of that which afflicts all the elves in the film: the substitution of dignity for grace, and thereby, the total loss of the lightness of heart and personal warmth that ought to characterize the elves as much as anything.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wood's Frodo is more vulnerable, more naive and less decisive than the book Frodo. But I for one found his transformation from merry young hobbit into tragic young hero very affecting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mishandling of Frodo is the great unsung atrocity of this film. Forget his age. Frodo is a scholar, a speaker of arcane languages (he has to ask for a basic word in elvish?), an outlandish person in a rustic country, who entertains dwarves and one recurrent wizard and who has more than once visited elves on the fringes of the Shire, before the story really gets going. He's not some naive, frightened kid. He is the most learned person of all his people. His presence at a council of the wisest people in the world is not really inappropriate, because his insights are real; he can learn quite quickly to meet them on their own level. Sam goes to Rivendell and is overwhelmed, enjoying himself but lost among the elves; Frodo goes to Rivendell and learns to belong there. He doesn't just get thrown to the mercy of Aragorn, Galadriel, Boromir, Gollum, Faramir, or Saruman. He judges them. Frodo is a sage.
Or, if you like, he's a very pleasant kid with big blue eyes who means well and does what he's told and hopes for the best.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The guy acted his little heart out ...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, he bugged his little eyes out. A lot.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PJ thinks of Boromir as a boorish knuckle-head? But Boromir is one of Tolkien's least developed characters. Bean made Boromir deeply sympathetic. He and PJ are to be commended.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree about Bean; his was easily my favorite performance. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Ol' Sharpe actually redeemed the character despite PJ's efforts, I'd say.
Yes, Boromir is less developed than most of the others. But more than this.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW, the guy who plays Bilbo so wonderfully is Sir Ian Holm, one of our most distinguished thespians
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, so I understand. It's embarrassing that I didn't know him, I'veconsidered changing that on the website, but the fact is I'm not a movie buff. Two people named "Sir Ian" on the same movie though? I didn't realize he was a knight as well.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your predictions for the next two films made me chuckle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hooray! But I was conservative, I'm afraid. That was before I heard anything about the scouring getting changed to orcs or Saruman getting pushed off Orthanc to fall on a spike. The reality will well outstrip my mockery.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But I think you will be wrong in one important respect. ... There is some evidence that Frodo will be naked in this scene
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, good for PJ. I suspect that he will give us his most accurate renditions when he reaches his own favorite scenes, as he did on the bridge in Moria and at the Party. Perhaps he has a particular fondness for the hobbit-torture parts. (Okay, now that was uncalled-for...)
Thanks for giving me a read, Pearl.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Pearl
We must agree to fundamentally disagree over McKellan's Gandalf, Robin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yup. As Frodoze said, rather better than I did, It's not that he did a bad job with the role, it's that I didn't like the role (and on my site he would only have made it to my favored-performance list for striving to play Gandalf as Tolkien wrote him). You liked it, I didn't, I doubt we're really going to get anywhere further on that. But at least Sir Ian will always be my one and only Tsar Nicholas.
Similar sentiments on Cate. I didn't think elves were short on personality in the book, but I'm not sure what else to say about it... probably pretty subjective territory.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frodo in the book doesn't know the meaning of the word Elvish 'dunadan', 'man of the West', as Bilbo tells him in Rivendell. Fro's knowledge was hardly exhaustive. You make him sound like an Oxford don. It is Bilbo who is the donnish one, rather than Frodo. Having said that, I certainly agree that book Frodo is an intellectual.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Certainly you're right in one particular--if anybody is the dean of the hobbits, it is Bilbo, probably more of a projection of the author than any other character. But I think you underestimate Frodo, who learned at his uncle's knee, and from Gandalf and the elves as well. He and Bilbo are peas in a pod. To be a total geek for a minute: Bilbo joshes him not about an elvish word but an epithet with an elvish etymology. Frodo doesn't say "what does that mean," he says "why do you call him that?" Bilbo, who also has the temerity to demand that Frodo take careful notes during his brushes with death, may feel that sorting it out instantaneously should have been like breathing to Frodo, but this is academese of a rarefied sort. Certainly this is no sign that Frodo's erudition is actually lacking; Bilbo would have found something to tease him about no matter what.
Anyway, how many English speakers think of the word rendezvous as French for "y'all come back," even though the words are perfectly uncorrupted? There, I've just needled you in much the way Bilbo needled Frodo--even though if you know a bit of French you could probably have worked it out yourself quite nicely if I'd just suggested it first.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You would enjoy Ian Holm's performance as Frodo in the BBC radio LOTR, I think.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm inclined to go find out, in fact. But then again all this talk about Bakshi has also piqued my interest, so perhaps I am not to be trusted. (To be fair, it's not really that I expect to like the Bakshi, but I'm curious.)
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh. For a robust defence of Elijah Wood in the film, I recomend this thread in Casting, which is pretty much swoon-free, although I can't deny that most of the posters seem to be wimmin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I went and looked, but found little to change my mind. It might have been more informative had it actually been a defense per se, but nobody seemed to be challenging him. Anyway, one thing I did see was the spectacle of not one but two posters complimenting an actor on a moment of character development executed while invisible.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
Yeesh. Took days to read all that.
Not sure where to begin now. It's sort of disappointing not to see any activity on here by the movie-doubters; it's an interesting opportunity for us to agree with the majority. Maybe.
Except that I only agree with the majority for some of the reasons stated--and I think the crowd in general is underestimating the force of Jeremiah's point.
A quick question before we get into it: can a man be a feminist? If you say no, then how will we ever have an egalitarian society? If you say yes, then--why do you keep asking whether minorities have made allegations of racism? Do you need a damned license to identify a racist theme? Must the minorities be left alone to deal with prejudices against them? Do you suppose everybody of a given minority background will have the same reaction?
I think we ought to address the sentiment, not the speaker, let alone the speaker's demographic. So...
Right at the top, Jeremiah said he'd only seen the movie, so rebutting his points with references to the book won't help. But--I am tempted to commit this same sin, discussing both simultaneously--precisely because I was already familiar with these allegations with regard to the book and I actually think they're much stronger there. I'll just try to remember when I am addressing his points and when I'm not.
About "mud people," it's a new term to some, but it is indeed standard white-supremacist language, and at least in the eyes of the supremacists, the Uruk-Hai crock pot would probably conjure exactly that image. I hadn't thought of it at all. That said, I don't think PJ was thinking any such thing.
Past that reference, I'm not at all sure what makes the film seem racist, unless it is the simple absence of anybody but white people, which has been addressed plentifully above. That alone is not grounds for a complaint if it is appropriate to the story, I agree. The fact that the Uruk-Hai are a dark brown color, and the elves pale and blonde (which is not from the book), is potentially an issue--but only if backed up by some other evidence, I'd say. And I don't really see much.
Now, sexism I can readily see in the movie--but it is period-accurate, if it makes sense to say that about an imagined period. Rather, we are talking about a world extracted from stories told be people living in times when for women to be totally uninvolved in the making of important decisions or the execution of unusually important tasks was only to be expected.
And, of course, we are given Galadriel and Liv Tyler as exceptions, plus some archers in Lorien, if I remember correctly. Liv, it seems clear, is tougher than most of the kids on the block, for her brief screen time--but except for the one pinch by the river, her primary role is as love interest, which isn't very redeeming. Galadriel is very powerful, a viewer of the movie might gather, and she seems the more active of the ruling couple of Lorien, so she is a big step away from a medieval worldview. Other than that--not many women going on. But this must be said of the bulk of modern adventure stories and many others, even leaving aside the ones set in medieval or quasimedieval worlds.
Which makes me wonder why that in particular would grab your attention about this movie.
Now, let's talk about the book. Jeremiah, you might have gathered from some of these discussions that Liv Tyler is stealing all her action from a male character (actually several, if you count the flood), and that in the book itself Arwen is barely seen. So that, presumably, is even more incriminating. Set this against Galadriel, who is in fact a great deal more active in world affairs than the movie made her, and add a few characters who got cut--Goldberry, who is one one hand wise and powerful and on the other hand very much a housewife; Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, a crotchety old hobbit who takes no guff; and then really not many others, mostly incidental characters, even if they are vivid, like Ioreth, who may yet make an appearance in the third movie.
Above all, though, we get Eowyn, whom you also have not met yet. Presuming you don't mind some plot spoilers--I figure everybody else around here knows already--Eowyn is a woman who shows up midway through the book. She's of noble birth among a warlike, basically Germanic people (oh, by the by, if the Dwarves are any nationality, their language would make them seem Nordic), and she longs for great deeds in battle. When the war passes through her land and sweeps away east, she is essentially told to mind the house. Instead, she sneaks along with the cavalry, and ultimately does in Sauron's number one gunsel, who's been the terror of humankind for centuries (he was already the Lord of the Nazgul in the days of Angmar btw). Incidentally, she fulfills a Shakespearian sort of prophecy here (made by the very guy whose job gets outsourced to Liv in the movie) that this particular baddie will not be slain by any man.
Her story is where we should look if we want to examine Tolkien's ideas about women. And indeed we find a conversation on the subject between her and Aragorn, as they part ways. I don't have the text in front of me, I'm at work, but as I recall, Eowyn complains about being expected to stay at home while her male relatives are risking their necks, and Aragorn respectfully tells her to get back in the kitchen.
Now, Aragorn is pretty much infallible throughout this story--I mean, he makes some mistakes, a string of them, but his moral standing is unimpeachable. So it's interesting that here he is pretty stodgy, and the narration never criticizes him for it. At the same time, Eowyn enunciates her decidedly feminist point of view quite well, and wins the day in the end.
When she does her deed in battle (and is lying apparently dead), note the reactions of the men. One and all, they bemoan the tragic fate that brought her here--even as they praise the bravery of her uncle, not far away, who did a valid but much less significant deed of derring-do. All the men seem to feel that she is brave, but if only she'd been elsewhere, they'd have been able to do the job instead without her having to get hurt. Even Eomer, mind you, who failed to do the job in part because he was hundreds of yards away trying to control his horse, having been routed with the rest of his men by the mere presence of the villain.
And then, at the end of her convalescence, she meets one of our more dashing heroes, and upon deciding to marry him she announces that she will leave warlike things behind her forever. Does this mean the author feels that a proper woman should put such manly things aside? Dunno. It doesn't mean he doesn't think that.
What about racism in the book? Frankly, that's so clear that I find many passages embarrassing to read. But mind you, there are degrees of racism; there are racists like Henry Ford or Hitler who devote much of their lives to their passionate hatred, and there are racists who live in a racist world and like it, and there are those who live in a racist world and haven't really thought about it, and there are those who fight the racism that we all learn, and devote much energy to learning egalitarian thinking. I would put Tolkien somewhere between these latter two; he was an Englishman, very much a product of an imperialist culture, living in an age when egalitarian thinking was making progress, but slow progress, toward application to all people. I think he thought of himself as egalitarian and simply never put so much time and thought into it as to notice how many of the old aryanist trappings of thought were still with him.
Just as PJ did when asked about racism, a couple of people mentioned an incident from much later, wherein Sam sees a black Southron fall dead before him, and thinks sympathetic thoughts about the man, wondering if he'd really wanted to come along etc. That is worth mentioning, and it is for such things that I feel sure Tolkien aspired to egalitarianism. Elsewhere, chiefly in the person of Ghan-Buri-Ghan, he shows us a fairly traditional "noble savage" which fights racism maybe a little more than the Victorian woman-on-a-pedestal fights sexism. But it means not to be racist, and that does matter, if what you want is a look into the author's mind.
