With several months yet to go before filming even begins on the first season of Amazon Prime’s hugely ambitious adaptation of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the studio has already gone ahead and renewed the big-budgeted fantasy series for a second season. There are several new details in the Deadline article which broke the news, so allow me to ramble on about them with urgency and excitement. As you can probably imagine, I’m trembling with anticipation.
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First of all, we have the news that the second season of the series is already in the works – Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, has confirmed that as we speak, the writer’s room for the series (which includes J.D. Payne, Patrick McKay, Gennifer Hutchison, Bryan Cogman, etc) is currently collaborating on writing the bulk of Season 2 scripts. As is noted in the article, this is really good news because it means that we, the audience, won’t have to wait that long between Seasons 1 and 2. In fact, at the speedy rate that things are going, we could expect to get the first two seasons almost back-to-back. My heart can’t take this.
Additionally, it has been revealed that after J.A. Bayona has finished filming the first two episodes of the series’ first season, the show will go on hiatus for four to five months, allowing time to review the footage and write more material for the second season before moving on with filming. In Deadline’s words: “By going on a longer than normal hiatus, LOTR will be ready with Season 2 scripts so it could possibly film some Season 2 footage during the Season 1 shoot, or even film the remainder of Season 1 and Season 2 back-to-back.” This is, of course, the same tactic that Peter Jackson used when directing his equally ambitious movie trilogy of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings. Parallels. Parallels!
The article also notes that the majority of the series is expected to film outdoors, on location in New Zealand, as we suspected. That could mean a return to the practical-effects pioneered by Jackson in his movie trilogy, or it might indicate something else entirely (Deadline suggests that it’s because Tolkien loved the outdoors: I have no idea whether they’re right or not).
So there you have it! This is an extraordinary action by Amazon, as it seems to suggest complete confidence in the fledgling series, which has a long way to go before it gets off the ground. While we wait, leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!
Happy Hobbit Day to all of my readers! Today, we celebrate the shared birthdays of hobbit heroes Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, chief protagonists of the fictional world of Middle-earth (you know, unless you’re counting the heroes of TheSilmarillion, like Beren, Tuor, Húrin and Túrin, Lúthien Tinúviel, Eärendil, and so on). And because this is a movie blog, and not a book blog, I will be discussing The Lord Of The Rings movies rather than The Lord of the Rings novels in this post. Typically, I would only consider writing an extensively long post about a movie I disliked, but I have so much to say about these films, and so much of it is good (actually, almost all of it is good).
The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, the second film in the classic trilogy, is currently available to stream on Netflix: here’s my review. I’m not going to be doing my usual hardcore fan-frenzy, where everything I write about the trilogy is unintelligible screaming, sobbing and wailing. Instead, I am going to write about the movie in a clear, concise way – with only a minimal amount of sobbing.
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Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to try and downplay the degree to which these films truly are movie-making masterpieces. The Two Towers is probably the most overlooked and underrated installment in the trilogy, but it still boasts more than most movies can: critics almost unanimously praised it for its epic scope and groundbreaking technology, while the Academy Awards rewarded it for special effects and sound editing (it was also nominated in four other categories, including Best Picture). Audiences loved it, making it the highest-grossing film of 2002, and, for a while, one of the highest-grossing films of all time. It was confirmation, if any was needed, that what had begun with The Fellowship Of The Ring a year earlier was not a fluke: the fantasy genre had redefined itself, stepping away from the shackles of sword-and-sorcery, and become a new, unique form of entertainment – critics debated endlessly at the time about whether it classified as “lowbrow” or “middlebrow” (since, obviously, “highbrow” was out of the question) and it would take another year before The Return Of The King won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, cementing the series in cinematic history and establishing the genre as a respected art-form. But unfortunately, The Two Towers has always been stuck in between its two milestone siblings: it was a crucial step in the process, but it tends to get ignored for that reason. What it did achieve, singularly, is just as important: Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance as the miserable creature Gollum, one of the first of its kind, was a stepping stone in modern CGI techniques – for more on that fascinating discussion, see here. It also led to the creation of the MASSIVE crowd-simulation technique, which is still used to this day on projects such as Avengers: Endgame and Game Of Thrones. These days, director Peter Jackson is a rather more unpredictable commodity, having largely withdrawn from the world of mainstream film-making: he is supposedly still working on a sequel for The Adventures Of Tintin (as of 2016, at any rate), and he’s working on a documentary about the Beatles, but his most recent venture, Mortal Engines, was a discouraging box-office disaster. So it’s worth looking back at the director’s heyday for a glimpse of what Jackson can be at his best, and what he can hopefully be again in the near future.
