CastleLyons
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Post by CastleLyons on Sept 6, 2008 13:22:08 GMT -5
I'm interested in starting a thread about how Peter Jackson handled the Lord of the Rings stories. Anyone have strong opinions on that?
For example, in the first movie I felt he did a great job of keeping in the spiritual elements. He might not have known what he was doing, but there are some great hidden truths there. One example is when Gandalf is standing before the balrog and says, "I am the keeper of the Sacred Flame." Tolkien himself said the Sacred Flame is the Holy Spirit. To have Gandalf (the "prophet" icon in the prophet-priest-king triad), stand "in the gap" between the creature of darkness and those who are on the divine quest is a powerful image of intercession and the power of the Spirit.
I know someone who has read the entire LOTR series completely through every year for many years, so she's rather an expert. She enjoyed the first movie, but at the end of the second, when everyone else in the theater was applauding, she actually stood up and voiced a loud complaint. She felt the second movie strayed too much from the original. She absolutely hated the third movie.
I feel that while Jackson did take plenty of liberties, he did not do anything that detracted from the messages Tolkien was attempting to present. The movies might have rebirthed a new interest in Tolkien and cause some people to learn more about the man. On the other hand, a huge "Frodo lives" campaign emerged in the 60s when Americans took great interest in the books during the hippie era. Tolkien said about that, "If they only knew what they were saying when they say 'Frodo lives.'" So while there was great interest in the books, the spiritual message was lost.
Of course, Tolkien himself would probably hate the movies no matter who did them or how well they kept to his originals. He was just that way--disdained anything having to do with "machines," including moving pictures.
Any thoughts on this?
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Post by mongoose on Sept 6, 2008 15:47:13 GMT -5
I don't know about the messages, but my greatest concern about the movies was how they mangled the character of Strider/Aragorn. As I recall (it's been a while since I read the books or watched the movies) the movies portrayed him as being reluctant to assume the role of king, more so than did the books. In the books they re-forged the sword in Imladris, and I think that's when he got the banner, as well, right? From that point on there were several instances in which he assumed authority without having to be badgered into it. Not so in the movies, where they don't convince him until Elrond visits right before the paths of the dead, and everyone's surprised at him when he rises up into the authority that was his.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Sept 6, 2008 17:53:09 GMT -5
The purists may vilify me for saying so, but in my opinion Jackson improved on the books in many instances.
Don't get me wrong: I list LOTR as the single most influential book(s) in my life. I love them. I have a leather-bound deluxe 50th anniversary edition sitting beside me right now.
Tolkien was brilliant. No one can legitimately deny that. Everything we do in fantasy now is because of him, to some degree. His world, his languages, his story...they rule them all like a ring of power.
But his characters were pretty lame, imo. He was a plot-first novelist. All the young males are pretty much the same. All the old males are pretty much the same. All the women are pretty much the same. All the hobbits are pretty much the same. Oh, they may have different agendas or attitudes or weaknesses, but it took actors to bring any differentiation to them. Actors with personalities, because that's what was lacking.
Jackson (and his lady writers) also worked to give them personalities and journeys. At first I was mad that he'd made Faramir into, well, what he made him into. Faramir had been one of my favorite characters in the books. But as I look back on the books now, I realize that he was pretty much just like all the other good guy young males in the book. In the movies, he had a wonderful character arc. Tolkien didn't give him that. Tolkien made him All Good (i.e., boring).
Same with Arwen. Boring, flag-sewing wallflower. I'm glad they cut the scenes in which she fought at Helm's Deep, but I'm also glad they gave her some life.
There were some poor casting choices, imo--though most of those choices were spot on. Sean Astin as Sam. No. Sean is obviously too smart--and sometimes even arrogant--to be Sam. Sam is wise and loyal, but not smart. He should've been more like Tim Blake Nelson's Delmar in O Brother, Where Art Thou? "We thought you was a toad!"
And whiny nose-talker Viggo Mortensen: "Dnat is nour nroad."
