Artist intent versus viewer perception
 

Feel free to kill this thread if it's been done before.

I've been watching the movie with the commentaries running - designers for starters but then got interested in cast commentary later in FOTR & Two Towers.

Two interesting points came out from it.

Theoden's character explaining that he was trying to get across the idea of slowly coming back from decrepitude, not entirely trusting Gandalf at first. One instance is that Gandalf grabs his arm the way Wormtongue used to, and it brings back to Theoden that sense of "do I - can I trust him?"

Here's the thing - (sure, it's different from the book, so much is, I don't care to take this thread in that direction) - that was totally lost on me in all my viewings until I heard his commentary. It looked to me like Theoden was being willfully obstructionist, and I found it really irritating.

I'd be interested to read others' takes on that and other such instances.

Here's another one: commentary from the designers came out that they showed Two Towers Uruk Hai as aging and Return of the King Uruk Hai as experiments gone badly wrong.

What I remember is seeing this gray haired, slightly aged Uruk, and I remember thinking - ah, a somewhat hale and smart orc to have lasted to old age.

In other words, I totally missed the designer's intent.

How about others?

This reminds me of a story about a different film director/designer... In one of his films there is a clanking sound when someone is being shaken. When someone asked him why it is there, he replied, "The critics will think of some reason".

This seems to go the opposite way, though. Honestly, I didn't notice any difference between the Uruks. They were all equally orcs and smudged with white paint to me. I don't remember noticing any grey-haired ones. :confused: Same goes for Gandalf/Theoden/Wormtongue.

I think they put all kinds of details in that are meant to signify something, but these details need more emphasis if they want the audience to catch them.

Interesting topic, lmp! I think it just goes to show how very, very hard it is to make a truly great movie. Any given intention on the part of the artists making a film has the potential of being undercut, or distorted, or subverted, or unclear, or simply unnoticed because of some other decision or chain of decisions.

It takes a lot of talent and at least a little luck to be able to balance all the millions of decisions and intentions of dozens of artists in a way that is simply coherent, let alone in a way that serves the overall intentions of the story. And then those intentions have to be sound -- powerful, insightful, resonant, emotional, whatever.

I read this theory recently that the reason Spielberg is so successful is because there is never any doubt as to what he means in a given moment. He is great at leading you through very clear series of cause and effect. The critic argued that this great strength is also his greatest limitation: there is never any ambiguity to what he does. It's an interesting theory. See here if you're interested in checking out the discussion (warning -- it's part of a looooooong article about how action works -- or doesn't -- in film).

Anyway, to more specifically reply, I remember watching the director commentary on the scene where the Black Rider almost catches Frodo and company in the forest. They're hiding, and the Rider comes near, and all these bugs start crawling on the hobbits, and Jackson said the intention there was something like that the Rider was so terrible that even the bugs were fleeing from him. When I watched the scene, though, it felt more like his evil aura or whatever was drawing these creepy things towards him. So, intention not received.

Just as well– the intended version... well, it's just too funny. Like an animated kiddie film. You can imagine all the little critters squeaking, "Crawl! Crawl for your lives!":D

Btw, that article you linked to, Mr Underhill, is really quite interesting... once you get past the bizarre presentation, anyway.

Thanks for the reference to cause & effect in Spielberg, Mister Underhill. What does that say about Peter Jackson?

Did you ever wonder/notice how much of what's in LotR the movie is because of Peter Jackson's unabashed love for blood, guts, creepy crawlies, gore, ugly? How about theme and variation in orcs? Huh, that almost founds like a musical work. :D Gothmog. Some orcs are more successfully presented than others. The one in charge who is NOT a Uruk at Shelob's Lair and in the tower of Cirith Ungol especially good. Why didn't they just name him Shagrat in the movie, and have done?

And why no Grishnack? I think I've asked that before so leave it alone if you like. If the point was to show how much pull the Ring had, why remove ol' Grish?

What's the intent behind the major moral failure of Aragorn lopping off the head of Mouth of Sauron during parley? "Well, Mouth of Sauron was evil, right? So it's okay to kill him 'cuz he's evil." If that is the reason, one had better make sure just what's evil and not! But the point! YOU DO NOT BREAK THE RULE OF NO VIOLENCE DURING PARLEY. IT'S A MAJOR COMPROMISE OF ONE'S HONOR. Why doesn't Peter Jackson know that?

I LOL'ed!

