I’m actually a huge Spielberg fan, which is part of why I was so disappointed with Tintin. My figuring was that this, his first foray into animation, was tailor made for him. Somehow it was just dull as dust balls.
Huh. That’s one of the things I loved about it, I thought he took advantage of the animation perfectly. The action scenes were wonderfully cartoony, and the scene where he has the camera stay on an unbroken shot for like five minutes while it swoops down through the city was incredible to me, something they could never do with live action. Not to mention all the transitions between scenes, shrinking ships landing in puddles and such.
^This.
—DiB
Wank Wank.
I hate to fall back on this, because it really is one of the weakest criticisms that you can throw at any film, but the story, the characters, the adventure…they were just plain lame. I found it hard to give a shit about any of it. Yeah, lots of neat technical stuff, but all in the service of a hero with the charisma of a slug.
I would’ve traded all of those cool shots and effects for a decent script.
I like Tintin as a character (not being a previous Tintin fan) and the mystery moved forward nicely, I especially liked how the heavy was like an Spielberg doppelganger and it colored my perspective of him as Spielberg having a lot of fun, and the other assorted cast of characters kept the beats going whenever Tintin started not earning his keep. So my appreciation of that film is not just technical.
—DiB
And we built a great crowd program. Be a shame not to use it.
Tolkien didn’t have to use it and it worked fine. It sounds like Jackson’s trying to make The Hobbit as epic a story as The Lord of the Rings by incorporating The Battle of Dol Guldur, which has never even been written, and the Battle of Five Armies, which wasn’t really written either. That isn’t what The Hobbit is though, it’s basically a children’s story (although it appeals to older audiences as well), more comparable to Studio Ghibli animes.
@ Polaris & Rock – I probably need to see it again, but now that it’s gone from theaters, I feel I’ve lost my chance to see it at its best.
I thought there were plenty of colorful characters to make up for Tintin’s blandness, though I personally like Tintin as a character. I’m also a huge fan of adventure films, and I thought the film had an amazing sense of adventure.
@Michael
That the Battle of Five Armies all takes place in a page or two is a big part of what makes The Hobbit what it is. Turning that into a 45 minute war scene, even though it would be staying true to the plot of the novel, would be a pretty huge infringement on Tolkien’s vision, which most certainly includes no such epic battle scene. Jackson committed the same crime with the LotR movies, adapting plot over essence.
I don’t know about “huge infringement.” Maybe Tolkien felt that a battle scene, via writing, wouldn’t be interesting or meaningful. (I think it’s very difficult to convey a battle via writing.) I’m curious to hear how you think it would be a huge infringement. Ditto comments about LOTR films.
@HoL
I liked the LOTR battle scenes, but I re-watched it a few years ago, and I didn’t think it held up so well—too much cgi, imo.
The post on the appendix material doesn’t sound promising, imo. (He’s making up characters?! Ugh.)
Yeah, I’m not too keen on characters being made up, but at least he’s introducing more female characters in a series largely bereft of them.
Michael—If he adapted The Hobbit with a tone too different from the LOTR films it just wouldn’t fit. Yes, the Hobbit is a book he wrote for his children, but in this climate (post the established trilogy) it only makes sense to adapt it with a similar tone.
And I’m all for watching Cate Blanchett kick ass.
Jazz—Watch the EE films on blu. They look fantastic.
I loved THE HOBBIT book and, call me crazy, I thought the animated adaptation for kids was very well done. And it was less than an hour long. 3 movies to tell THE HOBBIT tale? C’mon.
If he adapted The Hobbit with a tone too different from the LOTR films it just wouldn’t fit. Yes, the Hobbit is a book he wrote for his children, but in this climate (post the established trilogy) it only makes sense to adapt it with a similar tone.
It makes financial sense, yes, but then you’re accepting that he’s changing the tone of the story to match that of LotR, which has a very different tone.
I don’t know about “huge infringement.” Maybe Tolkien felt that a battle scene, via writing, wouldn’t be interesting or meaningful. (I think it’s very difficult to convey a battle via writing.) I’m curious to hear how you think it would be a huge infringement. Ditto comments about LOTR films.
