Lord of the Rings
Jun. 21st, 2011 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intertribalI've finally finished Lord of the Rings. All 1008 pages (my edition).
I feel like it's wrong to say I like the movies more, because (a) you're not supposed to like movies more than books, (b) you're not supposed to like adaptations more than originals. After all, what's put forth in the book was what Tolkien intended. The movie is Jackson's (and Walsh's and Boyens') interpretation of the book. I guess I will say this: I understand when fans of the book criticize the movies. I don't understand when fans of the book also love the movies, or think that they're a good interpretation of the book. Because I feel like they aren't even telling the same story.
I maintain that Return of the King should have been called Return of the Gandalf. And I didn't like Gandalf. At all. So you can imagine what that was like for me. I just wanted him to shut up and go away, go sit in the woods and smoke or something, but he had his fingers in every pie. He says everything important. He makes all important decisions. He determines where everyone else goes and what everyone else does. I finally gave up when during the coronation Aragorn requests that Frodo crown him, so Frodo takes the crown out of the box, and gives it to Gandalf, who actually crowns him. I was like "Get Frodo a frakking stool!" Anyway. Reading about him and the humans he spends most of his time with made me really sympathetic to pro-Mordor Russian remakes.
Though I'm not so sure about the most famous attacks on LOTR written by other fantasy writers.
And as I said earlier/before, Tolkien's characterization is a little too weak for me. There are glimmers of interesting people - like the scene where Merry describes Eowyn as a suicidal soldier, that was like, "whoa." But her shining moment goes by very fast (and after doing a good job with ominous build-up re: the ringwraiths and their fell beasts, was pretty anti-climactic, as usual), and then she's all "okay, no more fighting for me," so, uhh. I couldn't tell most of the human men apart. They all have the same values and thought processes and no visible inner life at all. Tolkien does give an inner life to the hobbits, probably because they represent English people, but it makes the human men look like cardboard. Really, really skilled cardboard. Gimli and Legolas are one-note wonders. Bill the pony is more of a three-dimensional character than these guys.
The exception: Denethor. He gets a much fairer shake in the book than he gets in the movie.
So, I don't know. Not having read it at a younger age, and not having a stake in the way the fantasy genre bends, I don't have an extreme reaction to LOTR either way. I do think that people like Morgan, who loved it at 14 and is now apparently allergic to it, hate on LOTR more than it deserves because they consider themselves to have "grown out of it" (he says in the comments: "I’m a lot different now than I was at fourteen. What does surprise me is that other readers haven’t gone through that same transitional process."). This kind of reaction is especially ironic to me because this is exactly the kind of thing that gets fantasy fans so angry when non-fantasy types say it ("geez, haven't you transitioned to grown-up literature yet", etc.). But that sort of passive-aggressive condescension is alive and well within the genre. Christ. We all want to be more grown-up than somebody, I guess. Also, I didn't grow out of what I liked at age 14, so neener-neener.
In the end, I don't think that Tolkien was trying to do what a lot of his critics seem to want him to do. To some extent that includes me. As to what he was trying to do - well, I'd guess, telling a moralistic story and trying to salvage some good and nobility out of what he considered a corrupted world, creating a sort of creation-myth for the British Isles, and giving a platform for lots and lots of poetry. I think to some extent he succeeded at this, since like I said my mother thinks LOTR was written in the 1500s (she continued to think this even after I corrected her). He was definitely not trying to become king of epic fantasy. He was not trying to be realistic either. I similarly doubt he cared much about compelling, unique characters. I actually appreciate that Tolkien was actually trying to write about morality and goodness (and evil, to a lesser extent...). I don't particularly like the results, but I think a significant reason for that is my issues with the way LOTR is written (the characters, the pacing, the Gandalf). And with his obsession on royalty and noble blood lines and all that squicky stuff (I actually think that this, more than anything else, is where Tolkien and I split ways). But it's crazy to me that anyone thinks LOTR is written for children. I actually think the best readership for it might be old people.
I feel like it's wrong to say I like the movies more, because (a) you're not supposed to like movies more than books, (b) you're not supposed to like adaptations more than originals. After all, what's put forth in the book was what Tolkien intended. The movie is Jackson's (and Walsh's and Boyens') interpretation of the book. I guess I will say this: I understand when fans of the book criticize the movies. I don't understand when fans of the book also love the movies, or think that they're a good interpretation of the book. Because I feel like they aren't even telling the same story.