More insidious than these brief glimpses of other races (black people and an invented race, the Druedain, respectively) is the general whisper of aryan ideals within the races we see most of. When Tolkien wants to compliment a hero, chances are he will call him tall and fair. Aragorn is tall, Eomer is taller than all his tall men, Frodo is taller and fairer than most hobbits, all the Rohirrim are tall and blond, the Numenoreans and their descendants in Gondor are tall and pale, though with dark hair. In more remote histories Tolkien pays much attention to who the tallest two or three of all the elves are, like Thingol and Turgon, both kings.
"Swarthy," on the other hand, is always an indicator of an enemy, with the one exception of Furlong's men, a small detail late in the text. Well, and of the Wild Men, I suppose; they might be called swarthy. The more human-looking of the orc-human crossbreeds are "swarthy." The Dunlendings--whose chief complaint is that their ancestral homeland was stolen by an invasion of Aryans--are both shortish and swarthy. Of course, dwarves and hobbits are short, so it's not a simple one to one. But it seems clear that after a life of scholarship devoted largely to old Germanic stories and languages, the tall blonde hero was very much present in Professor T's head.
(I'm not addressing orcs because it's never made very clear what they look like; they have bristly necks, fangs, and claws, and they're shorter than men and have long arms. They are not, by the way, stupid. The few times we hear them talking it's plain that they're about as clever, and as variously so, as humans. This, again, refers to the book; in the movie they do appear pretty stupid.)
All of this seems like legitimate complaint. It's not as crucial as it might be in the case of Kipling--there's an Englishman who spent years watching other races interact with his, and who clearly had an interest in interracial dynamics and a burgeoning awareness of the anger on the other side, and who nevertheless failed to break out of his traditional sense of English privelege, who in fact argued for it in his writings. I'd far sooner take him to task (and he was a great writer) than Tolkien for matters of race. Tolkien basically took some small steps from his upbringing toward a more modern mindset; when we complain about him, we are complaining merely that he did not do more.
But the question remains: how would you address it? The book is done, and it's too late to have a chat with the author. The movie, now, is freshly made, and it's reasonable to suggest alternatives. Except that the movie is presumably being based on the book, which puts a lot of constraints on it.
In the end, I don't think Jeremiah's suggestion changes all that much, or improves much. You might decide to cast all the elves as Native Americans, for instance (they do after all come from a land over the western sea), and that would give it a different feel, I suppose. Or you could just cast haphazardly, on the assumption that if humans can be of different strains, elves and dwarves and hobbits can have parallel strains. Would it mean anything? Maybe. Maybe it would give kids a more diverse worldview, or contribute a little. It would certainly look jarring to the fans of the book.
On the other hand, does it really seem like the fans would react to such vicissitudes of casting as "blasphemy?" I might have made the same predictions regarding the butchering of the plot. Do you think it would be so much more disorienting to watch a Korean Glorfindel than to see Glorfindel's part attributed to an entirely different person?
In the end, I think I'd sooner make the movie faithful to the book, and then make a movie of Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" novels, a magical adventure in which almost nobody is white.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by elanorh
RS, I hope not to insult, but did you really read this entire thread and the other thread referenced within this thread (the earlier racism posts)? Because there is a paucity of proof that Tolks was very progressive and not a "product of his times" re: racism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, hey, I hope not to be insulted. I did read this thread, I didn't read the other; I'll be glad to if I get the time but I think it's safe for me to comment as is.
A paucity is a shortage, which I'm not sure is what you mean? In any event I think "proof" is not a word to be used lightly. Very little of what happens in an online chatboard can reasonably be called proof of anything.
I'm not up on Tolkien's biography, though I'd like to be; it was news to me that he was born in South Africa, and I'd like to know a lot more about it. Indeed I think he was of a progressive mind; as I said above, I believe he aspired to egalitarianism. But as anybody knows who's spent a lot of time overcoming the racism we're all taught in our culture, it's just an enormous task. It's a matter of rooting out old habits of thinking. And I think Tolkien had some of those habits showing, which is what I was trying to point out before. I'm not vilifying the man. I adore his works and his point of view and I think he was a fundamentally good person and I wish I could have met him. But he didn't escape his age in every respect. He pulled away from the prejudices of his culture, a little. Had it been his life's work, he would presumably have done much more. It just wasn't.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
... if you look at Tolk's work, he doesn't want anyone, male or female, to make their lives about war. The whole point of the ending of LOTR is that (at least for a time), ME was entering a time of peace. And that stolid peacefulness was the goal Tolks thought made all the prevous battles worthwhile. You'll notice that Faramir settled down, right beside Eowyn. Yes, he was the steward of Gondor, but he wasn't off fighting wars!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes and no. I think it's complicated. It matters, a lot, that the backdrop of his writing process was the second World War, and the memory of the first. The idea of an implacable country to the east, a genuinely evil regime, bent on world conquest and stopping for nothing but outright military defeat, was pretty believeable for him. And no, I don't mean to make it an allegory--I am aware of his comments in the introduction and am quite fond of quoting them--but I think it's not unreasonable to see echoes in the story of the author's life and times, whether they were deliberate or not. Tolkien knew war. He was serializing those chapters to his own son, in the RAF.
So yes, Tolkien longed for peace. But he also had much occasion to see--as these days most of us have not--that sometimes going to war can be necessary and legitimate and right. And given that, going to war and fighting well can be worthy of praise. And since he was also steeped, the length of his life, in old Germanic stories, he had a vast vocabulary at his fingertips for praising martial prowess--learned at the knee of a culture that revered nothing more highly.
A slight digression: this year I and my family went through the book out loud--the first time in years that either Rebecca or Miriam heard the story--and as Miriam was reading at Helm's Deep, she came to the second mention of Gimli's contest with Legolas. She paused for a moment, rolling her eyes to the heavens, and muttered boys to Rebecca. Which was pretty funny, of course. The next day, though, I was talking to Rebecca, who'd had a hard time dealing with the violence of the book's first real battle. It was October as we were reading this, and we live in Manhattan; the idea of war was suddenly not so remote, and the idea of being under attack and having legitimate reason to fight (not to endorse the way my country chose to do so, which has been a disgrace) made the book read very differently than she'd expected.
So; Tolkien may have wished for peace, and his hobbits--his little Englishmen--wanted the same. But the Rohirrim, for example, rode straight out of Beowulf (complete with the name Eomer, by the by). They reckon greatness strictly in terms of foes slain and gold handed out to kin. They sing as they kill. Their enthusiasm for war is palpable--and this is Eowyn's culture. True to it, she eventually bows out on grounds of womanhood. Faramir settles down and gets married, but makes nary a peep about laying down the sword. He doesn't even thank Eowyn for killing the old bastard who kept kicking his ass all that year.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are plenty of current authors who feature as few or fewer females in their works. The Silm has more deeply drawn female characters than LOTR, due to its nature vs. the "eyes" which narrated LOTR ....
I don't think anything would have been gained by using actors of varying racial/ethnic groups in FotR.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree entirely. I don't think we actually disagree as much as we seem to, overall.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMO, "race" will cease to matter when we quit looking so hard for traces of it that we end up inventing it where it doesn't exist.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not sure about that. Somebody in this thread argued that race doesn't exist; I would say, I agree that race is not biological. But it exists, and its tensions permeate our history, and they will not leave us alone unless confronted. Prejudice thrives when it is ignored. Not that I don't understand the problem of invented complaints--and I'm not even sure I don't agree that Jeremiah's complaints against the movie are stretching too far, for too small a point. But race matters in more places than not. It's early in history to imagine it's anywhere near beaten; we're still diagnosing the problem.
A quick aside on this subject, pointed out by someone else in that discussion:
In 1938, the publishing house R\0xD9tten and Loening wanted to issue a German translation of The Hobbit, but in compliance with Nazi law they needed assurance that the author was Aryan and not Jewish. Tolkien sent back a curt response that mocked Nazi racial politics. "I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy or any related dialect," Tolkien wrote. "But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree with you, Robin, about the cave troll, it's my one big point of criticism in the film. As for "were-Bilbo", it's in the book. Bilbo is described as having his face take on the appearance of Gollum for a brief moment as he wants to see the Ring again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I checked the passage and it's more ambiguous than I'd remembered; it is indeed quite possible to read this as a literal transformation without contradicting any of the words on the page. I still don't, though. I think the intent is that Frodo sees Bilbo differently in this moment, and in his eyes and ears, the hall becomes quiet and shadowed. Bilbo, after all, is an old, bony creature, and currently he is indeed groping--all it might take to make him look Gollumish is to remove Frodo's psychological filter of familiarity at this moment and replace it with one of suspicion.
The episode with Galadriel seems clear enough--she raises her hand, and a light (maybe real, maybe visible only to Frodo) issues from Nenya that illuminates her and nothing else. She seems to tower over the hobbits (as is standard when Tolkien wants to express power and majesty, especially hitherto hidden power). And that's about it. Again, one could interpret it more along the lines of a visibly magical fit of temptation, but as an interpretation it's pretty aggressive.
More to the point, though, in both cases these interpretations were expensive. Strictly to conserve money, one could easily convey both these moments with lighting effects and camera angles or funky sliding stages, Orson Welles style, or something like that. Particularly in the latter case, when lighting and point of view are the only things expressed in the book.
Also, as Frodoze has pointed out elsewhere, these two scenes are both sad cases of covering up your best actors with animation right at their most important moments. Don't you trust them? Why steal their best scenes? Ian Holm was actually knighted for being such a good actor, and you don't let him do the work himself?
Similarly with the troll--apart from plot violations and implausible consequences, it just costs a hell of a lot more to animate that troll for five minutes than to make a big scaly arm. If money is really the reason for PJ's weird choices, then that troll gets hard to explain.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"closeups of Gollum that nobody needs to see"
Robin, that's only your opinion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Natch. Whose would I be peddling, except my own?
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, you are the first person who I've heard that dislikes Gollum's cameo.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, it's not strictly that I didn't like it. I just brought it up in the context of how much money it cost. If you're scrambling to save time and money, and plot loyalty isn't such a big deal to you, then why not just leave him out? It's not like he really has any action in the first couple books. Why not just introduce him when he shows up at the Emyn Muil? He could reveal then that he used to have the Ring long ago. Or, as I said elsewhere, just leave out his old connection to the Ring and have him be tempted by it now. It would work just as well to get him started doing all the stuff he does in the book. It might ring hollow to the old readers, but if they've rolled with the rest of the changes, they'd roll with that. And the other viewers wouldn't have a problem with it at all; hey, here's a weird monster, whoops, now he's involved. No problem.
Meantime, you'd save both time and money again, as I understand Gollum is all CGI. Now, PJ kept him anyway, which I think is another example of his weird efforts to pantomime textual loyalty, for whose benefit I'm not exactly sure. But it doesn't seem defensible as a financial choice. Which, of course, is only as issue when money becomes the subject.
I think Frodoze is really just challenging an argument that's been popping up in a hundred places, which is that in some vague way PJ had to do whatever given thing is under discussion because a) he had to draw good box office, or b) things have to be different because "film is a totally different medium."