The Two Towers is a spectacular and daring film, and it’s one of the rare films that can appeal to book-readers and general audiences alike, balancing humor and drama almost perfectly, allowing a vast ensemble cast to shine in ways that shouldn’t be possible – even modern Avengers movies have struggled to balance screentime for their sprawling casts: The Two Towers is a great example of how it can be done well. The intricacy with which subplots and story-threads are woven together, the themes brought to life through Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens’ script (we’ll talk more about those later), Jackson’s incredible camera-work: not to mention Howard Shore’s phenomenal score – which is used to great effect throughout the film, but most notably in the Fangorn Forest scenes, the arrival of the Elves at Helm’s Deep, and the last march of the Ents. And at the very end, as Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) monologues about the stories that really matter, and a world worth fighting for, it’s Shore’s score, a grandiose variant on his iconic “Shire Theme”, even more than the narration and the montage of hope triumphing over despair, that brings me to tears every time I watch Two Towers. This score was not nominated for an Oscar because of a long-standing Academy-rule forbidding sequel scores which reuse old themes: a rule that was rewritten a year later to allow Shore’s Return of the King score to win not one, but two Academy Awards. Shore’s score, the most thematically complex in film history, is a true work of genius: even when Two Towers‘ script fails to fully address the theme, hugely important in Tolkien’s original novels, of the earth itself fighting back against those who would seek to destroy it and harvest it for their own gain, Shore’s “Nature’s Reclamation” theme reinforces this message at critical moments, making sure that we are always subtly aware of it.
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And that’s just behind the scenes talent. In front of the camera, Elijah Wood’s wide-eyed Frodo Baggins is the underrated MVP of Middle-earth, and his Two Towers story arc is pure gold: he and Samwise Gamgee, leaving behind their friends in the Fellowship of the Ring, set out towards the land of Mordor, searching for a way into the impenetrable realm of shadow and ash – but when they come face-to-face with the wretched Gollum, previous owner of Frodo’s Ring, everything changes. Frodo sees in Gollum a twisted reflection of himself, a terrifying vision of the reality which could befall him if he succumbs to the daily temptation of the One Ring. He reaches out to Gollum with small, simple acts of mercy – which includes calling him by his long-forgotten true name, Sméagol. He has to believe he can save Gollum, because he has to believe he can save himself. As a rift grows between Frodo and the suspicious Sam (who is technically right for mistrusting Gollum, but doesn’t realize he’s basically paralyzing Frodo with fear every time he says there’s no way to save the wicked, scheming creature), Gollum is slowly being forced out of his own stolen body by Sméagol, who succeeds in establishing a tentative control over himself for barely a day or two, before Frodo’s “betrayal” under Faramir’s orders causes him to slip: the terror in Sméagol’s eyes when Frodo leads him into a trap, his sudden realization that Gollum is back, and stronger, is absolutely heartbreaking. Frodo and Gollum are both victims and abusers of the Ring’s power, intertwined in a tragic spiral: there is poetry in parallels, such as when a scene at the beginning of Two Towers, where Frodo draws his sword on Gollum to protect Sam, is mirrored by a scene at the end where he threatens to kill Sam to protect his Ring. And it’s up to Wood and Serkis, especially, to sell this storyline, and they do it: Astin is not a perfect Samwise, by any means (his line-delivery, especially, is…questionable in dramatic scenes), but he is also an important member of this loyalty triangle, and he manages to do just enough good in the role to excuse his flaws.
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On the other side of the Middle-earth map, the story is largely Aragorn-centric, but Viggo Mortensen’s portrayal of the reluctant warrior-king is at its most subdued here, and he delivers less of the Fellowship smolder, and almost none of the crowd-pleasing Return of the King rallying cries. This isn’t a fault of Mortensen’s performance, he’s still excellent, but it does allow his supporting cast to get some more time to shine – especially, unexpectedly, King Théoden (Bernard Hill) and his counselor, Gríma Wormtongue (Brad Dourif). Somehow, it is these two who stand out the most to me on rewatches of Two Towers, for a variety of reasons: Dourif, for his obvious pleasure in embodying this sickly, conniving character, who appears almost as a parallel to Serkis’ Gollum; the role could so easily have been played melodramatically, with Wormtongue laughing maniacally and expositing his evil plans – but instead, Dourif pulls his punches, letting his physical acting speak for itself. He is pathetic, a coward, and an utterly despicable traitor: but he feels like a legitimate threat at all times, even when he’s knocked down and bleeding. And as for his liege-lord, Théoden, he is a bare husk of a man when we first see him, shrunken in his mighty throne, devoured by age (strengthening his niece Éowyn’s fears that age and immobility will also claim her if she stays at home and rots while the men of her kingdom fight). But when Bernard Hill comes alive, through some CGI wizardry, and takes back his sword, it’s a spark of hope: up until that moment, Two Towers moves slowly, uncertainly, meandering through several subplots with no clear purpose – the moment Hill moves, the film suddenly moves as well, and finds focus. And Hill’s performance continues to be a highlight of the film right up to his desperate charge from the gates of Helm’s Deep. While his character was rather betrayed by the screenwriters in Return of the King, I can hold onto this Théoden as the definitive onscreen version of the noble king. Flawed, displaying a Shakespearean grief, Théoden is a man forced to fight a war that should, in a perfect world, have been fought by his son – who was cruelly stricken down in his youth. Sam’s line later in the film about how “by rights, we shouldn’t even be here” applies to the King as well: he shouldn’t be there, on the front lines, sacrificing his last hard-won years on the earth to defend his kingdom from destruction – but there he is, and he will do anything to keep his people safe.
