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I ran across these two wonderful articles on TTT. I found them on TORN -- my first choice for all things LotR.
This first one is one the differences between books and movies and how things need to be done differently in different mediums. It's written by "Quickbeam" over at TORN and you can go there to read it. It has the links to all the original info and such. Of course, because I don't trust links sticking around, you can click
QUICKBEAM'S OUT ON A LIMB:
In Defense of Philippa Boyens
There is always enough opinion to go around, that much is true.
One man from Germany just wrote me in response to my movie review of The Two Towers [http://greenbooks.theonering.net/quickbeam/files/121802.html]. It is not typical for me to get embroiled in a lengthy debate with my readers. Unfortunately, work and my limited schedule does not allow me the time I would like to converse with all the wonderful folks out there. However, this Henry fellow made some important points - made them intelligently - and he had a certain passion in his disagreement with me. I found myself responding to the tune of 1,300 words. Wow.
Our email exchange is presented here; for it is a very interesting "pro" and "con" argument about whether TTT can stand as a successful translation of Tolkien. I found myself coming to the defense of Philippa Boyens, who fairly represents the spirit and hard work of the screenwriting team.
I encourage all you fans out there to use the Talk Back (taking you over to our Discussion Boards), and we can all explore how we feel about the many changes made in this second film adaptation.
The Argument:
I'm sorry. I have to say that Philippa Boyens' comments are too similar to what many of the critics have had to say about many of Tolkien's own words: "Faramir's character is completely static in the books, and this wouldn't translate well filmically."
The beauty of Faramir (in the books) is that he IS "sea-green incorruptible," and that Tolkien makes his "sea-green incorruptibility" work. He demonstrates that one CAN be a Wizard's Pupil (in the best sense of the words), that he can be soft (softer than Aragorn), vulnerable (ultimately smitten down on the Field of the Pelennor), and (ur-ultimately) almost preternaturally wise.
In fact one could argue that he is, rather than Boromir's younger brother, Aragorn's younger brother, at least in spirit. Maybe even in his genes since, like Aragorn (and Denethor) and unlike Boromir, he brings the line of the half-Elven back to life.
And this is where I found the greatest lack in the films, one that almost brings me, sadly, to criticize them as ultimately having failed.
After watching Fellowship in the theaters twice, and its extended version at home once, I was still quite willing to forgive the changes that had been made to the books. I didn't mind Tom Bombadil's having been dropped, and I didn't mind Arwen having been substituted for Glorfindel.
In fact I had to agree with one of the reviewers who said that, at precisely the point where Arwen raced the Black Riders to the Ford, that was where a simply great movie transcended itself into epic. And her standing up to the Black Riders at the Ford brought me to tears.
But I wasn't entirely happy with what they had done to Aragorn. This whole story of being "in exile," of having turned away from the Kingship of Gondor, of not wanting the Kingship of Gondor. This was trivializing his character to an unwonted degree.
One of the greatest parts of the books, at least for me (and for all of my friends), was Aragorn's "sea-green incorruptibility," his having been the greatest Hunter, Tracker, Woodsman, and all around Knight of his age (per Gandalf), his having already served, by the time he was 90 years old, during the War of the Ring as Thengel's and later Ecthelion's Captain (under the alias Thorongil), before having dropped out of sight, not to go into exile, but on errands - which may have been Gandalf's - into the East.
In short, it was his being the last of the Dunedain, the leader of the Rangers of the North, who, in total, were a bunch of guys cooler than almost anything anybody could imagine. Men with a distant Elven bloodline, descendents of Elendil, and absolutely incorruptible.
So far we haven't seen anything of the Dunedain. I doubt that we will. I doubt that we'll see Halbarad, or even Elladan and Elrohir, since their showing up at any point from now on would compromise one of the film's basic storylines: Aragorn's "filmic" development.
And this brings us back to Faramir, and, perhaps, back to much of your own point. It's as if they tried to do too much, and, in doing so much, did too little justice to what they did. I thought a lot about the movie last night and this morning, and I was able, finally, to boil my dissatisfaction down to one thing: there was too much in it that was gratuitous.
The scene with Frodo and the Black Rider in Osgiliath, for example: utterly gratuitous. Unnecessary. Aragorn's disappearance after the attack of the Warg-riders. Unnecessary. Again, gratuitous. Most of the battle of Helm's Deep: overlong, overdeveloped. The appearance there of the Elves: absolutely, irredeemably gratuitous (especially in view of what it's such a poor substitute for).
More than all of that, though, and perhaps worst of all, because it's a sop to the critics for whom Tolkien (rightly) felt such scorn: a finally gratuitous "trivializing" of character, an inability to recognize that character can be more or less static (just as it is in real life), and that the True Story can be just as much about the development of inter-character tension (as is so much of the development in the LOTR itself), as about intra-character tension.
I wish you a Happy New Year (ein Guten Rutsch, we would say here in Germany).
