Fellowship I

We finally cracked the plastic on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set (the fancy one that didn’t include the Argonnath bookends). We ultimately realized that if we waited until we could sit down and watch the whole movie — let alone the commentaries and features — we’d be about as old as Bilbo. So we’re willing to watch it in what dribs and drabs we can.

So, some thoughts from the first disc. Spoilers (from Two Towers, in some cases) below.

• Buy it. Even if you saw the movie, buy it. Or at least rent it. See it again, expanded.
• I like the additional material, and, for the most part, would have been willing to sit through a four hour movie, rather than a three-plus one, in order to get it. Some of it, yeah, could be snipped, but unlike most such edit-outs (“Cool, but not necessary”), this stuff by and large adds depth and richness to an already deep and rich tale.

  We learn, for example, much more about hobbits. For old-hand LotR folks, that’s trivial, but for people approaching the movies without having ever read the books (and, yes, there are quite a few of them), I think it would help explain who all these short folks are. And, if nothing else, it adds to the poignancy of Frodo’s journey, physical and spiritual, away from them.

  Did the hobbit stuff slow the movie down? A bit, perhaps, and Jackson, like me, may have had a hard time initially getting into the books because of the seemingly never-ending quaintness of the initial chapters. But taken as a whole, I think it’s important stuff, and I’m thrilled to see it re-inserted.

  The passage of the elves through the woods is not handled quite a smoothly, but, again, reinforces a theme that non-readers might have missed — the departure of elvenkind from Middle-Earth, and what that means both in the short- and long-term.

• Do non-readers (hell, even some readers, I imagine) understand that Gandalf and Sarumen (and the rest of their “order”) are not of the race of Man? Do they need to?

• One thing missing from the original books was the sense of Saruman as foolishly plotting to be a rival power to the West and to Sauron. His uruk-hai were bred to that end, and he seeks out the Ring for himself. This plays most prominently in The Two Towers, but there are hints of it in the book form of Fellowship, and that bit of the tale is greatly diminished, or even missing, from the movie.

  I thought that was an error, but it occurs to me it may have been a sadly necessary simplification. In the books, Sauron is an off-stage presence, doing Bad Things, his motivations and thoughts ascribed via the narration or through exposition by Gandalf. In the movie, though, that wouldn’t work well.

  So, instead, Jackson has made Saruman be the Mouth of Sauron, in effect. Sauron has taken over his mind, via the Palantir, even as Saruman takes over the mind of Theoden. We see a bit of Saruman’s personality coming through here and there, but by and large he serves as a mouthpiece for Sauron’s plans and motivations.

  Not ideal, but not a bad idea.

• I still think Sauron looks … wrong. I still think we see his fingers being cut off too many times. I do like seeing how Isildur was betrayed by the ring — it doesn’t quite work as well as it should (which may be why it was clipped from the theatrical release), but it’s still a good thing.

• Jeez that Elrond is a hard-ass. You’d hardly guess he’s half-elven, too, would you. The personalization, though, of Elrond is, I think, a good addition to the movie (both chapters we’ve seen). It does make you wonder why the hell he didn’t jump Isildur while they were there in Mt. Doom.

• I really like the small bits added to Aragorn’s canon — the description of the Rangers in Bree, his singing of the lay of Beren and Luthiel, his first encounter with Boromir.

  I understand Jackson deciding to elide out the whole Arnor/Gondor thing, the division of the Numenorean kingdomes of the North and South. In the books (for those who don’t recall — and I just finished up Two Towers and Return of the King last week, so this stuff is still banging around my brain), Aragorn’s descent through Isildur gives him most direct claim on the throne of the North — but Arnor was overthrown centuries ago by the Captain of the Nazgul, leaving its royal house as the woodland Rangers, who, unsung, protect the people there (including those of the Shire) from the remaining bad guys in the wilds.

  Still, Aragorn has claim on the throne of the South, Gondor, as well, whose line died out centuries ago (Gondor being now governed by the Stewards, ostensibly until a king returns).

