what I'm not doing this weekend

[calimac]

This is the latest of several e-mails I've gotten from Symphony Silicon Valley:

After the breath-taking, sold-out presentation at Lincoln Center in New York City, Peter Jackson's film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkein's epic of Middle Earth and one small hobbit's quest to destroy the Ring of Power comes to San Jose, with Howard Shore's immortal score performed live by over 250 all-local musicians. Never before has an American orchestra attempted this monumental feat, and the results are stunning. This is not an event to miss.

You know I'm a lifelong Tolkien fan. (I even know how to spell his name.) I read The Hobbit when I was eleven years old, and The Lord of the Rings soon after. My life in the appreciation of art and the interaction with culture has been spent more on Tolkien and on classical music than all other things together. Here's the two, combined, in a special rare event, with a friend of mine participating on stage.

Why, then, have I absolutely no desire to go? I accept almost any review assignment I'm given; why did I beg my editor not to send me to this one?

Because while I'd be happy to re-read Tolkien's 1200-page epic any time, I found Jackson's three movies a tiresome bore that I have no desire to sit through again. And the music? Look, after nearly half a century of listening to and studying this stuff I think I know good music when I hear it. And Shore's score is competent hackwork, turned out by the yard: it fills the space and does the job asked of it, and nothing more. Everything else it generates in the way of emotional response is by transference from the movie, and you have to love the movie for that to have any effect. If you don't love the movie, there's nothing there.

There's a claim going around that Tolkienists who hate the movies are nothing but a few cranks. That's not true. Five of the six or seven most distinguished Tolkien scholars in the world hate the movies so much they won't even talk about them. And the others aren't uncritical. At the Birmingham Tolkien Conference of 2005, the largest event to mix serious scholars of Tolkien with those of Jackson, the Jacksonists frequently complained about the near-universal dislike of the movies among the Tolkienists.

When fans of the books as devout as we find the movies so distasteful, I think that speaks eloquently to the profound differences in moral content, in storytelling approach, in aesthetic tastes, in fact in virtually everything except an outline of the plot, between Tolkien and Jackson. Say what you may about "the needs of Hollywood movie-making," that only reinforces the point: they're entirely different in spirit.

But what of those who do like both? For such do exist, in fair profusion. (Though not everyone who likes Jackson likes Tolkien. Many Jackson movie fans find the books a bore. That, too, speaks to the differences between books and movies.) I think they simply like two different things, where the rest of us like only one thing.

That shouldn't be a surprise. Ancillary taste differences among Tolkien fans are long-established. Some Tolkien fans like fan fiction; others don't. Some like parodies (I'm one of those); others don't. Some like the fantasy epics that have come along in Tolkien's wake; others don't. Some like Tolkien's colleagues the Inklings (I'm one of those, too); others don't. In no case does the one impinge on the other. Neither does it with the movies. If this appeals to you, go: have a good time. But include me out.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call myself a Tolkienist although I do love the books and like you, I came to them young- I was more familiar with the prof as a linguist and philologist than anything else.

However, I particularly loathed the films as an Englishwoman- they completely miss the point and leave out just about everything I perceive as being of huge importance, but that's the folklorist and English ruralist in me, I suppose.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I did note in particular that Merry and Pippin are turned into Celtic clowns. The Celtic part didn't bother me personally as much as a lot of things did, nor as much as it bothered you or surely would have incensed Tolkien.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

That did annoy me, I'd admit, but the ignoring of the balladry, the ignoring of the centrality of people like Butterbur, the Maggots, Bombadil and Goldberry and the total ignoring of the centrality of the scouring of the shire REALLY bugged me!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Nothing that Jackson left out annoyed me one tithe's worth as much as what he put in that didn't belong.

The single worst thing in the entire cycle was J-Gandalf socking J-Denethor in the teeth. That's the kind of thing whereby Saruman left the path of wisdom.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

As though he didn't have enough to work with!

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

I think one of the worst changes in the movies (with the possible exception of making Treebeard into a bumbling idiot who needs to be tricked by the Hobbits into fighting against Saruman) is the change in Faramir's character. I remember Philippa Boyens commenting in an interview that they decided that Faramir wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation of the ring, and therefore they couldn't possibly have him act in the movie the way he does in the book (when he find out what Isildur's bane is, and that Frodo is in possession of it). To paraphrase Tolkien's comment about Zimmerman's treatment of the Balrog (in the proposed LOTR movie script from the 1950's), I could imagine him to responding to Boyens comment with this: "Jackson & Co may think they know more about Faramir and his ability to withstand the temptation of the ring than I do, but they cannot expect me to agree with them."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, indeed. This wasn't just a matter of what was "cinematic," but of Jackson and Boyens' complete inability to understand why Faramir avoids the Ring.

Actually, Faramir explains it himself: "I am wise enough to know there are some perils from which a man must flee." It seems to me that, if you have here a weapon that could win the war, and those capable of wielding it shirk from it in fear, that conveys its malevolence and terror a lot more graphically than any amount of temptation.

