I find it hard to have sympathy for Christopher Tolkien, who hasn't exactly been a model steward of his father's imagination. I'm reminded a lot of Brian Herbert, who really hit left field with the posthumous Dune stuff.
Given some of his actions, calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, let's film a 16-hour word-for-word rendition of each book, because that will work on film. I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.
I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)
Christopher Tolkien can be called many things. He hasn't always done the best job stewarding his father's world, erring on the side of conservatism and disapproving of anyone else's work based on his father's (rightly or wrongly). And he's kind of a jerk.
But the Brian Herbert comparison just means you've never read anything Christopher Tolkien actually published (or you never attempted to read Brian Herbert's terrible terrible work). The only publication where Christopher Tolkien embellished or added to his father's writings was The Silmarillion, published under pressure from their publisher to get it out the door as soon as possible after his father's death and when he was younger (relatively) and less sure about his bargaining position to leave his father's work untouched. The added narrative was mostly connecting prose, meant to keep the story more coherent, and one full chapter replacing a version that was hopelessly out of date compared to the rest of the updates his father had added over decades. He's repeatedly expressed regret about changing The Silmarillion (including again in this article), and has even laid out exactly what he added to the story so you can mentally edit it out.
Every single other book (that would be 13 of them, I believe) that he's published has been literally a written guide to trying to piece together a chronological view of all the undated scraps of rough drafts and notes his father left behind. The only thing he adds are clearly delimited notes about why he thinks some scrap came next and summaries about how some minor change made elsewhere suddenly made ripples of changes through future drafts of other sections, which he then proceeds to include verbatim.
In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work, short of leaving it unpublished. Again, he can be called many things (he really does seem to be like a total jerk, and there's no way any adaptation would have pleased him, even a word-for-word dramatic reading), but comparing him to Brian Herbert and what he did with Dune is beyond the pale.
I take it you haven't read The Children of Hurin. It really has no comparison to the rest of Tolkien's work. Compared to the other books and collections, it feels like a John Grisham novel.
I realize this is subjective, but I didn't get that feel at all from The Children of Hurin. I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing Tolkien's style (and, of course, significant passages were taken verbatim, or nearly so, from the shorter versions in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales).
"More" respectful, perhaps, was what he was going for. I've found it can be very easy sometimes to get the meaning of a sentence entirely flipped between thinking it and writing it out.
Allow me to clarify that the reminding of Herbert that Tolkien triggers for me is not based upon the quality of the work -- and I think you and I are going to agree on how bad Herbert's is -- it's only the territorial and overbearing defense of a creation not his own, often with ill effect.
In both cases, I wonder if we'd be better off had forward progress in the canon died with the author.
This and your comment above ("Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have published his notes and thoughts in that form") are a fair point, though Tolkien really did want to publish The Silmarillion for decades, he was just unable to find the time to finish it. I actually have some family members who feel the same way as you, and they've chosen to not read The Silmarillion at all because they prefer the off-handed hints and references to earlier times that pop in LotR to remain like that, rather than knowing the full stories. Personally, I've always loved JRR Tolkien's notion that these were legends, so conflicting drafts and different versions of tales were part and partial of that history, just as most mythological characters have sometimes conflicting and inconsistent stories told about them.
While it does sometimes seem slightly strange that Christopher Tolkien spent basically his entire adult life helping with and then documenting his father's work, it's really not that different from what most people choose as their life's work.
And while it might reduce some of the artistic aura around his works, I love seeing his thought process and how he evolved his world and characters. I really don't see much difference between reading the assembled published drafts and visiting Oxford and getting special permission to view the drafts, short of the fact that they've now been curated by the person most likely to be able to put them in close to the order they were actually written in. If it helps, think of them as an academic work, purely for the Tolkien scholars that came later, and not intended to be read cover to cover by most people. It's only an accident that there was enough commercial interest in Lord of the Rings to put these books in regular bookstores.
Brian Herbert sinned unforgivably when he claimed that his books were based on his father's notes and unfinished drafts, so were basically the stories he was going to tell, while constructing the plots around characters that had only appeared in Brian's other made up Dune stories. He and his cowriter should also just not be allowed to write. They have a terrible, terrible way with words.