I think I agree with what some have said--that money wasn't really the bottom line for many of these choices, which in fact represent PJ's artistic preferences. But when I go back to other threads and argue the artistic merits, people will still give those defenses. Maybe I can just refer them here.
Meanwhile, Feeank gave the only clear example I think I've seen of the sort Frodoze asked for: in half the surveyed viewings, the audience cheered for the beheading of Saruman's little homunculus. Well, maybe so. In which case I should ask: are they cheering for the troll, for WereBilbo, for Galadriel, for Gollum? A beheading was probably the single cheapest special effect in the movie. If beheadings are what they want, why not just throw more orcs in and proceed to maim them?
Last note, to E-Tonka: I suspect that you and I have different ideas of what constitutes a great height, but I must concede that unprintables are probably the most common sort of utterance made while falling from them.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PJ is warning us long in advance that the Scouring will be cut. This will be tough to stomach. However, I think it's possible. There are battles enough without the Scour, it's the characters that need time here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, as long as your themes are rather different from the author's, you might regard the troubles in the Shire as a vehicle for some more battle and a little character development. I think what Tolkien was doing, though, was developing the Shire itself--returning to the idyllic corner of the world that believed itself best left alone, after all this story about the wide and dangerous world outside, to show that the Shire was in fact part of the world, and vulnerable to its dangers, all along. Also, there is the author's stripe of anger about industrialization that is expressed here in terms rather more allegorical than the rest of the story.
As Gandalf tells our hobbits, they have been trained to handle trouble now--and that's what we get to see them do. Merry, who earlier orchestrated a careful escape from the Shire, now a veteran (even a hero) of battle, becomes the hobbit general, planning their strategy--because presumably he studied what he saw on the field, just as he studied the maps and histories at Rivendell. Pippin, who joined us as a careless adolescent on a lark, has since fast-talked his way out of assorted troubles, defied a king (basically) in his own house, killed a troll in battle, and looked Sauron in the eye; now he is more than prepared to stand toe to toe with Big Men and tell them where to get off. Sam, the moral stalwart who always loved the Shire and wanted to return, is forced to stand up for his homeland as he knows it, and then to survey its ruin and settle in for the long work of rebuilding it. And Frodo, always a learned sage in a land of rustics, makes his bid to bring the Shire safely into the greater world, trying simultaneously to give his people a sense of empowerment and a restraining principle of mercy. That's what we lose when we lose the final chapters.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why are bangs best in movies? Duh, because they bring in $$$. But I know that's not what you're asking. The issue is: what is it about our human psyche that makes us desire bangs in movies? Maybe we get vicarious pleasure in watching a bad guy get the !!!! beat out of him, since it's illegal in real life? Or similar playing out of fantasies? I'm sure there are many PhD theses have better answers than that. What's in the human psyche that makes us desire quiet thought and depth in books?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not so sure that people really do feel this way--preferring bangs in movies, subtleties in books. I'm sure one could dig up loads of counterexamples each way without half trying. Here's mine: possibly my favorite movie of the last few years was The Limey. Not much bang there--in fact it's aggressively directed to convey the passage of a lot of slow, kind of boring, time--without taking that time. There's some skillful direction. There is one villain who falls from a moderate height, but he's only a henchman. It's left entirely unclear whether the chief villain even dies or not; if he does, it's clearly not the important part. It's an overwhelmingly internal movie. That is so possible.
Terence Stamp, man. Hey, now, he would be a great Saruman. A great Denethor, too, maybe. But there it is; we won't get a great Denethor. PJ will give us a snarling, aggressive Denethor who doesn't want to hear it from anybody. The subtlety of a great ruler who is genuinely too proud but still sage enough to listen fully to the advice of an ally whose guts he openly hates--that, I think, will prove utterly beyond the ken of our PJ. Stamp couldn't have saved the dialogue this Saruman had to dish up, either, I suppose.
I digress. Where were we?
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
Concerning suspension of disbelief, I don't think it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Sure, lightsabers are inexplicable, trolls and dragons and the airborne steeds of the Nazgul violate the square-cube law, whatever. I can accept those things, when they seem to be an assumption of the story in general. And Indiana Jones or Bruce Willis having cumulatively astronomical luck of the course of a movie, that doesn't bother me at all, if it's that kind of a movie. The "lucky man" is a tradition as old as storytelling, and IJ is as pure an incarnation of him as Ferris Bueller, Farmer Giles, or Inspector Clouseau.
I don't accept bad physics when it seems like nothing more than a mistake. Like the bus jumping in Speed, or space shuttles in Armageddon, banking and swerving around as though there were air. But I would say: banking spaceships bother me in Star Trek, but not in Star Wars, because Star Wars is a romantic, essentially magical adventure and Star Trek tries to give everything a scientific gloss. And I'll deal with some Star Trek nuttiness, like transportation by beam or whatever, but I won't forgive the fact that people stagger around when a torpedo hits but stand upright when they accelerate to light speed and past it. The former is a plot device; the latter is an oversight.
A judgement call, of course; I don't actually know whether they made a mistake or a choice. But it's my best guess that since the shaking around doesn't really make any difference to the story, they're just unaware of the inconsistency because their understanding of physics is weak.
The staircase rocking back and forth, the transfer of no force to the solid section below, these things strike me like the jumping bus--things the filmmakers just didn't think about and didn't notice as unreasonable. Yes, there's magic in Tolkien, but was that a magic staircase? When things are not magic, they seem to fall more or less normally in Middle-Earth. Frodo's mail-shirt may be magically invulnerable, but unless it is also magically inflexible, that troll should have pulped our boy's organs when he pinned him to the wall like that. A small consequence of giving this shot to the troll, not an orc, that I would bet money just never occurred to PJ and co. Pure carelessness.
If this were Wayne's World, or even The Matrix, where the stability of physics itself is either under examination or just too serious to worry about, I'd let this stuff go without a second thought.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by danjerboy
I'd like you to explain why LOTR is a "subtle" book?
Realistically, LOTR is an epic adventure along the same veins as the tales of Homer. Tolkien himself advised AGAINST people reading allegory or metaphor into it. Basically he advised that readers enjoy it for what it was - a myth, a fictional history.
It is certainly complex, and complicated and thorough, and enjoyable. But it carries basic themes of betrayal, good vs. evil, friendship and loyalty.
It may have its subtle moments, but overall it skirts around subtext, as was the intent of the author.
Complexity does not equal subtlety...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtlety is also not synonymous with metaphor, and anyway Tolkien advises us against allegory, not metaphor. Basically he was warning against the very tempting WWII reading of the book. Or, actually, he wasn't even telling us not to read it that way, only asking that we remain aware that such applications were the work of the readers' minds, not the author's intent.
Lots of things deserve to be called subtle. The complexity you point to is one, depending what you mean by complexity. Plot complexity, not so much, by itself. Soap operas and comic books have complex plots, and they might not always be subtle.
The complexity of the backdrop, though, is crucially good writing, and nobody ever did it as well as Tolkien did, not with a fictional setting. A well-researched historical novel can have that kind of richness, drawing on the richness of the real world. Tolkien did the same with an invented world he had to make up himself.
Think for a sec about Star Wars, which was a real milestone in a way we tend to forget now, just as we younger readers tend to forget that what we think of as the "fantasy genre" didn't exist until people started trying to imitate Tolkien. Sci-fi movies were around in plenty before Star Wars. But the stuff in them, the machines and the cities, the robots, the vehicles, even the outfits, were always shiny and spotless and fantastical. Think of Ming the Merciless in his palace. Think of Star Trek. Things looked like we expect new inventions to look: clean, right off the shelf, with a zingy new design, like the new VW, the iMac, the Segway.
By contrast, Star Wars showed fantastic technologies looking like an old Chevy--lived in, patched up, showing their mileage. The ships are rickety, the robots need to be upgraded, nothing's new because who has the money for a spanky new robot? It makes it believeable that we're watching people zoom through space and beyond it. The people don't look amazed at their own miracles. They're accustomed to them. Now Star Wars is not a subtle movie in its plot or its characters--it's very broad, a simple romantic adventure. But that backdrop was a marvellous subtlety of vision, and directors who came after it have paid attention.
Back to Tolkien: there is a sense of age permeating the text, little references to golden ages past, the long slow passing away of the elves, the glorious things they have seen that will never be again. There is a road out of Bree called "the Greenway" because nobody uses it any more--but in another day it was the road from the southlands to Fornost, the seat of the King in the north. Aragorn knows this as he remarks on the road, but we have to read the appendices to find out exactly why--it's not handed to us.
Similarly Tom strays into memory at the barrow-downs, Elrond at the council, Treebeard regularly. Gloin simmers at reference to generations-old calamities suffered by the dwarves, and his own youthful mishandling by Legolas' dad, but the stories need not be told--we can see where there's bad blood, and that layer of interaction is established without some long flashback scene. Gollum seems to have heard a lot about the ancient history of the Dagorlad, back when he was a young hobbit, and from him we get bites of context, as much as we need but not a tenth of what Tolkien knows. This is subtlety--it is Hemingway's tip-of-the-iceberg dictum made real. All of it has been cut in PJ's movie, possibly replaced by something more blatant. The sense of depth of history is nowhere in the movie, the sense of great distances, of undying memories, of all the ages of water under the bridge that lie between the oldest people.
What else is subtle in the book? Character. Not mostly the lofty folks--Aragorn is much more subtle before the breaking of the fellowship than after, and his best time is his frustration with himself leading up to that point, when he makes a series of bad choices--but the hobbits are wonderfully real people. What a droll and humorous life Tolkien gives us in the Shire, these cloistered rustics who take such small things so seriously, who portentiously look askance at Bilbo's teaching Sam to read, who regard their near neighbors as mighty queer simply because they live in the next town over, clueless about all the aforementioned complexity in their world.
There's more of that--much of it simply the deliciously genuine dialogue in the Shire--but in their own way, the epic-mode characters can be wonderfully subtle as well. A particular favorite example of mine is Denethor. "Pride would be folly that disdained council in time of need," or very similar words, don't have it to hand. Denethor hates Gandalf's guts, he's willing to say so, but he won't spurn his news or even his advice because he is a genuinely great man, one for whom truth and prudence outweigh these petty concerns. Unlike his elder son, the Steward does everything in a considered fashion, cold in his calculations even in the utmost extremes. Even though his secret contests with Sauron are undermining his worldview, eventually to his destruction. A wonderfully rich character. And Saruman's fishing for information even as he keeps his own activities secret for decades or centuries, Aragorn's quiet defiance of Gandalf's advice on the Palantir, his silence to Legolas and Gimli on the matter of Boromir's failure, Erestor's (I think? "If Elrond's long wisdom did not forbid...") misgivings about Elrond's advice, Galadriel's mild "Gently are you revenged" instead of turning into a comic book freak. Even the constant stream of little imperfect interactions: Sam finally gets rope upon leaving Lothlorien, but doesn't get trained in making it their way, though he could have. Why is this detail here? Not to advance the plot, but because such little missed chances are true to life.