But casting helped in most places. For instance, can you ever see Pippen as anyone but Billy Boyd? Read the books and you can't tell Pip from Merry from Fatty Bolger.
Another way Jackson and co. improved on the books is by giving the stories a theme: "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future." They chose to hold up the idea of one person standing alone against many or against great evil as their recurring theme. I think it's perfect, and is one reason the movies resonate so well with us.
"Theoden stands alone." When they ride out for a glorious death in Helm's Deep. When Boromir stands alone against all the Uruks. When Sam stands alone against Shelob. When Gandalf stands alone against the Balrog. When Aragorn runs alone in a suicide charge in the last battle. When Arwen stands alone against all the black riders. Again and again they brought out this heroic motif. These were present in the books, but not emphasized as well, imo.
In the end, though, what Jackson did was an adaptation. Faithful, yes. Loving, yes. But novels and films are different media. They have different requirements sometimes, and in this case the books were written in a different era from the when the movies were done. Some things have changed.
But if someone else were to do another adaptation, it would be different. Not just because of the casting or camera angles or whatever, but because that adapter would make different choices and bring out different emphases.
An adaptation is a riff, an homage, and cannot and should not be exactly the same as the book, imo.
Jeff
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CastleLyons
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Post by CastleLyons on Sept 6, 2008 20:42:11 GMT -5
Your take on Sean Astin is interesting. Of all the actors in LOTR, not a one had ever read the books, save for Christopher Lee. But upon being cast, Sean picked up the books and read them and re-read them in order to get a feel for the character and the story. I don't believe any of the other actors did that.
I absolutely agree that the books were written in a different era. Tolkien did fall short at many points. The first time I read the scene of the council of Elrond, I got so frustrated turning page after page of talk and arguing and more talk and more arguing, I finally shouted at the book, "Make a decision already!" Yes, it helped. I felt better.
It's been said that if Tolkien's work had been an unsolicited ms in this day and age, he'd never stand a chance with a Christian publisher.
(Said out of a heart of love for Tolkien. Don't smote me, J.R.R.)
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lexkx
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Post by lexkx on Sept 6, 2008 22:01:25 GMT -5
I love Tolkien. Gobbled the books over and over, growing up. Waited breathlessly in line for each Jackson retelling. Different though Jackson's take was, the scope of vision and moments of intensely real emotion cannot be denied.
None of which negates the fact that I have a serious beef with Tolkien. Jackson's affectionate but non-Christian telling of the tale did not redeem this point, either. Tolkien went to such great lengths to depict Sauron as the ultimate evil, but he had no equivalent of God. Some of the characters do get to stand in as Christ figures, but the ultimate and perfect good wasn't personified. Good is a small rebel force, striving in the face of insurmountable odds. Our Lord is so much bigger than that--wants so much more than to return things to the way they were before our troubles started--and I'm always sorry He doesn't get to put in an appearance in Tolkien's work.
Regarding Jackson's films, I will say that you had to know the books to follow the movies. People unfamiliar with the novels were hopelessly lost. LOTR was and is a pretty big worldwide seller, so this wasn't a disaster, but I don't think the story as told by the film could stand on its own.
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Post by torainfor on Sept 6, 2008 22:59:14 GMT -5
Oooh, lexkx. Read The Silmarilion. Sauron was not the ultimate evil, he was a balrog, a demon, just like Shelob and the thing in Moria, but more powerful. His opposite was...OK, I can't remember the name, but they were basically angels. Although one fell in love with an elf once.
I respectfully disagree about Sean Astin. This household is still upset he didn't get an Oscar. Of course, we've loved him since Goonies, so there you go.
I agree about Viggo, though. He had the Strider look, but his voice was so distracting. (And wasn't it Eowyn who had the cut fight scene at Helm's Deep, not Arwen? There's another couple alterations--Arwen didn't rescue Frodo in the first book (although I forgive them of that since a friend of mine identifies with that scene deeply) and the elves never fought at Helm's Deep.)