Hmm I once wrote a pretty long rant on a tumblr account I used to have about the Lord of the Rings movies. I’ll try to find it but basically I’m 99% sure Tolkien would not have co-signed them due to changes in the characters, themes, and world. He would have been able to stomach changes to the plot but not to those other things (he admitted as much during other attempts to adapt the novels during his life).
As for The Hobbit, it seems pretty obvious to me why inserting an epic battle into a children’s story that mentions a battle in passing is a pretty big change. Tolkien wrote battles in LotR and The Silmarillion and was a great fan of Norse, Greek, and other mythology so he had no problem with written battles. He excluded the battle from The Hobbit because it doesn’t fit into The Hobbit.
By the way, here’s a great article from a LotR purist: http://eldorion.com/tolkienpurism/manifesto/
What female characters are they adding to the Hobbit?
I’m not a fan of the adding of masculinize female characters to medieval-era stories just for the sake of political correctness. Maid Marion in Scott’s Robin Hood leading troops into battle was absurd.
Theowyn, on the other hand, worked well in LOTR.
So hopefully any added female characters will take a Theowyn-like role instead of just being ‘women for the sake of women’.
You mean Eowyn? He’s added a female Mirkwood elf to be played by Evangeline Lilly.
“By the way, here’s a great article from a LotR purist: http://eldorion.com/tolkienpurism/manifesto/”
Oh god. The word ‘purism’ and ‘manifesto’ in the same link, from a URL that is itself a Tolkien reference. Gag me.
Alright, I’m stepping in now.
“but basically I’m 99% sure Tolkien would not have co-signed them due to changes in the characters, themes, and world.”
“what makes The Hobbit what it is.”
“infringement”
Flat out, one of the best adaptations of all time is Kubrick’s The Shining. And Stephen King hated it. Stephen King hated it because he had written a personal story about alcoholism and Kubrick changed it ‘from its essence’ to a structuralist piece on claustrophobia, basically. King said Kubrick missed the point.
Then King got into a car accident, reconsidered his life and writing, wrote a book about that reconsideration, and thereafter reconsidered his relationship to Kubrick’s Shining, and discovered… oh hey, Kubrick saw something in his work that he didn’t, and made something new. Alright.
Does one anecdote such as this defend movie adaptations’ tendencies to deviate from the original source? Not necessarily. Many adaptations are made without respect or consideration to their original source (most); others are merely illustrative and expand nothing new to it (Harry Potter). However, what differentiates the ones that succeed and the ones that fail are typically the ones that are made out of a genuine appreciation for the original source material. The Shining fits this profile, Fight Club fits this profile, and Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings fits this profile. He didn’t have to take the risks he took in the scope and spread of that original trilogy. He could have just cut through much of the material and tossed it away for marketability and efficiency’s sake, but he didn’t. And maybe the result isn’t ‘pure’ Tolkien, but this is why the word ‘pure’ bothers me. It’s metaphysical hoodoo.
And this is in light of a specific author whose very construction is based around ancillary content! Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings and then everything that came after, from a children’s book on Tom Bombadil to the Silmarillion to notes upon notes upon notes that his son Christopher has been slowly adapting into books for decades, is further appendices. ‘Middle Earth’ is one epic ballad with more self-created footnotes than a David Foster Wallace novel. There’s infinite room in that space to play.
I don’t really think it would be necessary for Jackson to make up new characters. I don’t think his movies are perfect. However, to make a ‘pure’ Lord of the Rings trilogy would involve hours of screen time devoted to people sitting around campfires singing epic poems about characters and places we never meet or visit in the story, and long exegeses on the history behind the growth of a field of grass. That stuff is better left cut out; it works in the world Tolkien created because it’s a process of mythology where the words themselves are the entities being exchanged, so that the whole damned thing is all about storytelling, in addition to his other themes (environmentalism, pacificism, etc.). This does not translate at all to a visual narrative form because hola, optos =/= logos.
