This draft is better (although still a little short) but it has the same problem of not staying on topic. Your first three paragraphs have nothing to do with the questions I asked you to answer:
You really need to concentrate on Return of the King. Lydia Fish September 22, 2008, at 09:17 AM
I think that you have strong points for your essay. I know that this is a draft and I don’t know how you’re going to set up your final paper, but when reading the draft, there’s a lot of information that seems to be more focused on the making of the film. You should have a good final paper! Sarah Chudyk?
Very strong essay! Man your on top of things. Though I think in the beginning you should possibly introduce Shippey and his predictions. Brittany Thrun ? September 17, 2008, at 10:42 PM
I think it is interesting how you discuss the difficulties of introducing and having Arwen as a character. I also think it is interesting how you discuss the emotional journeys of the characters. Another good point you made was the difficulty of how the destruction of the ring would take place. Nice conclusion. Steven Wilser? September 17, 2008, at 11:16 AM
You have a very strong essay, but I felt in the first few paragraphs, you were more looking at all the films rather than limiting it to Shippey and ROTK. I think if you brought more focus on the last film sooner, you would be set. Devon Cozad? September 17, 2008, at 10:29 AM
I would like to read what you’ll say in you final paper about the physical realities of filming a movie of this scale like the 100 speaking parts. Great use of available information. I totally agree that there is a different perspective of LOTR depending on what you have done first, read or see that film. Awesome point! Sarah McNutt September 16, 2008, at 11:25 PM
I think your emphasis on how Jackson changed the timeline of the story is very strong. There is no way that the cinematic audience could have lined the two separate story lines up by themselves. I bet the readers of The Lord of the Rings had a similar problem. Annika Laughlin? September 16, 2008, at 09:07 PM
You might consider splitting up your introduction. It seems a bit long. you could take out the part about getting a studio to accept the project, and put it in its own paragraph. But other than that — really well done! Joseph Bella? September 14, 2008, at 11:13 PM
I loved your last paragraph and how you compare Frodo’s task of destroying the ring to Jackson’s task of converting these books into movies; how both are seemingly hopeless! I think that you should expand your conclusion, and perhaps make your introduction a little shorter. I do feel like your concluding paragraph is somewhat short-sighted. Good job! Kelsey Till September 13, 2008, at 04:10 PM
You need to expand your conclusion paragraph. Other than that, well done! I really like your paragraph on the different characters and how all of them have different emotional journeys throughout the story. I think it is important to show that everyone has their own motivations and emotional connection to the battles and fight against evil that take place. Elizabeth Delano? September 16, 2008, at 07:11 PM
Emily Marvin 9/12/08
Peter Jackson, director of all three The Lord of the Rings movies, said that when he was reading the books at age 18, he never imagined he would be the one to eventually bring Tolkien’s world to the screen. In November 1995, Jackson asked his agent about getting rights to film The Lord of the Rings. At first, the Hollywood studio wanted the books condensed into two films, and then suddenly before the start of principle photography, they told Jackson to yet again condense the trilogy into one film or be replaced. Jackson made a deal with the studio that he would find a new company in three weeks to produce the films, or he would leave without compensation or the scripts, which he owned. Almost three weeks had gone by without any success, when Jackson turned to New Line Cinema as a last hope. He showed a short film, and within five minutes, he was making not one or two, but three movies. These obstacles were just the beginning of many to come with filming such a loved story throughout the world. It was imperative that Jackson stay focused when filming all three movies at once and out of sequence. When filming scenes from the third movie, he was confronted with the overall challenge of forming the climax of the trilogy, one that would preserve Tolkien’s narrative and world view, and be worthy of the title, The Return of the King.
When Jackson took on the job of filming these movies, he had 1200 plus pages, along with more than 100 pages of appendices with lineages and unknown languages to put on screen. He knew he would have to answer to the fans of Tolkien’s books if he didn’t satisfy them. He had the task of recreating a complex book that relies a lot on back story, or historical elements that were the key in telling the rest of the story. According to Jackson himself, these were fine in a book, but extremely difficult to display on screen. Already behind the books, Jackson had to keep up the momentum of the first two movies in the final one, which meant more sets, costumes, props, computer-animated creatures, training, casting and of course, larger-scale battles! Jackson definitely succeeded in topping the battle of Helm’s Deep, for which 10,000 orcs were released, with the Battle on Pelennor Fields, when 600,000 are released to battle Minis Tirith.
