The Hobbit Trailer

Plane Sailing · Jan 4, 2012

Celebrim said:
PJ's original drafts were horrid (or even more horrid depending on your perspective).

Where did you come across these? I avoid rubbernecking on the road, but...

Celebrim · Jan 4, 2012

Plane Sailing said:
Where did you come across these? I avoid rubbernecking on the road, but...

I was part of a Tolkien fan community site prior to the release of the movies. A member of the community was loosely associated with the production and managed to steal portions of the early scripts (some as early as audition scripts), as well as leak information about the scenes being shot to the fan community forums. This allowed us to be continually informed about cast and plot changes prior to the movies releases. Granted, PJ was redoing the script almost daily.

Over the course of production, the script in general moved toward greater faithfulness to the books. PJ admitted this in an interview with a magazine prior to the movies release, how some of his ideas had seemed cute initially, but paled upon further reflection.

I wish I could easily dig up the links for these assertions, but its been so long since the movies released that it would be a major effort.

As for damage to the character of the characters, that would also be my biggest complaint with the films, and no character was done more damage - inadvertently and deliberately - than that of Frodo himself. The inadvertant damage was done by what could be considered a combination of the unfortunate result of necessary truncations to the story, misplaced desire to give the story a female lead, and bad direction. By that I mean that in the book, Frodo is given virtually the entire 'Fellowship' to establish himself as a truly heroic figure in a more classic sense of what it means to be a hero. It is Frodo that breaks the spell of Old Man Willow and finds Tom Bombadill. It is Frodo that breaks that spell of the Barrow Wight and slashes off its hand with its own sword. Frodo defies the Witch King and goes down fighting on Weathertop, and though it is foolish he confronts the entire gathered Nine by himself and defies them at the Ford. Frodo stabs the Mountain Troll and drives it away when Aragorn and Boromir are at a loss. In short, Frodo is shown as a brave, wise, and hyper-competent individual throughout 'Fellowship', which is necessary because there after he's going to spend most of his time being crushed by the Ring and his heroism is going to derive from apparent weakness - like Mercy and Humility. Without this setup, its difficult to relate to Frodo as the hero - something that indeed is hard to do in the first place because we aren't used to heroes like Frodo. Most people end up preferring Sam, which is unfair to Frodo.

This is almost excusible, except for two things. One, PJ goes out of his way to direct Frodo as a pathetic weakling. I don't know how many scenes we get of Frodo which are close ups of him in agony and terror. It's pretty much all he does throughout all three movies. I mean, PJ directs all the characters in a redundant and slipshod manner (how many scenes do we get of Aragorn falling off something and lying unconscious after the fall), but its especially bad with Frodo. And even that might be considered excuseable except that PJ goes all Ioreth on the story and totally and deliberately subverts it. PJ has Frodo kill Gollum as his one heroic moment in the whole story. The one time we see Frodo excercising strength, it's to kill Gollum, and undo all his (and Bilbo's!) former mercy and compassion. And unless you think this is a mere interpretation of the chaotic action of the fight scene, it's actually written into the script that Frodo pushes Gollum into the lava.

I'm prepared to forgive a lot as the requirements of adapting a story to a different medium, but that's not one of them. This is a guy who reshot the entire scene of Gandalf arriving at the Battle of Helm's Deep because the stunt man used a saddle in the first take. It's not like we are dealing with someone who doesn't have an eye for detail. This was a deliberate change because PJ believes that the Ioreth story is the story of the movie as it ought to be.

Plane Sailing · Jan 4, 2012

Thanks for the interesting reply!

Celebrim said:
except that PJ goes all Ioreth on the story and totally and deliberately subverts it.

...

This was a deliberate change because PJ believes that the Ioreth story is the story of the movie as it ought to be.

I'm not sure that I follow the references here about Ioreth - could you clarify for me?

Thanks

Celebrim · Jan 5, 2012

Plane Sailing said:
I'm not sure that I follow the references here about Ioreth - could you clarify for me?

Thanks

Sure. Tolkien has a lot going on in the story, and its easy to miss a lot of the substance in the big epic sweep of events and the detailed word pictures he spends so much time painting. Also, I think that the sort of literary analysis that we are trained to do leaves us rather ill-prepared for somone like Tolkien - even if we think to do it during an 'escapist' adventure story.