I maintain that Return of the King should have been called Return of the Gandalf. And I didn't like Gandalf. At all. So you can imagine what that was like for me. I just wanted him to shut up and go away, go sit in the woods and smoke or something, but he had his fingers in every pie. He says everything important. He makes all important decisions. He determines where everyone else goes and what everyone else does. I finally gave up when during the coronation Aragorn requests that Frodo crown him, so Frodo takes the crown out of the box, and gives it to Gandalf, who actually crowns him. I was like "Get Frodo a frakking stool!" Anyway. Reading about him and the humans he spends most of his time with made me really sympathetic to pro-Mordor Russian remakes.
Though I'm not so sure about the most famous attacks on LOTR written by other fantasy writers.
- Michael Moorcock's "Epic Pooh": I don't think Tolkien forces a happy ending on his readers at all, seeing as how it ends with poor beleaguered Frodo getting some assisted suicide to cure his PTSD while hobbits that had it easier go gallivanting around the Shire claiming all the glory. Downright bitter ending if you ask me, made even worse if you then read "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" in the appendices. But I wonder - I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to like Merry and Pippin, and I'm supposed to find the Grey Havens to be a soothing reward, but I don't, so I might be reading the ending to be more depressing than Tolkien intended it to be. The idealization of the Shire also didn't feel as problematic to me as it did to Moorcock. The Shire isn't portrayed with nearly as much hyperbole as Gondor and the Numenoreans.
- Richard Morgan's "The Real Fantastic Stuff": I don't even get this essay, because I thought Frodo and Sam and Gollum, as a trio, were a great representation of the human reality of war, down in the trenches. While I too enjoyed the orcs' perspective, I think Morgan's being unfair to the former three characters. This little article actually makes me wonder if Morgan just doesn't believe in the possibility of characters that are not rough and "hardcore." I haven't read Morgan so I wouldn't know. But I wouldn't call the good guys in LOTR "irritatingly radiant." I just wished they didn't all sound the same, i.e., like Gandalf (except if they're hobbits).
And as I said earlier/before, Tolkien's characterization is a little too weak for me. There are glimmers of interesting people - like the scene where Merry describes Eowyn as a suicidal soldier, that was like, "whoa." But her shining moment goes by very fast (and after doing a good job with ominous build-up re: the ringwraiths and their fell beasts, was pretty anti-climactic, as usual), and then she's all "okay, no more fighting for me," so, uhh. I couldn't tell most of the human men apart. They all have the same values and thought processes and no visible inner life at all. Tolkien does give an inner life to the hobbits, probably because they represent English people, but it makes the human men look like cardboard. Really, really skilled cardboard. Gimli and Legolas are one-note wonders. Bill the pony is more of a three-dimensional character than these guys.
The exception: Denethor. He gets a much fairer shake in the book than he gets in the movie.
So, I don't know. Not having read it at a younger age, and not having a stake in the way the fantasy genre bends, I don't have an extreme reaction to LOTR either way. I do think that people like Morgan, who loved it at 14 and is now apparently allergic to it, hate on LOTR more than it deserves because they consider themselves to have "grown out of it" (he says in the comments: "I’m a lot different now than I was at fourteen. What does surprise me is that other readers haven’t gone through that same transitional process."). This kind of reaction is especially ironic to me because this is exactly the kind of thing that gets fantasy fans so angry when non-fantasy types say it ("geez, haven't you transitioned to grown-up literature yet", etc.). But that sort of passive-aggressive condescension is alive and well within the genre. Christ. We all want to be more grown-up than somebody, I guess. Also, I didn't grow out of what I liked at age 14, so neener-neener.
In the end, I don't think that Tolkien was trying to do what a lot of his critics seem to want him to do. To some extent that includes me. As to what he was trying to do - well, I'd guess, telling a moralistic story and trying to salvage some good and nobility out of what he considered a corrupted world, creating a sort of creation-myth for the British Isles, and giving a platform for lots and lots of poetry. I think to some extent he succeeded at this, since like I said my mother thinks LOTR was written in the 1500s (she continued to think this even after I corrected her). He was definitely not trying to become king of epic fantasy. He was not trying to be realistic either. I similarly doubt he cared much about compelling, unique characters. I actually appreciate that Tolkien was actually trying to write about morality and goodness (and evil, to a lesser extent...). I don't particularly like the results, but I think a significant reason for that is my issues with the way LOTR is written (the characters, the pacing, the Gandalf). And with his obsession on royalty and noble blood lines and all that squicky stuff (I actually think that this, more than anything else, is where Tolkien and I split ways). But it's crazy to me that anyone thinks LOTR is written for children. I actually think the best readership for it might be old people.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 02:47 pm (UTC)Good point. It's like a defensive/denial maneuver that becomes so strong it morphs into aggression.
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Date: 2011-06-22 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 03:13 pm (UTC)