Adaptation by Vague Recollection

[Faramir Jones]

I agree with IxnaY about Pan's Labyrinth. Having not seen The Devil's Backbone, I won't say if it's worth seeing or not.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

I agree with IxnaY about Pan's Labyrinth. Having not seen The Devil's Backbone, I won't say if it's worth seeing or not.

In many ways, The Devil's Backbone is as good or better a movie than Pan's Labyrinth. Simply one of the best filmed and poignant ghost stories I've seen.

[Zigûr]

Another article came to my attention just now on the issues with the production of the films which seem to suggest it was less "Vague Recollection" and more "Rushed Production" (although surely they at least had the book as a guide?):

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9...le-explanation

Long story short, as Faramir Jones posted on the previous page, there is indeed a special feature on the Part 3 Blu-Ray which discusses the difficulties of the production.

This seems like the perfect promotional opportunity to me: "Only by buying The Battle of the Five Armies on Blu-Ray will you be able to discover why the film is so terrible!"

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Another article came to my attention just now on the issues with the production of the films which seem to suggest it was less "Vague Recollection" and more "Rushed Production" (although surely they at least had the book as a guide?):

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9...le-explanation

Long story short, as Faramir Jones posted on the previous page, there is indeed a special feature on the Part 3 Blu-Ray which discusses the difficulties of the production.

This seems like the perfect promotional opportunity to me: "Only by buying The Battle of the Five Armies on Blu-Ray will you be able to discover why the film is so terrible!"

I would give them points for 'fessing up...except they didn't do it until after they had made as much money as they could.

[Zigûr]

As a side note on these films as adaptations, some friends have got me watching US sitcom "Parks and Recreation" and one character was baiting another for his "nerdiness" in an episode I just watched by asking him if he was going on a "year long walking tour of the set of The Lord of the Rings," to which he replied "To be honest with you I wasn't a fan of Peter Jackson's interpretation, so you can put that one away."

Now there's a point of view about the films that you don't see represented too often in popular culture. I found it rather pleasing.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Now there's a point of view about the films that you don't see represented too often in popular culture. I found it rather pleasing.

I see the Hobbit trilogy denounced fairly often, at least by actual people.

I agree it is pleasing to see it happen, though.

[Faramir Jones]

There's a peer-reviewed electronic journal, the Journal of Tolkien Research, that can be found online at

http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/

The current issue, Volume 2, Issue 1, has an interview of Tom Shippey by Patrick Curry. I quote below the last part, with the former's questions and comments in italics, and the latter's answers in bold. The reason is because Tom Shippey gave his views on Peter Jackson's film adaptations, which I think are very interesting and worth reading in full.

While, from what we can read below, he was more tolerant about the Jackson adaptations of LotR than others, he was critical about the 'coarsening' of the characters of Denethor and Theoden, which he blamed on people not having any personal experience of warfare, as Tolkien and his contemporaries had. He also said that this coarsening 'and indeed dumbing-down' was 'much more obvious' in the adaptations of The Hobbit.

***************

It’s difficult not to be struck by the contrast between Christopher Tolkien’s severe verdict on Peter Jackson’s films of The Lord of the Rings (to which I lean myself) and your own more tolerant response. How would you explain that, and have you had any cause to rethink your position in the intervening period?

I guess I allow more for the effect of different media, different eras, different audiences, than other people do. Certainly I was impressed by Jackson’s own commentary on the LotR films. He and his associates knew Tolkien’s work well and treated it respectfully. Where he had made changes, he often had a reason which seemed to me unanswerable. Drop a character like Arwen from the second movie entirely (as she is in the second book)? No, you just can’t do that in a set of movies issued at yearly intervals! Skip over action-scenes like the sack of Isengard and the passage of the Paths of the Dead, and have them told in flashback? No. Stress the power of the Ring all the way though and then just have Faramir ignore it? No.

Comprehensible, but not so inevitable, are things like the coarsening of the characters of Denethor and especially Theoden. My own feeling is that this is a result of the difference between a world of military veterans, such as Tolkien and Lewis and all their friends, and a world which has only experienced warfare in video-games. It’s very easy to be brave and bold in the latter, and see withdrawal as chickening out. Tolkien’s Theoden has his head screwed on, and knows when to withdraw to prepared lines of defence. Also, of course, when to blow his horn and charge. But you can’t do the latter every single time.

I have to admit that this coarsening, and indeed dumbing-down, is much more obvious in the Hobbit movies. Jackson still put his finger on one thing about The Hobbit. Its structure is episodic, one thing after another. It needed connections and a narrative thread–as also a good explanation for why Gandalf just disappears on the edge of Mirkwood! Would a modern movie audience just accept that? But I thought that Bilbo’s stage-by-stage development, from little fellow crying out with fear to troll-robber, Gollum-defeater, spider-killer, dragon- thief and finally to the moral courage demonstrated by handing over the Arkenstone–and then returning to the power of Thorin–well, it’s a pity that was largely replaced by a lot of charging and sword-waving. That’s video-game bravado, not three o’clock in the morning courage. In the book, all Bilbo’s big scenes take place in the dark, on his own. Hollywood isn’t good at that sort of thing, which is a diminishment. One of Tolkien’s great achievements, perhaps his greatest, was to revive an image of the hero–a word he hardly ever uses by the way, and in LotR never once, I think, without some kind of distancing–for a world which had been educated in irony.

I agree. Perhaps this also explains why Jackson couldn’t bring himself to allow Faramir to be a straightforwardly noble or heroic character.

Though he did not diminish Aragorn, apart from–for instance–adding the comic scene with Eowyn trying to figure out how old he was, and I thought that was genuinely funny. I guess that the different images of heroism are a result of the seventy-year gap between us and people like Tolkien, Robert Graves, Tolkien’s classmate (another Catholic, by the way) Field-Marshal Slim, three men I’m proud to say I’ve shaken hands with. They knew what heroes were, and were under no illusions about it.