Ioreth is an old 'wise' woman who works in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, and she has a couple of minor roles in the story. Her larger purpose in the story - beyond providing comedy - is to provide a ground level viewpoint of the big epic events going on around her. She, along with a few other common voices, is our representative in the story. After the culmination of the quest and the ring is destroyed, one of the first things that happens is the coronation of Aragorn as the king. Now Ioreth has a cousin who lives in an outlying village who has, throughout the course of events, been hiding in the safety of the hills far from the war, and now that's she has come to the big city for the coronation she wants a recap of the main events and players. So, during the coronation, Ioreth tries to keep her abreast of things. Of course, since Ioreth herself has only a limited viewpoint, in addition to enlarging her own importance, she gets almost all of it wrong.

In particular, Ioreth in describing Frodo's role in the story says, paraphrased down, "You must not judge him by his stature, for he went alone into Mordor with only his squire and defeated Sauron in a duel, and threw him down and his tower."

What Tolkien is pointing out through the tale of Ioreth is how we as humans prefer to view heroism. We would like the essential element of the heroic to be: kicks ass. We want: "Little monkey man beats up big monkey man and has sex with girl monkey." And so the vast majority of the hero tales we tell are about 'kicking ass', and the vast majority of heroes we create have as their defining feature 'kicks ass'. What Ioreth imagines the story of the Ring to be about is, in brief, "It doesn't matter how small you are, you can do great things like defeat your enemies through acts of violence." This is the natural, common sense view of the story, but it is - as Tolkien makes great effort to point out - entirely and ridiculously wrong. Indeed, in some small way, Tolkien is pointing out that the reason the world is so broken is that we want and admire the wrong sort of heroes, and faced with a real hero, we will do all we can to make them fit in to our wrong way of looking at things.

Tolkien's story is an anti-quest. A small and unimportant person goes on a quest to defeat evil by destroying a weapon for no other reason than a people he trusts ask him to do so, and having no hope of reward for his sacrifice. Meanwhile, while the humble do great things, the great wise people are sent to perform a pointless diversion in a largely pointless war in which they cannot win. This is not the story we naturally want to hear, but it was the sort of story Tolkien thought we should cultivate a taste for. Intead, when we bring his story to the masses and try to explain it to them, we end up doing just as Ioreth did. And it really does make me sad, and I think it breaks the good Professor's heart (though he fully expected it).

Gentlegamer · Jan 5, 2012

Celebrim, I often agree with you on many things. But here, I think you are quite wrong about Peter Jackson and Tolkien in several respects.

I may be back later with more detail, but I'll just say:

1. Our representatives, the common people, in Lord of the Rings, are the hobbits themselves. If you want to analyze what is meant by the common point of view, look to their reactions to events. For instance, Sam's realization that they are part of a much larger story that had began long, long ago, that was also filled with seeming hopeless moments.

2. While you want to say Ioreth embodies the 'ignorance' of the common people (in her misunderstanding of true heroism), despite what may be called her 'ditzy' character, she also represents the solid, grounded wisdom of the people (also evident when Sam resists the Ring's call to power) when she recalls "The hands of the King are the hands of a healer," whereby Aragorn fulfills his own heritage by proving himself worthy of being a king rather than by being a warlord. In the story itself, Frodo's true tale is praised with the lay of "Frodo the Nine-Fingered and the Ring of Doom" by the minstrel of Gondor, much to the delight of Samwise. If anything, Ioreth's take on events represents how legends are made, where events are distorted by distance and time; the stories of Middle-earth itself can be analyzed as Tolkien providing the "true story" of how several real-world myths were started, being a "splintered fragment of the true light."

Celebrim · Jan 5, 2012

Gentlegamer said:
Celebrim, I often agree with you on many things. But here, I think you are quite wrong about Peter Jackson and Tolkien in several respects.

Fire away.