I don't think Tolkien would have minded the adaptation for the simple reason that he hoped his stories would be adapted. He wrote them as an English mythology that could be added to, modified, contradicted. He wanted people to own them. Although, not so far that they printed his books without his permission. As far as technology, he wasn't thrilled about it, but he wasn't a Luddite. I think the tale was more cautionary (and a reaction to what he saw in WWI) than flat-out rebellion against all machination.
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CastleLyons
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Post by CastleLyons on Sept 7, 2008 12:30:28 GMT -5
The fact that Jackson had the Elves fighting at Helm's Deep was one of the major reasons why my friend took such umbrage at the movie. But I liked having them there--one last great battle where Elves and Men join forces. It added something to the scene when you see those Elves marching in perfect formation and willing to give their lives to save mankind. Tolkien's experience in WWI definitely had an impact on him, but he truly did have an aversion to almost all things machine. Bradley Birzer says (in J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth), "Though Tolkien especially disliked the machines of war, he frequently complained about the machines that were increasingly coming to be associated with everyday life in the twentieth century." Tolkien once called a motorcycle an Orc, and even went so far as to give up his own car. Once when a friend was going to tape record Tolkien reading some of his work, Tolkien said he ought to cast out any devil that might be in the recorder by saying the Lord's Prayer...in Gothic. According to Birzer, "Tolkien, on the whole, despised mechanization, arguing that it reflected modernity's attack on nature, its attempt to dominate and subjugate all aspects of the given world." Tolkien referred to technology in general as "Mordor-gadgets." I have a similar heart to Tolkien in that respect. I love nature and it inspires me. I long to move back to the country and get out of the suburbs. I love to garden and work in the dirt, and I prefer natural remedies to chemicals. But to my shame, I also love modern plumbing , television, computers, and the Internet.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Sept 8, 2008 7:31:40 GMT -5
I think I saw Arwen in some of the deleted scenes in The Two Towers, and I remember seeing some interviews about it. Not that wikis are definitive sources of information, but here's a note from one of them: In the original version of the film, Elrond and Arwen had gone to see Galadriel in person, and it was Arwen who led the Elves to fight alongside the Rohan defenders. Arwen's involvement was rejected after Jackson revised the portrayal of her character from a "warrior princess" to a role closer to that of the book, but the Elves remained part of the battle since Jackson liked the concept. You can also find a few photos online of her at Helm's Deep. Jeff
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Post by rwley on Sept 8, 2008 15:38:04 GMT -5
I am a diehard Tolkien adoring fan. I love his stuff. If Jackson had tried to stay true to the books, they would have taken 15 hours each and the second one (Two Towers) would have been so slow as to make watching grass grow exciting. They were an adaptation, as Jeff said. My niece hated the second film. "They didn't follow the book" was her complaint. No, they couldn't. It was too slow they way Tolkien wrote it. It just did not translate well to film. I think Jackson did a remarkable job. I don't know about the casting, I liked it. And, I beg to disagree, I don't think Sam's dumb at all. I never got that from the books. Unsophisticated, yes, country hick, yes, but not dumb by any means. IMO.
I've actually read The Hobbit and all three LOTR books several times; the first being way back in the day when I was about 5th grade. I've read The Simarillion three times and written two different papers on it for college classes. I have research on it that if I ever get that far, my Master's thesis will be on the theology of the Simarillion. Someday. Maybe. If I get the Bachelor's first.
All that to say this; both works are great in their own way. Tolkien gave us our permission to be Christian and fantasy at the same time (as if we needed it) and Jackson showed us his view of Middle Earth. I love it all. But, that's just me. Jackson didn't destroy the work, he just told his vision.
Robi
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Post by mongoose on Sept 8, 2008 22:38:03 GMT -5
Nobody cares that Jackson had Aragorn nearly die, and the women and children and old folks going to Helm's Deep in the second movie, and the elves dieing more quickly than the humans in the battle? These things really annoyed me, as I thought they went against the whole direction of the book. The whole bit about Aragorn almost dieing never even came close to happening in the book. They just put it in there because it made it more exciting, or something. If you want to take a book that would be slow paced and 15 hours on screen, and make it faster paced and more exciting, you just skip the slow parts. You don't cut out important character development scenes and add in pointless action that does nothing to advance character OR plot, such as they did. At least, that's my idea of how it ought to be done.
