2002-01-10 - 1:10 a.m.
#103: No Need for a Lord of the Rings movie
Note to self: Never, ever, ever, EVER leave your email alone for 2 weeks ever again. I mean it. The consequences could shatter the very foundations of your mind. Or at least make you wish you'd checked your mail and replied to everybody sooner. Geez.
Well, I finally got around to seeing Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings. It's funny, you'd think I'd be more psyched about going to see one of the biggest films in history (if not THE biggest: I seriously doubt any other director will be crazy enough to film three 3 hour long fantasy epics in one sitting any time soon. Well, maybe. Standards of filmmaker craziness seems to rise every year. Afterall, $200M used to be considered over the top for the budget of Titanic, and now people in Hollywood are throwing that money about like it was pocket change). Especially since it was entirely filmed in this 'ol country called New Zealand; where I have decided to make my habitation for the past 5 years or so. But it's still a rock. In a hole. Of the ass of an incontinent bear. But it has plenty of pretty, unspoiled scenery and impressive vistas of nature, I'll give it that. It's just not.... MARKETABLE enough, you know? I mean before the movie came out. After the movie hit the box office and started racking in the millions, I bet more than a couple of people overseas started thinking to themselves, "You know, New Zealand looks like a really nice rugged countryland type place. Let's go over there and bring the kids along to get them away from anything remotely resembling electronics because that country is just full of technologically repressed elves, dwarves and magical creatures who haven't even harnessed the power of electricity to run a shaver yet! We can bring matches and impress them with our ability to magically make fire with our fingertips! I like fire....". If FOTR was anything, it was a huge tourist video with a fantasy adventure in it as a subtext for showing a whole bunch of shots of the New Zealand wilds. I can hear the tourist agencies around kiwiland ringing Peter Jackson right now and saying, "Thank you". I can also hear other things as well, but that sort of talk just scares people away so I try not to dwell too much upon that.
(Here begin the spoilers. Or as spoilt as you can make a movie of which every aspect of the story was available and known by millions of people beforehand in the books, anyway. Whatever)
But I digress (as I always do) and return to my original line of thought.... Which was.... Which was.... Oh yes, the movie. I went to see it a couple of days ago, after promising myself I wouldn't even step close to a theatre until I'd finished reading the first book. I still haven't finished it (still 50 pages to go to the ending!) but I had some idea about how the adventure would go from the point I stopped reading, so I decided to watch it anyway. I like to skip around and read ahead a bit. *coughs* Hey, give me a break! To use a somewhat appropriate analogy I'm the type of gamer who likes to use a walkthough when putting on his fake l33t skills front. ANYWAY, I went ahead and watched a 9:15PM session over in the Village 8 cinema in Highland Park, and walked out of the theatre about three hours later at 12:30AM.... curiously unfulfilled. I certainly wasn't bored for the three hours I was watching it (though that's not a particularly high reccomendation considering the fact I waste precious seconds of my life playing solitaire on Windows 98) and it was a well made adaption of a considerably well respected text (tome? bible, even?) but I was still somewhat in a shrugging mood as I stepped out of that jam-packed crowded theatre. I felt something was missing from the entire production. It was like I'd heard a joke but missed the punchline.
