In February 2008, the Tolkien Trust sued New Line Cinema, the studio behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for £75 million claiming they had not received "even one penny" from the films. A request for punitive damages was denied in September 2008. (In March 2008, New Line Cinema became a unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment.) The case was resolved out of court on 8 September 2009 with the terms not made public.
In a press release, Christopher Tolkien stated, "The Trustees regret that legal action was necessary, but are glad that this dispute has been settled on satisfactory terms that will allow the Tolkien Trust properly to pursue its charitable objectives. The Trustees acknowledge that New Line may now proceed with its proposed films of 'The Hobbit.'"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578442/JRR-Tolki...
If I had to pin it on one thing, it was that Peter Jackson and team were extremely good at portraying evil in all of its ugliness but failed to portray "goodness" with equal skill (which admittedly is not an easy thing to do!). While the honest goodness of the Hobbits was wonderful, the portrayals of "good" characters such as Aragorn and Galadriel fell very flat. This is not to blame on the actors at all as I thought Viggo did an awesome job; but the screenplay needlessly muddled the character.
Also, where was the damn poetry?
There were too many radical departures from what JRR Tolkien was trying to do for me to still enjoy it.
I particularly loved the small touches; Boromir teaching the hobbits to use their swords, for example, helped make him a much more sympathetic and tragic figure than Tolkien did.
From Two Towers on the changes became considerably less good though; throwing out much of the plot incolving Saruman in favour of an invented-out-of-whole-cloth side quest for Aragorn was a terrible decision and, as you say, the changes to Faramir were appalling.
One positive, though, was emphasising the point that Frodo failed and the ring was destroyed by chance? That was good, because it was a key moral point Tolkien wished to make.
Perhaps it would've made ROTK the first dual-part series finale movie (like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, Avengers) of its kind.
So, one of the main points (the main point?) is missed, as well as Saruman's proper death.
If ROTK had been made into a two-parter finale it could have worked, perhaps. Or maybe a separate spin-off film for the Scouring.
He is a bit of an odd character, especially with no context of the Silmarillion.
I think that's a fair comment. I would go even further--in fact I did, some time ago:
While the last time I read the whole trilogy was around 1988, while still at school, it (and the Silmarillion) are sort of etched into my memory. I've been putting off re-reading it for ages, but maybe it's time to do that. I will be sure to re-read your essay too.
Thank you again.
I have lost count of the number of times I have re-read Tolkien's works. I first read The Hobbit in 7th grade, and went right on to LotR. It was some time before I was able to get my hands on a copy of The Silmarillion (the hard cover edition--I still have it), but I remember reading it almost straight through once I got it, because I was so keen to see what was in it after reading the appendices to LotR.
Thank you for the feedback!
For example, when they're going down the river and being pursued from the shore... come on, nearly everything in that scene is CGI and screams "we were hoping to make a theme park ride, here's the trailer!", honestly I could have lived without that scene entirely.
I did not watch any of them when they first came out though, perhaps they were better at the time but watching them now they almost feel The 10th Kingdom quality.
(Wyrm vs dragon)
The Hobbit, on the other hand, was awful. Way too much bad CGI. (Never mind all the other problems with that adaptation.)
And in my mind, the theme park ride started as soon as the dwarves were captured by the goblins, with the mind-blowing minecart sequence. I did not realize I was paying $14 to watch "Goblin Snuff Amusement Park Expert Swordfighter Drunken Master Ride: Part I, The Enpartening".
And the worst of all - they left out Tom Bombadil. His character showed what state you need to be in to not be affected by the ring.
The weirdest part is Gollum; everyone seemed to like the portrayal in Fellowship, but then Jackson threw it out the window.
Perhaps he was a bit too gruff or something, especially in the Fellowship of the Ring? I could possibly see that because in the book he was definitely clear-cut 'rough and ready good-guy'.
In the movies he's a blubbering wuss. He whines about how weak he is and how weak men are, he talks about how he doesn't want to lead, he can't lead, blah blah blah. It takes Elrond saying, "you're not getting any elf strange if you don't act like a leader," for him to shape up.
And Storytelling 101 tells us that an important protagonist needs to have a character arc.
The thing is, Aragorn doesn't have a character arc in the LOTR books. His character is largely static. His entire arc was in the backstory, prior to the events of the books. By the time the book starts, he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what he's willing to do to get it, and he does it.
The film, in order to give him an arc, muddied those waters. He turns from being a noble, confident, driven man, into a wishy-washy one-foot-in-one-foot-out wandering stoner, who spends most of his time moping, and the rest with no idea of what he wants, or what he should do to get it.
