Which brings us, in a funny way, to Peter Jackson's Movie rendition of LOTR... After all, isn't making a film of LOTR another aspect of discerning Tolkien's story?

I have written a review of Jackson's film that is posted on www.theonering.net. In it, I gave the film a 3.9 out of 5 stars. I wrote the film review on the day after the film came out. Since that was the case, it is obvious that what I wrote were first impressions on my first viewing. Since then, as of this writing, I have seen the film 5 times on the big screen. Some of my impressions have changed, and I think that I respect the film more on subsequent viewings.

December 19,2001 was a beautiful, Middle Earth Night in Houston Texas. The skies were partly cloudy, the sunset a bit grey. The day was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the evening was cool, but not cold. It all seemed so surreal to me, like it was in fact the evening of December 25, 3018 – the day the Fellowship left Imladris. As the movie previews ended, the crowd of Tolkien fanatics that filled the auditorium that midnight fell dead silent:

Many others of Elrond’s household stood in the shadows and watched them go, bidding them farewell with soft voices. There was no laughter, and no song or music. At last they turned away and faded silently into the dusk.

They crossed the bridge and wound slowly up the long steep paths that led out of the cloven value of Rivendell … Then with one glance at the Last Homely House twinkling below them they strode away far into the night.

And so it was that I began to behold something that I thought for years could never be done: I took the plunge into watching the first truly serious attempt to capture the magic of Tolkien on the Big Screen.

I sat and I watched. I was looking large at the screen trying to take in everything and anything I could think of – this was important. I had followed the Internet scoops almost daily for three years, but I had never publicly posted a word about what I thought. I felt going into the film that the casting was fairly strong, and I thought that the special effects would be there. But how would it be in capturing the magic of The Classic?

And when it was all over, I felt as though I was in a bit of a daze. I felt a bit numb. I commented to someone sitting next to me that “the film went BIG”. I got home at 3:45 am and I had to be at work at 7:45 am. My supervisor and co-workers knew that this was the Great Day. When I came in the following morning, I was wide awake, but I was not paying attention to my job. I sat there, brooding, brooding, brooding about the film. At one point, my boss looked at me and said in amazement, “You’re thinking about that movie aren’t you!” Late that morning or early that afternoon, I visited the TORN site  and posted my review under my own name. It marked my first introduction to the wider world of Tolkien fans outside of my reviews of Tolkien literary criticism that I posted in Febuary 2001 on Amazon.com.

It mattered little to me that the dialogue was not exactly the way it was in the story or that there were scenes such as Boromir teaching Merry and Pippin swordplay were not in the book. It mattered even less that the 17 years between Bilbo's party and the Great Events of 3018 - 3019 were represented as being compressed into a short period of time. The blunt fact of the matter is that you only have 3 hours of screen time to tell a huge, broad story and viewers who do not know the story don't necessarily need to know, for example, that 17 years passed between the Party and the Great Years. What is needed is cohererence in showing the characters, their development, and in showing the development of events. In fact, some of the written in dialogue and made up scenes may well have drawn a slight smile from the Professor himself. What is refreshingly clear by now is that millions of Tolkien fans from all over the world seem to have been very generous to Jackson by allowing him to play with the material a bit. New Line Executives and the New Zealand government weren’t the only ones who wanted the film to succeed. Many ordinary everyday people wanted the film to work too.

And what do fans get in return for their generosity?

Stephanie Zacharek from Salon.com has to be quoted again. She made the excellent observation that, "there were so many things about this film that could have gone wrong." Indeed, it is a tribute to Jackson and Company that they got an awful lot of this film right. It is likely that this track record will continue for the rest of the series.

So what were the things that I was really afraid of going into seeing this film? The main issues were:

1) Being afraid of seeing a film full of Heroic Medieval Hollywood Screenwriter Dialogue. In watching the film trailers, I was going absolutely crazy over what I saw in the Rivendell scene:

Aragorn to Frodo: "You have my sword."

Legolas to Frodo: "You have my bow."

Gimli to Frodo: "AND MY AXE!"


I was even more livid over what our favorite Elven queens were saying:

Arwen to the Ringwraiths: “If you want him, come and claim him!”


Galadriel to Frodo: “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

This was outrageous! What were those Hollywood screenwriters doing to my story? Tolkien would be rolling in his grave over dialogue like this!


Much to my endless relief, there was little of this in the film. Indeed, these scenes were the only ones where Heroic Medieval Hollywood Screenwriter Dialogue made it into the movie. Now that I think of it, was this a ploy on Jackson’s part to get people enraged and thereby see the movie? If so, that would be a Black Evil.