What else is subtle? Not only character, but character development. Our hobbits begin, not as hapless fools, but as thoughtful and relatively prepared people, albeit uninformed about the world (to varying degrees). They will return as hardened heroes, grown not only in personal prowess but in life perspective--a moral growth. Gandalf is already a know-it-all when he's the Grey, a bold and obsessively well-informed player in a huge and all-important game. He will be enlarged as the White, but not fundamentally changed in character. He will be more certain, less personally vulnerable--just as the witch-king will appear on the Pelennor infused with greater than usual power by Sauron, Gandalf the White is returned to Middle-Earth with a greater share of personal power, so that he can return to the work at hand without fear of being offed by any more balrogs. Istari were not sent to Middle-Earth to prevail by power, but by influence and counsel; Gandalf's new power is to keep him safe to do his counsel, for direct use only sparingly. Other than as a consequence of the experience of returning to Mandos and perhaps conferring briefly with the Valar, Gandalf's wisdom itself, his counsel, his outlook, remain unchanged.
These developments are not what PJ has given us. He gives us helplessly lost hobbits--a clueless and jumpy Frodo, and Merry and Pippin reduced to comic relief--and a quivering, hapless Gandalf. We are told that Gandalf will be very different when he returns, will then come into his authority and certainty--but this is not a subtle change. This has very specifically had the subtlety taken out of it, the difference made greater (at the expense of the shrewd Gandalf who is chiefly responsible for setting the stage in the book), because PJ doesn't trust his audience to notice a more subtle change. This is what his defenders are saying about it.
So. Certainly there are elements of LOTR that aren't subtle, but what story is subtle when reduced to its bare plot points? But the little things along the way, the deft touch the author had stylistically, the palpable realism and specificity of the landscape and its history--these are what deserve to be called subtle.
Actually even those bare plot points--it's not subtle that all of this glorious battle nonsense, Isengard, Minas Tirith, and the lot--that isn't the real game? None of it comes to anything unless the real gambit, the crucial play, comes through--Frodo's infiltration of Mordor with the most precious and powerful weapon in the world hidden away on his virtually defenseless person. The chief job of the Captains of the West, the sole and entire purpose in their hopeless sally against Sauron's impregnable front door, is to distract the old man from what's going on behind him. And almost no one knows it, even in the West. But Denethor knows, and it infuriates him, as it did his son. But he works with it anyway because he has the sense to see they're committed to it. That's not subtle? If it isn't, what is?
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
Danjerboy, nicely done, good points well taken. Naturally I was using examples that favored my cause, and I think many still apply, but you call my bluff well regarding specificity vs ambiguity. I'm not sure that isn't still too limited as a definition of subtlety, but let's run with it. So; for this conversation at least, lovely florid descriptions of landscapes and seasons don't count for subtle, because they're actually very specific. And of course there are loads of dialogue and action that are handed to us specifically: Aragorn was fiery, the orcs were cruel, Eomer is wrathful, mighty was the fallen, meet was his ending. Surely this is a Homeric adventure, as you say--or at least a lot of it is.
But if what you want is
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
the same subtle shades of emotion and morality as, say, Dickens or Hardy...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
then you should look at the characters trapped in difficult moral spots. I've already talked about Denethor, who has become one of my favorite characters as I've gotten older.
Look for a minute at Sam. Sam is pretty much sympathetic 24-7: faithful, stalwart, spunky, humble, earthy. Right up until Gollum shows up. But then--even though it's plain as day that his beloved master, whose wisdom he rightly trusts, aims to cure him a little, to bring him around--he just can't handle the strain of being pleasant with a stinky old rotten hobbit-frog-thing. He knows he should. He just can't muster the patience because his visceral reaction against Gollum's appearance is overwhelming. The wide world was fine as long as it was all elves and majesty--but where Gollum is concerned, the same guy who will soon have the fortitude to become the second of two people ever to fork over the Ring voluntarily is utterly overcome by his own underlying parochialism.
(I keep wondering: will Astin be able to deliver this? Maybe, maybe not. PJ? I truly doubt it. He'll give us a Kabuki version, where Sam says something like "I know you're trying to be good to him but I just can't help hating his stinky old guts," and then scowl and make little disapproving noises to himself rather than the occasional halfhearted and shortlived efforts at civility that Sam makes in the book.)
That brings us neatly to Gollum himself, more addicted to the Ring than anybody except arguably Sauron. (Side note about small things left unsaid by Tolkien: what do you figure Sauron called the Ring? We're never told, but I no longer doubt my guess.) Gollum's struggle is a quiet thing. I'm not talking about the overheard debate between Gollum and Smeagol--I'm just talking about the ongoing waffling that runs through his dialogue constantly. Where is his loyalty at the moment he says "dusst"? We know his greatest driving urge will get the better of him in a few minutes. But where is his head now?
In general, for characters showing uncertainty and mixed motives, the Shire is the best place to look. But Gandalf in Moria is wonderfully rattled, and Aragorn at Amon Hen feels responsible for everything going to pieces. Gimli and Gamling overlooking the opposition at the Hornburg. Aragorn again after a harrowing and questionable bout with the palantir. Beregond contemplating an enemy he knows his city cannot defeat, even though he feels duty-bound to keep a stiff upper lip and go down fighting. Aragorn, again, tiptoeing around Eowyn--not only around the crush issue, but around her well-argued desire to go fight when he is either a)enough of a traditional boy to think she oughtn't or b)not willing to gainsay Theoden in matters of his own household. Or possibly c)trying to avoid Eowyn's ever meeting Arwen and making a scene. (Not so likely, that last, maybe.)
Above all, though, check out Frodo. If ever a hobbit left most of his thoughts unsaid, he's the one. Half the time Sam explains them to the reader; the other half, nobody really knows. He's a scholar, as I've babbled about elsewhere. He is also the first of the hobbits to take up arms and use them, and then the first to lay them down--other than roughing up Gollum here and there, he doesn't strike a blow after Moria. When the Shire has its first battle in centuries, and the reader is (or anyway I always was) anxious to watch our now-seasoned hobbits kick some tail unsupervised for once, Frodo is a little dull--his companions have grown into decorated warriors, while he has grown into a conscientious pacifist. His friends wake the Shire and teach it to know its own power; he is concerned only with trying to teach that power to be a principled one, right at the start.
Anyway, he's the central hero of the story, and does the pivotal deed--and how Homeric is he, or it? Imagine for a moment that you're a recovering heroin addict, just out of a twelve-step--but so is everyone else in the world, all dope fiends, all teetering on the brink of a relapse. And then the task falls to you: you must carry a kilo of the finest horse in the world across the state of Utah, on foot, so you can sell it for a profit in L.A. That's a bit of a look at what kind of a hero Frodo is. His chief legendary virtue is simply toughness--he's more a Rasputin than an Achilles. And his mission, since he chose to accept it, is this: don't be brainwashed by this insanely powerful malevolent thing that everybody on the planet wants and most of them will kill for. Take it right to its own homecourt, the place where it's at its height of power, and don't let it sucker you.
And hell, he almost makes it.
To the other side of the discussion:
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That being said, I also think your evaluation of the movie characters as being entirely one dimensional is unfounded. Gandalf and Boromir especially I thought conveyed much more. Gandalf has one nervous moment, and that's all you remember from the film?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm with you on Boromir, he was probably my favorite. and I adore Sir Ian--I loved cousin Amos and Tsar Nicholas, and Apt Pupil is well worth watching for him, and not at all for any other reason. But he failed to save Gandalf from PJ's clutches, I'm afraid. One nervous moment? He's taken aback when Bilbo disappears, alarmed by Bilbo's behavior later that night, jittery about the presence of the Nazgul, aghast when trapped by Saruman, tentative when speaking with Saruman and Elrond, nervous through the council, and near the edge of a breakdown at Caradhras. Only in the cozy environs of Moria does he begin to get a grip--right where Tolkien had him display fear for almost the only time.
And it's not just that he was quivery--it's equally damning that he doesn't seem to know much about anything.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hobbits never seemed helpless or hapless to me. For characters thrust into something way over their heads, I thought they conveyed appropriate dread and reluctance, but also a sense of excitement (showing their naivite about what lies ahead).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Merry's most obvious excitement is shown in the thick of his first battle with creatures of evil--not counting Weathertop, at least. In Moria he's enjoying his orc-target role so much he has to comment on it in a distinctly modern vernacular--"I think I'm getting the hang of this!"
As for hapless--the firework episode is stoogey. Pippin in general ought to be clueless, but in an impulsive way (dropping a rock into a well because he can't resist), not in a stoned way (tipping an entire dead dwarf into a well by bumping into it). And Merry's suggestion of Bucklebury Ferry is the only dreg of his role in the book as the guy who actually studies up and plans things, a reassuring presence. Here he immediately hops in the back seat and stays there, along for the ride at Bree and with Strider and right through to the end. The apocryphal volunteering to be captured at the end does something to ameliorate this, but not half enough.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
but what I liked is that the movie doesn't erase those moments from the book, it didn't change or delete them, it merely asks that we fill them in ourselves (something the directors' cut might do later for some of the scenes).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frodoze has addressed this in other threads better than I: if you can save the movie by drawing on your pre-existing knowledge of the book, does that really speak so well for the movie?
I'm running out of time now. Frodoze: well said and well said. One quibble, cos you happened to pitch to a pet peeve: I do think if one word in the English language deserves to be used only literally, it is the word "literally." I'm quite ready to believe that you were transported to Middle-Earth literarily, but any "walking" you may have done with the characters remains stubbornly figurative! Unless you used to read while pacing.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by LOTR
Much has been made of late about the trol substitute for an Orc Chieftan. In my opinion this was done to add a more belivable foe for the Fellowship I have and awlays will find it hard that a Orc Chieftan could give the group so much trouble even with all the others orcs at the door pushing in surely with Gandalf, Gimili, Legolas, Aragorn and Bormir there one of them could have droped the Orc chieften dead in his tracks before he could get anyone specially poor lovable Frodo. That like I said is just my own opinion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've ever seen a relatively unknown player, known only to die-hard enthusiasts and hometown fans, put on a sudden burst of speed, zip past three famous defenders, and stuff the ball through the hoop, this scene becomes more believeable. You don't have to be famous to do that. But you get famous if you do it more than once a day.
Real fighters aren't ranked in some static way; even Thomas Mallory, obsessive ranker of Arthurian knights, duly recorded that the same matchup might fall one way on one occasion and the other way in a rematch. In this scene, the orc enters fast, bypasses the others simply by means of dodging, and scores one momentary good hit before getting his head bisected. I have no trouble at all believing that.
For the greater matter: how shall I justify my scathing terms? Tough to find any specific benchmark. I think the dialogue is bad: I think we should get off the road now, men are weak, we must join Morrdorr, never trust an elf, follow your nose, think I'm getting the hang of this, he will try to take it, who do you serve, stay with each other, hunt some orc, yaaaa. I think the music is obtrusive--maybe not bad music but definitely used badly. We never get to feel that a place is quiet, not once, even though Frodo and company are usually in remarkable, sometimes tense, isolation.
More broadly, I think suspense is sacrificed almost entirely in this film. The riders are never seen from afar; there one is and then it's right on them. A kid might be scared but there's been no buildup. And from there it gets worse: the Nazgul slowly stab cushions in Bree--would any moviegoers think our heroes were going to die so early? They're so easily frustrated--the cushions, a thrown rock, and then the quick brush of a handheld torch--it's hard to be very frightened of them (not to mention they look plain silly on weathertop, flapping their fiery cloaks around).
Then Saruman: intrigue is sacrificed to straightforward numbskulled menace. Join Mordor! No? Then I'll just beat you up! Caradhras: we see them for ten seconds in the thick of an improbable avalanche, but none of them look all that uncomfortable, they're just frustrated at walking through snow and debating the obvious risk of being swept off the path. In a hamhanded attempt to drum up some suspense about Moria, Gandalf wails that they must go on, but says not one word about why, and winds up looking like it's just his personal impulse. Saruman, while making the menace of the mountain boorishly direct and personal, explains that Moria is dangerous, but nobody tells Frodo, even though he's stuck with the choice.