Yes, Film Crit Hulk takes some getting used to, but I think he has some really great insights and ideas about film if you can just go with the flow.
Well, it's a continuum, right? I think Jackson often loses sight of the big picture for the sake of a gag in the moment, whether it's a JUMP! of surprise, a burp joke, a bit of shield-surfing, a gross-out image, what have you. His focus is more on the moment-to-moment without always being in control (or sometimes, being aware) of how a given choice might be undermining what he's trying to accomplish overall. And he obviously isn't always able to manage the clarity of intention of a Spielberg (though not many do).
I think again it goes back to Jackson favoring going for something extreme in the moment over a careful control of what he's building in the overarching narrative. A digitally enlarged mouth is a more arresting visual. A beheading is more shocking and visually interesting than both sides just riding away, even though it happens to subvert the personality of one of your most important characters.

I think this was Jackson's intent all along and is consistent with how he treated the character of Aragorn. He portrays him as a man who is not comfortable with his position as the Heir to Gondor and who cannot accept that honour. As such, a violent reaction to an emissary would not be out of character. I always think that this change was put there as Jackson maybe felt the modern audience would nto be comfortable with the idea of a clear cut hero with masses of honour, a mistake as it happens, when you consider how the audience/readership idolised the honour driven Ned Stark in A Game of Thrones.

Still, it's perhaps the most jarring incidence of Aragorn behaving without honour and maybe they did not intend him to be quite so arrogant at this stage of the narrative.

I believe both you and Mr. Underhill are on the right track, Lal; however, I would like to add that Jackson often takes a simplistic or sophomoric attitude towards his productions. In an almost teenage, giggling regression he reverts to his B-grade horror flick roots, where explodey things and buckets of blood take precedence over more mature scripting.

Somewhere in the extended version there was an allusion to his immature streak: he kept demanding that the mace used by the WitchKing in his battle with Eowyn be made larger and more menacing. I believe they enlarged the mace 3 or 4 times until it had the epic proportions of a school bus. I don't believe there was any thought given to Aragorn's honor or dishonor in his parley with MoS. As was inferred by Underhill, the shock value of beheading MoS (a clear and egregious breaking of a truce) trumped any consideration to the value of the characterization. Add in the joke said directly thereafter, and you have the personification of Jackson's directing style.

His method of oversimplification, juvenility and underestimating the viewer takes place quite often through the trilogy: in his denuding Faramir of nobility, in making Denethor a pathetically evil nutbag, turning Treebeard into a dottering hobbit's dupe, having the Scrubbing Green Bubbles of Death(TM) overrun Sauron's army at Minas Tirith, of Frodo sending Sam away, of making the Mumakil so impossibly gigantic that the riders of Rohirrim seemed like scurrying mice, making wargs (wolves by all Tolkien's descriptions) look like giant gangrel hyenas, plopping the glowing Eye of Sauron atop the Barad-dur radio beacon, etc.

Hm. This thread makes it appear that PJ's problem was not necessarily that audience members failed to see his "vision" for the movies; rather that many completely understood it, and thought it merely misguided and incongruous with the text of the books it is based upon.

The obvious question I have is whether the "vision" of the movies would be so opaque if it had stuck closer to the source material.

That the intent of a film-maker or an author does not come across to the audience is an old problem.

As an old example better known than some, Shakespeare’s Henry V is interpreted very differently by different commentators. Some see him a Shakespeare’s idea of an almost perfect king, a true hero. Some see Shakespeare pointing out how Henry V again and again falls below true virtue. They interpret the same scenes differently.

So what was Shakespeare’s intention?

Tolkien pointed out in various places that The Lord of the Rings was not an allegory and that, mostly, attempting to interpret names in his works as keys to what he was writing about would not yield valid results. That doesn’t prevent commentator after commentator coming out with new explanations about how one should really understand Tolkien.

Again and again I have encountered conversations between and author and a supposed fan in which the supposed fan attempted to explain what an author supposedly really meant and the author rather convincingly denied it.

Douglas R. Hofstadter is obviously a very careful writer. His most popular work is Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid in which each chapter discusses at the same time a philosophical/logical concept and a musical concept while the chapter in its format imitates the discussion. And at the same time the book manages to be hilariously funny. in 1979 the book won both the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fictionand and the National Book Award for Science.

The 20th anniversary edition of the book contains a new prologue about what this very popular book was about. One senses Hofstadter’s frustration:

Needless to say, this widespread confusion has been quite frustrating to me over the years, since I felt sure I had spelled out my aims over and over in the text itself. Clearly however, I didn’t do it sufficiently often, or sufficiently clearly. But since I’ve got the chance to do it once more — and in a prominent spot in the book, to boot — let me try one last time to say why I wrote this book, what it is about, and what its principal thesis is.