It makes for character development, but it is not an accurate portrayal of his book character. Much of his nobility in the books comes from him not having these kinds of hangups - he knows what the right thing to do is, and he does it, and people around him are awed by his conviction and charisma.
I usually don't like 'great man' stories, but I have a soft spot for his part in the LOTR books.
Not only that, but even the character arc in the backstory (the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen) is nothing like the arc portrayed in the movies. Even as a young man, Aragorn is noble, confident, and driven: he is only twenty years old when he returns from great deeds in the company of the sons of Elrond and is told his true name and lineage, and from that point he knows he wants to fulfill that lineage; he is never in any doubt about it. His character arc is about all of the things he has to do and all of the knowledge he has to gain in order to be able to fulfill his lineage when the time comes.
In the film, he hemms and hawws, and can't make up his mind of whether or not he wants to be king, but he never actually articulates a single reason for why he would not want to be one.
The film:
* Expects the audience fill in the blank for why he doesn't want to be a leader.
* Tries to make him more sympathetic as a leader, by turning him into a reluctant leader, as opposed to a guy seizing power because... Something something nobility, something something hereditary monarchy is how things are done in Middle Earth, but doesn't fly super-well for modern audiences..?
What was a tough pill to swallow was the self-doubt infused into the character. I know I know, character development, relatability, etc etc. But, c'mon, Aragorn is the damned KING and a leader with unflinching will (a contrast to many around him).
...
Also, where was the damn standard w/ the White Tree, Elendil when Aragorn arrived at the boat?!
I don't know if any film could really capture that, especially to Christoper's satisfaction. But the movies are action-adventure blockbusters, and the books really aren't. It's notable that the Battle of the Hornburg was only about a page of text, but close to an hour of screen time. That kind of shift of focus recurs throughout the adaptation. Tolkien was creating an alien world; Jackson gave us a familiar Sort Of Middle Ages Or Something.
The films did manage to capture the age of the world better than anybody could possibly have imagined. Jackson hired the best artists, famed for producing images that were better than Tolkien's own, and capturing a lot of what Christopher would treasure in the book. As a series of still images, Christopher should have found a lot to admire in the films. But the dialogue doesn't achieve the same.
But if LoTR hadn't accomplished what it did in its three hours, I don't think GoT would have GOTTEN its dozen hours. I think people underestimate how massively speculative fiction movies (especially fantasy and comic book adaptations) have improved in the last 20 years.
If you compare Jackson's LoTR to Ralph Bakshi's 1978 adaptation, they simply don't play in the same league at all.
That, of course, will depend on the thing Amazon is doing. And on what happens with the rights now that Christopher is gone. I personally was happy to think that he was defending The Silmarillion from a godawful adaptation -- and I just don't see any way to do it well. But there will be many who disagree, and if it has to be done, a TV series format might be the least-worst way. (See https://mythgard.org/silmfilm/, which has been treating it as an intellectual exercise for several years.)
As I understand it, Tolkien was trying to create a national mythology for England, so he wouldn't have intended the setting to be completely alien, as he wanted its archetypes to resonate with his own culture.
Also the main reason the films seem like a familiar medieval fantasy setting is that Tolkien basically invented the high fantasy genre and its tropes. I think one movie reviewer even panned the Lord of the Rings as being too generic and derivative, when in fact everyone else has been copying Tolkien for decades.
This is pretty debatable c.f. endless scholarship on the connections between LOTR and (a) Tolkein's feelings about England post-WWI and (b) Tolkein's deep connections with actual existing mythology and legend. "Different world", perhaps, but "alien world" seems a bit much.
Not changing complex and interesting characters with boring Hollywood tropes (Denethor, Treebeard, Faramir)? Following Tolkein's carefully thought-out timeline of how and when and why things would have happened, rather than making every action scene a hollywood trope, where the bad guys can't hit anything and the good guys can't miss?
The best film adaptation of a book I've ever seen is the Sense and Sensibility adapted by Emma Thompson. You can't make a movie identical to a book; it doesn't work -- they're different art forms. Emma Thompson cut out big scenes, chopped out characters, and made a load of changes to make the situation more accessible to a modern audience -- but the heart of the story, and the character of the people in it, are true to the novel.
The movies jumped the shark for me when Faramir said he was going to "arrest" Frodo and bring him to Denethor. I watched the third film, but I'd emotionally checked out at that point.
And, further, the movies fall far, far short of the images your own imagination can create from these classics.
And they even pollute your imagination with the limitations of the director's choices.
