Further Thoughts on "They Shall Not Grow Old" and" Lord of the Rings"

[lydy]

mrissa mentioned Jackson's treatment of LOTR in the previous post, and I think that, in fact, there are some strong similarities to the choices he made in the LOTR trilogy and TSNGO, and I'd like to noodle about that for a brief moment.  

We know as a matter of historical fact that LOTR is heavily inflected by Tolkien's experience fighting in World War I.  It was not, nor was it intended to be, an allegorical work.  At the same time, his experiences were very influential.  There's been a lot of ink spilled on that topic, and I've not read most of it, but even at a glance, one can see the reflections and resonances.  

Jackson, in his treatment of LOTR, makes two very consequential and contra textual changes to Tolkien's work.  The first is the way he treats the One Ring.  It is, in the movies, an absolute corrupter.  It deprives those near it of agency.  It is how we get to see Boromir as a tragic hero, and weep for him.  In the end, it's not really his fault that he tried to rape away the ring from Frodo, he was caught in the thrall of the One Ring, and it wasn't really his fault.  This reading of the power of the ring also forces Jackson to do the most egregious bit of rewriting.  Faramir in the book said, "I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory."   In the movie he is strongly tempted by the ring, and almost steals it from Frodo.  That impeachment of his character still infuriates me.  That change also alters our understanding of Denethor, makes his choices and tragedy less explicable.  In the book, we understand Denethor through his relationship to his sons.  This change makes Denethor much more of a cipher, makes his choices less explicable. The weight of that change steals agency from every character who interacts with the ring.  It's subtle, but that choice changes the heroics of Sam, the temptation of Galadriel, the actions of Gandalf in ways that make their choices less consequential and more fated.  

The other extremely consequential change, which mrissa mentioned, is removing the Scouring of the Shire.  One of the reasons that Lord of the Ring works so very well, is so intense and readable and important, is because he tells the grand sweeping, mythic story from the view point of a common, small, not very important hobbit.  I expect there's a lot of literary criticism about how this creates a relatable character to allow the reader to identify with.  But there's something else going on, too.  It's not just a nice literary device upon which to hang a mythic tale.  It is also a viewpoint that people matter.  That actions matter.  That people like Frodo, and Merry, and Pippin, and Sam, matter, that their choices and their actions matter.  The Scouring of the Shire has some of the "as above, so below" resonance that one would expect from someone well versed in Catholic theology.  But it is also, indelibly, about context and significance.  One of the reasons that hobbits continually surprise Gandalf, one of the reasons that they are capable of such enormous courage and stubbornness, is because of where they came from, and what they value.  

In Jackson's treatment of LOTR, the hobbits' context is largely played for a joke.  Their heritage, their concerns, their delights in food and drink are reduced to jokes about second breakfast and the smoking scene after the flooding of Isengard.  None of these things are real for Jackson.  He doesn't care.  The fact that who they are is partly a product of where they came from, that the choices that they make are heavily inflected by their past, is stripped away.  

So, in LOTR, we see Jackson strip his characters of agency, and treat their context as a joke.   He doesn't manage to do this as thoroughly in LOTR as he does in TSNGO, because the story Tolkien told doesn't really let him completely denude the characters of choice and past.  

I only saw the first of The Hobbit trilogy.  I reacted to it like blue food.  I had an extremely bad reaction to Radagast the Brown.  I found him vastly offensive. But I would also argue that Bilbo can't carry the story that Jackson said he wanted to tell.  He's a simple hobbit with simple desires, and that is the fundamental charm and strength of Tolkien's story telling.  We see small people as consequential.  Not because they are huge heroes, but because they want a nice cup of tea, and yet still are endowed with great courage.  This huge scope robs Bilbo of agency.  He's a bit part in a large play, yes.  But what he does matters a lot, and he does it for his own reasons, within his own frame of reference.  Jackson doesn't seem to think that this frame of reference matters.  He doesn't seem to believe that people's actions actually matter.  

 

Tolkien, I think, fundamentally believed that people matter.  Their choices matter.  Their lives matter.  The world is huge and strange and there is a larger story than any of us can comprehend of which we are a part.  But we are not an inconsequential part.  We matter.  Our lives matter, our past matters, our choices matter, and our future is not completely outside our control.  No one wants to live in such terrible times, but, "that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

I think that Jackson has a broken sense of story.  I think that he has a broken sense of agency, of consequence, of truth.  I think that shows in his treatment both of LOTR and the Great War.  

Comments

[dragonlady7]

Yes! This! All around!
I didn't even try to watch The Hobbit, I knew that despite loving the LotR trilogy, that love was entirely for the visuals, and not at all for his storytelling, and from the first preview I was like "welp there's no magic in this for me" and avoided all the Hobbit stuff.

(I was a huge fan, as a young thing, of Éomer, and I loved more than anything the Battle of the Hornburg, and the despair and defiance of it, and "let us draw swords together", and Éomer's fey fatalistic despair and the whole fantastic dynamic with Aragorn and that whole thing basically formed my id, as a young teen, and then they just... removed him from the movie, basically, so I was like .. .... ......... yeah ok. I'd checked out before they got to Faramir!)

[calimac]

You're definitely on to something here, particularly on why the Scouring of the Shire is important to the dynamic of the story; and you're also following the track of the best Tolkien scholarship further than you think you are. For the idea that this is really a story about the hobbits, not about the Great Heroes and the War, is a fundamental understanding of the book. Tolkien himself even said that the real hero of the story is Sam.

Jackson shows his lack of understanding of this by putting, not just Faramir, but Aragorn and Legolas and even Theoden through crises of the soul that aren't in the book, that he has to cram in as detours from the plot, and then laboriously (and inexplicably for the character arcs) dig his way back out of again because he doesn't want to depart from the story entirely. The reason this is wrong and unnecessary is because these men aren't the heroes of the story. They've already been through their testing. The hobbits are the real heroes, and the human warriors are there for the hobbits to look up to and emulate.

You're also really on to something in Jackson's use of the Ring as a stripper of agency. Tolkien's characters show agency in their ability to resist the Ring's lure; Boromir's great flaw is that he cannot do this. Jackson simplistically thinks that if the Ring is so alluring, nobody ought to be able to resist it.

I've noticed how Jackson removes characters' agency in other ways as well, and your comments help me put it all together. The most glaring example is Frodo at the Ford: in the book he's the rider of the horse, and defies the Nazgul himself; in the movie, he's the inert passenger, more the baggage, of Arwen riding the horse, and she defies the Nazgul for him. But there's more. Elijah Wood is a good actor; why is he so dreadful in these movies? Because the character he's trying to play has been stripped out from under him; there's nothing left for him to perform.

[green_knight]

I have not seen TSNGO and after all I've heard, don't want to: but I came away from the whole Hobbit trilogy with a different impression.

When so many of the allegedly noble folk fail, it is Radagast and Bilbo who come through, who do truly heroic deeds, who struggle and do the right thing anyway even though they haven't got much chance to succeed. Bilbo matters, not because he's a Grand Hero, but because he's an ordinary guy with a big heart, and he gives you hope that if not for him, there'd be someone else doing the right things.

[nsmorig]

I do think that that sort of view of Story with a capital S is something that doesn't exist in isolation: it comes from a view of the whole world, like everything that there is is some sort of Great Man theory of history, and that a person has to be fantastically brave or heroic or beautiful or tortured to be interesting. And I think that that's a terribly boring way to live.