We can have our issues with Jackson’s movies but he clearly makes an effort to respect the original source material and give it justice in the translation of word to image. Even his horrible King Kong remake suffered more from him having an overabundance of love of the content than just trying to make a buck. His issue, if anything, is that he gets so wrapped up in the source he’s working from that he starts to forget things like that there’s an audience that really needs to pee right now, seriously end the fucking movie. If The Hobbit trilogy fails, it’s going to be because of his inability to kill his own babies, not from clinically calculated ‘infringement.’
In the end most Tolkien fanboys appreciate what he’s doing with their beloved Middle Earth. Who knows what Tolkien would think or do, but we cannot speak for him and even if he hated it, just like Stephen King he could possibly just be wrong.
—PolarisDiB
Flat out, one of the best adaptations of all time is Kubrick’s The Shining. And Stephen King hated it. Stephen King hated it because he had written a personal story about alcoholism and Kubrick changed it ‘from its essence’ to a structuralist piece on claustrophobia, basically. King said Kubrick missed the point.
Then King got into a car accident, reconsidered his life and writing, wrote a book about that reconsideration, and thereafter reconsidered his relationship to Kubrick’s Shining, and discovered… oh hey, Kubrick saw something in his work that he didn’t, and made something new. Alright.
It’s like Jirin said, you can either try to make a faithful adaptation or you can totally re-appropriate the material into something new but you need to commit to one way. I would have no problem with a Dogme 95 adaptation of Lord of the Rings if it was done well even though it would be so different from the books in so many ways.
Polaris, did you read the article I posted? The writer explains what he means by “purism” and specifically mentions that cutting and restructuring that is necessary in order to fit the new medium is permissible. Tolkien himself said the same thing, that scenes would inevitably have to be deleted in order for the books to work as movies.
What’s important isn’t that the plot retain a 1:1 relationship with the events of the book but that the themes, characters, and overall essence (a slippery word but yet a real thing on which multiple experiences overlap) are maintained. That is what I would call a faithful adaptation (and as I said earlier, I don’t think adaptations even have to be faithful, they can be more like Oil —> There Will Be Blood, nor do I think a good movie is necessarily a good adaptation).
That being said, I think you’ve totally misidentified what the Lord of the Rings is essentially about given your suggestion that all the scenes of walking through nature and talking could be cut out. Those scenes are precisely the scenes that are essential to any attempt at a faithful adaptation of the Lord of the Rings. (Just as the scenes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione sitting around the Gryffindor common room or talking in the back of their classes are essential to the essence of the Harry Potter novels but were not present in the movies for commercial reasons. I mind this less in an adaptation of the Harry Potter novels because I respect them less as works of art.) But these scenes were downplayed in Jackson’s movies in favour of more action scenes and a more fast-paced story, again for very obvious commercial reasons. If you’re going to argue that such changes were necessary for the film to make its 250 million back, fine, but that isn’t a valid defence of the changes artistically or morally.
My problem with the adaptation boils down to Jackson’s attempt to adapt plot over essence, as a result doing away with Tolkien’s artistic vision and keeping only the superficial elements of the story, stamping Tolkien’s title on the film so as to exploit an existing fan base and reputation.
I’ll quote a lengthy excerpt of my rant that I mentioned to Jazzaloha that I wrote a couple of years ago on this (leaving some parts out to abbreviate it because it’s pretty long):
It seems like most adaptations are merely the highlights of the book, like the highlights of a sports match compared to the match itself. The writers figure that since they have to cut out a lot of the book (due to time restraints), they should take only the scenes that contain plot points, and toss out the rest. In this way, the tone of the book is totally lost. …
Perhaps the most saddening case of the tone of the books being lost is in the hobbits’ journey from The Shire to Bree to Rivendell. In the books, these chapters are rich in suspense. It’s a chess match. Hobbits move here. One Rider passes by. They march for a day and settle over here. They hear a Black Rider call in the distance and another answer nearby. The next day they move here. Do they have time to make it to the next sheltered place before nightfall? Etc. The chess match is masterful. In the movie, the atmosphere is totally lost, as is the essence of The Lord of the Rings.