Tolkien thought that his book was not filmable. Jackson would agree that to film the books, it would be impossible to film page by page; that’s why Jackson was trying to, most importantly, capture the spirit of the books in the movies. Many parts of the third book were taken out of context. For example, instead of giving the speech about Eowyn to Gandalf when he says that she is in the house of healing, Jackson films it as Wormtongue’s speech. He and his scriptwriters knew that this had to be said about her; it didn’t matter who was the one to say it, the audience had to know about the inner struggle of Eowyn in leading up to the third movie. Jackson and his crew did an excellent job in the challenge of preserving many descriptions of Tolkien’s world, whether it was through the sets built into the landscapes of New Zealand, or through the words of the characters. Many will agree with Jackson’s claim that they “created a film that feels like it happened in a real place.” For example, the description of the undying lands in the “Grey Havens” chapter is given to Gandalf. As he and Pippin are gazing at the evil brewing in Mordor, Gandalf offers words of comfort to Pippin, “and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.” The scriptwriters display their belief that this is a metaphor for death; Gandalf is telling Pippin that death isn’t such a bad thing, but is “just the beginning.”
From day one of filming all the movies, Jackson mapped out the events of the books in chronological order. This solved the problem of organization that was necessary for a film to work. I will talk about this more in detail below. One part of the second book that Jackson instead placed in his filmed version of The Return of the King was when Pippin takes the palantir from Gandalf and is seen by Sauron. I think this is an improvement on the novels themselves because it would make more sense to show the audience why Pippin is going with Gandalf immediately before they ride for Minis Tirith. It would become less dramatic if they were to start the third movie with the two characters riding; the audience may even forget that sense of urgency for transporting Pippin. Another part of the second book that Jackson knew immediately to leave to the filming of scenes for the third movie was the encounter with Shelob. Jackson knew it would be foolish to have two incredibly climactic events happening at once in the second movie; it would be anti-climactic for Frodo and Sam in the third movie. According to Tolkien’s timelines, Frodo and Sam enter Shelob’s lair after the army of Minis Morgul has been summoned and the battle for Minis Tirith has begun.
Jackson had more than 100 speaking parts to fill. Once again, fans of the books had their own ideas about the looks and mannerisms of their favorite characters. Jackson said, “We were finding actors to represent some of the most beloved characters in history, so we felt that responsibility acutely, and we spent a lot of time trying to find people who just felt right… We literally said that we wanted our actors to feel like they stepped out of the pages of the book.” Jackson was gifted for finding new talent, such as Orlando Bloom who was days away from graduation in London when he was picked for the part of Legolas. Many people who saw the first two movies would agree that they can’t imagine anyone else playing the vital role of Aragorn, than Vigo. The third movie required new characters such as Denethor and the strengthening of existing character roles, such as Aragorn, Arwen, Sam, Faramir, Pippin, Merry and Eowyn.
There were two specific characters that posed problems for Jackson in filming the third movie; the first was Arwen, the second was Faramir. Jackson knew that he had to somehow fit Arwen into all three films to get the audience familiar with her and not wonder why all off a sudden she appears in the third movie, which was my impression when reading the book; it took them a year to figure out how to do this. The story of Arwen and Aragorn is mostly in the appendices in the third book. Jackson tried a number of things, such as Arwen fighting in Helm’s Deep with Aragorn. Finally they found a way to “keep them together when they were apart.” Arwen becomes not only the one to rescue Frodo in the first film, but one to have a psychic connection with Aragorn. The audience is then conscious of what drives Aragorn to become King, although he fears the abuse of power. Jackson and his scriptwriters agreed that Faramir had to become more of a threat in the second movie. He had to go through a journey of his own, and it had to start in the end of the second movie, so that by the time we see him in the third, we see how he has progressed. In the moviemakers’ opinions, it would be kind of silly to have Faramir help Frodo and resist the Ring. If he still said he would not be tempted by it if it “were by the wayside,” it would make a mockery of the controlling power of the Ring; I believe this is also an improvement on the book. Faramir is lured by the Ring, just as all were, to “show his quality” as Captain of Gondor; this sets us up for the third movie because we understand that he wants to gain his father’s approval. He comes to understand the evil of the Ring with the story of Baramir.
Another challenging aspect of the third movie was not only casting the multitude of characters, but the fact that each of them had their varying emotional journeys. Jackson and his crew had to make sure each character’s journey fit together into the puzzle. This challenge continued from when the fellowship split up into three groups in the second movie, to the third, when more character groups disperse, such as Gandalf and Pippin and Merry and Eowyn.
In the books, Tolkien used a “leapfrog” pattern. According to Tolkien’s biographer, Tom Shippey, Tolkien has his characters “with widely separated adventures, and with the groups further rejoining, re-separating, and subdividing in bewildering fashion. Nor does the narration follow them neatly, picking each group up again, where it had left them before… the strands of story overtak[e] one another and then backtrack.” Shippey predicted that this would not be imitated on screen. When anyone is reading the books, they are often times unaware of how the other companies are doing. The story of Frodo and Sam is completely separated into another book; this generally doesn’t work in commercial cinema.