Then Moria, the worst of it. In the book: a long, dark, quiet, tense march, still long and even more tense after Pippin may or may not have revealed their presence. Then the chamber of Mazarbul: the foes are certainly overwhelming, but one door holds them back for now, while another door may or may not be a safe place to run. A troll who would certainly give us all a good whipping is out there, and trying to get the door open, and there's really very little we can do about it. Then there's a little fighting, and then we run, except Gandalf, who gives us an ominous description of an unidentified presence who is his match: this from the guy who wound up barring that path by speaking a word so powerful it brought the roof down. If his match is coming, we're in trouble. On they go, keeping some barrier or other always between themselves and the legions on their trail, until finally the balrog appears and Gandalf understands--though we don't, exactly.
In the movie: a quick walk with loud music to Mazarbul, where the troll bursts in and kills all its own orcs while inexplicably leaving the heroes unharmed, even the ones who jumped on its head. Then the pursuing orcs are--gone? Killed, with the help of their own troll? Why even run? Everything's fine. Come on, do we really think Frodo is dead here? Maybe during the stabbing, though it's so hammy it's hard to be upset about it. But after? Nope, he jumps right up and says, "fooled you! See, armor." Then this bizarre surrounded-by-orcs-who-then-wait-for-no-reason-and-then-run thing, a poor substitute for suspense, before the balrog, which is nice and scary but stripped of its best foreshadowing.
Aside from suspense, there's stuff that's just bad, ugly and unreal. The hobbits leave home without packing a damn thing, just as later the Uruk-Hai will pour from Isengard to go running through the woods for days with no gear but their swords, already pointlessly drawn. The witch-king, as somebody around here wrote, "very slowly and carefully misses Frodo's heart" at Weathertop. Terrible match-lite combat from 70s cop shows, with the torch. Gimli makes an ass of himself at council, trying to break this really important thing without pausing to ask anyone, then gamely volunteering his axe to the quest, looking not one whit abashed that he's just now broken one. Crossing the mountains not at a pass but right over a peak, and surviving a deluge of snow that looks like it ought to smother them all easily. Gimli being a loudmouthed moron the whole time--why does Hollywood insist on including such characters in adventures? Cthulu dangling Frodo in the air instead of just drowning the little pipsqueak fifty feet away. Merry enjoying himself in his first-ever desperate fight for life against minions of evil. Saruman and Gandalf in their breakdancing match. Villainous monsters with faces frozen in permanent tooth-baring snarl. The worst combat of all, between Aragorn and that shield-throwing lout. The incredible indecisive staircase. Three heroes gamely attacking a battalion of rastafarian orcs as if they've got nothing to lose. The huge troll without mass. The wizard without a comb.
Characters: flimsy. Liked Bilbo, liked Boromir. Aragorn? We see a brief shot of the party in the middle of a random day hiking over the countryside (sans horse) and he's scowling with exaggerated grimness as though he's just now been sent to the headmaster's office. What, does he do this every step of the way? "You must never forget that you are the romantic lead! You must always be grim and determined." Frodo? Boy, pull those eyes back in that head once in a while, will you? Merry and Pippin? Awful. Gimli? Worse. Gandalf? Affable enough, definitely not reassuring. Elrond and Galadriel: unremittingly hostile. Why? Oh, and Gollum? Who? He's a what? Why is he in this movie at all? Will the newbie viewers really remember next year?
I can't emphasize enough that lack of faith to the book is not really my complaint against the movie. I would openly have preferred a loyal movie, but the big problem is simply this sort of tacky, poorly written stuff. Indeed I think PJ made things far worse for himself by trying to include all these token nods to the text. Legolas walks on snow, but doesn't go anywhere; Gandalf goes to Saruman, but only when the Nazgul are known to be present in the Shire, bent on destroying his little protege whom he packs off with his chubby manservant; the hobbits question Strider's veracity, but he never really gets to answer them; Boromir fails Galadriel's test of heart, but nobody else has to take it; Frodo bellows "I will take the Ring" to quell a roaring room, then suddenly remembers how he was just making expository conversation with Sam about wanting to go home; the company pauses to bid a sad farewell to their intermittently present horse, never yet mentioned; Gandalf examines the book of Mazarbul carefully, but not carefully enough to keep some pages from falling unnoticed to the floor; his questionable taste in libraries has already led him on an afternoon's outing to Minas Tirith to find Isildurrr's scroll, which was ripe for cutting if they had really been worried about finding time; the hobbits' insistence on mentioning and briefly enthusing over mushrooms leaves them looking like hopeless ADD sufferers. If you're happy to make changes in general, why shackle yourself with these bizarre feints and allusions? Just ditch them and make your loosely-based-on-Tolkien movie however you want.
Movie looked great. Good props. Stunning scenery. Good sets apart from Lothlorien. But that's not enough to save it from being really execrable overall.
Billius asked, for comparison, what I (or anyone else like me) would call a great movie. Here are some, in no particular order:
The Limey
Quiz Show
Amadeus
Monty Python's Life of Brian
All About Eve
Rob Roy
The Pink Panther
2001: A Space Odyssey
Harold and Maude
Fresh
The Court Jester
To Sleep with Anger
The English Patient
The Truman Show
I cold go on thinking of others but that's something to work with. I'd be interested to hear your examples too.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
So I dutifully went back and read the linked threads, which for the not-too-busy I recommend, just for the fullest record. I didn't see lots of new thoughts, but one thing was certainly discussed at great length: that Arwen is significant because she is Aragorn's love interest, and particularly because Elrond set this particular challenge at Aragorn's fate by telling him he would not see his daughter wed any less a mortal than the king of both Gondor and Arnor. This and such tasty bits occur early in the appendices; hence little hinting remarks in the text proper whose full meaning is hidden to anybody who doesn't read the appendices.
So: it seems like we ought to address this funny issue of what is text and what is not. In a gathering like this one, maybe more people than not have read the appendices, the Silmarillion, the Lost Tales, Tolkien's correspondences, Christopher T's ongoing compilations of snippets and unfinished works, or some combination of the above. A whole lot of us have "extra" familiarity with Arwen and with a lot of other characters besides. But it seems likely, doesn't it, that most readers stop at the end of the last chapter? And honestly it's hard to know just what the author intended. Novels do not generally come with appendices, after all. It happens, perhaps, more often with the more bizarre and arcane items in the literary canon (Pale Fire, The Dunciad), but by and large if a novel has any materials at all extraneous to the main text they will be limited to an introduction, maybe a map or two, a pronunciation guide, or some other very brief note. The above exceptions both include lengthy "external" notes (which are not really so) by way of playing with academic conventions; and in a gentler way, Lord of the Rings is doing the same thing, though not exactly in mockery. It's fairer to say it's in the tradition of the very first novels, Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, in that it is claiming all along to be a factual account, a scholarly translation (with studious notes) of a discovered record.
I think it was Hemingway who said a story should be like an iceberg--only a small portion of what the author knows should be visible to the reader. This little chestnut gets quoted with unfailing reliability in writing workshops in universities around the English-speaking world. But only the tweediest of academics would ever actually do it.
Well, Tolkien was just that.
So when we talk about what's in the story, where do we suppose are the boundaries of the story? Notes the author probably never meant to publish or reveal are known to us now. Taking into account all we know, the whole Third Age is a small part of the history of many of the characters who appear in Lord of the Rings. But I would mark three gradations of textuality: the story within the chapters at the innermost, the appendices (since they were at least deliberately published between the same covers) next, and all other of the author's writings outside that (for purposes of discussing this story).
The reason I blather on about all of this is that Arwen and Glorfindel are actually in very similar positions. Each has a small part in the story proper. Each gains a surprising amount and variety of backstory in the appendices, and to the reader of the appendices, their appearances in the main text thereafter seem illumined by that history, shining through the thin veil of their fleeting actual presence. Other authors might achieve the same effect by using pre-existing characters: hence Wild Bill Hickok seems to have briefly met virtually every aspiring gunfighter in the West (a number of whom were then present for his death), Heracles at his labors bumbled through dozens of other people's stories on the way, to say nothing of the Blind Prophet Tiresias, and Arthur and various of his knights often pay a call in later stories of chivalry. For good reason; the effect is terrific. When Connery walks in unannounced at the end of Costner's otherwise unfortunate Robin Hood, an American movie audience responds in much the way the British peasantry might have responded to a sudden appearance by Richard the Lionheart. Brilliant. Unfortunately, you either have to use other people's characters or coax your readers through loads of your own material to achieve that payoff.
This is probably a lot of what makes the old devoted readers so fond of either of these characters, and a number of others (though sometimes it's just our own caprice, I think--Elladan and Elrohir, who seem to have a stout following, don't really get that much time even in appendices and sundry apocrypha, do they?). And so many have argued that Arwen needs to be amped up because she's so important--because we as readers of the extended story know how important she is.
She is indeed important, though I think it should be noted that Aragorn would probably do most of the same things he does just to save the world and be king, even if his betrothal didn't depend on it. But here's what I don't get: Arwen occurs minimally in the text proper and much more in the appendices, and because of that people say she needs to be amplified so the movie viewers will understand her better. Glorfindel, though, also occurs minimally in the main story and much more in the appendices (and more yet in the Silmarillion, if I recall correctly), and for that people say he ought to be left out because nobody knows enough about his importance to miss him anyway. To be fair, I haven't seen one person make both these arguments back to back in one post. But still, it's odd to hear them advanced close together without anyone mentioning it.
What is the appropriate "story" for a movie to draw on? If the story proper is what matters, then the histories we know so much about don't mean bunk, and we might as well let them both be what they are in the actual chapters: minor characters making brief appearances with quick but adequate references to their wider significance in the world (we get a hint at Rivendell that Arwen and Aragorn are an item, backed up by his remarks along the way; Glorfindel is referred to as a powerful elf-lord and mentions that the other--few--members of Elrond's household "who can ride openly against the Nine" are all out looking for the hobbits, a detail we don't get in PJ's movie). Or, arguably, both should be cut in favor of Bombadil, who has loads more to say and do in the book proper. If the movie should also draw freely on the appendices, then Bombadil gains no significance but Arwen and Glorfindel are both amplified considerably. But on what scale does Arwen matter so much more that Glorfindel ought to be erased to make room for her?
Anyway. There's one slightly different way to look at the question.
...
For the record it's not that I "prefer Glorfindel" in any overall way. It's that I prefer Glorfindel in Glorfindel's part and Arwen in Arwen's part. I wouldn't remotely suggest drawing his Balrog battle or any other episode from a prior age into this story. If one really wanted to add more material for him, the most pertinent things to mention would be that he is an old familiar enemy of the witch-king and is the one who said he would not fall by the hand of man. This, by the by, would help to make the witch-king a specific known villain, more concrete than the cloistered Sauron--which in fact PJ does far less even than the story calls for, even though the need for a more tangible villain has been held up as a defense for the various apocryphal behaviors of Saruman. But anyway.