2) The Personification of Sauron: This was one of my chief worries of the story. I knew that the Last Alliance story would have to come out somehow in explaining the history of the Ring to viewers, but that would mean showing Sauron in the flesh.

Tolkien obeys the first rule of great story telling involving villains: NEVER SHOW THE VILLAIN! Sauron comes across as an abstraction in LOTR – the Lidless Eye. However, we don't need to know what Sauron looks like because we get an idea of what Sauron is really like just by looking at the Nazgul, visiting Mordor and viewing his works.

However, that still leaves the practical problem of the showing Sauron in the Battle against the Last Alliance. Sauron is a Deity! How do you show a deity who is supposed to be the personification of evil in the flesh on the big screen? To raise the stakes even higher, how do you show Sauron, who is  wielding the Ring no less, without somehow diminishing The Big Baddie himself?

Jackson and Company acquitted themselves well in dealing with Sauron. We never see Sauron's face (or does he have a face?). We see an appropriately hellish scene where Sauron, wrapped in gold, glories in his own creation by holding up his Ring adorned hand. Scenes are shown of people running away in fear and pandemonium as their kingdoms fall to the power of Ring's concentrated spiritual power.

We finally get to see the crucial scenes were Sauron decides to pay the Last Alliance battlefield a visit. Things aren't going to well for The Big Baddie. The Elves and Men are numerous and armed to the teeth. They're hot, they're motivated, and they've come to play hardball.

So they wanna play hardball 'eh?

We see Sauron, mace in hand, Ring burning with heat, stride into battle. We see Sauron walloping 10 heavily armed Men back to Minas Morgul here, whacking 15 more Elves out of Mordor on his next stroke. This is kids stuff. He could do this all day. Just another pleasant stroll down Mordor Boulevard for The Big Baddie himself. Chalk up yet another day of ruining hopes and singlehandedly turning the tide of yet another battle over the fate of Middle Earth against those pesky Elves and Men. When will they ever learn?

But our fearless heroes of old don't learn, do they? When Isuldur has the audacity to cut the Ring off of the Big Bogeyman's hand, the power of Sauron's malevolent spirit is shown flattening a few thousand more of his enemies as his dissolving body fades to ashes. When the Really Big Guns in the world go down, they go down really, really hard...

But wait! There's Round 2! We now behold the Lidless Eye. An arrogant and imperial Saruman chillingly tells Gandalf that Sauron's Eye, "... see's all. His Gaze Pierces Clouds, Shadow, Earth, and Flesh!" The Eye is terrifying. What will Sauron be like when regains his Great Ring? Oh, No!

3) Too much of Arwen the Politically Correct Warrior Princess. On a couple of my subsequent viewings, the film did in fact seem at times like a film about the boys going out for an adventure. No Girls allowed in the Club. That, however, does not necessarily mean that we have to prosecute Tolkien for failure to follow Affirmative Action Laws in his epic.

I have to admit that I have not seen Liv Tyler in any of her previous work. That's not hard for me to do since I rarely go to see movies anyway. She is certainly easy on the eyes, but taking roles in movies such as "One Night at McCools" didn't inspire much confidence that she should be in The One Movie That I Do Care About. I had her pegged as the type of girl who ran with crowds who avoid Tolkien types altogether. Too uncool, untrendy, and way too unglamorous those D&D players. What is a Halberd anyway and why do you care? I just don’t get it.

Jackson and Tyler did all right. Her presence didn’t ruin the story at all (is this another tribute to the depth of the story?) and the twist of having her summon the Waters at the Ford was a nice touch. I really liked the look on her face at the point where she was starting the summons because it almost seemed as if she was wondering if she was going to be able to finish the spell in time before the Nine got across the Ford. Lesson here: Arwen had home court advantage. A thankfully tireless Asfaloth and home court advantage were her only hopes against the amassed power of the Nine, but home court advantage ended up paying off big time. The doom of Middle Earth hung by a thread and Arwen saved the day.


Now that I think about it, one could argue that starring in this film was a really good career move for Ms. Tyler.

4) Hollywood Heroic Fighting. My definition of Hollywood Heroic Fighting is where a small band of heroes in any story easily defeat a mountain of bad guys while suffering nary a scratch to themselves. One of the big reasons I don’t often watch movies these days is because of Hollywood Heroic Fighting. The bad guys are always incompetent fighters, which in my view often destroys the tension of stories. Sadly, we do see of much of this in LOTR, but I was well prepared for this.