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Unfortunately, this is more a testament to Hill’s strength as an actor, and less of a compliment to the script, which tries its best to frame Théoden as a well-intentioned but naive military leader, whose plans to lead his people to safety at Helm’s Deep will ultimately backfire when it leads a caravan of women and children into harm’s way. Thankfully, in this scene, Aragorn is there to save the day and right Théoden’s wrongs.
And that’s a problem that the movie often runs into, trying to pose Aragorn as the answer to all of Middle-earth’s problems, and the sole salvation for the human race. In Tolkien’s novels, this is not the case: yes, Aragorn is in a class of his own, but never to the point where his fellow humans feel like they’re not doing their part to save the world – in the books, Théoden is more than willing to ride out to war, and doesn’t waste time worrying about petty grievances Gondor may or may not have caused in the far-distant past; and in the books, Faramir, here played by David Wenham, is completely different from how we see him onscreen. In Jackson’s version of events, an antagonist is needed to disrupt Frodo, Sam and Gollum’s story from its forward motion, and that antagonist is Faramir: who, in Tolkien’s version, is a quiet, mild-mannered pacifist who is not only a trustworthy ally but a good friend. Here, Wenham (who had never read the books before taking on the role) does his level best to make Faramir unsympathetic and unrelenting, threatening the hobbits on multiple occasions, dragging them as prisoners toward his even more tyrannical father, and nearly falling victim to the Ring. In the film’s Extended Edition, a great deal of Tolkien-derived backstory is glimpsed for Faramir, including his desire to have his father notice him and recognize his great deeds: sadly, we see none of that in the theatrical edition, which is the one I’m reviewing here. Instead, what we get is a low-key villain who appears to maybe be conflicted about what he’s doing, but does it nonetheless. This is one of the biggest crimes of The Two Towers, especially since Faramir, on the page, was the character who most closely embodied all of Tolkien’s own beliefs and philosophies, and whose “sea-green incorruptible nature”, as Philippa Boyens once put it, was supposed to serve as a reason for readers to place their hopes in the faith of Men. But no, we’ve got Aragorn to do that – you know, the guy who, according to Jackson, doesn’t even like being a human and wishes he were one of the Elven-folk (for the record, that change to Aragorn’s character is interesting, but it only increases the need for Faramir to be good).
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Anyway, while there is some justification for the butchering of Faramir, there isn’t any for the drastic alterations to the character of Treebeard (voiced by John Rhys-Davies): one of the giant, mysterious Ents who inhabit Fangorn Forest, Treebeard is the shepherd of the trees, a sorrowing remnant of an ancient world, one who remembers the splendor of the forests of old and is watching as his last corner of the world shrinks under the axes of orcs and the mechanisms of the White Wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee). But in the movies, Treebeard is somehow unaware of Saruman’s evil, despite living a few miles from him, and has to be tricked by Pippin Took (Billy Boyd) into seeing the horrors of war firsthand. This one bothers me far more than Faramir, honestly, because (a) it’s completely unnecessary, and (b) having Pippin be the one to outsmart Treebeard only makes the forest-giant look even more stupid, considering that Pippin is not known as the brightest member of the Fellowship. This was justified as a way for Merry and Pippin to have some say in events, but again, it could have been avoided: in the books, Merry and Pippin are the deciding factor in Treebeard’s plans to go to war, reminding him that there are good people in the world outside his forest who still love nature, people who are worth fighting and dying for. Reducing that motivation to a cheap trick robs the story of its emotional impact, and misses an opportunity to reinforce the film’s themes.
