1,621 words
Filming a book is not something that can be done successfully without lots of blood, sweat and tears. Directors who take on these projects are prepared for the hard work ahead of them. A director must capture the essence of the book thus; slight changes to the novel must be made for the conversion to be a success. But when a book is written in a roundabout manner with lots of details and a lot of nothing intertwined, the process of going from page to screen is even harder. Thus was the task of Peter Jackson, director of all three Lord of the Rings films based on the world renowned books by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tom Shippey, a scholar of medieval literature, wrote an article called “From Page to Screen: J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson”; in which he discusses the challenges involved in taking a long and extremely complicated literary work and turning it into a dynamic film. Shippey shares some of his concerns and problems he thinks Jackson will face when filming Return of the King; the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson was faced with many challenges while filming all three films of The Lord of the Rings, but the third installment, The Return of the King, was especially difficult, because it was the zenith of all three movies. Jackson’s first challenge was writing the perfect script for Return of the King, one that included all the necessary details and excluded anything that wouldn’t really make a difference to the story. Because Jackson realized how important having the perfect ending for Return of the King would be, he was thinking about the end as he was molding the scripts of the first two books, Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers in order to set the stage for Return of the King. The script for the Two Towers was sacrificed in order to keep the audience anxious and interested. Many scenes such as the destroying of Isengard, the palantir and the death of Saruman that happened in the Two Towers novel were placed in the script for the Return of the King film and the “Scouring of the Shire” scene was excluded entirely.
Not only did Jackson restyle the novels but he also gave new life to some characters that weren’t looked upon as important to the novels. The romance between Arwen and Aragorn is mainly in the appendices however, Jackson realizes that Arwen is a very important part of the film because her character is strongly tied to Aragorn. Arwen is Aragorn’s source of strength even though she is rarely mentioned in the main text of The Lord of the Rings novels. Once she gives up her immortality as she professes her love for Aragorn, her life is tied to the destruction of the ring. Jackson successfully incorporates Arwen into the film by increasing her role; she has a spiritual connection with Aragorn as he journeys with the Fellowship. She is his source of comfort and his sole reason to persevere in his struggle to help Frodo destroy the ring. Jackson also realizes that Faramir’s original characterization wouldn’t have made any sense to the film. In the novel, Faramir does not want the ring and says he would not want it even if it lay on the wayside, but in the film almost everyone wants the ring so who is Faramir to say that his desires are any different? Jackson changes Faramir’s character into one who is a threat rather than a friend. He no longer tries to help Frodo resist the ring like he did in the novel or says that he doesn’t want the ring. He is just like everyone else who realizes the power that the ring encompasses and wants it for himself.
According to Shippey, the main problem that Jackson will face is how to end the book; Jackson must give the film an ending that would be acceptable to Tolkien fanatics as well as incorporate Tolkien’s world view into a film. Tolkien concluded the Return of the King novel with lots of endings, almost one for each character in the Fellowship. With so many endings to choose from Jackson had to make a wise decision on how to end Return of the King in a way that would please viewers who were avid Tolkien readers as well as viewers who never read Lord of the Rings. Because the audience would want to know what happened to the characters that they had grown to know and love, Jackson over came this challenge by using some of Tolkien’s endings which included the destruction of the ring, the crowning of Aragorn as King, the reunion of Arwen and Aragorn, the fellowship’s reunion in Rivendale, the return of the Hobbits to the Shire, the passage of Frodo into the Grey Havens, and the passing of the book from Frodo to Sam. Jackson kept the true ending, it worked for him as it worked for Tolkien. Sam returns to his home, and utters the words, “Well, I’m back.” All of which played important roles in satisfying the viewers’ need for completion and despite a few changes here and there the film and the novel still ended on the same note.
Although Jackson did a wonderful job meeting these challenges, did he preserve the essentials of Tolkien’s narrative? Did he incorporate Tolkien’s worldview? Shippey states:
“Tolkien’s narrative structures, I would suggest, are a part of his worldview. That is why they cannot be imitated on screen. The problem is that commercial cinema, for obvious social reasons,is essentially a triumphalist genre. In it, Good must Prevail. Villains get their Just Desserts – as they do in Tolkien, of course, but the difference is that Tolkien never thought this was inevitable.”
At some points in the movie you begin to think that Good is not going to prevail and according to Tolkien’s outlook, it can go either way. In Tolkien’s famous essay about Fairy-stories we get to see his worldview through the cases he makes. Tolkien writes: “… God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance”.
With his Christian background it is easy to see why Tolkien’s worldview is like that of a fairytale. Although Tolkien does not think it is inevitable that Good will prevail.Why would God let evil prevail over good? As Tolkien shares his thoughts about fairytales as he writes: “First of all: if written with art, the prime value of fairy-stories will simply be that value which, as literature, they share with other literary forms. But fairy-stories offer also, in a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation, all things of which children have, as a rule, less need than older people.”
“What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.”
This helped me understand Tolkien’s motivation as he wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Everything is so intricately detailed that the reader is sucked into the world of Middle Earth. Although Tolkien’s writing is unprofessional it is believable. Languages, geography, governments, war, diversity (elves, dwarves, men) —everything that exists in the real world also exists in the secondary world of Middle Earth. But once something is deemed unrealistic the reader/ viewer will snap out of it and just be a regular outsider looking in. The novels are believable and allow the reader to get swept away in fantasy. Keeping this in mind was very important for Jackson. He had to know and study Tolkien’s worldview in order to accurately capture the spirit of Lord of the Rings into film. Reality = SUCCESS. Lord of the Rings has such a big following just for that very reason. However, Jackson wasn’t the only important person to play a role in this quest for reality, as a director Jackson had to deal with the challenge of making Ents and Orcs look realistic to the audience. So it was important for him to have a strong design team and make-up artists who understood the value of Tolkien’s wish and were able to make it come to pass.
Jackson was very successful in his undertaking of bringing the Lord of the Rings from page to screen. After tons of edits, changes and simplifications Tolkien’s mythology has been brought new life. Every aspect of the movie was carefully thought out in order to be pleasing to Tolkien’s wishes. In his paper about Fairy Stories, Tolkien goes on to write: “To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible… will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.” This is what Peter Jackson has attempted and what he has made. He preserved the essentials of Tolkien’s narrative and incorporated Tolkien’s worldview; the Lord of the Rings films are epic and are now a big part of literary and film history. Works Cited
Shippey, Tom. “From Page to Screen: J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma 77 (2003): 69–72.
Tolkien, J.R. R. On Fairy-stories.
Tolkien, J.R. R. The Return of the King. New York, NY: Random House, 1994.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition. Dir. Peter Jackson.