[Talking about how the Council of Elrond didn’t properly weigh all the options of what they could with the ring and why it had to be taken to Mordor:] You know, then the story would have actually made sense in the movie. There are a thousand other minor changes I could protest but they are insignificant enough that I can’t be bothered. On the other hand, these changes are so small and so easy to correct that I am left confused as to why they were made in the first place.
This leads me to my main problem that I have with the LOTR movies and this one is a combination of screenwriting and direction: the process of adaptation is illogical. Take, for instance, the scene that transpires outside the Gates of Moria. Here is what happens in the book: The Fellowship waits outside the doors while Gandalf comes up with the password. Gandalf comes up with the password. The gates open. The Fellowship enters BUT – a tentacle shoots out of the pond, drags Frodo back toward the water. Sam hacks at it with his knife and saves Frodo. Quick, suspenseful, and faithful to themes found elsewhere in the books. Now here is what happens in the movie: the Gates open, The Fellowship begins to enter but then a monster arises out of the water, throws a hundred tentacles in all directions, picks Frodo up and shakes him in the air for several seconds before the Fellowship wins an epic battle against it and saves Frodo. It’s not so much that the scene in the movie was horrible, I just don’t see the logic in making any change to the original scene when:
1) it’s less realistic than what happens in the book
2) it’s a lot more expensive to do than what happens in the book
3) it’s less scary than what happens in the book (less is more)
4) it’s more time consuming than what happens in the book and
5) IT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!
I don’t see the logic behind spending money and time to downgrade moments from the source material.
I appreciate that the movies pushed certain boundaries in terms of costume, make up and set design and that they brought thousands of new fans to one of my favourite novels but at the same time they are in some ways poisonous to Tolkien’s legendarium because muddle knowledge about the books, create misconceptions, and exploit an existing fan base [which is where I think the morality part comes into it].
This might seem like trivial stuff, and it is, unless you happen to be the author of the work that is being disrespected (or a sympathizer of his). You could spend your entire lifetime pouring over Tolkien’s work but even though it is of such epic scope, you will never find a single plot hole or error no matter how picky you are. So it is decidedly disrespectful of the film makers to make minor changes at whim that create plot holes in somebody else’s story. The perfect example of this is the presence of Elves at Helm’s Deep. Why are there Elves at Helm’s Deep? I don’t care that they aren’t in the book. I care that they create a plot hole that doesn’t exist in the book (as it is physically impossible for them to have reached Helm’s Deep in so short a time. This is the exact sort of error Tolkien put years of work into avoiding.)
My final example of the source material being completely disrespected is in the scene of Gandalf’s death in The Fellowship of the Ring. Lord of the Rings purists have made a big fuss about the appearance of the Balrog in the film. The Balrog in the movie is pretty much a winged cave troll that is constantly burning with flames. Who cares? But I care because it would have taken the scriptwriting team 3 minutes to look this information up. Instead they just “whatever”-ed it and made a monster that makes it obvious that the writers only skimmed through the chapter once. It is equivalent to adapting The Odyssey and giving the race of Cyclops two eyes, not for any particular reason, but just because they had overlooked the fact that they are only supposed to have one. It is completely disrespectful and entirely indicative of how much Peter Jackson cared about the text he was adapting and its fans. (For the record, Balrogs are man-form, just over man-high, are not on fire and do not have wings. There is a simile that says they have wings of darkness and then there is a metaphor based off of this simile – this is what mixed up the screenwriters who were too lazy to make certain.)
The movies deserve some credit for making themselves significant in the early history of film in this century. Nevertheless, I think they are absolutely appalling adaptations and at times seem to me as if they are intentionally satirizing the book. Basically, I think they could have cut out stuff from all over and used that to re-enforce certain parts that were rushed through. The filmmakers paid more attention to plot than tone, while I think that tone/pacing is the most important aspect of an adaptation (and possibly any film at all). Adapting the plot leads to a total mess (see: HP 5). Not only do I challenge the method that was used but also their intentions.