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There is another missed opportunity in Two Towers that baffles me to no end: while Aragorn and his friends are preparing for battle at Helm’s Deep and Frodo and Sam are captives of Faramir, another subplot is introduced, one that initially appears to fit in with the rest of the story – this being the tale of Aragorn and Arwen (Liv Tyler). Arwen first begins appearing through flashbacks and an unconscious dream-sequence, and the audience has to piece together certain events that are…well, vague, to say the least. Arwen’s choice to give up her mortality so she could be with Aragorn should have been that simple, but Jackson chooses to elaborate upon the framework of their romance that Tolkien built – and his attempts to do so get pretty derailed. For some inexplicable reason, it is implied that Arwen’s immortality is bound up with the Evenstar pendant that she gave to Aragorn in Fellowship, but the flashbacks here suggest that, only a short while after she gifted it to him, Aragorn tried to return it to her, telling her that they could never be together, and that he wouldn’t have her die on his account. But he ended up keeping it, because she told him “it was a gift”, and now he starts possibly falling for his temporary traveling companion, Éowyn (Miranda Otto), who definitely has feelings for him: and then he loses the Evenstar, but then he gets it back, and when he does I guess that symbolically renews his love for Arwen – but off in Rivendell, Arwen is teary-eyed and depressed because Elrond (Hugo Weaving) tells her that even if Aragorn does win the war against Sauron, he is still a mortal, and will die eventually. His speech is accompanied by an absolutely beautiful vision pulled straight from the Appendices of the novel, in which a veiled Arwen mourns at Aragorn’s tomb before abandoning the waking world and departing into the forest, never to be seen again. It’s touching stuff, and Arwen is eventually convinced to go away with the rest of Elrond’s people to the Grey Havens, to set sail into the West and preserve her immortality. Except…she already gave that up, didn’t she? What exactly are the mechanics of giving up your immortality? Isn’t that what the pendant is all about? We don’t get to find out in Two Towers, because for whatever reason Jackson chooses to leave that subplot hanging, until it can finally be resolved in the third film. Then, and only then, do we learn that Arwen doesn’t go to the Grey Havens, but has a vision of her own future with Aragorn, and the family they will raise together – a vision which inspires her to turn around, march back to Rivendell, and angrily confront her father with the truth: instead of fleeing, they have to help Middle-earth. They have to reforge The Blade That Was Broken. That would have been an excellent ending for her storyline in Two Towers, and would have been entirely consistent with the film’s themes – but Jackson, once again proving he had no idea what to do with Arwen, chooses to break up the story between the two films. A little cohesion can go a long way, and Arwen’s entire subplot lacks any.
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I could go on and on, nitpicking every little alteration to the story and every single detail that breaks with book-canon: Samwise shouldn’t throw precious lembas bread to Frodo while they’re sitting a few feet away from a cliff; even if the old alliances did hold, Rohan wouldn’t be able to send word to Gondor and receive an army of reinforcements within a few hours, as Aragorn suggested; Legolas (Orlando Bloom) mistakenly refers to the Uruk-Hai heading north-east toward Isengard – that one’s especially funny, considering that later in the same movie, excessive screentime is devoted to studying a map of Middle-earth which proves him completely wrong. But talking about these minuscule nuisances would be petty, in the bigger conversation about The Two Towers and what it’s attempting to say.
It’s a story about hope – about finding something to believe in, and to hold onto, even when all around you seems to crumble into ruin. It’s a story about a disunited world coming together to face unspeakable evil, about people realizing that we are all in this life together, and that it’s our duty to defend those who need our help – and that’s why I can’t, for instance, be too mad about the Elves coming to Helm’s Deep to fight alongside the Men of Rohan: because, while it might not be in the books, it still achieves what Tolkien wanted to say, about how we are the stewards of our earth, and, when in dire circumstances, we will stand side-by-side to protect it. In this modern age, a story like that is more essential than ever.
Or, as Samwise Gamgee would put it, it’s a story that really matters.
Happy Hobbit Day to all of my readers! Today, we celebrate the shared birthdays of hobbit heroes Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, chief protagonists of the fictional world of Middle-earth (you know, unless you’re counting the heroes of TheSilmarillion, like Beren, Tuor, Húrin and Túrin, Lúthien Tinúviel, Eärendil, and so on). And because this is a movie blog, and not a book blog, I will be discussing The Lord Of The Rings movies rather than The Lord of the Rings novels in this post. Typically, I would only consider writing an extensively long post about a movie I disliked, but I have so much to say about these films, and so much of it is good (actually, almost all of it is good).
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, the first film in the classic trilogy, is the only one of the trilogy not to find a temporary home on Netflix this month, so you’ll have to purchase or rent it elsewhere if you want to watch it: here’s my review. I’m not going to be doing my usual hardcore fan-frenzy, where everything I write about the trilogy is unintelligible screaming, sobbing and wailing. Instead, I am going to write about the movie in a clear, concise way – with only a minimal amount of sobbing.
