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Enjoying Jackson's Take On Tolkien
Now that Jackson's take on the Lord of the Rings trilogy has been
put to bed, Joseph asks just what has been achieved ... and will history
smile on this particular cinematic adaptation?
Why did Elrond bring Andúril to Aragorn at Dunharrow? I've heard many conversations like this over the last three years and I've learned to read between the lines. Allow me to translate: Why aren't movies the same as the books? Most of the exiting moviegoers had no clue what my bookworm brothers were on about because chances are they were too caught up in all the action, tension, tears and excitement of the film. These are the things that draw most of us to go to the movies and in recent years it's hard to find a film that has all those motivating factors. For me, it's been a long drought with the last oasis being The Two Towers and The Fellowship Of The Ring the year before that. As a Tolkien reader, I get a charge seeing characters and settings I've spent so much time with finally brought to life. As a moviegoer, I'm lost in the special effects, moving performances and sheer ingenuity of the production team. But a movie can't be a book and it shouldn't try to be. It's amazing how many of my fellow fans forget this as they try to rationalise why Gandalf would stray from the storyline to chase off Nazgul with a beam of white light. Tolkien had a very special and dusty place on my shelf. It had been almost 15 years since I had even opened the books and driven by anticipation and a Chapters impulse display, I bought a new edition and re-read the trilogy several months before the Fellowship's release. It was great to open up the jacket and be right back where I was when I first found Middle Earth. Of course I had grown and many elements took on new meaning but essentially it was as if I had never left. After the premiere of The Fellowship, I felt much the same. Sure things were changed and some important elements had fallen out while lifting the story from the page to the screen but I was in Middle Earth none-the-less. When I talked with other fans I found that many of them were lost in the translation. Readers know what's coming. Some of them have been on the 1000 plus page journey three or four times, so every scene is being judged against an image they have in their heads and some of them have been building these images for decades, myself included. So when the on-screen Aragorn strays from Tolkien's path many book fans feel left behind or just plain lost. In his interviews, it seems like Jackson is continually answering to these fans for the choices he's made, many of which I'm sure were not easy and maybe not what we would have done. But we didn't put a studio and ourselves on the line to tackle what seemed like a near impossible task and we didn't book off four years of lives to make it happen. The way people go on you would think PJ just pulled the script out of his shorts but watch any of the documentaries and you'll see an incredible amount of consideration given to all the details included and left out. There's an explanation for every question a fanatic can conjure somewhere in the six hours of interviews and extras on the extended DVDs. And it's not just Jackson that has all the answers: if writer Philipa Boyens can't cover it then I'm sure the guys who spent two years making chain-mail have an opinion. You've got to have respect for the source material to take on a job like that, make no mistake. Just to ensure we were getting everything out of them, the filmmakers decided to release a longer version of the film with more of the detail that makes Tolkien's world so rich. The extended DVDs are intended to appease the hardcore fans looking for the lost pieces that only an additional 40 minutes of footage can provide and for me knowing there's an extended edition on the way alleviates the concerns over the minor adaptation shortcomings of the theatrical release. But no length of extended footage is going to make it more like the book. It's only going to give us more of the movie experience, a little more of Jackson's Middle Earth. Sure, if a little flotsam and jetsam makes you feel like you got more Tolkien out of Jackson then fine but I say the Three Foot Six crew have given everything they had in them to immerse us, the fans, in the environment, to get us a booth at the Green Dragon, wet our feet in the Anduin. If that's not enough screw the Gollum bookend and include a vial of Jackson's blood in the Return of the King gift set. What SF/H/F readers are lucky enough to have their sacred text realised by such a dedicated and inspired team of artists, actors and production crew? It's a staggering achievement for a director, cast and crew working outside of the Hollywood system. What die-hard fans should really be upset about are chicken rings at KFC. Chances are Aragon's face on a bucket of chicken would probably start the spin cycle in JRRT's grave sooner than a discrepancy over where and when the king gets his sword. Seriously, if you want to take issue with how Tolkien's works are treated then talk to the people who came up with Hungry For The Quest! Now there's a battle you can take to the streets. Joseph Nanni
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OTHER CONTENT - January 2004
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Leaving
an advance screening of Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
my buddy and I found ourselves in a sea of post-game conversation.
As we descended the vertigo inducing stairs of the Paramount Theatre,
we came to a standstill because of the bottleneck at the bottom
of the flight.
Here,
pressed up against others eager to exit the building after sitting
for over three hours straight, I'm forced between the brain dump
and synopsis of two die-hard fanboys trying desperately to join
the dots between film and literature.
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