There And There Again: Four Years with The Lord of the Rings
(originally printed in ChicGeeks)

Before hanging Peter Jackson from the gibbet as sport for his own crows, let us discuss the gifts he has bestowed on the world with The Lord of the Rings :

1. He has created one of the most engaging ensemble casts ever (except for Viggo Mortenson and David Wenham).

2. He has proven that fantasy fiction (and its depictions in three-hour-plus movies) isn't the refuge of shallow characters and inaccessible plots.

3. He has singlehandedly created a viable film industry away from Hollywood.

For his undeniable fanboy "wouldn't this be cool?" ethic, Peter Jackson should be forgiven the blatant and coldblooded atrocities he has committed on J.R.R. Tolkien's work. I am convinced that sometime in the formative stages of the script, as Kiwis drank in the reek and koalas rolled on the floor with the dogs, a decision was made to "fuck the book".

Here are two examples from ROTK that display, in our opinion, a good deviation from the book and a bad one.

Prior to the Ride of the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, Eowyn is forbidden to go by Theoden. Instead she will go vacuum and arrange the doilies at Edoras. Eowyn calls bullshit on that, throws on a helmet, and rides as Dernhelm. She picks up Merry, similarly disenfranchised, and together they gallop to Gondor.

GOOD:

In the book Merry doesn't realize who Dernhelm is until Theoden has been squished by his own mount and the Witch King is menacing Eowyn. In the movie he figures it out immediately, saying "My lady" in wonderment and hobbit-sized lust. It doesn't take away from the narrative (or, more importantly, the author's intention) to speed up this reveal. And the movie is ten hours long, for Illuvatar's sake.

ILL:

In the book, Eowyn lops off the head of a Fell Beast and the Witch King shatters her arm with a mace. This also happens in the movie. But it is Merry who kills the Witch King in the book. He does it from behind, and the contact with that Angmar spectro-flesh nearly does him in. In the movie Eowyn is given a feminist MacDuff moment and gets to stab the Witch King in the hole.

This is something Jackson would say is "better". It gives Eowyn the chance to show her quality (in the book and movie, she ends up with Faramir. The book's Faramir is a worthy second choice; the movie's Faramir has had his ass handed to him in every battle he's fought. Who'll wear the pants in that family?) but it contradicts the book. You are not Professor Tolkien's collaborator , Mr. Jackson - you are his interpreter .

Across the world and here in Hollywood, people have anticipated the past four Decembers with equal apprehension and glee. Through teaser trailers, sneak peaks at conventions, and well-organized websites and fan clubs, devotees of the book and the movies hoped that Professor Tolkien's epic story would be realized faithfully and well. It would take someone with a big imagination and tremendous drive to pull it off, and today's release of ROTK:EE is certainly testament to that. And this isn't even the last you've heard about Lord of the Rings DVD releases: after King Kong (and maybe The Hobbit ), Jackson will doubtless put together a blue laser, 16-hour edition of the three or four movies.

But the atrocities. Since the three movies are such an accomplishment and such faithful, loving interpretations in most areas, it is hard to reconcile certain things that were placed in the movie (or left out) with the way these events did (or didn't) happen in the book.

Fellowship of the Ring fused Haldir with Arwen to give Liv Tyler a bigger role, and in so doing made the elf maiden a warrior out of sync with who she would be in the rest of the movie. At the pivotal Isen scene, where the book's Frodo weakly raises his sword against the Witch King in an act of defiance beyond his physical strength, we are now left with Arwen summoning water horses (a job Tolkien gave more appropriately to Gandalf).

Also, the Celeborn of the movie (Marton Csokas) has become such a neutered, useless character in comparison to Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) that I'm surprised he's been left in the movie. Legolas should have taken her aside and said, "Lose the fairy."

I remember December, 2001, after the disappointment of the first Harry Potter movie, when my LOTR -geek friends and I left The Bridge Cinema in El Segundo after Fellowship , thinking, "Jackson got so much of it right - why did he change those other things?" For example, while Tolkien didn't describe Gandalf and Saruman's Wizards' Battle so comprehensively, Jackson crafted a kick-ass scene that I'm sure J.R.R. would have appreciated. It added color to the movie but didn't have anyone go drastically out of character.

November, 2002 brought Fellowship 's Extended Edition, and with it a righting of certain wrongs, such as Gimli's growing love for the elves (Galadriel's gifting ceremony was exquisite) that had been left out of the original release. Fans were prepared to forgive Jackson for the little liberties he had taken, as well as the sheer commercialism of deliberately releasing one inferior DVD in the summer with the full knowledge that there would be a better one out in the winter.

