What they got right

Peter Jackson and his team--that phrase should be understood throughout what follows, but from the documentaries that accompanied the various DVD editions of The Lord of the Rings, it's clear that the ultimate decision-making power for most areas of production rested with Jackson. Plans were not developed, concepts not pursued, models not made into reality, unless they were "approved by Peter."

(And I write from the point of view of a thorough-going, unadulterated fan of the novels. I read the works when they were initially--and unethically--published as paperbacks by Ace in America, and have read most of everything else by Tolkien published since then, multiple times, including the twelve volumes of The History of Middle Earth, although I have yet to get to the two volumes of drafts of The Hobbit. Once someone told me that she never got into Tolkien. I replied that I never got out of him.)

• Production design and realization. The key to the success of the movies. If they had got the look of Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age wrong, it would have ruined everything else. The wisest decision they made was to base the designs on the visions of the two best artists working on Tolkien today, Alan Lee and John Howe. And then they brought them to New Zealand, so their designs could be organically placed within the various New Zealand landscapes selected. From Hobbiton to the beacons of Gondor to the Grey Havens, from Frodo's clothes to Eomer's armor to the Orcs' weaponry--everything looks right. And down to the smallest detail--as Miranda Otto said when she picked up the cup that she was supposed to offer to Aragorn in Edoras, "It's heavy!" No need to act like it is.
• Casting. After numerous reviewings, I can't think of a single casting decision or performance I have a problem with. (I do have a problem with some of the lines they have to say--more on that later.) Some work so well--Ian McKellan as Gandalf, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, and Elijah Wood as Frodo--that I can't envision anyone else in the parts. I'm especially glad that McKellan's career achievements were finally recognized. I remember when the execrable Alec Baldwin Shadow came out in 1994 thinking, "Here's one of the greatest actors in the world appearing this piece of sh*t." Now if he appears in a piece of sh*t, it's because he wants to, not because he has to.
• Music. These movies needed a big, late Romantic score, with a variety of echoes of other kinds of music, and plenty of motifs and "tunes," all of which Howard Shore provided. Not only have I bought the soundtrack albums when they came out, I've been picking up the complete recordings, which contain all the musical cues in the works, and run around three hours each. From Dwarvish chants to the forlorn gallantry of Gondor, Shore gets close enough to the essence of what he is portraying (the two personalities of Gollum, for example) to be very effective.
• Direction. This might seem a given, but in all the arguments raging over the film, I think Jackson's skill as a director got lost. I realized this the last time I watched his remake of King Kong. Since I wasn't so heavily invested in it, I was able to watch more objectively the way he put a scene together, such as the offering of Naomi Watts to Kong: the camera angles, camera movements, editing, perspective, combination of music and action, the overall vision. When I watched the end of The Fellowship of the Ring recently, I freshly noticed all the touches: the slow motion as Aragorn approaches the Uruk-hai; the cut to regular speed with the first sword slash; the camera on a trolley as the Uruks run to Boromir; the use of silence as Lurtz shoots Boromir; the performances he gets out of Mortensen and Sean Bean. Jackson has learned the lessons of the masters well.

One more to go: the changes.

"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...