If you're going to add elves at Helm's Deep, fighting, you MUST show that it takes far more to kill and elf than it does to kill a human. That much was made clear several times throughout the Tolkien novels. But the first blow basically takes Celeborn (or whomever the lead elf was) out of the action, and two more kill him. His comrades are piled, dead around him. I don't see that happening in such a conflict. The elves would be more closely matched in toughness to the Orcs, as the orcs were genetically engineered (more or less) from kidnapped elves, and we know orcs're pretty tough.
And as for the women and children, the book made the important point that Theoden and/or Aragorn made the strategic decision to send the women, children and old folk off to another more or less secure location with Eowyn as their commander, while the younger men went to Helm's Deep to hold the land against the Uruk Hai. I guess Jackson wanted to give Eowyn and Aragorn more time together, as if his version of Aragorn wasn't conflicted enough already.
I preferred the extended editions of the first and third movies, the third just because it was the most exciting and seemingly epic in scope (although they messed up the whole Merry and Pipin in battle thing, and I preferred the book's Faramir because he was a southern ranger, like Strider was a northern one, and that's just cool!) But I don't think the theatrical release of the second movie was even worth watching, much less purchasing. The extended made it worth it, but not nearly as much so as with the first and third movies.
Okay self, one more thing. In the special features Jackson and the two writers say time and again, "We thought it needed a little more excitement, so we put that in there." Hogwash! The books were plenty exciting enough once you got past the "About Hobbits" part. Sure, for the big screen you have to cut things, but you don't have to add excitement to books like these. Someone on another board mentioned that if the six books (the Trilogy was originally six books) were made into six movies, the fifth movie (first half of the third book) would look like "Last of the Mohicans" without the trees. Lots of walking. Basically Sam and Frodo's trip into Mordor. That, I think, would have rawked! Another movie they complained about was Hidalgo, for the all the scenes of him on his horse walking through the desert. THAT'S what good adventure movies are made of, IMHO. Not going from fight to fight with a few other elements thrown in to complete the story (which would be properly classified as action, I think.)
So Jackson did a good job of covering the most important parts of the story and of making three great movies, and then added a half hour per movie of stuff he and the writers just made up, thinking it would make the story better. :-P
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Post by torainfor on Sept 8, 2008 23:21:41 GMT -5
Yes, the part about how easily the elves were taken out did bug me. I didn't understand why the whole thing with Aragorn falling off the cliff, especially because of the two things that came from it--the too-affectionate reunion with Eowyn and the shattering of Arwen's pendant.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Sept 9, 2008 22:02:05 GMT -5
I've heard that the Chinese believe that any masterpiece is inherently flawed. I think this is true both of Tolkien's work and of Jackson's brilliant adaptation of it. Jackson and crew may have misunderstood some things (their take on Boromir seems a typical liberal misunderstanding of the conservative mindset, and they misunderstood that he truly was the better character because he wasn't tempted, even though, for all that, their rationale was fairly solid), but they managed to take a long, meandering story, and turn it into a long, focused story of unequalled power and beauty. All in all, I thought they did a spectacular job of maintaining the best parts of the story, upping the ante where it needed to be upped, and being faithful even when they wanted to go astray.
One former student of Tolkien's said that the Master would have loved the films. That's enough for me.
I can't wait for the two Hobbit films!
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lexkx
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Post by lexkx on Sept 10, 2008 5:06:24 GMT -5
Oddly enough, certain Scandanavian cultures also believe art should be flawed. Their reasoning, however, is that only God can create something perfect, so a man-made work of art should be deliberately off. Perhaps Tolkien took a page from their book and wanted to leave himself some wiggle room?