As someone who suffered through the Silmarillion, I can attest that it sucks. If you read it, you'll wish you hadn't. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to other idiocy through the years, I have some schadenfreude knowing the Tolkien estate is mad about the movies (as was inevitable). Couldn't happen to better people. The stories would be much better off in the public domain. I don't think it's a huge surprise the world works this way -- think of Star Wars. Do you really think those stories are better off in the hands of George Lucas or Disney? It turns out heirs are really poor custodians. We don't have royalty either, for much the same reasons.
As someone who has had the pleasure of reading The Silmarillion, I can attest it is a supreme work of literature and a joy to (and in my opinion, superior to LotR).
In other words, people's tastes are their own. Don't let this person put you off.
Like many, I was disappointed the first time I read The Silmarillion. But later, I read it with the guidance of an english professor who brought The Silmarillion alive for me and in doing so made me appreciate The Lord of the Rings so much more. The Silmarillion is what makes Tolkien stand far above other authors who play at the fantasy world-creation game. Frank Herbert is one who also has a well-developed world that makes his books enjoyable over and over again.
I can appreciate that creating a fantasy world requires a lot of behind-the-scenes notes and bookkeeping, and that the final product readers enjoy spares them this drudgery. Few but the most obsessed fans are going to be entertained by the detritus left on the floor during the crafting of the polished product.
I agree for most first time readers. My first exposure to the first section also delayed my first reading of The Silmarillion for maybe 4 or 5 years before I finally picked it up again and happened to flip forward to see what else was in there.
I've found that now that I have some context, I find the first section much more interesting. It's still not a barn burner, but it was important to Tolkien for a reason. It of course mirrors the rest of the tales in the book, the counterpoint of the music also functioning as a counterpoint to the events to come later, but it also lays out Tolkien's notion of the nature of evil, and how it operates in a world created by a loving but subtle god (or at least the one that Tolkien created).
I think it's rather beautiful, but, again, only after skipping it and reading the rest first :)
For what it's worth, the beginning of the Silmarillion is by far my favorite part. Maybe it's easier to read if you've had previous exposure to mythology and/or the Bible?
I found the Ainulindale to be one of my preferred parts, but I'm also the kind of person who would enjoy reading Hesiod or the Bhagavad Gita as well. I enjoy religious literature without the bother of agreeing with it; it has a different quality that mercilessly bends the strict fiction/non-fiction line we like to pretend exists.
I actually read it while I was young and hadn't the money to buy my own books: I got it as a single, enormous Word document from a friend and read it by CRT display.
I think you're being too hard on Christopher Tolkien. The first time I read through The Silmarillion I was disappointed by how much it resembled a history text book...then I realized: it is a history text book. This interview just cements what I had already suspected: much as the history of the real world is mostly mundane, punctuated by a few good "stories", the same is true of Tolkien's works. Surely, when you see the Mona Lisa your eyes are drawn to the face and slight smile, but da Vinci still had to paint the background for it to be the painting it is. In some regards, this is the difference between art and pop culture. Once you get past the surface, pop culture is typically hollow.
All that said, I think the original movies are artistic masterpieces (haven't seen the Hobbit yet, so I can't comment)...just masterpieces of a different sort, in a different medium.
> Once you get past the surface, pop culture is typically hollow.
I'll be pedantic and take issue with that.
Pop culture is unable to stand on its own, but once you get past the surface, it's really more of a guidebook to the nature of culture which can rapidly become a very deep exploration if you have the stomach for it.
Art tends to be able to stand on its own outside of the culture it came from.
Yeah, it's Middle Earth's Bible, which is part of the reason why I disagree with its existence. Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have published his notes and thoughts in that form, and it dilutes Tolkien's published works of their artistic value.
Yes, I've heard that argument as well, and felt it myself to some extent. Not to torture the analogy too much, but one thing to note about the Mona Lisa is the amount of discussion, debate, and research that has gone into questions such as "what location does the background represent?" and "who is this lady, anyway?". Literally hundreds of years have gone into an analysis of that painting, and posthumously publishing Tolkiens background notes almost guarantees that the legacy of his work will be treated very differently. That said, Tolkiens works exist at an interesting cusp in the course of human history, as we are transitioning from a dearth of contextual clues surrounding works of art, to an extreme excess. Nothing is sacred, but such is the way of things today...