Jackson tries to preserve some flashbacks from the second and third book in the third movie. For example, instead of showing the Ents’ attack on Isengard only in flashback, as Tolkien has, Jackson gets around this by showing the audience the attack paralleled with Helm’s Deep in the second movie and leaving the scene with Merry and Pippin smoking with Treebeard, when Theodin and the others come to see what has become of Saruman, to the beginning of the third movie. Through Jackson changing the overall narrative structure of Tolkien in the films, however necessary in cinema, he loses part of Tolkien’s world view. Movies generally follow the theme of good prevailing against evil; Tolkien’s somewhat jumbled narrative pattern shows that he doesn’t believe that this is inevitable. Through reading The Return of the King, the reader is forced to doubt if, once and for all, the characters will fulfill their tasks.
The actors in Jackson’s The Return of the King undoubtedly portrayed the character’s uncertainty about the outcome of the “Battle for Middle Earth” throughout their journey and near the end; as someone who watched the movies before reading the books, I believe the audience is not forced to share that complete awareness of likely defeat. When I watched the movies, though I didn’t know for sure what the outcome was going to be, I expected, like in other movies, that it would end “happily ever after.” Jackson has some success when the script has Frodo go into Shelob’s lair alone after sending Sam away. This gave Gollum some success in manipulating Frodo and should make the audience uneasy. He does not succeed, however, when he has the mouth of Sauron show Aragorn Frodo’s garment because the audience already knows that Frodo isn’t dead.
Jackson specifically was challenged when trying to portray Sauron near the Black Gate. They tried showing him in “angelic form,” as he had transformed into when tricking the Lithuanians, and then having him turn into an armored figure to fight Aragorn. They decided against this because the heroism of Aragorn wasn’t about his honor, but about him sacrificing his men in order to buy time for Frodo. Instead, the light coming from the eye of Sauron is redirected to Aragorn. The audience can see that Sauron knows that the heir of Isildor has come to fight. The eye flares and it is visually seen through his facial expressions that Aragorn is affected.
Another difficult challenge for Jackson to face was regarding the destruction of the Ring. “Do you follow the book?” was the question they were consistently asking themselves. They wanted to give more of a role to Frodo, instead of just having him, after how far he had come, be a bystander. They contemplated having Frodo push Gollum into the fire, but then realized that Frodo doesn’t want to kill Gollum, but get the Ring back. Jackson showed Elijah Wood how to fight Gollum for the Ring by having somewhat of a tug-of-war. They leave in the part that Gollum has finally gets a hold of his “precious,” and falls over when he holds up the Ring and walks back too far; this keeps the sense that it was Gollum’s fate, and that he is the tragic hero, alive. In retrospect, when writing the script, Jackson would also come across the challenge of choosing how to end the movie’s trilogy.
Any other director might have been tempted to use one of many alternate endings that Tolkien seems to tease the reader with, such as when Aragorn becomes King, or when the Hobbits return to the Shire. Although Jackson includes a glimpse of the “Scouring of the Shire” in Lothlorien in the first movie, he knew it would take away from the climax of destroying the Ring, which I completely agree with. They had filmed scenes that showed what happened to Legolas and Gimli, but didn’t have room to include them. It should be noted that Jackson kept the very ending of The Lord of the Rings the same, so in this sense, although the viewer can easily overlook it, he preserved some of Tolkien’s view of the reality of evil. Jackson resists ending the movies on a high note. The quest was about Frodo and he intended to “use the last 20 minutes to show the toll that the Ring had taken on Frodo.” Frodo sails away because the Ring still weighs on him in Middle Earth, and it ends with Samwise returning to Rosie with, according to Shippey, the “most noncommittal final words in literature, Well I’m home.” Part of Tolkien’s worldview is “what else is there for a man or hobbit to say?” After this long and dangerous journey, Sam, as well as all the companions, must face going back to what they left behind.
The most important challenge in making the movie was to, “focus on the human drama within the spectacle”; many Tolkien fans will agree that Jackson succeeded in this challenge. Jackson, like Frodo, did not shy away from the daunting task at hand, even when it seemed hopeless or challenging near “the end of all things.” According to Jackson, the films now belong to the viewers. We are fortunate to have had a director with such respect for Tolkien’s books to be the one to transform them to the screen.
-In addition to the Shippey Article and the extras watched in class, I watched all the extras on the theatrical disk to gather material for this paper.Emily Marvin? September 12, 2008, at 03:06 PM