In a word, GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.

Hofstadter goes on, filling in more details. That people didn’t get this is understandable because the book covers so many interlaced things, most of them worthy of a book on their own. Indeed Hofstadter had not really indicated that this, among so much that appears in his book, was for him the principle thread and meaning. Other readers found features of the book that was of more interest to them.

There is a common critical belief that it doesn’t matter what any literary (of film) creator says about his or her intent. All that matters is what the audience perceives and every perception is equally valid. So any literary or film or parts of it may have many contradictory meanings at the same time. That the perception of some of the audience sometimes matches that of the creator doesn’t particularly matter.

I disagree with this. When one speaks one is usually trying to get a particular meaning across. Sometimes the speaker may unintentionally be more ambiguous than he or she intended. Sometimes the listener may not properly hear or understand everything that the speaker says. Sometimes indeed it may be impossible to determine the meaning. But it is going too far to claim that therefore any meaning that may be read into an utterance is as valid as any other.

Often, as in the case mentioned by littlemanpoet, where the intent of Théoden’s actions don’t come across, misunderstanding occurs. But in every case it would be wrong to always blame the speaker/portrayer as not sufficient indicating intent and would also be wrong to always blame the perceiver for being imperceptive.

I tend to agree with juvenility and immediacy of the moment as characteristics in Jackson's approach that defeated more honorable, virtuous, approaches.

However, let's suppose that one could find justification for Aragorn to lop off the head of MoS in this movie. After all, Jackson DOES indeed underestimate the ability of a modern audience to appreciate honor (which may say something about Jackson). Is his intention effective within the confines of his interpretation?

What about with Denethor's death?

Faramir?

For that matter, one of the biggest differences between the book and the movie is that Jackson has intertwined the tale of Aragron and Arwen throughout the whole whereas Tolkien felt he had to resort to the appendices though he would rather have not (according to his letters). Was Jackson successful in carrying out his intent? What was missed? What could have been done better?

Quickly, on this, there is an orc credited as Grishnakh.

This one.

(Edit: Ah hah, found the old Grishnakh thread I started - Ring-Driven or Meat-driven)

The difference being instead of getting a fascinating exchange between Grishnakh and Pippin leading Grishnakh to believe he has the Ring with the "gollum" trick...the movies Grishnakh just wants to nom on some Hobbit legs...which starts the orc fight. And I believe Grishnakh is eventually squashed by Treebeard.

Nice thread idea, lmp. I have to throw my voice in with the others, that it seems the more honorable the book-character the more Jackson liked to just tear them down. Don't forget, in Faramir's interrogation of Gollum, he gleefully looks on as 3 of his men turn Gollum into a kicking bag. In the extended edition interviews Jackson just smiles and says "They're softening him up."

It's difficult to catch some of the other, subtler and perhaps interesting artist intents when the artist sways more to the violence/juvenility that's been brought up. I would never have caught the intended message with Theoden had I not read this thread. Of course, now that you mentioned it, the light bulb went on, but it took knowledge of the scene and the intended message before it finally clicked.

I believe, that "modern audience" would have thought Aragorn was weak if he hadn't done it. The whole point of "modernity" is that

a) a looser is always wrong;
b) one who thinks he or she is in the right should not limit him- or herself with silly moral restrictions in their fight;
c) killing a bastard is always a good thing while keeping your promise to a bad guy is just stupid.

In this respect modernity can be seen as a peculiar mix of ideology and real politics brining Jesuits to mind but I don't want to put forward any particular examples as they are all quite controversial. In the book it is Gandalf who takes Frodo's garment from Mouth, confusing him with a flash of white light. However Jackson decided to make everyone but Alpha-male Aragorn look sheepish.

A little problem is that this is not the world Tolkien intended to create. But who cares? Although if movie-Aragorn just wanted to convince Sauron that he was in possession of The Ring and his corruption had already begun, his act was just brilliant :)

"And why no Grishnack? I think I've asked that before so leave it alone if you like. If the point was to show how much pull the Ring had, why remove ol' Grish?"

The whole significance of the character had been wiped out by PJ assuming his audience was too stupid to deal with Saruman being a traitor to both sides, rather than just a minion of the Dark Tower. There's never a hint in the movie that the whole band weren't from Isengard.

Thus no conflict between the Ugluk and Grishnakh factions except over the triviality of fresh rations, and G and his followers becoming nothing more than stupid, appetitive Orcs as opposed to 'brainier' Ugluk (never mind that throughout the whole FR chase "Lurtz" comes across as a mere bestial predator)