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To understand The Fellowship Of The Ring, and its place of pride in modern film history, you need to understand what it was at the time it first released in theaters on December 19th, 2001. Nothing like it had ever been done before – and to this day it is still regarded as a monumental achievement. When New Zealand native Peter Jackson, best known for low-budget horror films (and putting Kate Winslet on the map with Heavenly Creatures), was put in command of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, outside viewers were almost unanimous in their condemnation of the undertaking. It seemed impossible that someone with such an uneven and unpredictable track record of small-scale hits and misses could possibly succeed in adapting English author J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive fantasy novel to the big screen: Jackson wasn’t merely being asked to direct a film; he was being asked to helm a trilogy of massive three-hour long movies, which had to be shot simultaneously in his thoroughly unprepared home country, with a combined budget of $281 million dollars: a trilogy that was already a huge gamble for New Line Cinemas, after a tiresome war with Miramax for the film rights.
But instead of bowing to the insane pressure, Jackson and his crew rose to the challenge, turning the sleepy city of Wellington into a movie-making capital; transforming a rag-tag ensemble cast into award-winning celebrities; developing groundbreaking technology that had only been dreamed of previously, in order to perfectly realize the fantasy world of Middle-earth onscreen. From 1997 to 2004, Jackson’s team struggled against unimaginable obstacles, such as studio interference, harsh weather conditions, miscasting, injuries, and even burning birthday-cakes, to bring the series to the screen: with a vast fanbase of Tolkien loyalists watching their every move, sometimes literally spying on their filming locations, Jackson’s team were expected to deliver a final product that was faithful enough to the source material, while also making the film accessible to general audiences. The payoff was beyond rewarding: when Fellowship Of The Ring premiered, it was an instant box-office, critical and pop culture sensation, becoming the fifth grossing film of all time for a while, garnering a 91% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and universal acclaim from critics, and being recognized as one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It also significantly impacted the economy of New Zealand and made the country a flourishing tourist destination, so it can put that on its resume as well. And, looking at the bigger picture, it reshaped the entire fantasy genre, whether on the screen or on the page, for years to come: all of the dozens of fantasy adaptations coming out in the next few years owe something to Peter Jackson – largely because of his unprecedented decision to make Middle-earth feel like historical fiction, fantasy is no longer synonymous with the cheesy, exaggerated sword-and-sorcery movies of the 80’s and 90’s, but is instead one of the most revered genres of art in Hollywood today, and one that continues to rake in mountains of cash: so much so that Amazon Prime Video is making their own prequel to the series, which will be a similarly-daunting, if rather more organized, task – with a budget nearing $1 billion dollars, that series is expected to be the most expensive show ever produced: another win for the Middle-earth franchise that all began with Fellowship.
So why did Fellowship strike a chord with viewers, soften the harsh hearts of critics, and unite almost all book purists and revisionists in a shared love for Jackson’s vision? Because it’s a great movie, that’s why.
Fellowship is based on a novel, one of the best ever written (in my very biased opinion), and hews closer to the source material than either of its sequels, or the Hobbit movies which followed later. In Fellowship, we can see Jackson, still hesitant about making major changes to book canon, using what he has and expanding upon it with truly incredible results: there are few of the wholly new characters and subplots that emerged later – rather, there are small additions to the lore, minor alterations, and some significant divergences that feel entirely at home in Tolkien’s world, nonetheless. There are missteps, and I’ll discuss them, but for the most part Fellowship doesn’t just resemble the classic 1954 novel, but its story structure is strongly evocative of a novel’s pacing, and layout. Let us examine: Fellowship, the movie, is essentially split into three parts, each roughly an hour long.