On the otherhand, let it be known that I did attend the showing with a stomach full of dinner. And that dinner was beehoon noodles in laksa spup, which as some people may well know (I'm looking at Josh, Kunfei, Matt, Nick and Travis here) is extremely hot in its spicy chilliness and does not sit too well in ones stomach (though it tastes greeeeeeeeeeeeat going down). So I was, errr.... A bit distracted while watching the movie. Trying to be considerate for the person behind you by slouching in your seat is not a good combination with a rumbly tummy. Let it also be known that I'm also spectacularly thick when it comes to appreciating certain movies. The clearest example comes in the form of Mononoke Hime (aka Princess Mononoke) which I had to see three times before the whole thing went "click" and I finally got what everybody else in anime fandom was raving about when talking about this movie. When you can get this easily confounded by the almost instantly accessible films of Miyazaki, you know certain films deserve multiple viewings before you pass the final judgement upon them. CERTAIN films, you'll note. One other recently released fantasy film that tried to cash in on the (then market projected) popularity of the LOTR films deserves not even a FIRST viewing. And finally, let it be known that I went ahead and got the soundtrack by Howard Shore before I even got around to seeing the movie, and used it as a musical accompaniment to my reading of the book. The music has a kind of dark evil nature about it that just PUSHES the safety boundaries I'm used to in hearing recent movie soundtracks. It has its light moments too, but overall it just had a sense of purpose and power that you can't seem to get in other scores from big budget Hollywood movies now. I really can't explain it properly, it's just a feeling I have. Maybe it's because the sound feels rather new due to the fact there just haven't been a lot of fantasy style movies in a long time. Anyway, the soundtrack just brought about another set of expectations that just weren't QUITE met in the movie.... Not missed either, just: DIFFERENT.
And difference in opinion about how the world should be rendered is probably the main problem I have about the movie. I can be EXTREMELY nitpicky and complain about the subtractions and additions from the original text; but I keep in mind that this is an interpretation of the LOTR text and some sacrifices (as well as bonus additions for those who've read the books and wondered "So what happened when so-and-so was off elsewhere?") have to be made in order ot preserve the fluency of the movie. To be absolutely honest, I'm almost glad they cut out the section with Tom Bombadil, master of the everything. There's a lightness and bouyancy to his speech and mannerisms that I'm quite sure would not have translated all that well in terms of the movie. There's also quite a lot of waiting in the book that was cut out for the movie, which also makes a lot of sense (the hobbits do a lot of travelling, but they do a lot of sitting around and eating too. Eating is their favourite pasttime in fact, a fact that the movie only barely brushes with) as there is only so many "10 years later" subtitles the audience can take before realising how silly it is.
In all respects, Fellowship of the Rings is one of the most perfect adaptions of a fantasy novel I have ever seen (it's also one of the few adaptions I have ever seen, but don't let that deter you): it streamlines the story in such a way that it doesn't fall into the trap of being a ponderous word-for-word translation (and gives some surprises for those who have read the book too!) nor into the trap of being so bare of the original text that it bears little resemblance to its former influence. It recounts the major events in the book, but it's not a slave to every last detail; I approve wholeheartedly of Peter Jacksons decision on that and say "bleh!" to those anal retentive Tolkien-fans who want to know where page 53 of the book went.
So anyway, my problem is not with the attention to detail, Peter Jackson did a great job of hitting the right buttons to stir the audience when the others were unused or missing. My problem is with the way the adventure is played out with those major events in place. Reading the original book, what struck me most was that this was not only a fantasy adventure, but also a coming of age tale with the hobbits as the youthful, innocent children who have to grow up faster than they expected to when charged with *ahem* THE FATE OF MIDDLE-EARTH AS WE KNOW IT! Okay, that may sound a little pretentious (like I know LOTR better than a director who's been a fan of the books since 1970) but it seems to me that that particular thread has been diluted by introducing other threads from the other characters. Stuff like Gandalf facing off with Sarumon, Boromirs conversations with Aragorn, Aragorn and Liv Tylers characters indiscretion in the elven city beneath the moonlight (see? Her character is so minor and underused in the book that I don't even remember her name. But she seems quite important in the movie now O.o) or shots of Sarumon giggling evilly over the fate he has planned for our luckless heroes (insert "nyahahaha" laugh here). It fleshes them out as proper characters in the LOTR, rather than an interpretation of a person as seen through the eyes of the hobbits. In a way, that IS probably a lot better (rather than leaving the other companions as mere ciphers) but still.... The shifting backwards and forwards between the viewpoints of the various characters is somewhat confusing for someone who's just read the book and expected a movie from merely the hobbits point of view.