Yours,
Henry
The Reply:
Hullo Henry,
Don't be sorry, man, you have an opinion.... it is perfectly valid. And well written too, I have to say. However, I'm not sure at what point you and I will agree on this.
The thing is, Tolkien was a genius writer - of books. We all know that. It seems difficult to think that anyone would "know better" than the Professor and change his work around. But it is critical to remember that Tolkien was not a screenwriter. He never wrote for the visual medium, not once, for that was not his world of experience. A novel, a language, an epic poem, sure he could write those things.... but he had zero experience putting material into the medium of television or motion pictures. Stories are not told the same way in a 1,200 page book as they are in a 130 page screenplay. It just does NOT work the same way. Trust me on this, I've been a Hollywood writer for many years.
It is possible, just possible, that someone with a good instinct for screenwriting could take a big novel and turn it into a story for the silver screen that works on a different level. What Sidney Howard did with Gone With the Wind comes to mind. There were many things changed from Margaret Mitchell's novel.... yet it worked. I cannot say the scenes you complain about in the LOTR movies are gratuitous.... they are not gratuitous for a movie! For an epic novel those things might be silly, not working at all - but for the visceral, immediate, "quick contact emotional points" of a screenplay, the very scenes you dislike work. Yes, they work very well, in my opinion.
I don't see much trivializing of these movie characters, really. Is there a problem with Aragorn fighting in the Warg attack to help defend women and children? Even if this action-filled episode is apocryphal to Tolkien, I don't see a disconnect between the Aragorn of the book and the Aragorn of the movie. Both versions of the character would have protected the helpless, indeed with a valiant effort. You say that the movie Aragorn does not want to claim his birthright but I never saw that. Viggo portrays him as uncertain, crippled by self-doubt, feeling the constant weight of his own history. A legacy unasked for by Aragorn, for he never really wanted it. How would you feel if such a far-reaching and frightening responsibility was laid upon you? He knows that he must carry on and he does, with steely resolve. There is yet such an inner-reserve of strength and nobility that the movie Aragorn keeps finding through the events of these films; the most critical visualization of this happens when he's half-dead down that river. And what a lovely moment where we see Arwen's love and spiritual support for Aragorn has never left him. This stuff might not be expressly written in Tolkien, but it's perfectly realized on screen. As the cinema Aragorn comes to a greater self-realization, moves closer to his destiny, the movie audience will rise to meet him when he has fully come into his own and earned the Crown of Gondor.
I also completely see the good sense in Elrond, with the cooperation of the Galadhrim, sending a battalion of Elves to Helm's Deep. Many people have complained about this scene, loud and long. Though it be in wild contrast to the book, this event serves as a counterpoint to the dour, grim Lord Elrond who has spent the past two movies saying "There is no hope left in the world of Men." He has been so hopeless for so long that now it is incredibly refreshing to have him turn around. Has he had some kind of an epiphany, a moment of foresight perhaps, seeing the necessity for the Free Peoples of Middle-earth to work together against the Enemy? In terms of screenplay, this is not gratuitous nor does not trivialize Elrond (or the Elves). It gives the movie a dramatic turn that is honest and uplifting, emulating the essence of Tolkien's thematic structure. Is it not true that we are inspired by Tolkien when he drives home the value of hope in the face of hopelessness? It seems to be Peter Jackson's main theme in this film.
The whole Faramir thing is the biggest controversy, if we can call it that. It is criminal to many fans that he seems so unlikable. Even I was a bit surprised at how I emotionally reacted to the character the first time I saw TTT. But I've seen it three times now and I can offer something more to this discussion. Here is the really fascinating part about the "altered" Faramir. In this movie, the two hobbits are not allowed to sit in Henneth Annun and have a comfy lunch while their friends are suffering through war and strife west of the River Anduin. It gets tough for them too. The screenwriters are hell bent on raising the stakes for Frodo and Sam (and of course, Faramir) every step of the way. We will see more threatening situations come upon these characters than are actually in the books. Why? Because it is more interesting to see how they all react in the face of such threats.
It really is as Philippa Boyens suggested: allowing a character like Faramir to change is filmically interesting. He may start out as bullying and myopic in his attitude, but events in the screenplay allow him to judge the weight of his conscience (letting Frodo go) versus the need to please his overbearing father (taking the Ring to Denethor). Personally, I find David Wenham's character really fascinating on a whole new level. No, he is not quite the same "nice guy" that I remember from the book. But this Faramir is going to turn around, just a bit more, and you can sense it when you look in his eyes. He will pay dearly the next time he speaks to his father; and don't you think the audience will feel something for him then? This is the kind of screenwriting the treats the character with respect and looks forward to what will make him complete when his story arc is done.
The painful work that Jackson, Boyens, Sinclair, and Walsh had before them was to take their own experience and love of Tolkien and make something functional for a screenplay. Seriously, I don't envy them at all.
