One Spectacle to Rule them All -- Final End

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Date Posted: 16:46:46 01/03/04 Sat
Author: Drummond
Subject: One Spectacle to Rule them All

In a way, it's unfair to judge a film like Return of the King, the script being based on one of the best selling novels in history. Watching the film, I was too easily distracted by the differences. After Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, The Lord of the Rings probably had the largest impact on me as a child. At about 12 years old, I was so engrossed and/or obsessed with the story, my mother actually forced me out of the house without the book one day so that I could get some of the physical exercise I had been neglecting. In anticipation of her concern, I had left my bedroom window open so I could climb in to retrieve it and imbibe in the refuge of the local woods, where the experience was even enhanced; eating Twinkies while imagining the golden cake as Middle-Earth's Elven Lembas ( In fact, the stale bread depiction of Lembas in the film was one of the distracting disappointments for me).

The films, all three chapters, are fun. They bring back memories of the original experience. Great choices of theme music. Brilliant choice of New Zealand as subject matter for the cinematography. Visuals that move you into another realm, brilliant in their detail and conception, as well as their execution with special effects. Good and sometimes even great acting. Good.. and..., well, good script writing. Grand mosaics of emotion, laden with broad strokes in themes of despair, hope, loyalty, betrayal, cowardice, bravery, damnation, redemption, evil and good. Even a habitual cynic like myself could not help but be brought to tears on occasion, even though I knew the story, and even though the presentation was heavy handed in more-than-obvious metaphor and sometimes overstating the morality of the original work.

I'm going to be in the minority here. My favorite of the three chapters was the first film, Fellowship of the Ring. Of the three, it brought me back most profoundly to the original experience. I measure each chapter by the amount of distraction from the magic of Tolkien's creation, and although the Return of the King is receiving accolades from high and low, it was third on my list.
The first major distraction came late in the first film, in the tunnels of Moria. Boromir announces the presence of a cave troll and instead of the 8 to 10 foot tall ogreish figure I imagined in the original experience, in marched a computer animation monster about 30 feet tall that pulled in every other science fiction/fantasy movie involving reptilian monsters over the past 50 years. Big was apparently better in producer Peter Jackson's estimate and whereas in the novel the troll was driven off by one of the hobbits who stabbed it in the foot. Jackson's troll dominated the fight and perhaps made it more exciting and "action packed" per the film industry standard. Of course, a few scenes later, the Balrog had to be even more grandiose as well as a "suspense" scene involving a crumbling stairway where by uncanny luck typical of grade B movie heroes none of them fell into the chasm as well they would have had the present Earth rules of physics been in place. The film lost me for the next 10 to 15 minutes until they wandered into Lothlorien where the brilliant depiction of the Elven forest city restored the magic that had been compromised for the benefit of the action movie crowd.

And in fact for me the first film, like the novel, ended in a crescendo of emotion with the death of Boromir, the only dynamic character in the movie script, straying from the moral path under the temptation of the ring only to find redemption in a failed attempt to rescue two of the hobbits from the insidious orcs who spoke with either a cockney or a Klingon accent. I wasn't expecting a complex deviation from the good/evil structure of the story, but Sean Bean probably showed the most versatility in his acting, and presented a character that was perhaps more layered with relative complexity than even the novel's character.

By the second film, I had hoped that Jackson would ultimately do more with the character Gollum, brilliantly played and depicted by all involved including the phenomenal acting of Andy Serkis. Even more so than Tolkien's character, there seemed to be some hint of the possibility of redemption. The struggle between Smeagle and Gollum personas within, Frodo's desire to assist in Gollum's salvation - all of it could have culminated in one last willful act of Smeagle to reclaim his soul in the destruction of the ring before it could take him over permanently. I picture something along the lines of the end of The Exorcist, the same physical actions in Gollum's final breaths, with a different nuance. Both Tolkien and Jackson missed the opportunity, but Jackson had teased me with the possibility in the second movie. The hope was dashed early in the third movie as Gollum became pure evil with no redeeming characteristics, and Sam's hard line became the wisdom to Frodo's naivete ("He's a villain Mr. Frodo.").

Obviously I don't expect the characters in a film to possess the depth of those in an equivalent novel. We're all taught at a young age that movies based on books are always disappointing. And the adult in me has to concede that Tolkien's work itself really wasn't all that deep, but perhaps temporally setting the bar for good v. evil in fiction, even defining it. But Tolkien's characters were still much more layered, and at least moderately more complex than Jackson's, and the differences cost the films some vitality. Distractions were just too large for the third film to take me where it seems to have taken many reviewers. Why did Jackson require the extremes in characters? Gandalf did not have to be quite so somber (plus, he seemed in the last film much more of a Moses figure than the pagan wizard of the first film, and I found myself missing the pointy hat). Gollum did not have to be quite so evil. Denether did not have to be quite so pathetic. Legolas did not have to be quite so perfect, or quite so powerful a superhero. Gimli did not have to be quite the comic relief character. Frodo did not have to be quite so perpetually somber (though I do have to admit now that Elijah Wood can act, and by the third movie I had completely shed any imagery imposed on me by his less than stellar performance in The Faculty, not that he had much to work with).