  A bit of that comes out in Boromir’s speeches, but the rest is lost. While I understand the desire to not complicate the backstory more than necessary, the result we are left with is Aragorn as the only Ranger we hear tell of (what, then, does he do aside from hang around in bars and smoke?), the abandoned watchtower of Amon Sul (where the Hobbits get attacked by the Ringwraiths), and a single kingdom of Gondor, to which there is no obvious connection with Aragorn.

  It simplifies things some, but also muddies them.

• One of the parallels that Tolkien draws is the Nine of the Fellowship as being set against the Nine Ringwraiths. That’s been dropped, alas, since it would be a cheap paralellelism as far as screen time goes (a single line by Elrond).

• Gandalf’s invocation of the Ring inscription at the Council of Elrond is great. Jackson may have felt it was beating a dead horse (“The Ring is evil, got it?!”), but I think it drives the lesson home as well as a number of other occasions.

  Though one has to wonder, did that invocation then make the Ring more active, leading to the Big Argument Scene? How more dangerous, then, to invoke the Ring in any fashion!

• One also has to wonder, as a thought experiment, how things would have been different had Bilbo taken the Ring with him to Rivendell in the first place. Would Elrond, a wielder of one of the Three Rings, and lord over Rivendell’s magic, have detected it? (He didn’t when Bilbo passed through on the way back from the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit.) Would Bilbo have ever even gotten there, or would the Ring have betrayed him somewhere in the woods?

• Given how terrifying Ring-o-vision is, I’m surprised that Bilbo would ever willingly put it on, especially for a trivial purpose like the Party.

• Why does Bilbo age so much after he puts aside the Ring, while Gollum, who bore it so much longer, does not?

  I don’t recall if this is dealt with in the books. My guess is that it was because Bilbo bore it for so much shorter a time that it did not completely take him over, which would have “permanently” extended his life. Further, because he intentionally cast it aside, he rejected its magic.

  My thoughts, at least.

• Why is Boromir there? In the extended version, we at last get the answer — a dream he had. But it’s presented here in a muddled fashion, whereas in the books it’s a telling prophecy:

  Seek for the Sword that was broken:
  In Imladris it dwells;
  There shall be counsels taken
  Stronger than Morgul-spells.
  There shall be shown a token
  That Doom is near at hand,
  For Isildur’s Bane shall waken,
  And the Halfling forth shall stand.

  Why not use this passage? It ties together much of what happens in Rivendell/Imladris, and it adds back a bit of the largely- (and justifiably-)neglected poetry of the books. It also becomes a bit of poetry that others have heard of later in the story — Faramir and Denethor, both. It reinforces the “Isildur’s Bane” part of things, foreshadows the reappearance of the Sword, and lets people say, “Jeez, you’re halflings, like in the prophecy? I thought you guys were myths!” It’s more concrete than Boromir’s “I had a dream.” A missed opportunity, I think.

• Having now seen two of the three films, it’s fascinating how the Hobbits change over time. Frodo is most obvious — going from callow youth to grimly tragic figure, but you can see it in the others, too.

  The relationship between Frodo and Sam changes, too. Frodo starts out as the “master,” more self-possessed than Sam, guiding the latter in his (here fleshed-out) romantic endeavors, encouraging Sam in taking that step to go the furthest he’s ever gone. Later, though, it’s Sam who becomes the strength of the pair, encouraging Frodo step by step. I really want to see how this continues in the next, final film.

  Merry and Pippin, too, grow quite a bit. Pippin remains the buffoon, Merry the (marginally) more level-headed one. But they both react to events and change with them.

  I think once all three films can be viewed, it will be the growth and change of these characters that will be one of the most noteworthy attributes of the film.

• Again, in the realm of backstory and understanding what’s going on, I like the increased use of maps in the extended version. Some folks (like me) like to know how different places relate to each other. It gives the story a verisimilitude. Showing maps of Middle-Earth at the beginning, as bits of the history are being revealed, helps folks who might otherwise be confused (or, worse, not realize that they should care).

Damn. Can’t wait to watch the next disc.