I believe that your dissatisfaction with P.J. comes from his movies not "feeling" exactly the same as the book. Perhaps it is safe to say that what serves you emotionally in the book cannot be replaced by a movie. That's fair. I would go further and suggest that what you really would have preferred was a mammoth, lengthy mini-series that took up about 18 or 20 hours (perhaps produced by the venerable BBC). Something that didn't play with the idiom of the story too much and gave you a more expansive, leisurely way to soak up the story (like a good book). You know, I would really love that kind of experience too. Many fans would go nuts for it. Perhaps some years ahead in the future it will happen.
But for this cinematic work, for the nature of the script that P.J. and Company have created, I am fine with it. There are things that I appreciate so deeply, because I just happen to connect with movies on a certain level.... not the same way as I connect with a book that takes me five weeks to read. But that's just me.
Perhaps this is where we agree to disagree. Thank you for the generous thought you put into this letter... I do respect where you are coming from, all in all.
Have a fantastic and safe New Year.
Much too hasty,
Quickbeam
The second article is by Johah Goldberg, entitled "Movies & Metaphors". It is wonderful and can be found at National Review Online. While the original work has links to all the articles and references mentioned, but I also copied it in case the link don't work. So, if you want, you can just click
Movies & Metaphors
Man and the universe.
January 3, 2002
I wanted to write about the latest Lord of the Rings movie today. But as I scoured the web reading what other people had to say, I realized I had nothing new to offer. I love Tolkien. It's a good movie. A bit too long, I thought, but I will see it again, regardless.
Anyway, while trying to figure out what to write, I kept stumbling on articles about how Tolkien was a racist and/or about how The Lord of the Rings is pro-war propaganda. Both of these ideas have dedicated adherents. For example, John Yatt says in the British newspaper, the Guardian:
The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.
To cap it all, the races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a BNP leaflet. Dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced Ñ it's amazing he doesn't go the whole hog and give them a natural sense of rhythm.
And as for the war-propaganda thing, well, that's really all over the place. For example, Karen Durbin recently wrote in the New York Times:
It's impossible not to experience Peter Jackson's "Two Towers" as war propaganda of unnerving power. The scene in which ranks upon ranks of enemy Uruk-hai warriors march in perfect order seems like a spine-chilling tip of the computer-graphics hat to Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will'…. On the intentional level, "The Two Towers" is a grand adventure tale, in which good and evil are comfortingly clear. But even without the accidental echoes Ñ evil or "Evildoers?" Sauron or Saddam? And how many towers? Ñ the movie would have its own double edge. Dehumanizing the other guy is the first step in training soldiers and fighting wars. The danger is that this is what makes not just warfare palatable but extermination itself.
Sigh. Okay, yes, it's true. Many of the Orcs (and the super-Orcs) are dark-skinned and have slant-eyes. They are also Ñ how shall I put this? Ñ Orcs! Ya frickin' idjit!
One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people Ñ like me Ñ who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, "Cool, Orcs!" On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim "black people!" Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters.
Now, as for the war-mongering stuff, a similar point can be made. In fact, I have this theory that many movie critics need to imagine themselves as Right-wing morons in order to criticize films. Ms. Durbin is probably quite smart herself. But her criticism of The Two Towers is premised on the idea that other people can't figure out what is apparent to her. So while she probably understands that The Lord of the Rings "on the intentional level" is a "grand adventure tale" wholly separate from our own reality, she Ñ like many other sophisticates Ñ frets that other people might be swept up by the excitement of it all and confuse Sauron with Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the dictator of Iraq is not currently a giant flaming eye. If he is, the New York Times will have major egg on its face.
A similar argument erupted a few years ago over the film Starship Troopers, an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel. Set in the distant future, Earth is semi-fascist and unimaginably prosperous Ñ so prosperous, in fact, that many people gladly forgo their right to vote in exchange for not having to join the military, the only route to full citizenship. The armed forces are made up of beautiful young people. They aren't all Aryan types; there are a few blacks and Asians in the mix, too. Sort of an S.S. that looks like an America or a J. Crew catalog for young fascists. Anyway, the military is very important because humanity is at war with an alien horde of giant insect species which allegedly works collectively (socialistically?) toward the destruction of the human race. Hence, the soldiers shout lots of things like, "the only good bug is a dead bug."
The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter (one of the best reviewers in the country), wrote a pretty angry essay about the film saying, "It's spiritually Nazi, psychologically Nazi. It comes directly out of the Nazi imagination, and is set in the Nazi universe."
In a sense that's absolutely true. The movie does play heavily and deliberately with Nazi films. The opening scene, according to Verhoven, is a direct homage to Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. (Another scene, at the fort, has several references to the 1964 movie Zulu.) So, yes, Hunter and lesser critics were on to something when they critiqued the Nazi aesthetic of the movie. But John Podhoretz was on to something also when he noted that Verhoven was parodying both the novel and the Nazis simultaneously. "Hollywood has twisted Heinlein's novel into a mock Nazi pretzel," Podhoretz wrote in a review at the time.
But here's the most-important point for this conversation: The giant bugs weren't Jewish. Oh, I don't simply mean the slithering giant maggots weren't Kosher, or that they might have been Episcopalian. I mean, literally, they were huge bugs. Not Jews. Not blacks. Not Gypsies. Not human beings!