The Two Towers , however, was an abomination. With the addition of a fourth screenwriter to the mix, everything went to Hell by way of the Emyn Muil. Gimli was now comic relief, Elves were cropping up in places like Helms Deep where they hadn't been before, Elrond became nothing more than a scene-chewing jealous dad, and for some god-awful reason, Aragorn was fake killed-off   in a warg attack that never happened. Faramir not only looked like a wimpier Richard Gere, but also took our heroes on a side trip to Osgiliath that served no purpose. Oh, and Gimli became Scottish.

We walked out of that film dazed and horrified. We saw it again when people who hadn't read the books begged us to consider TTT on its filmic merits only, and not by comparison with the book. We still hated it. Listening to the commentary on the Extended Edition which we dutifully bought the following November, we were shocked to hear Jackson saying, "there wasn't a warg attack in the book, but we made it better ." Bright spots in TTT were limited to Miranda Otto's Eowyn, John Rhys-Davies' Fangorn/John Kerry, and a skillful Zeffireliesque repurposing of Gandalf's line about Eowyn and her bower closing in to Brad Dourif's Wormtongue. But Shelob had been repurposed as well, and fans had to wait to see her until Return of the King .

By now December had been redefined. Our east coast roots forgotten like Gollum's memory of bread, December had become not about snow and foggy glasses but about the next Lord of the Rings film.

Since fans had been burned by Jackson before, we anticipated ROTK with some dread. There was a lot to do. Since so much had been left out of the previous two films and a considerable amount of shit had been thrown into the last one, I walked into Hollywood's Arclight Cinema expecting to be disappointed when the film ended unsatisfactorily and then made to hold on for the Extended Cut a year later in the wan hope that the gaps would be filled in.

But Return of the King was a triumph. Small moments belonging to Pippin and Sam were mixed with grand scenes like the lighting of the beacons, all pulled off wonderfully. Eowyn's money shot with the Lord of the Nazgul, Sean Astin's Oscar-worthy performance, and the glory of the first shot of Minas Tirith were enough to make me sit through it three times on two coasts.

Even though -

  - John Noble's Denethor was like an unwigged drag queen doing a flaming swan dive off Minas Tirith (Jackson most shortchanged Tolkien, we think, in his depiction of the men of the House of Anarion; while Sean Bean's Boromir was multi-layered and effective, like his counterpart in the book, both the movie's Faramir and Denethor made one wonder why the people of Gondor had any love for them at all). We were also disappointed that the Paths of the Dead evoked not dread but instead The Pirates of the Caribbean . Also, the miscast Aragorn's faggoty-assed pep speech at the Gates of Mordor paled in comparison with Theoden's "Red Day" battle cry to the Rohirrim overlooking the Pelennor Fields.

Which brings us to ROTK :EE, which the mailman brought today. Does it depict the Scouring of the Shire? No. Does it give enough reason for Frodo to go to the Grey Havens? No. Does it give us any epilogues like the book's appendices? No. But the lesson of the past three years is that you really do have to watch these movies without regard   to the books, and if, now and then in a mostly-faithful rendition of Tolkien's work you get a deeper peek, you're lucky.

That is why it was satisfying to see an extended showdown with Saruman, even if Wormtongue was dispatched about 700 miles from where he should have been, and by someone else. We were disappointed that Saruman's spirit didn't look to the west before it was rebuffed and blown away, but we were happy that he referred to "the staffs of the five wizards". We were happy to see the Mouth of Sauron restored, even if he sounded a little like a Croatian Cookie Monster and Aragorn lopped off his head. We were sad that Aragorn's part was made bolder only by Gandalf losing some courage. The book didn't cut corners like that; Gandalf was always right - he didn't get second-guessed by anyone or modify his counsel. And when Gandalf left Middle-earth, he left on top. The movie has him diminishing like some Elf.

Tolkien did not give the women-folk of Middle-earth much credit. The Entwives had disappeared, Arwen was more of an ideal than a person, Eowyn had to fight for man-scraps, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins was a shrew, and the healing-woman, Ioreth, was almost a Thurber woman in her witless chattiness. The movie increased   Middle-earth womens' stature quite a bit, but again, it was at the expense of other characters. Poor choice.

All in all, the three Lord of the Rings movies were a glorious achievement and The Godfather or Star Wars of our generation. Jackson's technical brilliance was too often offset by his hubris, however, in making arrogant and unnecessary plot choices. No one accused Francis Ford Coppola of taking liberties with Mario Puzo's book, even though the movie was much better. Mostly, Jackson did right by Tolkien, and did it better than probably anyone could (certainly better than Chris Columbus ever did with anyone's book).

  - Professor Dentyne Murdlurk