I have to admit though, Boromir is probably one of the characters who benefits most from the enlargement of his role in the movie as compared to the book. Aragorn probably didn't really need that extended scene with Liv Tylor (or at least.... as far as I know from the books thus far) and Gandalfs sequence against Sarumon (as well as scenes of Sarumon plotting and scheming by himself) is a bit of exposition that's not strictly needed but adds a bit of colour to the canvas that is the film. But Boromir.... Well, my interpretation of his character changed quite significantly after watching the movie. In the book, he was an absolute ass. And in the movie.... He was still a bit of an ass, but only until he becomes part of the fellowship and decides to become more likeable than in the book. More of a tragic hero who unfortunately has a burning desire in his heart to take the ring, rather than an arrogant Southerner who refutes the thoughts of everybody around him because "back where we come from, we don't do things that way! *spits tobacco*". I swear, I was thinking that Tolkien based Boromir on someone from Texas he once met while in the midst of writing the book. The kind of arrogant, somewhat elitist thinking was SO spot on....
But enough about my expectations and them not being met but, on closer inspection, completely superceded. What about the visuals of the film? (don't bother asking me about the sound and music. I'm too enamoured with them both to give a fair comparison to anything else. I get suckered by good music rather easily too) Well, I was certainly quite impressed. If only by the fact that everything WASN'T done by computers if anything else. I'm still trying to figure out how they took relatively normal heightsized actors and shrunk them down to hobbit or dwarvish size, while the other cast members still in the correct proportions. Split screen effect? Could be, but how would one explain the shire homes the hobbits walk around so freely in, while Gandalf bumps his head into the wooden arches and chandeliers? Or the fact that the characters wander about and interact with each other with such ease? In the end, I just gave up and concentrated on watching the movie itself before I missed other visual splendours. My final theory on the matter though, is that it's a combination of camera effects, costuming, actor craft and stilts. They all combine somehow, I just need to figure it out. But moving on.... I thought the Ringwraith riders were especially well realised (in my mind); and though they didn't really move with the sychronised motions they were obviously meant to, the option of replacing them with computer digitised actors really didn't appeal to me. Maybe puppets.... But no, Peter Jackson has already done Meet the Feebles. And the effects for Frodo being in the "shadow world" after putting on the ring and becoming invisible is just a neat visual effect.
And the monster battles! The glorious battles with the troll and goblins in the tunnels of Mordor, along with the climatic battle of Gandalf against Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad Dum! (culminating in a wicked "wink of an eye" joke to those who read the books.... Who else thought Gandalf was going to make it out of the encounter alive even though the book says differently?) I'm not a fan of the "shake camera violently to make the battles look more intense than they really are" trick, but it really showed off what those WETA special effects boys can do. It really felt like a battle for their lives against what seems like an unstoppable force of nature, rather than a straight "special effects creature shot" that Hollywood is so fond of in sci-fi movies but never seem to make them convincing enough. *sniffs* Sometimes I'm so proud. And the balrog was spectacular. When Tolkien described it as a creature of flame and shadow, I bet the effects guys were really scratching their heads over what to do to make the damn thing come to life. Well, I'm personally happy with the result; and I want to see a creature like that in a FPS game sometime soon cause it looks terribly, ah.... WICKED. The horns were a bit much, but the lava-like body combined with wings of smoke that swirled about its entire form just screamed out (in a Steve Irwin voice-alike from Crocodile Hunter) "Danger! Danger!". It was neat, yeah. The whole look wasn't as "slick" as some other fantasy/sci-fi action stuff, but I think the grainy look adds a bit of character that would be otherwise loss in a high gloss style. I wonder how Tim Burton would have directed and handled the visuals this movie though, (as he did for Batman and Edward Scissorhands, not for what he did in the disastrously shrugworthy and ponderous remake of Planet of the Apes) since he and Peter Jackson seem to share a particularly macabre and dark style of directing. Would there have been a difference, even?
So.... I guess I'm not as completely DISsatisfied as I sounded right at the start of this entry. I'll still have to see it a couple more times before I make up my mind completely, so hopefully my lukewarm reaction will dissappate to be replaced by hardcore LOTR l33tism! @_@ Or errr.... maybe I'll just like the movie more. That sounds just as good. Anyway, here's to the next two films and hoping they'll kick as much ass as FOTR is in the box office takings right now!