And this raises an interesting question: Would Nazism be so bad if, instead of non-Aryans, they only cared about exterminating ferocious extraterrestrial lice, cockroaches, and beetles? I'm not saying that the only thing wrong with Nazism was the mass murder of humans. But can we accept that this was a big part of the story? After all, if you take the genocide out of the equation, Nazism drops several notches on the evil-regime list. Still evil, sure, but of a significantly lesser category.
The critics who got worked up about the bugs in Starship Troopers and the Orcs and Uruk-hai in The Lord of the Rings fret over the explicit "dehumanizing of the enemy" involved in these respective stories quite a bit. What they leave out is that the enemies aren't humans being unfairly mischaracterized the way the Japanese were in World War II posters. The enemies in these movies are, in fact, non-human. As a moral proposition I'm as against genocide as the next guy, but I do hold out the caveat that if mankind is attacked by 99.5-percent pure-evil Orcs, or, say, skyscraper-sized dung beetles, I might change my views.
METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING
Now, the sophisticated response to all of this is that The Lord of the Rings will be taken metaphorically. Their war is like our war. In their war they can kill their evil enemies without remorse, so we must be able to kill our enemies without remorse, for they, too, must surely be evil.
Now, rather than beat a dead horse about that criticism, I'd like to say a few words about metaphors instead. Metaphors are wondrous candles which illuminate the hidden connections between things.
But wait a second. Metaphors aren't candles. They aren't made out of wax. You don't light them on fire. You don't buy them in a store. You can't burn yourself on a metaphor, except, perhaps, metaphorically speaking. And didn't I just say I don't want to beat a dead horse? Where is this dead horse? I am sure if I had a dead horse in my house my dog would be barking at it, since he barks at dead things and at horses.
The truth is that a metaphors is an acid. (Again: In reality metaphors aren't acidic at all). Metaphors burn away all sorts of relevant facts leaving behind only tiny nuggets of understanding.
Think of an expensive model airplane. Now, a teacher of aeronautical engineering could tell you a lot about planes by using a model of an F-18 as a teaching tool. He could show you how an F-18 moves, where its weapons are located, why it was designed a certain way, and so on. But, in reality, the model itself has very few meaningful similarities to an F-18. It doesn't actually fly. It has no engines. It's merely twelve-inches long and weighs only a few pounds. It was designed be a metaphor or, more accurately, to be a physical analogy to something completely different Ñ a giant, screeching talon in the claw of the war bird of democracy. (Again: F-18's aren't actually talons).
I could go on about metaphors until the cows come home Ñ which would ostensibly be for all eternity since the likelihood of cows coming to my home is very remote Ñ because I think the effectiveness of metaphors and analogies provide a fascinating insight into the nature of man and the universe. Seriously, I really do.
But I bring up metaphors here and now because I think The Lord of the Rings is an excellent metaphor. In the film, as in the book, the author makes things extremely simple. Tolkien shows us, explicitly, who is evil and who is good. The Orcs are not portrayed with complicated interior lives. The Uruk-hai (the Super-Orcs) were never adorable children with mothers who loved them. They are abominations born of muck and filthiness. Their leaders openly express their evil intent and ambitions. Jonathan Last will not be coming along making the case for Sauron the way he made the case for Darth Vader, because Sauron's express purpose is cruelty, darkness, evil.
The battle lines could not be clearer: Good vs. Evil. But even faced with this obvious fact, Tolkien demonstrates that man is weak. Men make excuses and refuse to look at the reality of a situation. They rationalize, they say "not me," or "this will pass." Hobbits, Elves, Ents, and Dwarves do the same thing too, but these noble creatures, alas, are as unreal as the Orcs; in a sense they too are simply extended metaphors illuminating different aspects of man's nature. Evil knows its intentions and has the will to see them achieved. Good is plagued by doubt. The whole book is intended to illuminate the nature and dangers of that doubt, whether it's the question of whether or not the men of Gondor and Rohan have the will and moral clarity to fight or whether Frodo has the will and strength to resist the ring of power. (See Steve Hayward's excellent review). Good must be chosen of free will. And free will means choices, and choices introduce doubt. Evil has no such problems.
In the real world it's much more difficult to identify evil. It would be much easier to argue for toppling Saddam if he were a giant fiery eye ruling subhuman creatures bent on destroying all that is beautiful and enslaving all that is good. But, damn it, that's not the case. The reality is much more complicated than the metaphor. But that is always the case. And, the principle remains: Evil still exists, even if it is adorned with better disguises than an Orc mask and equipped with better excuses for leaving it be. Such excuses might be the potential deaths of innocent humans Ñ as opposed to vile Orcs Ñ or the simple rationalization that our own comfortable Shire is not particularly threatened yet. And come to think of it, another rationalization for not heeding the message that evil must be confronted might be to dismiss the messenger as a racist. After all, those Orcs do have dark skin.