Before you mention it, I am fully aware that my suggested version of a LotR adaptation isn’t really feasible inside the Hollywood system because it wouldn’t make nearly as much money as Jackson’s movies did, but they would have been much more tasteful, faithful and, I think, would come much closer to rivalling the quality of the books.
@Michael,
For what it’s worth, John Howe’s illustration of a Balrog fighting Gandalf in Moria looks almost exactly like the one in the film. So I think it might have been less of the screenwriters were lazy and more of the animators looked at Howe’s art. I do agree with your thesis though.
^ This is true. Howe is fantastic at capturing specific (and specifically cinematic) moments from Tolkien, and no doubt this was the reason Jackson hired him to help bring the film to life.
@HoL
Jazz—Watch the EE films on blu. They look fantastic.
What’s the “EE films?” (I saw parts of the trailer, although I tried not to.)
@Michael
Hmm I once wrote a pretty long rant on a tumblr account I used to have about the Lord of the Rings movies. I’ll try to find it but basically I’m 99% sure Tolkien would not have co-signed them due to changes in the characters, themes, and world. He would have been able to stomach changes to the plot but not to those other things (he admitted as much during other attempts to adapt the novels during his life).
Did Jackson dramatically change the world, themes or characters? I don’t really recall that he did. I know he certainly added in scenes that weren’t in LOTR, but were they not references from other Tolkien writing. (I’m thinking of some of the scenes between Arwen and Aragorn.)
Tolkien wrote battles in LotR and The Silmarillion and was a great fan of Norse, Greek, and other mythology so he had no problem with written battles.
I meant, writing that describes in detail the nature of the battles. The depictions of battles in LOTR are not the type of descriptions you usually read about in myths.
That being said, I think you’ve totally misidentified what the Lord of the Rings is essentially about given your suggestion that all the scenes of walking through nature and talking could be cut out….But these scenes were downplayed in Jackson’s movies in favour of more action scenes and a more fast-paced story, again for very obvious commercial reasons.
What is the essence of the books in your opinion and how does reduce some of these things take away from that essence. To me, there are practical reasons for reducing some of these scenes of walking and talking—namely, time. The film would be much, much longer if you left those scenes in, and it’s pretty long as it is. Also, my feeling is that those scenes create a feeling that the reader is on an adventure—more than support a critical theme. (Or I’m not sure what theme or ideas these scenes would support.) Jackson’s films succeed in creating a sense of adventure and a long, epic journey, imo.
HoL said, If he adapted The Hobbit with a tone too different from the LOTR films it just wouldn’t fit. Yes, the Hobbit is a book he wrote for his children, but in this climate (post the established trilogy) it only makes sense to adapt it with a similar tone.
Yeah, I agree with this.
Jazz: EE = Extended Editions. They are much better films than the theatrical releases.
And Micheal can speak for himself, but Tolkien did make changes to characters that I didn’t like—the lowest being sidelining Gimli as blundering comic relief. What a waste of Rhys Davies.
The one that bothers me the most is Faramir. In the book he is a very special character—he’s one of the few beings actually capable of not being seduced by the ring. In the film he kidnaps Frodo and Sam to take them (and the ring) as a prize to his father Denethor. In the book he interrogates them at length, and upon discovering what they carried, makes the statement, “I would not take this thing if it lay by the wayside.” That’s pretty serious, since even Galadriel was tempted by it, and she’s immortal. The film’s arc as far as he’s concerned is all about playing second-fiddle to his brother and trying to please his father. It’s a fine arc, but a much weaker character than the book.
Of course Arwen is only in the Appendices, and her inclusion is fine, but Jackson originally shot scenes of her fighting at Helm’s Deep, and decided to cut the material after fans outraged, calling her Xenarwen, lulz.
I also don’t care for the elves being at Helm’s Deep at all, but that’s not as big a deal to me as the changes with Faramir.
Same with Aragorn entering Minas Tirith too early in the film—in the book he wouldn’t do it until he had proven himself as ready to be King.