Yet another character reduced to one dimension was Saruman. Although we are told by Gandalf that the good-wizard-turned-evil Saruman was once "great," the film lacks any sense of the progression of his evil in the novels - the "road to Hell is paved with good intentions/power corrupts" themes beginning with Saruman's attempt to convince Gandalf that an alliance with Sauron might actually allow them to influence Sauron against despotic atrocities while maintaining a sense of reason in the new Middle Earth order. That characterization of his initial motives was completely absent in the film, and apparently the theme was so unimportant to Jackson that he omitted not only the endgame scouring of the Shire, but even Gandalf's breaking of Saruman's staff, a pivotal point in the war, and one of the more dramatic moments in the novels.

That being said, I actually preferred Jackson's ending, and not just because I had to pee very badly after 3 � hours without intermission. The idea that the Shire remained intact, untouched by the evils of the war; its citizens completely oblivious to the danger they were in, and oblivious to the heroism of the four adventurers whom they presumed had wandered off to party and wreak random mischief. This after the people of the great kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan had bowed to them for their roles in saving the Middle Earth from darkness, evil, and whatnot. It was actually an improvement on Tolkien's apocalyptic totality.

Sauron's eye at the top of the tower was an effectively creepy innovation of Jackson's. The image of the spotlight flowing from the eye to the orc camps probably was intended to invoke images of totalitarian East Germany, but had the unintended effect of invoking for me the images of helicopter borne spotlights going into the homes of East Los Angeles residents as depicted in the now classic Boyz in the Hood. A minor criticism of continuity: the eye's beam continues to scan the orc camps after the orcs have left to confront Aragorn's army. Why did the eye take so long to focus its gaze on the fight? What was it looking for? Not that it was accomplishing anything, as just before the eye switched its focus northward, it had shone on Frodo and Sam without apparently detecting them proving to be as effective as the spotlights of Hogan's Heroes.

I don't go out of my way to look for political messages in films, but I couldn't help but notice the imagery of the war at the siege of Gondor. Some of the Oliphant riders, dressed in black veils and waving scimitars looked suspiciously of Middle Eastern effect. Was Jackson trying to appeal to the present war mind set? Well, the analogy carries in the geography of the war, and perhaps a few other images. But in the case of the war of the Ring, the bad guys had superior artillery and firepower. And to my memory, none of the films invoked terrorist imagery in any way. I remember some rather silly political critiques of the new Star Wars films a couple of years back, and I imagine the Return of the King will generate some similar ridiculousness from certain quarters. However, I seriously doubt Jackson intended to pander to the anti-terrorist sentiment, no matter how hard the President tries to make the analogy. If anything, the President should ask himself what the Ents would think of tearing up the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve for oil exploration.

The Return of the King had all the makings of an "epic," a term given by the reviewing industry to films like The Titanic or Gladiator - delivering intensity of visuals and emotion on a grand scale, with just enough subtlety to avoid criticisms from anybody but the usual suspects of film purists and alternative media types. And quite frankly, I would probably have been much more impressed with the films had they been based on an original script, or a literary work with much less stature than Tolkien's. The breathtaking battle scenes certainly stimulated the testosterone and adrenalin in my system. Shelob was easily the scariest damned spider I've ever seen in a movie. The tribute to political correctness by playing up the female characters neglected by Tolkien wasn't too patronizing.

Oh, but on this last point I must make one last comment. Both Tolkien and Jackson also passed up an opportunity with Lady Eowyn's slaying of the Nazgul leader. Okay, we were given the heavy-handed irony that two individuals denied the open opportunity by King Theoden, snuck their way into battle and killed off the villain who at that point was second in evil only to Sauron. But Jackson interjected a couple of lines where the Nazgul exclaims "No man can kill me!" and Eowyn responds "I am no man." Jackson could have done more with that. Here was an opportunity for her to shed her masculine armor, facing him in a white dress with her hair down, responding with an attempt at defiant humor (rather than the vulgar earnestness of her scripted response) along the lines of "Nor shall one do so." It would have taken some acting on the part of Miranda Otto, to project her obvious fear combined with brave resolve as expressed in defiant sarcasm. It's a small thing, and I only raise the point to suggest that Jackson might have put a little more thought into character development, been a little less predictable, and focused on the smaller nuances as well as the grandiose.

But the film is very much a grand experience, and well worth the money and time. If it fails to win "best picture" with the academy awards, it's for no other reason than its genre. It has all the elements of an "epic," or entertaining spectacle depending on your point of view. And I'll probably go see it again myself.

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