I'm glad someone finally put into words my thoughts on those subjects.
This first one is one the differences between books and movies and how things need to be done differently in different mediums. It's written by "Quickbeam" over at TORN and you can go there to read it. It has the links to all the original info and such. Of course, because I don't trust links sticking around, you can click
QUICKBEAM'S OUT ON A LIMB:
In Defense of Philippa Boyens
There is always enough opinion to go around, that much is true.
One man from Germany just wrote me in response to my movie review of The Two Towers [http://greenbooks.theonering.net/quickbeam/files/121802.html]. It is not typical for me to get embroiled in a lengthy debate with my readers. Unfortunately, work and my limited schedule does not allow me the time I would like to converse with all the wonderful folks out there. However, this Henry fellow made some important points - made them intelligently - and he had a certain passion in his disagreement with me. I found myself responding to the tune of 1,300 words. Wow.
Our email exchange is presented here; for it is a very interesting "pro" and "con" argument about whether TTT can stand as a successful translation of Tolkien. I found myself coming to the defense of Philippa Boyens, who fairly represents the spirit and hard work of the screenwriting team.
I encourage all you fans out there to use the Talk Back (taking you over to our Discussion Boards), and we can all explore how we feel about the many changes made in this second film adaptation.
The Argument:
I'm sorry. I have to say that Philippa Boyens' comments are too similar to what many of the critics have had to say about many of Tolkien's own words: "Faramir's character is completely static in the books, and this wouldn't translate well filmically."
The beauty of Faramir (in the books) is that he IS "sea-green incorruptible," and that Tolkien makes his "sea-green incorruptibility" work. He demonstrates that one CAN be a Wizard's Pupil (in the best sense of the words), that he can be soft (softer than Aragorn), vulnerable (ultimately smitten down on the Field of the Pelennor), and (ur-ultimately) almost preternaturally wise.
In fact one could argue that he is, rather than Boromir's younger brother, Aragorn's younger brother, at least in spirit. Maybe even in his genes since, like Aragorn (and Denethor) and unlike Boromir, he brings the line of the half-Elven back to life.
And this is where I found the greatest lack in the films, one that almost brings me, sadly, to criticize them as ultimately having failed.
After watching Fellowship in the theaters twice, and its extended version at home once, I was still quite willing to forgive the changes that had been made to the books. I didn't mind Tom Bombadil's having been dropped, and I didn't mind Arwen having been substituted for Glorfindel.
In fact I had to agree with one of the reviewers who said that, at precisely the point where Arwen raced the Black Riders to the Ford, that was where a simply great movie transcended itself into epic. And her standing up to the Black Riders at the Ford brought me to tears.
But I wasn't entirely happy with what they had done to Aragorn. This whole story of being "in exile," of having turned away from the Kingship of Gondor, of not wanting the Kingship of Gondor. This was trivializing his character to an unwonted degree.
One of the greatest parts of the books, at least for me (and for all of my friends), was Aragorn's "sea-green incorruptibility," his having been the greatest Hunter, Tracker, Woodsman, and all around Knight of his age (per Gandalf), his having already served, by the time he was 90 years old, during the War of the Ring as Thengel's and later Ecthelion's Captain (under the alias Thorongil), before having dropped out of sight, not to go into exile, but on errands - which may have been Gandalf's - into the East.
In short, it was his being the last of the Dunedain, the leader of the Rangers of the North, who, in total, were a bunch of guys cooler than almost anything anybody could imagine. Men with a distant Elven bloodline, descendents of Elendil, and absolutely incorruptible.
So far we haven't seen anything of the Dunedain. I doubt that we will. I doubt that we'll see Halbarad, or even Elladan and Elrohir, since their showing up at any point from now on would compromise one of the film's basic storylines: Aragorn's "filmic" development.
And this brings us back to Faramir, and, perhaps, back to much of your own point. It's as if they tried to do too much, and, in doing so much, did too little justice to what they did. I thought a lot about the movie last night and this morning, and I was able, finally, to boil my dissatisfaction down to one thing: there was too much in it that was gratuitous.
The scene with Frodo and the Black Rider in Osgiliath, for example: utterly gratuitous. Unnecessary. Aragorn's disappearance after the attack of the Warg-riders. Unnecessary. Again, gratuitous. Most of the battle of Helm's Deep: overlong, overdeveloped. The appearance there of the Elves: absolutely, irredeemably gratuitous (especially in view of what it's such a poor substitute for).
More than all of that, though, and perhaps worst of all, because it's a sop to the critics for whom Tolkien (rightly) felt such scorn: a finally gratuitous "trivializing" of character, an inability to recognize that character can be more or less static (just as it is in real life), and that the True Story can be just as much about the development of inter-character tension (as is so much of the development in the LOTR itself), as about intra-character tension.
I wish you a Happy New Year (ein Guten Rutsch, we would say here in Germany).
Yours,
Henry
The Reply:
Hullo Henry,
Don't be sorry, man, you have an opinion.... it is perfectly valid. And well written too, I have to say. However, I'm not sure at what point you and I will agree on this.