Oh, and my biggest gripe with the third film was the epic waste of that book’s best surprise reveal—that of the Black Fleet descending on the Pellenor Fields, rallying the armies of Sauron, only to crush them when a gigantic flag unfurls revealing the White Tree of Gondor, and Aragorn leading the ships. The film hamfists the Paths of the Dead badly in my opinion, and then ruins the reveal. Missed opportunities.
Yeah, and this is a nitpick, but in FOTR the Hobbits are shown eating tomatoes at Amon Sul and there were no tomatoes in Middle-Earth. Yeah, I’m a dork.
@HoL
Jazz: EE = Extended Editions.
Oh, OK. I don’t have the blu-ray EE’s but I have the dvd versions and I saw them several years ago. Some of the battle sequences are so cgi-ed that they look like video games.
And Micheal can speak for himself, but Tolkien did make changes to characters that I didn’t like—the lowest being sidelining Gimli as blundering comic relief.
Yeah, it was like bringing in the approach to the dwarves in The Hobbit to the LOTRs.
It’s a fine arc, but a much weaker character than the book.
Yeah, I think Faramir was robbed in the film a bit, but those kinds of things are to be expected in my opinion—and they don’t constitute the type of infringement that Michael suggests. But, while we’re at it, a much bigger oversight, imo, was the evolution of Aragorn from ranger to regal monarch. For example, there’s a scene in the book where the Riders of Rohan come across Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli as they chase after Frodo and Sam on foot. Eowyn’s brother (can’t remember his name now) says some threatening thing, and Aragorn unsheaths Anduril (or was it Narsil?) and says something about being the returning king. It was a cool scene, but they change it in the movie. But I don’t think Viggo and Jackson really executed Aragorn’s growing acceptance of his destiny, and that was a big part of the character, if not the books.
..calling her Xenarwen…
heh.
Same with Aragorn entering Minas Tirith too early in the film—in the book he wouldn’t do it until he had proven himself as ready to be King.
See above.
Yeah, I’m a dork.
I thought I was dork, but you’re dorkier, man.
Narsil was the broken sword. Remade it was Andruil, Flame of the West. I thought Viggo was one of the stronger performances in the film, and I think he sold the arc you’re talking about, but we can agree to disagree there.
@Jazzaloha That’s interesting how you bring up “acceptance” on the part of Aragorn, because the theme of acceptance is something that carries its way through the story, but it’s portrayed very differently in the books and the films. Jackson constantly defended his vision in interviews by saying that he would always honor the themes of the books, even if he didn’t put everything in the plot into it. However, the theme of acceptance is portrayed differently throughout the films in comparison to the books, because you see many characters being pushed to accept the path that has been set before them, yet they take a long time to accept it.
In the books, Frodo seemed aware ahead of his quest that the Ring would be his burden, even though he wished it “had never come to him”, but he accepted it after Gandalf made it clear to him that he would not take the Ring, even to do good with it. When it came to the Council of Elrond, Frodo was hesitant to speak up, but he knew in his heart that he had to carry the Ring to Mordor so it doesn’t take him long to step up. In the film, Frodo isn’t very keen on keeping, especially after arriving in Rivendell and gets ready to give up his responsibility for the sake of returning home. Only after the long quarrel between the Council members and the whispering of the Black Speech was Frodo pushed to realize that he would have to be the one to take the responsibility.
In the appendices, Arwen is another character who has accepted her choice to become a mortal woman from when she declared that choice to Aragorn in Lothlorien. Her father had to accept it too, but on the condition that Aragorn would fulfill his destiny as the King of Gondor or else he could never marry her. In the film, Arwen is not entirely sure about her choice, Aragorn is not willing to let her do it, and Elrond means to persuade her by any way to reconsider. It’s only by the third film that they all have to go along with the choice with a bittersweet heart.