In a corollary to this, I was also interested in how Jackson was going to depict the power of the Nine. I thought his depiction of the Nazgul was relatively accurate. He shows how the Nine inspire terror in nearly everyone except for a handful of the Great and Noble. It was almost entirely by fire that Aragorn manages to drive off the Ringwraiths from Weathertop. It was interesting seeing how the five Ringwraiths manage to “recover from their wounds” they suffered at Weathertop to fight another day. My only complaint is that Jackson did not slip in any depiction of the Witch – King exercising some of his sorcery, but that is a minor complaint.


In summary, most of my fears about the film going into seeing the movie were assuaged. Thumbs up to all.


What were the best things I my view?

1) The filming and cinematography were really interesting. Even on my first viewing, one of the things I noticed about the movie itself was its dark edges and contours. Scenes throughout the movie often have gray, green, and bluish hues to them, which give those scenes an ever so slightly mysterious feel to them. In particular, scenes involving the Nine were really well done. The scenes showing the Nine riding from Minas Morgul, eventually reaching the Shire and Bree are excellent. Jackson also elected to show Caras Galadon in a similar light.


2) Jackson really has done a first rate job in trying to capture the grandeur of Tolkien’s creation. Indeed, the massive scale of Jackson’s presentation is the film’s strongest suit. He is trying to enthrall us. Events Occur and Move. Middle Earth’s great Chess game has started.

Did I in fact visit Hobbiton, Bree, Isengard, indeed Middle Earth itself? The answer simply is yes I did. Better yet, I can’t wait to see a ghastly Minas Morgul and to get an in depth tour of a proud Minas Tirith in the future films. I can’t help but think that Alan Lee had a lot to do with much of the scene conceptualization in these films.

In particular, I really liked how Bree was shown. It seems as though we have gone back to sixteenth century English town. The night watchman is an appropriately cranky old man who talks of “strange folk running about”. The scene is shown almost entirely from the viewpoint of the Hobbits. The streets are dark, muddy from rain, and slightly ominous. The streets and the tavern in The Prancing Pony (what a name for an inn!) show a town full of heartless, uncaring, shady ne’er – do – wells.

As a kicker, I didn’t notice until the fifth time I saw the film how Bree was shown in the background as Aragorn and the Hobbits leave the following day. My only complaint was that it could potentially be a mystery to some viewers (who may not have read the books) why was it that the Nazgul didn’t stick around town to try and waylay our heroes when they left the inn.

Perhaps my favorite 2 minutes or so of the film are the scenes that are shown as Gandalf leaves Frodo to find out the answers posed by the mysteries of the Ring:

The scenes cut immediately from one to another and the contrasts cannot be greater. We leave the comfortable confines of Bag End and sadly see the camera briefly linger on Frodo’s face. He seems uncomprehending and dumbfounded as his beloved, trusted mentor has to go once more into a wider world that Frodo knows little about.

The scenes swiftly change and the background music begins to rise in volume and power. The scene is now all in darkness. We are now far away from the Shire, at the top of one of the battlements of the Barad-dur itself. We see a restless Mount Doom in the distance, shrouded in clouds. A river of glowing lava flows into a moat of unimaginable depth.

The Enemy is on the move. Evil is busy, busy, ever busy. We see armies of Sauron’s slaves laboring onward. Lines of Sauron’s servants silently cross back and forth in torchlight over a great bridge that spans the moat. What they are doing, we can only guess. The scene then turns towards the sky. We hear the clinking of metal and see countless workers, torches and lights. They are rebuilding the mighty fortress. Sauron will be invincible.

Gollum, tortured, has now been captured by the servants of his greatest Rival. In bitter pain he screams out two words that make one’s blood curl. "Shire! Baggins!"  That’s all we need to know…

The Volcano erupts, and then, terror from the East. Here come the Nine!

The scene again swiftly changes. Suddenly, in incredible grandeur, we see Gandalf galloping towards a hill top. He briefly halts. He is near to the Great City of Gondor. Minas Tirith must be brave, for in the distance we see an Omen. The Mountain bursts and the heavens above Mordor are seared with fire and lightning. What hope is there left in the World?

The camera then closes in on the face of Gandalf who beholds the Drama unfolding before him. It is a face that is near to anger, full of determination and purpose. If there’s any hope left in all the world, we know it must be with him. He forcefully pulls the horse aside and rides on.

                                   
                  
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