The thing is, Tolkien was a genius writer - of books. We all know that. It seems difficult to think that anyone would "know better" than the Professor and change his work around. But it is critical to remember that Tolkien was not a screenwriter. He never wrote for the visual medium, not once, for that was not his world of experience. A novel, a language, an epic poem, sure he could write those things.... but he had zero experience putting material into the medium of television or motion pictures. Stories are not told the same way in a 1,200 page book as they are in a 130 page screenplay. It just does NOT work the same way. Trust me on this, I've been a Hollywood writer for many years.
It is possible, just possible, that someone with a good instinct for screenwriting could take a big novel and turn it into a story for the silver screen that works on a different level. What Sidney Howard did with Gone With the Wind comes to mind. There were many things changed from Margaret Mitchell's novel.... yet it worked. I cannot say the scenes you complain about in the LOTR movies are gratuitous.... they are not gratuitous for a movie! For an epic novel those things might be silly, not working at all - but for the visceral, immediate, "quick contact emotional points" of a screenplay, the very scenes you dislike work. Yes, they work very well, in my opinion.
I don't see much trivializing of these movie characters, really. Is there a problem with Aragorn fighting in the Warg attack to help defend women and children? Even if this action-filled episode is apocryphal to Tolkien, I don't see a disconnect between the Aragorn of the book and the Aragorn of the movie. Both versions of the character would have protected the helpless, indeed with a valiant effort. You say that the movie Aragorn does not want to claim his birthright but I never saw that. Viggo portrays him as uncertain, crippled by self-doubt, feeling the constant weight of his own history. A legacy unasked for by Aragorn, for he never really wanted it. How would you feel if such a far-reaching and frightening responsibility was laid upon you? He knows that he must carry on and he does, with steely resolve. There is yet such an inner-reserve of strength and nobility that the movie Aragorn keeps finding through the events of these films; the most critical visualization of this happens when he's half-dead down that river. And what a lovely moment where we see Arwen's love and spiritual support for Aragorn has never left him. This stuff might not be expressly written in Tolkien, but it's perfectly realized on screen. As the cinema Aragorn comes to a greater self-realization, moves closer to his destiny, the movie audience will rise to meet him when he has fully come into his own and earned the Crown of Gondor.
I also completely see the good sense in Elrond, with the cooperation of the Galadhrim, sending a battalion of Elves to Helm's Deep. Many people have complained about this scene, loud and long. Though it be in wild contrast to the book, this event serves as a counterpoint to the dour, grim Lord Elrond who has spent the past two movies saying "There is no hope left in the world of Men." He has been so hopeless for so long that now it is incredibly refreshing to have him turn around. Has he had some kind of an epiphany, a moment of foresight perhaps, seeing the necessity for the Free Peoples of Middle-earth to work together against the Enemy? In terms of screenplay, this is not gratuitous nor does not trivialize Elrond (or the Elves). It gives the movie a dramatic turn that is honest and uplifting, emulating the essence of Tolkien's thematic structure. Is it not true that we are inspired by Tolkien when he drives home the value of hope in the face of hopelessness? It seems to be Peter Jackson's main theme in this film.
The whole Faramir thing is the biggest controversy, if we can call it that. It is criminal to many fans that he seems so unlikable. Even I was a bit surprised at how I emotionally reacted to the character the first time I saw TTT. But I've seen it three times now and I can offer something more to this discussion. Here is the really fascinating part about the "altered" Faramir. In this movie, the two hobbits are not allowed to sit in Henneth Annun and have a comfy lunch while their friends are suffering through war and strife west of the River Anduin. It gets tough for them too. The screenwriters are hell bent on raising the stakes for Frodo and Sam (and of course, Faramir) every step of the way. We will see more threatening situations come upon these characters than are actually in the books. Why? Because it is more interesting to see how they all react in the face of such threats.
It really is as Philippa Boyens suggested: allowing a character like Faramir to change is filmically interesting. He may start out as bullying and myopic in his attitude, but events in the screenplay allow him to judge the weight of his conscience (letting Frodo go) versus the need to please his overbearing father (taking the Ring to Denethor). Personally, I find David Wenham's character really fascinating on a whole new level. No, he is not quite the same "nice guy" that I remember from the book. But this Faramir is going to turn around, just a bit more, and you can sense it when you look in his eyes. He will pay dearly the next time he speaks to his father; and don't you think the audience will feel something for him then? This is the kind of screenwriting the treats the character with respect and looks forward to what will make him complete when his story arc is done.
The painful work that Jackson, Boyens, Sinclair, and Walsh had before them was to take their own experience and love of Tolkien and make something functional for a screenplay. Seriously, I don't envy them at all.