Especially if it's thwarted temptation, for, in a typically Jackson move, having derailed the plot by his additions he has to haul it back onto the rails again to follow the book any further. Thus, you have the scene which baffles even the Jackson fans I've talked to, in which J-Faramir, having previously decided to take the Ring, inexplicably changes his mind and lets Frodo go.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I liked the first LOTR movie very much, but I remember reading an interview with Boyens before The Two Towers came out in which she talked about how the book didn't really work and they had needed to improve it. The fact that they didn't understand The Two Towers came through loud and clear, and it is illustrated in the fact that Theoden, Treebeard, and Faramir are all turned into various kinds of idiot who need the Fellowship to tell them what to do. That seems to be one of the central changes rung by the movie: Instead of finding allies who are gutting it out in the face of danger, the Fellowship are the uniquely heroic figures going out and instilling courage in broken people. It seems a more self-congratulatory vision than Tolkien's. This may also explain why the Scouring of the Shire could be abandoned, because far from the hobbits coming back empowered by their experiences, they are the ones who were empowering others to begin with, as Merry and Pippin do with Treebeard.

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

Good points. And sometimes you saw this type of pattern occurring in the movies within the Fellowship itself. I recall Jackson & Co. saying that when they were making the Fellowship of the Ring, they focused on making it "Frodo-centric." This led to what I thought was one of the more cringe-worthy moments in that film, in which Gandalf decides to "let the ring-bearer decide" whether or not they would attempt the passage of Moria, even though there were people in the company (Gandalf and Aragorn) who were far better equipped than him to make this decision. In the books, Frodo naturally defers to Gandalf.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent way of putting it. I have expressed roughly the same idea as saying that Jackson likes to derail the plot by inserting characters having failures of nerve. Then, because he wants to stick to the book instead of sending the story off in the completely new direction it's now heading, he has to awkwardly haul the story back onto the tracks again.

But it's not just other characters who do this, but the Fellowship as well. Frodo losing his nerve and sending Sam away (I think this is in movie #3). In movie #2 there's Legolas having a nervous breakdown. I bet most viewers have forgotten this, but it's there. Aragorn has to tell him to buck up. (Aragorn has a similar if less emotionally charged detour when he falls off the cliff.)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

You know, I liked a lot of things about Jackson's LotR films. Then I saw the first two Hobbit films (I couldn't bear to watch the third), and not only did I not like them at all, but I also rather dread rewatching LotR. Jackson's Hobbit films had all of his failings as a filmmaker turned up to the threshold of pain; what if the same failings now jump out at me during LotR? I might rather look back appreciatively at things like Boromir's death, which I thought were well done, and not have to wince at things like the collapsing stairs of Moria, which I didn't like the first time.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I have had the experience of having fans of the LOTR movies tell me, after seeing the Hobbit movies, that now they understand what I've been complaining about all these years. You sound as if you are somewhere in the general vicinity of that category.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. I had those complaints myself, or many of them; for every one of the LotR films I could give you a list of things in it that I thought showed bad judgment. But there were things in each of them that I found beautifully done, too—Arwen's vision of Aragorn's death, the boys and old men of Rohan being led to battle, the panorama of the beacons from Minas Tirith to Edoras—things that I felt worthy of the novel and that helped bring it to life. (In retrospect, I still love the way Jackson shows Middle-Earth as going on and on and on; it doesn't feel like a stage set.) Now, though, I've had such a strong dose of the bad tasting stuff that I've been sensitized to it and I can see that the taste was always there, and that it mattered more than I thought it did.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As I said, "somewhere in the general vicinity."

I thought a lot of the visuals were nice, but - in relation to your taste metaphor - in response to a "half a loaf" argument I once characterized the LOTR movies as a poisoned glass of milk. All the nutrients are still there, but it's not good to drink.

Contrary to your feeling that Jackson shows Middle-earth as vast, I see his geographic vision as small and cramped compared to Tolkien's. Two specific instances:

1) Saruman following the Fellowship on his palantir as early as Caradhras. This is supposed to be howling wilderness! The wargs may have provided a clue, but the enemies shouldn't know where they are, or even that they are.

2) In The Hobbit, the sight of the landscape at the Eagle rescue. It looks as if the Eagles could easily fly the Company all the way to the Mountain, and indeed some viewers have indignantly asked why they don't.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Well, the second one's a bit off topic, because I didn't say that The Hobbit gave me that sense of vastness. In fact most of it seems claustrophobia-inducing.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I do like some of each of the three LotR movies very much; I violently dislike other things in them. But I'm not going because I don't have the money for it right now, it's not a priority. I completely agree with you about Howard Shore! Gosh, I'm glad someone else feels that way.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Once, when expressing this opinion of the music, I was informed that it showed how vast and irrational my hatred of Peter Jackson was that I even tried to beat up on Howard Shore.

No, it earned this evaluation. Shore isn't bad, exactly, but Tolkien deserves something better than a competent hack. Jackson, by contrast, is no hack but a genius in his way; yet, in Tolkien, neither is he competent.