Agreed. My experience of Tolkien was reading the hobbit (which I remembered from an animated version in my childhood) without realizing that a whole trilogy would follow.
Learning that I could return to middle earth, I was excited, and devoured the lord of the rings trilogy soon after the hobbit.
Then I learned that I could spend some more time in middle earth with the Silmarilion, so I dove into that next. Total buzzkill. I quit a little way in, my enthusiasm for middle earth mostly drained.
You shouldn't have quit. There's really good stuff in the Silmarilion and if you really like middle earth and all that, you won't be sorry to have read it entirely in the end.
When I read a great book, I usually end up thinking, "Damn, I wish there was more about that one thing they briefly mentioned". Usually, if somebody goes in later and tries to fill in the blanks, you end up with a turd, because they're going in later to answer questions.
The Silmarillion is different. I'd argue it's the main work, and I appreciate it largely because it's not a novel, it's a Biblical compilation covering thousands of years that required decades of world-building and re-writing to bring it to the incomplete state it's in now.
I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)
I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.
somewhat <SPOILER ALERT>:
The battle of five armies, which will show up in the last movie is likely to be much more epic than the book, based on Jackson's renditions of other battles of Middle Earth.
</SPOILER ALERT>
I would go one step further: Peter Jackson's adaptation has been nothing short of fantastic. He's been pretty faithful to the LoTR story, but his movies have sparked interest in Tolkein's universe among those who would have never known about it otherwise. None of my friends would even consider reading the Hobbit or LoTR, but they've all seen and enjoyed the movies. (A tiny minority even tried reading the book). Now, its something that we enjoy talking about over many afternoons
I have to disagree, at least about the LoTR films (I haven't seen The Hobbit yet). I think Jackson "adapted" the story out of all recognition. It may well have drawn a larger audience, but the Middle-Earth that the audience is seeing is not the Middle-Earth that Tolkien wrote about.
<SPOILERS FOLLOW>
Just a few points:
(1) The elves in the movies are way too immature. For example, Elrond, who is something like 6500 years old at the time of the War of the Ring, acts in the movies like an angst-ridden middle-aged father in a second-rate TV drama about Arwen wanting to marry Aragorn.
(2) Way too much screen time is spent on stuff that isn't even depicted in the books and adds nothing to the story, such as Saruman breeding the orcs.
(3) There are some major plot changes that make no sense: for example, the part in The Two Towers movie where Aragorn apparently falls off a cliff and is lost. (When I watched the movie in the theater with a friend, who had already seen it and who has been reading Tolkien as long as I have, he told me when it got to this point, "Here's the part you're going to hate.")
(4) The Scouring of the Shire is completely missing; that's an integral part of the plot in the books and omitting it takes away a lot.
Again, if someone is just taking the movies as their own story, without knowing anything about the books, I can see how they would like it; but they're not seeing the same world that Tolkien wrote about.
You've probably heard this counterargument, so I'm just putting it out there for the sake of completeness:
If Jackson hadn't done those things, there was no way he could have culled the story down to 3 3-hour segments.
That said, I do agree. I was disappointed that Bombadil and his immunity to the Ring didn't show, for instance. But while the Scouring of the Shire was immensely critical to the books, it was also profoundly anticlimactic: it would have broken the simpler narrative of the movies to pull in those more complex themes to have a second climax.
As it was, Jackson only barely managed to hang the two main plotlines together. They didn't need a connection in the books, but it's much more challenging in a movie format. It might have been worth it to split The Two Towers into two films in order to give each its room. (Frodo and Sam from the Breaking to the escape from Cirith Ungol in Film 2; Aragorn and Gandalf's contests with Theoden, Saruman, and Denethor as a very long Film 3; and twisting the two back together in 4 with room for the Scouring.) Nolan managed it in The Dark Knight, where after the Joker was beaten, there was one final emotional explosion. So it can be done. I don't know if Jackson could have done it.
