"Even the smallest person can change the course of [movie] history"

Thus (almost) says Galadriel to Frodo in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring: a non-Tolkienian line, but movies have never shied away from being explicit. Before I plunge into Kristin Thompson's The Frodo Franchise, I thought I'd set down my thoughts on Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, which is, I think, on the whole, brilliantly successful.

Now I never got into the pissing matches on the Net before, while, and after these movies were released; it just wasn't worth it. Minds were often made up before the movies were even seen--it's like the person on Amazon.com who gave the latest Harry Potter book one star before it was published. I found that time, as it usually does, brought clearer reflection. Some points became more obvious; some weaknesses more apparent. But these movies became awfully useful to me in writing classes, as I used them as a method of showing how to provide examples to support a thesis--even their Appendices--and while doing so, engendered further thoughts on the motives behind the production.

The main point to remember--and one that the Harry Potter motives have reinforced for me--is that Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Phillipa Boyens decided to make a successful movie. To do that, they had to draw in as an audience people who had never read Tolkien. The latest Potter movies show that their makers are relying more and more on the audience's having read the books. To recoup the staggering costs of production, Jackson and his team had to engage a mass audience, not just the fans--who would probably come to the movie anyway.

The second point is related. When Bob Shaye at New Line gave Jackson the green light to make three movies, certain structural problems became evident. The team had to rewrite their two-movie screenplay. The first two books end on a cliff-hanging event, and I think Jackson did not want to alienate those members of the audience who might not even have realized that two movies followed The Fellowship. Thus each movie has a rounded ending--the last movie's being too rounded for some.

The third point is again related. How do you make a successful Hollywood movie (even in New Zealand)? Learn how to write a screenplay from a master: in this case, Jackson and Walsh attended a scriptwriting seminar given by the modern guru of the art, Robert McKee, author of Story, who is so famous he was portrayed by Brian Cox in Adaptation. All modern screenwriting manuals emphasize a character "arc," that characters change over the course of a movie (or three). Thus some characters in the novels with immutable personalities become more plastic in the movies, usually weaker (in some aspect) before they can become strong.

More to come...