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The first hour of the film is slow, laced with a brooding suspense: it builds up a mystery of epic proportions, but makes it feel small-scale and intimate at first, allowing us just enough time to get to know our team of furry-footed hobbit protagonists in the warm, hazy environs of Hobbiton – before upping the ante and slowly weaving more and more high-stakes danger into the mix: the One Ring, just a glimpse of gold; the namedrop of Sauron; hints of the miserable creature Gollum (Andy Serkis); all of this while we’re supposedly just enjoying a birthday-party with Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) and his large family of nosy busybodies, rosy-cheeked gardeners and Proudfeet. But the mystery is constantly boiling up in the background: it grows in size, soon ensnaring Bilbo’s nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood). Suddenly, cheerful Hobbiton is no longer bright and sunny: the lighting shifts, becoming moody and atmospheric, almost reminiscent of film noir; or maybe that’s just the giant smoke-ring clouds drifting lazily through the air. Half an hour in, and Frodo is on the move, after learning that he possesses the weapon of the Enemy. The music shivers quietly with anticipation, foreshadowing grander themes to come. We meet Frodo’s friends, Sam (Sean Astin), Merry (Dominic Monaghan), and Pippin (Billy Boyd). The Black Rider appears in the Shire, and nearly catches Frodo as he feels the temptation of the Ring for the first time. The wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is captured by his nemesis, Saruman (Christopher Lee), and imprisoned in a vast darkness speckled with the fires of burning trees and the glow of underground forges. Frodo and company arrive in the town of Bree, hoping to find Gandalf waiting: but all they find are strange, watchful men and tidings of the Black Riders that have arrived before them. This first hour concludes with two major events: Frodo putting on the Ring for the first time and seeing the Eye of Sauron, his enemy, wreathed in fire, piercing through mind and flesh – and his meeting, immediately after, with the hooded ranger Strider (Viggo Mortensen), who offers to help him: and then, ever so gracefully, eases into the next hour with Saruman’s monologue about creating an army worthy of Mordor, an army of orcs and gnashing steel; while, imprisoned on the tower above him, Gandalf seeks a way of escape. That first hour could be an entire movie in itself, it’s so well crafted: building the mystery, heightening the tension, constantly keeping our protagonists on their toes, uncertain and doubtful of their choices, is a brilliant move.
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In the second hour, the mystery moves to the back-burner: the Ring, having done what it needed to do, is largely hidden away now, ever present but concealed, a lurking threat – delaying the inevitable, Frodo keeps it out of sight, but in those rare moments where it is revealed, the results are disastrous: the Witch-King is made aware of it, and stabs Frodo, nearly killing him; Bilbo sees it in Rivendell for only a moment, and nearly attacks Frodo in a blind rage at seeing it worn by another; Boromir (Sean Bean) sees it twice, and handles it once, and that is enough to drive him into torment and madness; it nearly destroys the Council of Elrond. But while it is not less of a threat, it is less obvious than those presented by physical enemies: the second hour opens with the battle on Weathertop, and moves on through an epic fight at the fords of Bruinen to the high and lofty citadel of the Elven folk: nothing is simple anymore, and the hobbits are out of their element, surrounded by characters who are almost archetypes – Strider’s real name is revealed to be Aragorn, and he sheds his well-worn gear for more noble attire: we learn of his lineage, and his chivalrous romance with Arwen (Liv Tyler), the Evenstar of her people. Gandalf escapes from Saruman’s clutches, riding a literal eagle, and soars across panoramic mountains. The mood and atmosphere change again, and the world seems bathed in light – the music swells and exchanges the domestic for the grandiose. We move through landscapes straight out of a nature documentary, and into the vast caverns of the Dwarves, realized in vivid CGI. But in this huge world, it is Gandalf who brings us back down to earth as the second hour closes, in his whispered conversations with Frodo in the Mines of Moria, and his heroic self-sacrifice to save the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo himself is nearly killed by a cave troll, an innocent and pitiful creature deluded by the Ring into attacking Frodo. This foreshadows events in the third hour rather perfectly.
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The third hour blends the suspense of the first with the epic action of the second, and delivers raw, emotional, character-driven drama: helpless after Gandalf’s fall, the Fellowship seeks refuge with the sorceress Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), but begin to split from within, as Boromir wishes to head back to his home country of Gondor – and it is now that the Ring suddenly reappears after its absence, haunting Frodo’s waking days and driving his friends mad with bewilderment: finally, when the Fellowship arrives at Amon Hen, it becomes too much for Boromir, who succumbs to the Ring’s allure and tries to take it from Frodo by force. Fleeing, Frodo stumbles in a blind panic, witnessing the devastating power he carries on a chain around his neck; he will destroy everything he loves, and everyone he cares about, if he does not act. Aragorn is almost tempted, and fights with his instincts for a few dreadful moments before letting Frodo go, and rejecting the Ring outright. At which point, I start crying, because this is when Boromir dies defending Merry and Pippin from Saruman’s orcs – the Chekhov’s gun that goes off with a fateful bang in the closing action sequence – and Frodo and Sam leave the Fellowship to continue the quest on their own. Hard choices have been made all around, the Fellowship is broken, hope is a faint glimmer on the edge of despair; and the movie is over.
There are minuscule flaws in those three hours of pure goodness, and they’re all nitpicks about diversions from book canon. For instance, something that constantly bothers me is the way that Barliman Butterbur looks over his shoulder at Aragorn when Frodo asks him about the strange man in the corner, instead of…(gets out battered copy of The Lord Of The Rings, flips to page 156)…“cocking an eye without turning his head.” Tolkien goes out of his way to mention that Butterbur doesn’t turn around, because Butterbur, the innkeeper, is already well aware of everybody in the place, who they are, and where they’re sitting, because he has to be. That’s the kind of thing that drives me insane in the movie. Nobody who hasn’t studied every page of the book would even notice this, but I have, so I do.