And I must agree about Sean Astin. Of all the characters and performances in the film portrayal, I think he portrayed a Christian's walk on earth the best.
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CastleLyons
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Post by CastleLyons on Sept 10, 2008 8:59:22 GMT -5
About art being flawed: That reminds me of a scene in Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. Near the end of the story, Ransom is watching a sculptor carve an image of him. Ransom asked the guy why he was making him rather short and squat. The guy answered that no one would believe it if he made Ransom look taller and thinner because the gravity on Earth is heavier, therefore the people on Mars believe Earthlings to be short and squat. So the art was meant to reflect what people would accept, not what the real truth was. I appreciate all your responses. I'm glad to see that others who love the books can also love the movies. That friend of mine made me feel a bit like a traitor for loving the movies as much as I do. BTW: here's a primer for anyone who needs a little refresher on The Silmarillion: Ilúvatar = God The Ainur = angels (called the Valar by the Elves) Melkor = the greatest of the Ainur who corrupts Ilúvatar's creation and wants to be lord over the people of Middle-earth The Maiar = beings of the same order as the Ainur but to a lesser degree; servants and helpers of the Ainur Balrogs = those of the Maiar who were drawn to Melkor and corrupted. The greatest of these was Sauron. The Istari = Five of the Maiar who came to Middle-earth to guide mankind. They are known as wizards by the people of Middle-earth. Among the five are Sarumon and Gandalf. Saruman became corrupted through studying the devices of Sauron. (One of the truths Tolkien held to was that if you study the ways of the Enemy, you are prone to fall prey to them.) All of the Istari except Gandalf failed in their mission because they were drawn to the things of the world. (A Bible college professor told me that Gandalf was the least of the Istari. There's a great lesson there, too.) Orcs = Elves who were corrupted, enslaved, and disfigured by Melkor Uruk hai = Offspring of Orcs and men, bred by Melkor since the Orcs could not stand the light of day. Regarding God being absent (by name, at least) from the LOTR books: Tolkien said, "Of course God is in the books. He is the one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named." Tolkien purposely left many things to be discovered by the reader, wanting his audience to come to their own conclusions. He didn't care for the way Lewis made things too obvious, calling it "too much spoon-feeding." He felt that to explicity show Christianity would spoil the Christian message. For this reason he also didn't like the Arthurian legend* because he thought it was too openly Christian. Unfortunately, many (including Christians) don't recognize God in the stories, despite such lines as when Gandalf says to Frodo, "There was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it." I was so glad that Jackson left those lines in just as they were. *P.S. Don't get me started on the farcical King Arthur movie that starred Clive Owen. It was a good story all by itself...it didn't need to pretend to be a "more accurate and historical" retelling of the Arthur myth, for it was no such thing. If the makers of the film had given the characters different names, the story could have stood on its own. And I wouldn't have to be irked by it.
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Post by mongoose on Sept 10, 2008 13:24:55 GMT -5
Boromir wasn't tempted by the ring?? I thought every character that had the ring was tempted by it, and the hobits were the least succeptible, but even they were tempted.
Obvious examples of characters being tempted by the ring: Boromir almost betrayed the fellowship in his desire to use the ring against Sauron and to save his home land. Gandalf said, "Don't tempt me!" Galadriel fantasized about what she would become if she had the ring, then denied herself, prophecying that she would diminish, go into the west and remain Galadriel. Faramir was tempted, and in the book denied himself, but in the movie tried to take the ring to Gondor. Sam only had the ring briefly, but still was reluctant to give it back to Frodo. Frodo and Gollum both tried to keep the ring for themselves. Aragorn was attracted to the ring, almost took it, but then denied himself and sent Frodo away.
I would say of those, that Aragorn and Frodo were the least affected by the ring, considering their exposure to it. Galadriel and Gandalf, already powerful, were tempted perhaps most of all. My understanding of Boromir was that he had potential that was most realized in the moments that he submitted to Aragorn as his king, but that his own selfish pride got the best of him too much of the time, and he ended up looking weak.
Such were my impressions from the books and the movies.
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