Exactly why I never watched the films, despite being a huge Tolkien fan from about age 9 to 16. The thought of how Hollywood would depict elves was particularly off-putting for me. I've never regretted not watching them, even when the hype was at its greatest, and any glimpses of screenshots that I've chanced upon have only confirmed that I made the right choice.
https://www.themarysue.com/the-story-of-eowyn/
But even apart from that, when such huge chunks of screentime were devoted to these epic battle scenes, you do get the sense that the priorities at the top level were not quite aligned to what was in the book. Even compared to the 1981 BBC radio play (13 hours total), you feel like the movies missed a lot of good stuff.
I for one loved reading the books as a kid and I felt that some scenes (Legolas shield surfing and flying between elephants) were a bit too "cheap" and unnecessary. I enjoyed the films by telling myself that there was a lot of good that offset those bads but perhaps that's easier to do when you are young than when you are on your 70s
The latter was bad but the former was incredibly out of place. It's the one scene I'd cut.
The movies gloss over all of that to focus purely on the story.
It's hard to have pages and pages of explanation of a world in a movie. The movies do that by exploring that history in the set pieces and characters, and I think most people would agree they do a magnificent job of it.
"... although I will note ... that a two-hour movie will not cram the entire complexity of the novel I wrote into its 120-minute running time."
"And that’s fine, and as it turns out, necessary. Movies are not books. Movies are adaptations of books, for another medium entirely. When filmmakers try to make their movies simply a “faithful” version of the book that runs at 24 frames a second, the results (speaking as a former full-time professional film critic) tend to be dreadful more often than not. I don’t want a movie of Old Man’s War that’s a retread of what I’ve already done in the book. What I want is an adaptation and interpretation of what I’ve written that’s interesting and exciting, and is faithful to the idea and feel of the universe I created."
It's been a long time since I saw the LOTR films (and never bothered to see The Hobbit, so I can't comment on those), but, as I recall, that's more or less what Peter Jackson did.
Lots of more modern fiction, written by people who think of stories first in the cinematic sense even as they are writing them, you can almost derive the film from the book. Say, Jurassic Park, for example. The departures from the novel were incidental, and the film could've been made even more faithful to the text but for the desires of the producers.
I think it's easy for many people who are used to a diet of truly terrible adaptations to mistake one which is merely bad for something excellent.
(I think pretty much everything about those films was very good, except for the script, which was poor on both a large and small scale.)
Even in the world of software, how many of us have worked on a project for a long time only to hand it off to someone else, and find it hard not to have strong opinions about how they work with it, when it's no longer our responsibility?
The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was as transformative for fantasy as Star Wars was for science fiction - people didn't even think the trilogy could be filmed, much less be successful, as fantasy (like comic books and, ironically, science fiction before Star Wars) was considered cheesy, juvenile schlock forever doomed to box office failure. Peter Jackson not only filmed the unfilmable, but wound up creating what many people would consider one of the greatest motion picture trilogies ever, on many levels, beyond just spectacle. There are probably millions more Tolkein fans across the world just because the trilogy was as good as it was.
Given that the canonical onscreen adaptation of the trilogy until that point was a cartoon by Filmation from the 70s, I would hope purists could maybe see the silver lining around the cloud.
Also if you're selling it in a movie format, you have to be able to bring in the general masses. That means cutting down a lot of the intricacies.
* Helm's Deep went on way too long, it was like 45 minutes of battle
* Legolas's action scenes were a little too over the top for my taste (Oliphaunt tail slide, surfing on a shield). I'm not sure the iffy CGI helped.
* Poor Faramir
As far as Legolas's action scenes, are you referring to the elephant? That one was CGI, but the scene of him sliding down the stairs on a shield was actually a practical effect done with wire work. The only CGI in that scene was the removal of the wires I believe.
Yes, Faramir's story is tragic but I think that's kind of the point of his story; isn't it?
I think I sort of prefer showing him struggle with it and then make the right decision rather than just making the right decision easily. Resisting the temptation makes him more heroic.
The main one was a flashback that shows his relationship with Boromir and the toxic effects of Denithor's favouritism.
The film made him look weak, violent and rash but in the books he was the polar opposite of all three.
It did make him more human, so it's not entirely bad. In the books he, like Aragorn, is a paragon of humanity, straight up just better than the rest of us.
You have living elves that remember them originally going into the west. You have the history after they came back, including several who where there. Some know the Valar personally. You can be reasonably confident of the history. Heck, you have Maiar wandering around. And then you have Bombadil. Who is he? Nobody knows! Not the elves, not the Maiar. What does he want? To sing goofy songs. It's beautiful!