Anyway, the way that Jackson ratchets up the dramatic tension in this movie is insane, and the climax is rewarding and satisfying – and leaves you wanting more (thankfully, The Two Towers is just as, if not more, perfect in every imaginable way, shape or form). The choices he makes, centering the story around Frodo and his relationship with the Ring, giving both characters more agency in the story (for the Ring is a character), are brilliant. Even in that second hour, when Middle-earth suddenly expands from Hobbiton by the Water to a sprawling country of forests, mountains and scenic views, we are watching it almost always from Frodo’s point of view (the only real exceptions being Gandalf and Aragorn). And in Peter Jackson’s opinion, any scene in which the Ring is not the driving focus or at the very least an undercurrent is wasting time: which is why the hobbits’ whimsical escapades with Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, a beloved part of the novel, was cut entirely from the films.
However, Jackson’s choice necessitated other changes to the source material, including one particularly controversial one: the characterization of Aragorn, one of the book’s noblest heroes. In Jackson’s films, in an effort to make Tolkien’s archetypal protagonist more sympathetic to mainstream audiences, and also to make the Ring even more powerful, Aragorn’s character is softened somewhat, and given a full character-arc – raised by the Elves under the care of Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Aragorn feels more at home with them than with his own people; weak, easily corruptible Men. In his veins runs the blood of Isildur, the man who fell victim to the Ring’s temptation thousands of years before and bound his descendants to the Ring’s fate – Aragorn’s distrust of himself, and his doubting of his own strength, is a key element of his character in the films, and it is what drives many of his actions: from his dangerous romance with Arwen, to his decision, at the end of the film, to resist the Ring and in so doing save both Frodo’s life and his own.
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Viggo Mortensen, thankfully, is a phenomenal method actor, and does a great job portraying the Ranger’s conflict. It is rather unfortunate that the screenwriters felt, going forward, that his character needed to be constantly elevated to the detriment of others, and, in The Hobbit, tried to copy-and-paste him over the character of Bard the Bowman. But it is understandable, when watching Fellowship, why they became so obsessed with him. I would even go so far as to say that Mortensen is the film’s MVP, bringing roguish charm, grace, dignity and his unique accent to every scene he’s in – he plays Aragorn’s internal conflict subtly, using small facial movements (and his wildly expressive eyes) to display unease.
Similar praise can be lavished on Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen, but not, unfortunately, Sean Astin: his portrayal of Samwise Gamgee is consistently one of my least-favorite things about the trilogy, unpopular opinion though that may be. Some of it may be attributable to Jackson’s directing, but Astin’s tendency to shout lines that don’t need to be shouted, or become exaggeratedly happy or sad, begins to make him look like a parody of the over-the-top animated Samwise in Ralph Bakshi’s 1970’s The Lord Of The Rings. He rescues himself in his final scenes with Frodo, but just barely.
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For the most part, the ensemble cast is very good: Sean Bean’s Boromir is sympathetic and pitiful; Holm, Weaving and Blanchett are endearing glorified cameos; Orlando Bloom as Legolas is decent, if a bit wooden; the only truly miscast character, in my opinion, is the Dwarf, Gimli. It’s not that John Rhys-Davies does a bad job in the role (how could he?), but the role itself should never have been tailored for an actor like him: in the novels, Gimli is proud, noble and mysterious until he begins to warm up to his traveling companions, and even afterwards he is still distinctly unusual to them, a bit of an underdog. In the movies, he’s brash, reckless and foolhardy, talks far too much, and is constantly the subject of unfriendly jokes (including the notorious “Nobody tosses a Dwarf!” punchline that continues to infuriate book purists to this day). If The Lord Of The Rings had been made after the Dwarf-centric The Hobbit, I think Jackson and his team would have been aware of this and would have cast someone more like Richard Armitage, their Thorin Oakenshield, in the role: but it was not, they did not, and we got Rhys-Davies.
The talent behind the camera deserves a special shout out. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens put together an incredible, multi-faceted script that is true to the spirit of Tolkien’s work (despite the fact that neither Jackson nor Walsh had been fans of the book before starting the project) and makes for an excellent movie even viewed on its own. The film’s cinematography is absolutely brilliant – and Academy Award winning. Ngila Dickson’s costume department outfitted the Fellowship and their supporting cast perfectly (another special shout-out goes to Viggo, who insisted on wearing his Aragorn costume while hiking in the wilderness, sleeping in it, and even mending it to give it a more weathered look: did I mention he’s a method actor?). Weta Workshop designed countless weapons, prosthetics, miniatures, and props under the direction of Richard Taylor, and the now legendary craftsman Jens Hansen was commissioned to create the One Ring itself. Art directors John Howe and Alan Lee brought unique visions to the world-building of Middle-earth. Howard Shore composed a brilliant and emotional score for the film that is widely considered one of the greatest ever, while New-Age singer Enya lent her powerful vocals to the film’s iconic Elvish ballad, “May It Be”. The New Zealand government (both local and national) and army helped Jackson to build sets and gain access to filming locations, provided hundreds of extras, and later promoted the films with every available resource. The thought and care that went into every inch of film, fabric, concept art, set design, stunt-work, music and CGI is incredible.