If Jackson hadn't done those things, there was no way he could have culled the story down to 3 3-hour segments.
Done what things? Except for omitting the Scouring of the Shire (for a further comment on that, see below), the things I was criticizing could have been changed without lengthening the film at all. Indeed, leaving out all the "Hollywood" stuff like Saruman breeding the orcs would have left more time for things that would have added more value.
while the Scouring of the Shire was immensely critical to the books, it was also profoundly anticlimactic
Again, if Jackson hadn't wasted screen time on "Hollywood" stuff, he would have been able to add the extra themes that would have helped the Scouring of the Shire to make sense to the movie viewer.
I don't agree that the Saruman breeding the orcs should have been left out, but I'd have to re-watch the entire thing to be certain my argument holds water and well... I'm not going to do that anytime soon.
I don't agree that the Saruman breeding the orcs should have been left out
Perhaps not entirely left out, but a lot of screen time was spent on it that, IMO, added no value whatsoever to the movie. A quick cut or two would have been enough.
Also, he basically destroyed the Ents. That was my favorite part of the book ("You have angered an elder power. The elder power hits you. You die.")
Instead we get Treebeard being basically a dummy sidekick for the hobbits, who realises late that Saruman is destroying the trees and then goes on a rampage.
I was greatly peeved at how many times Jackson expanded a 1- or 2-sentence mention in the book into major scenes. See Radagast and the stone giants for prime examples.
I think a PJ-style movie adaptation of The Hobbit would have fared well as a 3-hour theatrical cut, plus some extras for the Super Deluxe Director's Extended Blu-Ray Edition.
And why the hell didn't Bilbo's actual finding of the Ring from The Hobbit match the scene from the first LoTR film? Can't Jackson follow his own freakin' canon?
The only way for it to match would be for them to have filmed The Hobbit first, then copied footage. They changed actors too - obviously not following his own freakin' canon. Does that ruin it too? Should he have used the same actor, damn the results, to satisfy canon?
The story in the LOTR movies was "Bilbo found the ring in a hole and Gollum yelled 'Loooost!'". There's no canon. That is not a story, it's an obviously-intentional massive oversimplification that was obviously not intended to be reused verbatim in The Hobbit.
An unsatisfying excuse: all the stories are from eye witnesses and second hand story-tellers. No wonder, there are discrepancies. Bilbo tells the finding different than Gandalf. It is like the chinese whispers/telephone game.
Not entirely made up. In Tolkien's world. Azog was indeed the leader of the orcs in Moria and he did behead Thror. However, Tolkien's story has Azog killed by Dain in that same battle. The scene at the end of the first Hobbit movie did take place in the book, but Azog was not present--if I remember right, they were just treed by some random goblins, who sang a cheery song :)
While I enjoyed the Hobbit movie, I was annoyed by the Jabba the Hut scene, and some of the slapstick that was lifted right out of Laurel and Hardy movies.
Hardy played the hit on the head with a brick, and then when he thought that was the worst, he'd get hit on the head with another brick.
This schtick has appeared (in various forms) in endless movies. It's so cliche I knew the goblin king was going to fall on the dwarves the moment one of them said "that wasn't so bad".
Then there's the good guy slicing the bad guy with a sword. You think he missed, then the bad guy looks surprised as his head slides off. I've seen that in probably at least 6 movies.
Falling into the abyss, and yet being grabbed and saved at the last second. Where have we seen that before? The literal "cliff hanger". And we get to see it several times over in The Hobbit.
I still liked The Hobbit. But in spite of those scenes.
I think the goblin king should have been played a little more subtly, but as jonny_eh points out, it's a children's story. While The Hobbit takes place in the larger world of Middle Earth, it is also significantly lighter in tone than LotR. It was silly in places, and some silliness is appropriate.
Consider the trolls they find early on. Do any of Tolkien's other works ever mention them being more than mute beasts? Yet in the Hobbit, they're dumb but capable of making tools, etc., and they turn to stone in sunlight, a weakness never mentioned elsewhere. This is much more in line with traditional fairy stories, down to Gandalf tricking the trolls until they're caught in sunlight and turn to stone.