1. Our representatives, the common people, in Lord of the Rings, are the hobbits themselves.

Well, yes and no. While its true that the hobbits represent simplicity, three of the particular four hobbits with which the story are most concerned are drawn from the landed gentry. Between them Frodo, Merry, and Pippin represent most of the aristocratic and monied interests in Hobbiton and are themselves uncommon for many reasons. Frodo is after all 'the best Hobbit in the Shire' and is conversant in Elvish and versed in all manner of lore and wisdom. They are sufficiently uncommon to be considered wierd, and were they not noble in the social sense they probably wouldn't be able to get away with their ecentric mores and behavior. To actually get down to the level of the common hobbit, the common man as it were, we have to consider more the opinions of the Gaffer, Ted Sandyman, or Odo Proudfoot than rarified individuals like the heirs of the Tooks and Brandybucks - to say nothing of the heir of Bilbo.

Sam straddles the gulf between the truly common and the truly noble and respresents something of an idolized commoner.

For instance, Sam's realization that they are part of a much larger story that had began long, long ago, that was also filled with seeming hopeless moments.

Sam and Frodo's discussion of the meaning of stories on the pass of Cirith Ungol is the real heart of the story, but by no means is Sam's profound realization of his place and purpose in the universe - literally as it were discovering the answer to life, the universe, and everything - meant to be the common and ordinary understanding of life. Sam is standing on a high place at that point. He's not seeing the story from ground level.

While you want to say Ioreth embodies the 'ignorance' of the common people (in her misunderstanding of true heroism), despite what may be called her 'ditzy' character, she also represents the solid, grounded wisdom of the people (also evident when Sam resists the Ring's call to power) when she recalls "The hands of the King are the hands of a healer,"

First of all, I don't at all deny that Ioreth embodies both the wisdom and foolishness of common sense - just as Sam himself does. She certainly comes off better than the learned academic in the scene. As I said, she serves several roles in the story. However, I do think that she is one of the stories ordinary voices. She's actually quite possibly my favorite character in the story, so by no means think that I'm being insulting to Ioreth. She's so real and drawn with so much affection and compassion by Tolkien.

However, I think Tolkien doesn't believe in the "solid, grounded wisdom of the people". There is certainly no simplistic praising of the proletariat here. I think the commentary he's making on wisdom through characters like Sam, Ioreth, and Beregond is more complicated than that. Sam for example has far too much faith in his "hobbit-sense" for his good, and in many cases his confidence is not born of wisdom but of ignorance. He likewise has the arrogance of the unlearned in assuming that anyone with learning must be somewhat of a fool. But on the other hand, Tolkien doesn't simply back his own academic social classes biases either, and instead does really praise the common folk as a source of practical wisdom. Indeed, I can't help but think to some extent Tolkien has read his Erasmus and is not praising folly. Certainly, that 'fool of a Took' tends to do things that are stupid, but which work out in the end.

Even though Sam is only 'half-wise', that still puts him up above the level of common understanding, and by the end of the story he is 'full wise' having come by his wisdom the hard but sure way - by making mistakes and learning from them.

Ioreth, bless her heart, doesn't strike me as someone who is so teachable nor so humble.

If anything, Ioreth's take on events represents how legends are made...

I don't at all deny that Tolkien is commenting on myth making in general here, but I think you do him a disservice by not examining the particular sort of myth that is being created in the light of the major theme of the story. Tolkien is not a perfect writer, but he is very subtle in his thought and he seldom does anything with only a single purpose and in my experience he seldom has failed to think through the consequences of what he writes. Thinking that he was being shallow and has hindered my understanding of Tolkien too many times where I didn't take a second look at something until the third or fourth time I read it.

"splintered fragment of the true light."

I liked Pearse and Flieger's writings well enough, and Flieger in particular did a great service by finally putting the rest of academia on more of the right track and ended the era of truly profoundly wrong-headed academic writing on Tolkien where someone could with a straight face claim LotR was an allegory of WWII, but so far I don't think I've read an academic who gets Tolkien better than Wood. I think that one of the problems academics have when they tackle Tolkien is that they are trained to start looking for allegory that constructs some clear narrative behind the plain narrative. Tolkien may use the fragment of light in Galadriel's glass to represent certain things, but that doesn't make the story allegorical or simply followed by looking for symbols, or that his symbols are meant to mean one thing only. Tolkien uses symbols the way a painter uses color, but Tolkien isn't a modernist - the symbols aren't the meaning of the work.