And, while I’m busy writing this lengthy Oscar-acceptance speech for Peter Jackson, I may as well take a moment to honor the lasting legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy, whose story lives on through his novels, and through the succession of films, radio dramatizations, streaming shows and biopics that have followed. Say what you will about Peter Jackson’s decision to cut out Tom Bombadil, or give the Balrog wings, or the “dumbing down” of the author’s philosophical and pseudo-religious views, the truth is that his movie has taken Tolkien’s original message and spread it to an even wider audience. Sales of the novel skyrocketed in the wake of Fellowship‘s release. Tolkien became a household name for people who had never even considered reading one of his books.
Granted, there are still the poor, naive souls who think that Tolkien is “that guy who ripped off J.K. Rowling”, but it’s best to just ignore them.
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Tolkien’s message in Fellowship is essentially the same from page to screen: he tells us that our lives are built around choices, especially hard and uncertain ones; choosing between right and wrong, between an easy way and a hard way, or worse, two difficult paths that lead to an unclear future. They are the choices we all make – the choice to adapt a 1,000 page novel into a three-part movie series, the choice to simply walk into Mordor with your gardener and a weapon of mass destruction, and….wait, you’re telling me you’ve never had to make those choices? Anyway, Fellowship is not a happy story, and it does not end happily for any of its heroes: sometimes, the choices we make have real, lasting consequences, and they’re not always good. But it is not an unhappy story either. It is about free will, and about the human privilege of being able to make decisions for ourselves: what a gift that is, that we take for granted! When Gandalf told Frodo, in the long dark of Moria, that “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us,” he spoke truly – we are granted a brief time on this earth to do something great, and to leave a legacy behind us. But choosing to do that is up to us.
And as for Peter Jackson? Well, he’s already done it.
Game of Thrones is over, and has left a gaping hole in the fantasy genre – a hole that multiple film and TV studios are eager to fill. Amazon is the favorite to achieve that, with their upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series based on the novels and other published works of J.R.R. Tolkien, a five-season, billion-dollar commitment that apparently will also spawn a number of spin-offs and sequels.
That all sounds fantastic, but so far we’ve had barely any indication that this project is even still alive. They confirmed the show’s setting and time-period earlier this year through a series of posts on their official Twitter page, which was followed by a report that shooting would begin in Leith, Scotland, later this summer. John Howe, art director on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Tom Shippey, a Tolkien scholar, both boarded the project at some point as well. There has been very little online chatter about the show, unless you (like I) habitually frequent sites like TheOneRing.net. But that might be about to change with the news that broke today, that Bryan Cogman is rumored to be either the director or a chief consultant for the show.
Cogman’s involvement with the series is interesting news for Tolkien purists who want the core themes of the book to be transferred to the screen – he served as “loremaster” for Game of Thrones, working to maintain fidelity to the George R.R. Martin novels, and has won multiple Emmy Awards. This is not going to please everyone, though – Cogman is now the third white male to board the project, following the firing of Sharon Tal Yguado at Amazon Studios. Jackson’s famous trilogy was extremely progressive in that it was largely written by two brilliant women; Jackson’s wife Fran Walsh and friend Philippa Boyens. Cogman, on the other hand, is in part responsible for some of the most controversial scenes in Game of Thrones history, such as the brutal torture and rape of Sansa Stark, something that (a) is undeniably a key element of Sansa’s brilliant character arc, but (b) was not in the original books and does have some suspiciously sexist overtones. Tolkien’s world is much “cleaner” than Westeros, and one wouldn’t expect to find such acts of violence in Middle-earth – though, then again, this series is not going to be set in the Middle-earth we know from the books and movies: this is going to be a story of an empire falling into decadence and decay, a civilization obsessed with death to the point of madness. This is a subject that has already been debated and argued for years, so I’m not going to dive too deeply into it, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide: is Cogman’s involvement a problem, or are you excited about this news?
(Benioff & Weiss, the Game of Thrones showrunners who have been the target of a LOT of backlash these last couple of weeks, are not involved in the show, by the way – nor are they likely to be, since they’re joining the Star Wars franchise).