I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "pretty good". Enjoyable action movie? Sure. Has all of the right characters? Check. Actually follows the plot? Complete fail.
Off of the top of my head, Bilbo should sign the contract the night before, wake up, and only actually go out because Gandalf comes and tells him that he's late. When Bilbo goes to investigate the trolls, the dwarves have no fire and no idea what is there. It should be Gandalf who gets the trolls to argue with each other, not Bilbo. Azog should not appear in The Hobbit. There should be no encounters with orcs until, possibly, the battle of the 5 armies. There should be no encounter of goblins, or wargs until after visiting Elrond. The dwarves should be made far more welcome - I personally had been looking forward to the Elvish songs they were supposed to be greeted with, and did NOT like seeing a bad repeat of the meeting between Aragorn and Èomer in The Two Towers. Gandalf should leave Rivendell with the party. The white council should not meet while the dwarves are there, nor in the book is there any hint of romance between Gandalf and Galadriel. (Useless trivia, Galadriel is actually Elrond's mother-in-law.) The dwarves should hear the stone giants - but not be caught riding them. In the cave where they were captured, Bilbo wakes, sees goblins in the back, then shouts (which is how Gandalf escapes). He doesn't wake, have an eloquent conversation, then have the floor cave in. The goblin fight sequence is very long, entirely made up, and the goblin cave we see (complete with rickety structures, the messenger, and so on) owes no debt to Tolkien. (Goblins chasing behind, yes. Rivers of goblins coming from all directions being comically killed by every dwarf in sight, not so much.) Bilbo should be lost by the party because he falls off of a dwarf's back while they are running, and not because he managed to avoid initial capture. Bilbo should not meet the goblin that Gollum was killing when he lost the ring. Bilbo should lose his buttons leaving the goblin cave, not squeezing through some random rocks. The whole tree sequence complete with heroic fight, trees being pushed over, and dangling over cliffs...? All made up. As a reminder, in the book the wolves discover them, they hide in trees, Gandalf throws burning pine-cones, the wolves are driven crazy, goblins come, turn the fire on the trees, Gandalf gets ready to pay dearly with his life and then the eagles come and save him.
That's just off of the top of my head. If I was to actually put effort in it, I'm sure I'd come up with a much longer list of differences.
Of all of the changes, the only one that I consider completely justified was making it light enough in the goblin cave fights for people to see. A bunch of running in the dark would not translate to the screen very well.
Random disclaimer. I have no idea how many times I've read the books. But my last two times reading the Hobbit were painfully slow - I read it to my son.
I agree with almost all of your points, but there is one minor item to correct:
There should be no encounters with orcs until, possibly, the battle of the 5 armies.
"Orc" and "goblin" are just different names for the same creature. In the book the word "goblin" is the only one used, except for one passage in "Riddles in the Dark", where "orcs of the mountains" are equated with "big" goblins.
I don't know whether a series like A Song of Ice and Fire could every be adapted well, but the TV show has definitely ensured that more people will read, and most important remember, the work of R. R. Martin.
Whatever you may think about the artistic merit of LOTR and The Hobbit, I think Tolkien has still benefitted immensely.
> calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the pot calling the kettle black.
It's a little worse than that.
Compare how the stories were told back in the 80s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y (I saw this in first broadcast, and have probably been singing the song for 3 decades since.)
Peter Jackson wasn't an improvement on this? So let's be clear: This is not about showing respect for the stories. It is about the money.
Unlike The Matrix, The Hobbit was created knowing it would be the first of a trilogy (early in production, a two-part series). As such, it spends all of its frames laying the groundwork for the next film. One reviewer, I forget who, described the experience as "all foreplay with no sex", which I agree with. That said, still a rousing ride and a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, particularly the Thorin/Bilbo story that concluded near the end.
To borrow a term from TV, it's a "premise movie", the counterpart to a premise pilot, which doesn't work as a regular episode, but as the set-up for the rest of the show.
> I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.
So have I, and as much as I wish it could coexist, I'm not sure it really can. For an entire generation, "Lord of the Rings" really pretty just means the movies.
Given some of his actions, calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, let's film a 16-hour word-for-word rendition of each book, because that will work on film. I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.
I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)