Theoden is also pushed to accepting the fate of leading his men into battle against the armies of Isengard, which he does accept after Gandalf frees him from Grima’s spell and rides off with Aragorn, Eomer, and the Riders of Rohan to meet the Uruk-hai. Theoden is not so accepting of his duty in the films because he dislikes the idea of putting his people at risk through battle, not considering the fact it’s the only way to protect them and keep his kingdom from going into ruins. Once he realizes that he and his people are cornered at Helm’s Deep does he realize that he will have to fight back. He also doesn’t fully accept his allegiance to Gondor as he coldly refuses to go to their aid, before the beacons are lit and he changes his mind. Theoden was a man who accepted his duties in the book with a strong will; his allegiance to Gondor and duty to his kingdom were things he had to accept without letting the risks bog him down into despair and sloth. He has a lot more to learn about accepting his responsibilities in the films than he does in the books, making him appear as an old man who is still growing up.
Aragorn, Legolas, Elrond, Faramir, Treebeard, and Denethor are another handful of characters who have a lot to learn about responsibility and acceptance in the films as well because they are more stubborn, doubtful, and defiant about the circumstances they are in and making the right choice. Aragorn’s long refusal to be king, Legolas’ harsh judgement about the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep, Elrond’s bitterness with the race of men and dreading to leave Middle-Earth in their hands, Faramir’s lack of understanding about the Ring’s evil (although Gandalf clearly told him about, as mentioned in the appendices), Treebeard’s lack of will to fight, and Denethor’s incompetence are all extreme character changes that contradict Tolkien’s exploration of fate, destiny, and acceptance to the point that those themes rarely showed themselves over the majority of the films until later on. In the books, their acceptance of their fates in times of crisis showed how strong and courageous they were about making the right choices earlier than later and sticking to them without letting a moment of doubt change their minds and make them reconsider.
I can understand that Jackson these characters more complicated to the extreme for the sake of tension, which he admits in his commentaries that he always wanted there to be tension at every turn in LOTR, explaining the reasons behind drastic changes like Faramir’s corruption, Frodo and Sam’s falling out, and Treebeard’s reluctance to attack Isengard. By looking at the films in that respect, I accept them for what they are and that it helped deepen them even more, but as a reader of the books, I always keep aware of where Jackson was turning away from the source material and can feel what it’s like to be upset about whatever drastic deviations Jackson makes when you’re a devoted fan to the text.
By the way, it’s not dorky at all what you, House of Leaves, said about the tomatoes, because that scene doesn’t make sense, not just because it concludes tomatoes. Why would would Frodo be so panicked about the hobbits roasting tomatoes on a fire? Surely he knew fires would have to be lit along the way, especially if they were going to have to eat. It also makes the hobbits look responsible for alerting the Ringwraiths to their presence and makes it look rather silly. In the book, they lit a fire without much worry, especially since Aragorn was with them. In the film, he leaves them for probably an hour when he says he’s “going to look around”, which is rather incompetent of him when he’s not there to protect them when the Nazgul attack the hobbits. He was there to protect them and he wasn’t really doing his job when he left them alone for a long time.
I also didn’t much care for the Ent Moot initially resulting in the Ent’s refusal to help. For one thing it just dragged out this scene, which was already a drag.
As for Denethor, not showing that he had a Palantir, which was the cause of his madness, was a mistake. It would have gone a lot further in showing the power of these items and how Saruman was so badly corrupted. Also would have upped the ante on the risk Aragorn took in looking into it to distract Sauron from Frodo and Sam.
Another thing that always bothered me is that when Frodo and Sam are at Osgilliath (neverminding for a moment that they were never in Osgilliath in the books), after Frodo nearly kills Sam while under the sway of the ring, Sam says there is something left worth fighting for. Frodo asks what that is, and Sam says, lamely, that “there is some good left in the world.” No, no, no. All he had to say was, “The Shire.” After all, that’s really what these two Hobbits are fighting for—their home, to protect The Shire so they can go home and be Hobbits like they really want to. Of course their home is scoured by Saruman in the books, an epilouge of sorts that shows the damage has been done—that war changes everything, and you can never really go home and have things as they were. In the film this is seen only really in Frodo, and thankfully the film does a great job at the Grey Havens.
