Fellowship of the Ring

ByThe Plaid Adder
Comments:plaidder@mindspring.com

As you all know only too well, I'm not one of those people who sees the books themselves as sacred texts which cannot be messed with. I think LoTR is a great concept somewhat clunkily executed; the story it tells is better than the books that tell it. So I was pleased with most of the changes they made--I actually cheered upon reading a review that informed me that Tom Bombadil had been excised. Liza felt there was too much battling as opposed to other stuff, and she's probably right. Here's the short story on the good and the bad:

The movie's strength was being able to make Tolkein's vision of Middle Earth and its evil really come to life. We were both very impressed with whatever it was they did to make the hobbits look short. The scene where the hobbits first arrive in Bree and everything is too big and too tall really brought home to me in a way that the books didn't the significance of the fact that Frodo et al. are so much smaller than everything else in this universe. But I was more impressed with things like the way the movie rendered Frodo's Ring-O-Vision, the Eye of Sauron, and sites like Orthanc and the mines of Moria. And the black riders. Did I mention the black riders? I wouldn't have thought that a film could really convey the sense of menace that Tolkein does, but this one came pretty close.

The difference between the way Jackman has made the magic visible and the way, say, Chris Columbus failed to do this in Harry Potter, is that his visual imagination really seems to have engaged with Tolkein's. To some extent Jackman's obviously been guided by the illustrations--the maps, inscriptions, and some of the sets are clearly based on them--but there are sequences like the birth of the first Uruk-Hai that are not in the book and yet fit perfectly into the spirit of things. The most successful example of this kind of collaboration is Saruman. In the books, Saruman is such a straw man that it's hard to get really excited about his defeat-- you don't see much of him before the Ents crash his gates, and the confrontation at Isengard is anticlimactic. Plus, Gandalf seems to have taken stupid pills before going to visit Saruman's hideout. In the film, Gandalf is allowed to be suspicious sooner, fight back harder, and take a more active role in getting himself off the pillar, while the increased view we get of Saruman's machinations provides a better understanding of why he has to be taken out before they can go after Sauron. So although this is a change from how the books work, it's done with a view to clarifying and enhancing elements that are already there in the series.

Incidentally, rumors you may have heard about Arwen's part being beefed up are greatly exaggerated. She gets to do one extra thing. Yee ha.

However, the one thing I didn't like about the new Saruman stuff was the wizard fight, in which two old, bearded guys whack at each other like they were Gabrielle and Little John. Here is an example of how when it comes to battle scenes, less is sometimes more, an approach that does not seem to have resonated with anyone on this production team. And this brings us around to the negative elements.

Liza really hated the guy who played Elrond; I personally didn't think he was that bad. But I do think the movie did less well representing the elves than it did in other respects. The complete dearth of singing, for instance, was hard on elfdom; and while I am glad that the producers took the "just shut up and shoot" approach to Legolas (or, as we like to call him, Legolamb) I feel like their representation of Lothlorien and Galadriel was more or less a failure. Galadriel wasn't given enough dialogue or screen time to make her presence felt except as an icon, and the scene in which she imagines what she would be like if she had the ring was ruined by overblown special effects. In the books, the spooky thing about that vision is that she's herself, only evil. The film turns her into a tornado-belching demon creature. Oh well.

The other big drawback is the score. Liza felt it was too much like Titanic. I felt it was too much, period. It was huge, sweeping, cheesy, and EVERYWHERE. Most unforgivable was the scene right after Gandalf's death, in which the visuals of hobbits grieving in slow-motion are overwhelmed by an avalanche of Very Sad Music. It was also a real missed opportunity in that the score would have been the perfect place to put some of the songs that didn't make it into the Rivendell segment.

Liza's other big beef with this film was the attempt to give it an upbeat ending. George Lucas may have established the idea that trilogy endings go bright-dark-bright; but Tolkein was writing before Star Wars, and FOTR does not follow the pattern; it ends in defeat and despair, with the only bright spot being Sam's decision to follow Frodo to hell. This one ends with Aragorn going, "OK, chums, let's hunt some orc!" and Gimli going, "Arrrrgh! I like the cut of your orc-butt-kickin' jib!"

All in all, though, I thought it was far more successful--and a far more entertaining movie --than Harry Potter was, and I'll happily line up for The Two Towers, just so I can see the Ents.

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