I believe that your dissatisfaction with P.J. comes from his movies not "feeling" exactly the same as the book. Perhaps it is safe to say that what serves you emotionally in the book cannot be replaced by a movie. That's fair. I would go further and suggest that what you really would have preferred was a mammoth, lengthy mini-series that took up about 18 or 20 hours (perhaps produced by the venerable BBC). Something that didn't play with the idiom of the story too much and gave you a more expansive, leisurely way to soak up the story (like a good book). You know, I would really love that kind of experience too. Many fans would go nuts for it. Perhaps some years ahead in the future it will happen.
But for this cinematic work, for the nature of the script that P.J. and Company have created, I am fine with it. There are things that I appreciate so deeply, because I just happen to connect with movies on a certain level.... not the same way as I connect with a book that takes me five weeks to read. But that's just me.
Perhaps this is where we agree to disagree. Thank you for the generous thought you put into this letter... I do respect where you are coming from, all in all.
Have a fantastic and safe New Year.
Much too hasty,
Quickbeam
The second article is by Johah Goldberg, entitled "Movies & Metaphors". It is wonderful and can be found at National Review Online. While the original work has links to all the articles and references mentioned, but I also copied it in case the link don't work. So, if you want, you can just click
Movies & Metaphors
Man and the universe.
January 3, 2002
I wanted to write about the latest Lord of the Rings movie today. But as I scoured the web reading what other people had to say, I realized I had nothing new to offer. I love Tolkien. It's a good movie. A bit too long, I thought, but I will see it again, regardless.
Anyway, while trying to figure out what to write, I kept stumbling on articles about how Tolkien was a racist and/or about how The Lord of the Rings is pro-war propaganda. Both of these ideas have dedicated adherents. For example, John Yatt says in the British newspaper, the Guardian:
The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.
To cap it all, the races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a BNP leaflet. Dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced Ñ it's amazing he doesn't go the whole hog and give them a natural sense of rhythm.
And as for the war-propaganda thing, well, that's really all over the place. For example, Karen Durbin recently wrote in the New York Times:
It's impossible not to experience Peter Jackson's "Two Towers" as war propaganda of unnerving power. The scene in which ranks upon ranks of enemy Uruk-hai warriors march in perfect order seems like a spine-chilling tip of the computer-graphics hat to Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will'…. On the intentional level, "The Two Towers" is a grand adventure tale, in which good and evil are comfortingly clear. But even without the accidental echoes Ñ evil or "Evildoers?" Sauron or Saddam? And how many towers? Ñ the movie would have its own double edge. Dehumanizing the other guy is the first step in training soldiers and fighting wars. The danger is that this is what makes not just warfare palatable but extermination itself.
Sigh. Okay, yes, it's true. Many of the Orcs (and the super-Orcs) are dark-skinned and have slant-eyes. They are also Ñ how shall I put this? Ñ Orcs! Ya frickin' idjit!
One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people Ñ like me Ñ who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, "Cool, Orcs!" On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim "black people!" Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters.
Now, as for the war-mongering stuff, a similar point can be made. In fact, I have this theory that many movie critics need to imagine themselves as Right-wing morons in order to criticize films. Ms. Durbin is probably quite smart herself. But her criticism of The Two Towers is premised on the idea that other people can't figure out what is apparent to her. So while she probably understands that The Lord of the Rings "on the intentional level" is a "grand adventure tale" wholly separate from our own reality, she Ñ like many other sophisticates Ñ frets that other people might be swept up by the excitement of it all and confuse Sauron with Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the dictator of Iraq is not currently a giant flaming eye. If he is, the New York Times will have major egg on its face.
A similar argument erupted a few years ago over the film Starship Troopers, an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel. Set in the distant future, Earth is semi-fascist and unimaginably prosperous Ñ so prosperous, in fact, that many people gladly forgo their right to vote in exchange for not having to join the military, the only route to full citizenship. The armed forces are made up of beautiful young people. They aren't all Aryan types; there are a few blacks and Asians in the mix, too. Sort of an S.S. that looks like an America or a J. Crew catalog for young fascists. Anyway, the military is very important because humanity is at war with an alien horde of giant insect species which allegedly works collectively (socialistically?) toward the destruction of the human race. Hence, the soldiers shout lots of things like, "the only good bug is a dead bug."
The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter (one of the best reviewers in the country), wrote a pretty angry essay about the film saying, "It's spiritually Nazi, psychologically Nazi. It comes directly out of the Nazi imagination, and is set in the Nazi universe."
In a sense that's absolutely true. The movie does play heavily and deliberately with Nazi films. The opening scene, according to Verhoven, is a direct homage to Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. (Another scene, at the fort, has several references to the 1964 movie Zulu.) So, yes, Hunter and lesser critics were on to something when they critiqued the Nazi aesthetic of the movie. But John Podhoretz was on to something also when he noted that Verhoven was parodying both the novel and the Nazis simultaneously. "Hollywood has twisted Heinlein's novel into a mock Nazi pretzel," Podhoretz wrote in a review at the time.
But here's the most-important point for this conversation: The giant bugs weren't Jewish. Oh, I don't simply mean the slithering giant maggots weren't Kosher, or that they might have been Episcopalian. I mean, literally, they were huge bugs. Not Jews. Not blacks. Not Gypsies. Not human beings!