Did Jackson dramatically change the world, themes or characters? I don’t really recall that he did. I know he certainly added in scenes that weren’t in LOTR, but were they not references from other Tolkien writing. (I’m thinking of some of the scenes between Arwen and Aragorn.)
http://eldorion.com/tolkienpurism/lotrchanges/characters/
This essay lists changes to Frodo, Aragorn, Faramir, Gimli, Denethor, Treebeard/Ents, Arwen, and Elrond.
The key theme that is lost is the beauty of nature.
In terms of tone, I already gave the example of the chess match between the hobbits and the Black Riders on the way to Rivendell.
In terms of plot, no, not all scenes that were added were referenced in Tolkien’s writing. The best example of this is Gandalf’s run in with Saruman at Isengard. In the movies, they include a wizard duel between them, something Tolkien never envisioned. In the books, they talk, Gandalf is imprisoned atop the tower and is then rescued by an Eagle.
Had they cut out this scene, Farmer Maggot, Caradhras, some of the extra action scenes they added (like the exaggeration of the attack at the Gates of Moria), they would have been able to include more of the walking and talking in the outdoors without making the film any longer. I don’t think the walking scenes create the sense that the reader is on an adventure. In the books you feel like you’re on an adventure for the journey from Hobbiton to Bree. After that, you’re in a desperate struggle. The movies try very hard to make this feel like the great epic magical adventure and the book is more about Christian themes.
I don’t object to changing the source material as much as the direction of the change. If you’re going to adapt something unique and special, do something unique and special with it, instead of just dragging it toward the center. In this case, injecting the same political correctness motivated female characters as every other movie.
Then there’s Faramir and Denethor. I don’t mind that they changed, but they made them so one dimensional. Denethor became just generically evil and crazy, like the cop in a Die Hard film who marches in, tries to run the scene, and doesn’t listen to anything McLean has to say. They’re making cultural and political updates in the generic direction.
So we have to wait three years to see one novel on screen? Yeah, I’ll skip it — a two-part film would have been a stretch in itself.
I think at this point it is best to stop thinking about this new trilogy as “The Hobbit trilogy”. A difficult task, I know, considering it is being called The Hobbit, but at the same time I understand why they didn’t try to call it something else.
It is best to look at this new trilogy as a prequel trilogy to The Lord of the Rings. Looking at it this way means that:
1) the goal of these new films will not really be to tell the story in The Hobbit, but more that Jackson wants to tell the story/history leading up to Fellowship, which includes much material outside of The Hobbit, or only hinted at in The Hobbit2) even though The Hobbit was written as a children’s story, this will not be a children’s story. It’s tone will more or less match the tone of The Lord of the Rings, which is much more than a simple child’s adventure story.
But I will say one thing I am curious about. (It has been a LONG time since I have read The Hobbit, but I am assuming that the book is similar to the animated film, so am just going to refer to the book with this assumption). I wonder about how these new films will portray Gandalf first coming to Bilbo. In the book, Bilbo doesn’t really even seem to know Gandalf when Gandalf first comes to his house with the dwarves. And it works fine in the book, because in children’s stories sometimes we have these unexplained occurrences, and I suppose it could be part of a lesson for a child (“opportunity comes when you least expect it, etc”)
But if Jackson is staying in tone with LoTR, I don’t think this would fly. There needs to be some reason that Gandalf would travel hundreds (thousands?) of miles away to seek out a a particular individual who has no training or experience with this sort of thing, and comes from a race of creatures that are well known for not getting involved in adventures. Was there a hobbit prophecy? And if there was, are the dwarves in on it? The dwarves are often portrayed as being petty, but they aren’t stupid, so either Gandalf told them one hell of a whopper to get them to continue to believe that Bilbo is a “burglar”, or there is something else.
dp
Rock and Bull
Yeah I know there were some people that hated it. I just thought it was a complete blast. I think I like Spielberg more than most people here though, and I thought it was his best film. Anyway, I didn’t mean to derail the thread, haha.