I don't think adding these Glorfindel details would be necessary; it would be enough to learn that the most powerful folk of Rivendell are out searching, and he's one of them. Glorfindel's narrative significance here, forget his history, is to help us understand why Rivendell is a safe place to be, and show us our first (and really only) glimpse of what a Noldo can be in battle. Gildor and co. were our first hint that elves are powerful and can shield the hobbits from the enemy; Glorfindel shows us why. Having seen that, we can see why this guy's house will be a safe haven, the safest in the north; and when Elrond speaks of ancient battles when the elves were far more numerous than now, we will have that little window into what he's talking about. It's not Glorfindel particularly that matters; if Erestor had found the hobbits, things would likely have gone much the same way.
Liv Tyler, on the other hand, never really gets associated with Rivendell in the same way, and certainly can't be associated with ancient history. We probably gather that she's Aragorn's girlfriend and Elrond's daughter, and we don't know whether she's a sorceress because she's Elrond's daughter, or because all elves are like that, or it's just her. And it's strangely disjointed that she would be sent into the wild to face deathless weirdos but not appear at the council to talk about important decisions.
If you wanted to give Arwen more material, there's plenty of it in the appendices. PJ claimed that's where he was going to get it. There's no need for fighting Nazgul, or for fighting at Helm's Deep (I'd never heard about that, and yes, everyone says that footage got cut, but the fact that he went as far as to write it and shoot it is more than enough to tell us where his head is). That sort of thing is ad libbing with wild abandon, not the judicious and somehow unavoidable doctoring PJ makes it out to be.
...
Importance to the story is not the same as length of time onstage. Elrond might well be called a minor character, certainly not more important than Bombadil, to judge by his time in the story before we move on and leave him behind. The same could be said of Galadriel. Their action is crucial to the plot, surely, and their offstage lives are critical to world affairs. But they are all advisors, visited for a couple of chapters and left behind again. They are supporting characters; Sam is a principal character. Even Pippin, whose chief significance to the wider world is that he's constantly agitating evil maiar, is a principal character, a much bigger point on our radars than Elrond or Denethor or Saruman.
To choose the starkest example, Sauron himself is never once seen. He is, however, the most powerful person in the world (this side of the sea) and the prime mover behind everything, every bit of action in the length of the story. This story is all about Sauron. Is he a major character? Is he minor? Is he a character at all?
Glorfindel is not important because he beat up some big bad guy a few thousand years ago. He's important because he teaches us about what high elves really are. That's what he's here for in this story. He is part of the underlying fabric that gives the book much of its depth and scope and poignance: the reminders that our gentle hobbits are on the run in a world populated by powers they can hardly understand, and stuck at the very focus of the attention of all those powers, and past that the sense that all the greatest of these powers, the last vestiges of golden ages long gone, are passing quickly and will soon be gone.
Liv Tyler fails to send that message in several ways. She's not as lofty and otherworldly as Glorfindel, and though one might have tried to make her so, she doesn't read that way in PJ because she's visibly young and little or nothing is said to tell a casual viewer she's not. She also doesn't give us the sense that all the powers that be are watching the hobbits nearly so clearly, because (correct me if I'm wrong in this) she doesn't say anyone else is out looking, and since she's obviously got something going on with Aragorn, it seems more like a family operation, like she's looking for him as much as anything; she hardly looks at the hobbits.
The significance of Arwen in the story is not small, but as a character she is clearly minor. She hardly appears at all. Glorfindel is with us only once, I admit, outside a sighting in Elrond's council and one later reference. But when he is with us, he is present for a stretch of eight pages (in my edition, the red leatherbound one), not an insignificant period. Arwen gets one, at the end, to give Frodo his stone. Prior to that she is seen in one flickering moment and occasionally spoken of for a sentence or two at a time. Even in most of these incidents she is hinted about, not named, in a way a casual reader wouldn't likely connect to her at all.
People have been arguing that she needs to be there because the movie needs a love interest. I think that's another example of folk superstition in Hollywood that has no real justification, but it's hard to find counterexamples because the filmmakers believe it so totally. But there are movies that do fine without love interest. Jaws, for example. Quiz Show. The Wizard of Oz. I imagine I could think of others, but the fact is there aren't many. I don't think that proves much except that moviemakers agree with you; but I think people would be fine watching a movie that broke a few molds. It is also notoriously hard to think of movies in which nobody dies, though they're out there, and they do fine in the box office. Does this mean it's crucially important to have a death no matter what your movie is about?
...
Here's quite possibly my last new point on this subject, to expand on that last. There are two modes of storytelling, and of dialogue, in Tolkien. He is at home with both, in love with both. One is the homey, prosaic, wonderfully colloquial and English language associted chiefly with the hobbits and also with Gandalf. The Breelanders speak this language, like the hobbits, and they live in a world painted with that narrative brush. In these passages we get the constant flashes of humor, wordplay, wonderful crustiness of character, people getting excited in silly ways about insignificant things. Here we get the earthy, direct, and wonderfully complex interactions of real people, and Tolkien is every ounce as true-to-life with this as Robert Frost. The Shire is the England of Middle-Earth. It is the place we, the readers, are to feel at home, and to long for, because it is just that tiny tantalizing bit removed into the past.
The other mode is the epic: this is the language of Eomer and Faramir and Denethor--always serious, never stumbling, always clear and always dramatic. As the book progresses we dwell more and more in this world, and Aragorn--who, like Gandalf, switches effortlessly back and forth between the two veins, as indeed does Frodo--steadily moves from the familiar to the lofty, until by the time he is king he seems like he has been a legend all along, his ruffianly entrance forgotten. This is the language of the old Germanic adventures Tolkien was steeped in, and whenever hobbits are not present (and often when they are) the whole world is painted with it.
A similar divide exists in Shakespeare, where the high language of drama is verse, and unversed lines denote comedy. In Tolkien there's not such a sharp line between them, and intermediate degrees do exist; Galadriel laughing and telling Frodo "gently are you revenged on me" is on the more dramatic end, but not as distantly so as "begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!" Aragorn's teasing of Merry in the Houses of Healing is actually a discussion of the split between these modes, and exists almost at the midpoint.
Now, the epic tone is also the language of the appendices, very much including the story of Aragorn and Arwen. And I was looking at Arwen's only moment of dialogue, the first page or so of "Many Partings," and I must say she is as stilted here as anybody in the book, almost. She recapitulates in a sentence or two her position as an archetype in the story--lo, I have given up eternal life for this man, like Luthien, and it is bittersweet. Then: I give you my passage to the West, and also this rock. Wear it and remember us, by our most pretentious names! And that's it. She's outta here.
Now, look at Glorfindel. He's around for a while, and he's on the middle of the scale somewhere--doesn't talk like a ho-hum hobbit, he's definitely on the lofty side, but he smiles and teases, and looks concerned, and talks about practical things. We get to know him a little. As soon as he arrives Strider begins to defer to him somewhat, and since we have come to regard Strider as a great authority by now, this recommends him. He acts and speaks with assurance and gentleness, and the grace of his rarefied elvishness is paid much attention. We do have an investment in this guy. We're never really going to get to know Arwen; like Elizabeth II, she is a real person somewhere, but her function in our lives is as an icon. In the far future, they will remember Arwen and sing about her, while Glorfindel will be a footnote. But we walk a little ways with him here and now. Briefly he becomes our companion. Each is a kind of importance in the story. Only one can really be called character.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by tgshaw
...his own limited acquaintance with Sindarin...fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zoinks! Well done, you caught me; I've been overestimating his linguistic skills somewhat. Gildor calls Bilbo "a good master" of high-elven so I figured Frodo wouldn't be all that far behind. I am appeased a little in seeing that evidently Frodo also speaks at least one dialect of Sylvan, and moreover than such a language does indeed exist, which I was starting to doubt. But in any event I put his knowledge of the various elven tongues too high.
Perhaps the more important consequence of Frodo's seventeen unattended years without Bilbo is that he studied far less than he might have. Though it is of course still quite reasonable to call him a scholar, surely among the hobbits and even among the other peoples in the world (barring the high elves themselves, perhaps).
It does leave a bit of a puzzle, though, doesn't it? The elves of Lorien actually speak accented Sindarin; Frodo thinks it is a dialect of Sylvan; and Legolas, a Sylvan elf of Mirkwood, answers them in the same tongue? Of course, Legolas is a prince and hundreds of years old and it's not surprising if he should speak more than one language. But having never been to Lorien, is he able to speak Sindarin as the Galadrim do? Or does he answer in his accustomed form of Sindarin, in which case wouldn't Frodo recognize it if not understand it? Or perhaps his dialect in Sindarin is not so different from that of Lorien, since Mirkwood is also east of the mountains. Hrm.
But this strays further and further from the thread. Well, I've pretty much said my piece; being caught overestimating Frodo's polyglot tendencies (though embarrassing) doesn't change it. Frodo as we know him is an exceptional person, not excited about this adventure but better prepared for it than any other hobbit. PJ gives us a spooked kid who means well and does what he's told and bugs his big blue eyes out a lot. Alas. Alackaday.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by tata bolger
Of course, readers know what is going on, Nazgul commanding him, etc... but how do you show it?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For example:
Close up on hooded face of lead Rider.
Shot of Frodo checking his horse, frowning or looking vague and uncertain. He turns back slowly.
Shot of Rider again. If you must, make him extend his hand toward Frodo across the river.
Frodo looking haggard. Suddenly, as though breaking out of a trance, he scowls and starts talking back, "go back" etc as in book.
First Rider urges his horse into the ford. Closeup of hoof as it touches the water, if you like. Two others follow. Laughing and speaking over one another, they taunt Frodo, "come back" etc as in book.
Perhaps shot from over the shoulder of Riders, or of Frodo, so as to catch all parties, Frodo lifts sword, "by Elbereth" etc. Witch-king stops midstream to do his little spell, daunting Frodo and breaking his sword. Enter flood, stage north, etc.
What's the problem? If it were really impossible to express emotional conflict on screen, movies would have been in big trouble a long time ago. And showing things like magical battles for control of one's own behavior--that's old hat in Hollywood. There's a whole vocabulary for it, and as viewers we're more than sufficiently familiar with the idea to understand even when it's done subtly.
I think PJ might agree with you, though. If he can't figure out how to express the ford, though, how do you think he's going to handle Gandalf and Saruman's battle of wills? Let alone Gandalf and Denethor? What about Frodo in Morgul Vale, Sam and the watchers (he'll skip those entirely I imagine), or even Frodo in the Sammath Naur? Those all involve similar struggles. Use of Palantiri by anyone. Struggling through the Paths of the Dead. Merry on the field of the Pelennor. Faramir marshalling his men under fire. If PJ can't hack the ford, he can't do this stuff either.
...
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by tata bolger
My point was, it is difficult to portray supernatural forces involved in a mental/emotional struggle. For the simple reason that this is something people do not observe in real life. ... As the result, even with best intentions you get a weak scene in the movie.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's going to be subjective, of course, whether you think a scene succeeds. But plenty of things are shown in movies, and seemingly understood by their audiences, which have never been witnessed in life. And an actor can be a powerful thing--I must disagree with the idea that the voice cannot act. Jeremy Irons doesn't act with his voice?