And this raises an interesting question: Would Nazism be so bad if, instead of non-Aryans, they only cared about exterminating ferocious extraterrestrial lice, cockroaches, and beetles? I'm not saying that the only thing wrong with Nazism was the mass murder of humans. But can we accept that this was a big part of the story? After all, if you take the genocide out of the equation, Nazism drops several notches on the evil-regime list. Still evil, sure, but of a significantly lesser category.
The critics who got worked up about the bugs in Starship Troopers and the Orcs and Uruk-hai in The Lord of the Rings fret over the explicit "dehumanizing of the enemy" involved in these respective stories quite a bit. What they leave out is that the enemies aren't humans being unfairly mischaracterized the way the Japanese were in World War II posters. The enemies in these movies are, in fact, non-human. As a moral proposition I'm as against genocide as the next guy, but I do hold out the caveat that if mankind is attacked by 99.5-percent pure-evil Orcs, or, say, skyscraper-sized dung beetles, I might change my views.
METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING
Now, the sophisticated response to all of this is that The Lord of the Rings will be taken metaphorically. Their war is like our war. In their war they can kill their evil enemies without remorse, so we must be able to kill our enemies without remorse, for they, too, must surely be evil.
Now, rather than beat a dead horse about that criticism, I'd like to say a few words about metaphors instead. Metaphors are wondrous candles which illuminate the hidden connections between things.
But wait a second. Metaphors aren't candles. They aren't made out of wax. You don't light them on fire. You don't buy them in a store. You can't burn yourself on a metaphor, except, perhaps, metaphorically speaking. And didn't I just say I don't want to beat a dead horse? Where is this dead horse? I am sure if I had a dead horse in my house my dog would be barking at it, since he barks at dead things and at horses.
The truth is that a metaphors is an acid. (Again: In reality metaphors aren't acidic at all). Metaphors burn away all sorts of relevant facts leaving behind only tiny nuggets of understanding.
Think of an expensive model airplane. Now, a teacher of aeronautical engineering could tell you a lot about planes by using a model of an F-18 as a teaching tool. He could show you how an F-18 moves, where its weapons are located, why it was designed a certain way, and so on. But, in reality, the model itself has very few meaningful similarities to an F-18. It doesn't actually fly. It has no engines. It's merely twelve-inches long and weighs only a few pounds. It was designed be a metaphor or, more accurately, to be a physical analogy to something completely different Ñ a giant, screeching talon in the claw of the war bird of democracy. (Again: F-18's aren't actually talons).
I could go on about metaphors until the cows come home Ñ which would ostensibly be for all eternity since the likelihood of cows coming to my home is very remote Ñ because I think the effectiveness of metaphors and analogies provide a fascinating insight into the nature of man and the universe. Seriously, I really do.
But I bring up metaphors here and now because I think The Lord of the Rings is an excellent metaphor. In the film, as in the book, the author makes things extremely simple. Tolkien shows us, explicitly, who is evil and who is good. The Orcs are not portrayed with complicated interior lives. The Uruk-hai (the Super-Orcs) were never adorable children with mothers who loved them. They are abominations born of muck and filthiness. Their leaders openly express their evil intent and ambitions. Jonathan Last will not be coming along making the case for Sauron the way he made the case for Darth Vader, because Sauron's express purpose is cruelty, darkness, evil.
The battle lines could not be clearer: Good vs. Evil. But even faced with this obvious fact, Tolkien demonstrates that man is weak. Men make excuses and refuse to look at the reality of a situation. They rationalize, they say "not me," or "this will pass." Hobbits, Elves, Ents, and Dwarves do the same thing too, but these noble creatures, alas, are as unreal as the Orcs; in a sense they too are simply extended metaphors illuminating different aspects of man's nature. Evil knows its intentions and has the will to see them achieved. Good is plagued by doubt. The whole book is intended to illuminate the nature and dangers of that doubt, whether it's the question of whether or not the men of Gondor and Rohan have the will and moral clarity to fight or whether Frodo has the will and strength to resist the ring of power. (See Steve Hayward's excellent review). Good must be chosen of free will. And free will means choices, and choices introduce doubt. Evil has no such problems.
In the real world it's much more difficult to identify evil. It would be much easier to argue for toppling Saddam if he were a giant fiery eye ruling subhuman creatures bent on destroying all that is beautiful and enslaving all that is good. But, damn it, that's not the case. The reality is much more complicated than the metaphor. But that is always the case. And, the principle remains: Evil still exists, even if it is adorned with better disguises than an Orc mask and equipped with better excuses for leaving it be. Such excuses might be the potential deaths of innocent humans Ñ as opposed to vile Orcs Ñ or the simple rationalization that our own comfortable Shire is not particularly threatened yet. And come to think of it, another rationalization for not heeding the message that evil must be confronted might be to dismiss the messenger as a racist. After all, those Orcs do have dark skin.
I'm glad someone finally put into words my thoughts on those subjects.