Ooh. Jeremy Irons would have made a wonderful Elrond. But anyway.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Gandalf vs Saruman. They got "physical" in the movie only for presentation rea
-Gandalf and Denethor. This conflict has verbal dialog. I see excellent opportunity to act it out. Should be no problems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But Gandalf and Saruman was a dialogue too! That's what they cut in favor of assisted breakdance. Anyway, though, I was referring to their later confrontation, where Gandalf drags Saruman back to the railing by verbal command.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Frodo in the Sammath Naur. This was in Cannes. I did not see it
, but people say "good".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
People are saying "good" about everything I'm screaming bloody murder about. But I do expect this scene to be more faithful than most, because PJ will be afraid of complaint otherwise. But even if he gets the events about right, I don't count on him to do the battle of wills thing very well.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Merry on the field of the Pelennor. Action. Easy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sure, especially since Merry has "gotten the hang of this." He'll probably spring up lightly and smirk as he dirks.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW can you give an example of a movie where emotional struggle with smth supernatural was done well/or better that in PJ's LOTR? I am really not that erudite.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not such a movie buff either, but I can think of a couple. Sadly, the first thing that came to mind was actually a Conan movie--I don't know which one--wherein two wizards battle over the opening or closing of a big stone door. They don't touch; they position themselves on opposite sides, one sitting as though meditatively, the other standing with arms raised, occasionally clanging his metal wristguards together as is his habit. The door opens, the door closes, the soldiers on both sides wait tensely, and finally the sitting fellow wins--the door slams shut and the bad guy howls and claws at his eyes as though he's been struck. A pretty lowbrow movie in general, and that scene's no miracle, but next to it, PJ's rotating wizard game is a joke.
Next I thought of 2001 in which there are repeated scenes of people being profoundly--and vaguely--affected by a supernatural force which is so unknowable as to be represented by a big unmoving block Kubrick called "a sort of Jungian archetype." The supernatural influence is represented by a high keening noise, except in the last scene, by which time we've seen the drill several times and many other weird things have recently happened; now the monolith just stands there, and the old dying man raises his hand--trying, as everyone has, to touch it--it's trippy and not simple, but it's affecting. Nothing in PJ's movie is even trying to function on that level. Closest thing may be the whispery Ring effect, which is actually not bad, but not to write home to Mom about either.
Probably the best example I can come up with, though, is just good old Star Wars. The Jedi Mind Trick is a nice, simple, subtle, and I'd say believeable act of superatural mind control. The perpetrator simply makes a hand motion and speaks deliberately--the victim just hesitates slightly before repeating, not dully but in his own usual mannerisms. No funky music, no visual weirdness--and no misunderstandings or strainings of belief, not that I ever heard of.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
A lot of good meaty stuff to talk about here.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Fangface
So why the change? the film was the same, was it me?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You never really come back to this in your post. Why do you supose things changed? I mean, you talked about a lot of issues, but there's no before-and-after opinions.
My money says the movie did not change.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The great thing about LOTR is that each one of us sees it and experiences
it in a different way, our individual interpretations aren't wrong, just
different, This is Peter Jackson's interpretation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think this may be the biggest difference I have with you, but I want a closer look at it, this word "interpretation."
I've had a rocky relationship with the idea of interpretation for a long time. Here are some examples, from Shakespeare, of interpretations that have bugged me to a greater or lesser extent:
An old one, from Hamlet--Hamlet in his mother's bedroom. Freud started this one, analyzing the play in terms of his own Oedipal theory--Hamlet hates Claudius because all men want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers, and Claudius actually did kill Hamlet's father and marry his mother. Well, Freud will be Freud. But then Laurence Olivier took him up on it, casting a young attractive Gertrude and introducing this very new tension (and I would add, very foreign to Shakespeare). Mel Gibson later took this to its logical extreme, hopping into his mother's bed and making out like teenagers.
Second from same play--Laertes in the duel. Shakespeare is always sparing with stage directions, so we know little about how this duel goes exactly--much could be argued endlessly about Laertes' motivations, how much he is or is not still murderously angry at Hamlet, is or is not having moral qualms about killing him unfairly. But in the end, shortly after Laertes tells the king "I'll hit him now," we are told: they fight. Laertes: Have at you now! Laertes stabs Hamlet.
Again and again we are shown productions wherein they fight, they back off and stop fighting, Hamlet walks away and is looking in the other direction, and Laertes stabs him from behind rather than as part of the fight. Maddening. Definitely an aggressive interpretation, in my book--but defensible, more or less, because nothing in the text actually contradicts it.
Third one, this time from Romeo and Juliet. Franco Zefferelli version. Mercutio, en route to party with boys, makes with his little soliloquy about Queen Mab. Suddenly, he's all depressive, everybody's quiet, and Romeo has to check to see if he's okay and cheer him up. What? Where did that come from?
This last, particularly, is the sort of minor exercise in aggressive interpretation that modern Shakspeare productions are made of. There's one in every play. Since there are so few specific directions (and when there are, like as not, they run something like "enter Marvin, all stuck about with tongues") there's a lot of room for interpretation, and for directors and even actors it's become an obligatory fetish. I've seen the rehearsals of one production of Shakespeare, supplemented by occasional remarks in print by more famous actors and directors, and it really is amazing to see. For every role, for every monologue, the director tries to find the proper twist, the unexpected reading that will "make it our own" and "make it fresh again." It's become the whole game. Their favorite moment is finding that new element to introduce to a scene that nobody else has ever done before.
Another way of saying it is that in every case, Shakespearean companies try to divine the author's intent precisely so they can deliberately flout it. And one quiet consequence of this is that we may never see a production of a Shakepeare play in our lives--at least, one done by professionals--that even wants to show us what Shakespeare meant to write.
All of these are examples of interpretation. I'm used to it. Obviously I have a lot to say against it, but it doesn't stop people from putting on good productions, and I still like watching them.
The point is that in all of these cases, even at their most aggressive, the words and their speakers remain unaltered. There are cuts, sure, and scenes are presented in different sequences, but we never get handed dialogue that Shakespeare (or whoever he was or wasn't) didn't actually write. They're having a grand old time with their improbable arrangments of things but the text is still the text.
Why the line happens to be drawn there for Shakespeare in particular is hard to say. I'd venture that it's because people respect Shakespeare.
This, at any rate, is what I call interpretation. Changing the action outright, changed the explicit timeline, adding scenes, adding characters, and above all, writing a ream of new dialogue--this is way, way beyond all that. This is rewriting. If it counts as interpretation, then I don't see why The Sword of Shannara, deservedly selected by a publisher whose stated purpose was to find the manuscript that most brazenly and unabashedly ripped off Lord of the Rings, shouldn't count as an interpretation of Tolkien as well. Unless the names are the critical distinction.
So we'll keep bumping into this issue as we go on... assuming of course that I have any room left to post...
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who are we to question the personal experiences of others?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's our big issue number two, not entirely unrelated. I'm not sure I understand this feeling that other people's movies are above question by the proletariat. Obviously, you didn't say that exactly, but I'm not at all sure what you do mean, by this or by "These are PJ's interpretations. And I have no cause to question them."
So now that you've established a broadly inclusive definition of "interpret," you seem to go on to make it an inalienable right (fair enough), above question once done (more troublesome). Why even talk about movies? I could use a little clarification there.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't want to go too deep into the specifics of the movie. Because to me, all the aspects of this film were superb.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll stick to your framework for your own thread, naturally. But I want to re-emphasize going in (especially since I've spent most of this post establishing my credentials as the most anal-retentive man on the planet) that my displeasure with all those aspects of the film, as a film, is far the greater half of my disappointment with the movie, not the individual changes that we're talking about here.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Arwen/Glorfindel change, the introduction of Lurtz, the change in Saruman, all of these come down to PJ's interpretation of character
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, see above on "interpretation."
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For starters, the reforging of Narsil. This HAS NOT happened. And I am glad. Because in my opinion, it occurs far to early in the book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Believe it or not, I'm right with you here. I'm not above second-guessing my favorite book, and I think the matter of Narsil/Anduril is arguably the weakest element in the story. Is it supposed to be important or not? Is it a magic sword or not? Why, for the love of God, does he not carry a second sword that works, and if he doesn't how in hell has he fought all those battles in Rohan and Gondor without one? What changes to make the reforging possible or advisable now when it hasn't been for so long? Why, if Elrond has always had smiths on hand who can do such work, haven't we been arming up with such weapons for centuries? Why is the event brushed over with no pomp and circumstance at all?
Practically, I'd be inclined to guess that Anduril was the victim of the in-sequence writing process of LOTR. I suspect Tolkien hadn't quite decided how he wanted to use the sword until some point after the party left Rivendell, or else he only realized in Rivendell that he'd given us this peculiar buildup about the broken sword and now didn't have much use for it in the plot. But it's all very regrettable in any event.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Either way, it does not concern me , because it fits with PJ's interpretation of their characters in that, at the moment, they are young, care free, totally irresponsible hobbits with no thoughts to the results of their actions. (different from the book, yes, but not wrong.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, only wrong insofar as the movie purports to be Lord of the Rings, anyway. But this is no interpretation--this is nothing that PJ saw in his head while reading the book, nothing that he thinks Tolkien actually wrote. This is a rewriting, pure and simple. And sadly it substitutes a couple of numnucks for great characters. The loss of the conspiracy shorts Merry most of all, of course, as the least glib, most thoughtful, and most coolheaded of Frodo's companions. It shorts Sam and Pippin as well, and even Frodo, who in the movie is not trying to shield his friends from what he regards as his private doom.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many people call themselves purists
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I answer to this because it clearly means me, but the term was in vogue long before I arrived--I wouldn't choose it. Certainly I don't care for your "fundamentalist" suggestion, and I'm not really sure how carefully you advance it.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether you like the film or not is irrelvent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To what? Not to me. To you? I imagine so.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What about the final scene involving Aragorn's temptation by the ring, and his subsequent release of Frodo. Some people have said that Aragorn would not do this. Sorry, but this is totally in character. Aragorn knows that Frodo is leaving, he knows that he cannot stop him, and he knows that if he follows him, Frodo will find a way to elude him anyway. He is the most perceptive character in the fellowship, thus he sees that the fellowship will continue to be torn apart by the ring .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an interesting example of what I would sort of call an interpretation on PJ's part. His evident thesis, that all the members of the fellowship would eventually have been seduced by the Ring or at least that Frodo thinks so, is in and of itself more like the Shakespearean interpretations I talked about in my first installment--it's an interpretation in that he could have played the story that way without changing any events or dialogue. It's open to question and a perfectly plausible reading.
That said, it's not mine. But that doesn't bother me (and indeed the scene didn't much bother me) as I'm game to watch other people's interpretations as long as they're interesting. I think it's quite plausible that even without Boromir's covetous fit, Aragorn--despite his own stated and apparent intentions--could have been talked into letting Frodo go without him, because a)by now he rather respects Frodo's counsel and b)he really really wants to go south and be king. He feels it is his duty to attend the Ring first, and seek his inheritance only as fortune allows him, but I can well imagine his accepting a graceful release from that duty by the Ringbearer himself. Or at least, maybe. He does, after all, still have the option of seeking to track Frodo down--and here I must disagree with you, I think after some fifty or sixty years tracking supernatural weirdos through the wilderness his odds of catching Frodo are quite favorable--in the book, and he chooses instead to go South (the abduction of the other hobbits was probably conceived largely as a device to force this choice on his part).
So I can buy that conversation, though I think Aragorn's anguished decision after a string of bad choices is more interesting. If I were to criticize this sequence (and oh yes, I do) it would be for other reasons--our boys diving gamely into a whole regiment of orcs, the bizarre impunity with which they do this, the now empty moment of decision by the three hunters (since the decision has already been made in the above conversation), and of course, the preposterous Shield Thing that happens around now.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet to the others, who have been turned away, due to the changes that were made.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quick reminder from our sponsors--that's not me--I turned away because I think it's a dismal movie all round.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I say this. Virtually all of Tolkien's writings were based on Norse mythology and Anglo Saxon myth. Tolkien took these writings, interpreted them, and added his own themes and events based on his own artistic vision. He received much critiscism from 'purists' who felt he had popularised and simplfied the complex nature of these myths. Sound familiar?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can see some of what you're getting at. It puts me in mind of my old mythology professor telling the story of seeing Clash of the Titans in the theatre, being predictably outraged at the way that film played fast and loose with the source material, and then slowly forcing himself to acknowledge that the Greeks would have shrugged it off since they changed each other's myths all the time.
Nevertheless, I don't think the analogy is such a good one. For one thing, I'm not sure my prof was right--I'd bet most interested Greeks argued bitterly in favor of the locally known version of any given story. But more than that, Tolkien didn't proclaim his story to be an old Germanic myth (or even a new one). Your analogy is actually more analogous to an old co-worker of mine who saw the Gypsy Kings among my CDs and told me not to bother with them, here, listen to the real stuff--and handed me a CD of what turned out to be staid, solo flamenco guitar played by a guy in a tux.
Well, I know what flamenco is. But the Gypsy Kings (a band of seven or eight guys singing loud, lively, distinctly modern dance music) aren't masquerading as flamenco purists--they play music, and it's easy to hear that their music has a lot of flamenco in it, but they like it the way it is, it's not like they're trying to do old-school flamenco and failing.
These academics who criticized Tolkien may or may not have had a point to make, but he didn't call his book The Battle of Maldon or anything. And when he did write a piece on the Battle of Maldon, it was interpretive, a piece of historical fiction. PJ did call his movie Lord of the Rings, and unlike the Greeks', Tolkien's tolerance for alterations on his storyline was pretty well documented.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember singular adherence to any thought, belief or work is moot, because nothing is perfect, nothing is the only way and nothing is truly original.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This gets more philosophical than I may be prepared to get into, but I wantedto point out that it is a philosophical stand. It's not some verifiable reality. And anyway, leaving aside whatever it means or doesn't mean to be original, I don't think "singular adherence to a thought or belief" lines up so readily with "singular adherence to a work," at least not if you mean the stance of preferring adaptations of a given book to follow the events within that book.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, Tolkien himself once said that when he had finsished with Middle Earth, it was his hope that "other hands and minds" would continue to investigate and interprete these stories for themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be interested to know where I might find that quote, so I might better appraise what he meant by it. Not long ago someone posted that he hated fan-fic (was that even happening back then?) so I'm not sure how well that squares with your apparent suggestion that he was endorsing people's writing further works within Middle-Earth.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
And to those who didn't, all I can say is, I'm sorry. I know how much you all love the book and what it means to you, and I know how much you were looking forward to the film. All I can hope is that you will grow to like it over time, and that you enjoy TTT and ROTK more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I realized a short way into the movie that it would have no power to affect my experience of the book, so I don't have any feeling that the book is under attack or anything. It was disappointing, of course, because I did hope for a great film adaptation and PJ had been talking a good game, especially early on.
As for learning to like it in the future, I've recently been a few rounds on that subject. Suffice to say I don't regard it as probable. And liking the others better--out of the question, I think. They're the same movie, as a number of supporters have said; they will simply be further installments of what we've already seen. They could hardly pull this one back in line with the story, surely. And they really can't reach back to the first one and improve the writing and direction of it, even if they are better in those respects, for which I can imagine no reason.
...
Hey there.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Granted, adding Lurtz to the mix, and beefing up Arwen's role are not interpretations. ... Lets focus on the film's inherent merits or lack there of, and not my syntax.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay... your point is right on, of course. I must admit that my windbaggy display before amounted, in the end, to a treatise on my personal choices among definitions. Very sad. But all is not lost! I still have hope that my writing it can come in handy; it's not that I didn't have a point, it's just that I got addled and left it out.
I do have my reasons for using the words the way I do, natch--but you don't want to debate semantics, understandable. So if all the various styles of adaptation or whatever are called "interpretation," which we can do, then the point (not surprising, but I did forget to say it) is that the subset of interpretation that I was using that word for--let's call it "transposition," maybe--is importantly different from an interpretation in which any significant share of events and dialogue is introduced, what I called "retelling" (which maybe we can call "adaptation" per your suggestion).
Mel Gibson's Hamlet would be a transposition, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead would be an adaptation.
My problem, then, with this movie is that it can't decide which it wants to be. It's way further off the text than Gibson's Hamlet, incomparably so--many pages of new dialogue, a long litany of new events and changed events. On the other hand, it kept the title of the original, and doesn't show a "fresh new take" on the story the way R&D Are Dead does, or the way The Mists of Avalon does with Arthur, or Lo's Diary does with Lolita, or--well, other examples. It doesn't seem to have a point to make by departing from the text, no seamy underside to reveal, no philosophical point of view to expound. Things change, but they don't seem to change meaningfully.
If it wanted to be a transposition, I think it should have stuck to the text, introduced a minimum of new dialogue and events, changed almost infinitely less stuff than it did. If it wanted to be an adaptation, it should have been bolder, changed further, struck out for some surprising new ground and made a statement.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personally, I don't think much of the film itself and God knows a lot of people critically flayed it. But at the same time, I didn't, and never would question the film's personal worth to her at the time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm right with you, here. But then, what? A given viewer's experience of the movie isn't what I'm talking about when I discuss the movie, other than my own. Certainly I'm not out to devalue anyone's personal experience, and I definitely know what it's like to have a movie be powerful because of the chords it touches more than because of its own particulars. But that's not what I'm talking about on this site, if only because such things are in fact so ineffably personal.
We agree that PJ has a right to make whatever film he wants, and people are allowed to like it. But has anyone really challenged this?
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your flattering yourself here Robin. I wrote this review before I knew you even existed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nonono! I didn't mean it like that. That would indeed be insufferably smug. What I meant was: when, in general (I wasn't referring to your post or anything in this thread particularly), someone speaks of "purists" on this site, I gather that they mean "people who don't like the movie" or at least "people who in some part criticize the movie on the grounds that it should have followed the book more closely." Since this is true of me, I must count as a purist. I don't call myself a purist--if I describe myself I tend to use terms like "naysayer" or at most "text loyalist" or some such. I just accept the fact that the term is in fashion here, for a group to which I clearly belong.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are those on this site who gratefully accept this title, almost feverishly so.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't call any to mind but I'll take your word. Well, of course there's The Purist, but he isn't one.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamentalist on the other hand IS appropriate. ... I will not recant, and did infact advance it carefully and indeed purposefully.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I'd be curious to know more about what you mean by it. I'm only familiar with it as applied to religious extremists, most familiarly (to me) literalist Christians who believe that every event in the Bible is factual history.
Mormons believe their holy book is a translation of a history recorded on a set of gold tablets, found by Joseph Smith. If we imagine a group of people who believe that Lord of the Rings is in fact, as it claims, a translation of a history recorded in the Red Book, mysteriously found by J.R.R. Tolkien, then we have the beginnings of what I might understand as "fundamentalists" on the subject of Tolkien. With the possible exception of Peter S. Beagle, I haven't known of anyone who seemed to believe the book to be literal truth.
I'm being flip, of course. I'm sure you mean something, and I think it's probably not much like what I just described--but I don't feel safe guessing too much further about what you do mean.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether you like the film or not is irrelevant in relation to understanding that this is PJ's adaption/interpretation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Granted, okay. But one might just as easily say that fully understanding this movie as PJ's vision is irrelevant to whether one likes it.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure what you mean by, "To you? I imagine so." But I'm not sure I like the insinuation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Didn't mean to be insinuating anything, sorry. I just meant: to you, for example, it's probably not relevant whether I, for example, liked the movie. Not personal.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How and why an individual adheres to specific work or thought is fundamental to their beliefs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, I'll buy that. But what does it mean to adhere? I love the book--is that adherence? I would prefer a more faithful movie to a less faithful one, other factors being equal--that might be called adherence. I do not, however, automatically deride an adaptation solely on the grounds of its variation from the text--and if I did, I can also see how that might be called adherence.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
My belief is that for a film to be good, it has to encompass specific tenants. I believe this film has, for the most part, encapsulated these. Conversely, you believe it has not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Either that or I have a different set of tenets or criteria by which I judge a movie. Either or both might well be true here. I would guess some of both.
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think your splitting hairs here just a tad. Tolkien is infamous for his portrayl of 'protostories'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know this term. Or does it relate to what you say next? Is it about his drawing on old source materials?
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A vast amount of his work is identifiable with pre exisitng works. Are we quibbling here over the names and title of a story?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, it's delicate, I suppose. Tolkien does draw heavily: I was surprised years ago to bump into Eomer in the text of Beowulf, and then again when I found the brothers Boromir and Faramir in Mallory's Morte Darthur. Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen cycle concerns a magic ring made by elves that makes one invisible. If I knew more about ancient Germanic tales, I'd probably be able to go on listing obvious literary heists that went into his work. In a broad way Meduseld is essentially Heorot, Minas Tirith is Camelot, the Shire is relatively modern England, Gandalf's relationship to Aragorn can reasonably be compared to that of Merlin to Arthur, and the first chapters of the Silmarillion can fairly be said to owe a great deal to Paradise Lost.
But to my thinking, the names and the title mean a great deal. In the title the author tells us his intent. Tolkien didn't "refashion an existing construct" at all--he wrote a new book, drawing heavily on old tropes and even liberally using specifics from ancient stories, yes, but still supported chiefly by his own unprecedentedly voluminous and very original work. He never said he was writing an ancient story. He added.
PJ, however, took an existing title. No matter how heavily Tolkien borrowed from a wide array of sources, he cannot reasonably be regarded as derivative in the same way Terry Brooks, say, who based a massive novel entirely on thinly veiled echoes of one source, Tolkien himself, with small infusions of other source materials and a handful of his own inventions. And PJ is clearly deriving far more than is Brooks: he takes the title of the work, he takes ostensibly the same characters, and tells, of course, an even more closely parallel story.
But that has an effect Brooks couldn't. The title and the characters' names are the easiest parts of a book to see and recognize. People seeing a movie with the same title and names will most readily see the movie as being somehow identified with the book, as being the same thing, more or less interchangeable, and only upon examination notice differences. The Sword of Shannara, however, might easily be read by an uninformed reader without its parallels to LOTR being very striking at all, because the obvious clues of names and title have been changed.
PJ hasn't made it clear whether his intent is to add a new story, albeit with some certain amount of content drawn from an older one, or whether he wishes to present an old story in a new medium. A sort of terminal indecision on what seems like a crucial and basic question.
top - - back - - Opinions - - Index
My first exposure to Lord of the Rings was as the youngest of three kids to whom my mother was reading it. At that time, Pippin was a green cartoon parrot, and Merry was Mary, perhaps not surprisingly. Strider, when he appeared, was a sort of spindly Snidely Whiplash in a top hat--more like the magician in "Frosty the Snowman" than anything else. And Elrond was a vague human shape made out of white flames--I think because I thought the frothy friders in the flood were actually him and his household. Oh, and Glorfindel was sort of an Englishman on safari with a walrus mustache and a pith helmet.