The Desolation of Tolkien

I feel foolish.

In a three-part series (one, two and three), I spent a good deal of time demonstrating that the best fantasy is realistic. Given that the glorious works of J.R.R. Tolkien illustrate this principle and that the screen adaptation of the first book, The Hobbit, does not, I had the perfect opportunity to make my case. At times, the argument grew subtle; for example, when I vigorously debated at what point in the story it was appropriate for Bilbo to find his courage. More than one person accused me of being too fine.

Then, Peter Jackson - who, in the spirit of the fantasy genre, shall evermore be known as Peter the Accursed - released The Desolation of Smaug, a movie that ranks as the most horrific moviegoing experience of my 51 years. If science possessed the ability to selectively obliterate these audiovisual inputs from my brain, I would admit myself to the Cleveland Clinic, have my skull opened, and my brain tissue irrevocably ablated. I am sad I cannot have this major surgery.

Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter the Accursed demonstrated in the first Hobbit movie a belief that scenes devoid of extreme action lacked a hold on the mind of the vapid modern moviegoer. They were just getting warmed up. Little did I know that this belief would evolve into a total departure not only from Tolkien's work, but good storytelling in general.

If I attempted to document all the absurdities in this movie, it would be a 10,000 word post that no one would read; my goal is to keep this to 1000 words that no one will read. Fortunately for brevity, there is a legal concept called res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for "the thing itself speaks." The idea is that usually in legal proceedings you have to explain the offense - the hit and run accident was really murder; the bad roofing job was a con artist stealing an old lady's money. You have to make your case. But there are times when the thing that happens is so glaringly obvious that no case need be made. Anyone who has read the book and seen the movie needs no explanation of the violence done to the story. The very fact that the movie poster below contains two characters never referenced in The Hobbit makes the case the the book itself was discarded as a serious source of plot material.

 

The Desolation of Smaug picks up at Chapter 7, Queer Lodgings, and follows Bilbo and the dwarves through Chapter 13, Not At Home (roughly; given that the story has been vaporized, sometimes it's tough to determine). Would it surprise you to know that the sum total of violent, martial activities engaged in by Bilbo, the dwarves, the elves, the men of Lake Town, and other characters is THREE: Beorn kills a wolf and goblin off camera, Bilbo kills some spiders, and the dwarves use sticks, rocks and small knives to drive away more spiders.

That's it.

There is not a single live orc in these eight chapters. There is not a single live goblin in these eight chapters. No elf shoots an arrow or uses a sword. No man of Lake Town shoots an arrow or uses a sword. No dwarf lifts more than a stone or small knife in his defense (except to shoot arrows at animals for food...and miss).

Chapter by chapter, let us examine the bravery and military chops of our dwarven heroes:

1. Queer Lodgings: Meekly approach Beorn at Gandalf's direction. Want to steal Beorn's ponies.
2. Flies and Spiders: Grumble, complain, fall into the river, starve, get lost, get caught without much of a fight by large spiders. Freed by Bilbo and, at his direction, wield sticks, stones and the odd knife to fight off spiders.
3. Barrels Out of Bond: Easily captured by the elves after begging for food, three times disrupting a feast, rescued by Bilbo. Complain.
4. A Warm Welcome: Impose upon the hospitality of the people of Lake Town by deceitfully exaggerating their prowess and reputation.
5. On the Doorstep: Grumble and complain.
6. Inside Information: Cowardly refusal to go into the mountain. Send Bilbo. Bilbo does the heavy lifting while the dwarves wait outside.
7. Not at Home: Cowardly refusal to go into the mountain. Send Bilbo again. Only reluctantly go to Bilbo's aid, which they do not have to provide. Greedily claim and obsess over the unguarded horde.

Here's the real question: Why would Peter the Accursed even bother to make The Hobbit? If he despises Tolkien's story - the improbable triumph of a weak, overmatched and hapless party of dwarves along with one surprising halfling - why not use the Middle Earth milieu to tell a story of his own making? Legolas, Superhero Elf. Think of the cool movie poster you could have for such a movie!

Why, in a segment of the book that features, for all intents and purposes, absolutely no battles, would you rewrite the script and subject your viewers to almost three hours of endless battle between made-up characters on both sides? What's the point? If your assessment of the market is that you're dense audience will only be impressed by a suffocating barrage of ludicrous battle scenes, then direct another damned story, for heaven's sake!

The answer is money. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has amassed almost three billion dollars in movie revenue alone worldwide. Production companies continue to battle over royalties for the Hobbit series even now. The movies Peter the Accursed has made - a short book bastardized into almost nine hours of film - is about dollars, not the classic story. But hidden beneath all those dollars is an error: a belief in the stupidity of the average moviegoer, and in the notion that Tolkien's nuanced story would have kept people away from the theaters.

If Peter the Accursed decided to make a movie about the Bible, he would have Jesus and his disciples as shuriken-wielding attack ninja who rip through the Roman Empire like tissue paper, chopping up Pontius Pilate, the Sanhedrin and the Roman legions like so many orcs. Because, of course, it's more exciting that Peter run across the helmeted heads of Roman guards while implanting three shuriken's into the head of Caiaphas than to deny Jesus and reel away in shame.

Reality vs. absurdity, and absurdity has won.

I have selected only one aspect of the movie's abominable treatment of the book: the violence and fighting. Other elements were more absurd: an elf/dwarf love story, the golden idol in the mountain, etc. but, despite what my friends and family think, the most important thing is not the fidelity to the original story; it is theoretically possible that Peter the Accursed could have directed a screen adaptation that was unfaithful to the book but still great storytelling. The point is that, even if The Hobbit did not exist and The Desolation of Smaug was an original work, it is insufferable storytelling. It is unrealistic fantasy that leaves the viewer battered, annoyed and unimpressed.

Not An Oxymoron - Part Three

This post, in conjunction with Not An Oxymoron - Part One and Not An Oxymoron - Part Two, hopefully performs three functions:

1. Establish a counter-intuitive principal by which I judge good fantasy: realism.
2. Offer a tangential review of the finest young adult fantasy novel ever written - The Hobbit. As this book is so well known and has been comprehensively dissected, it would be both presumptuous and unproductive for me to grind out a straightforward review. These three posts perhaps touch upon uncommon reasons that every person who purports to love fantasy must read The Hobbit.
3. Catharsis. The Hobbit movie drives me insane, and I want my blood pressure to be lower.

We left off with our writers, almost scene by scene, deciding that Tolkien's carefully crafted tale lacked pizzaz. Our fourth example may not rival the physics-defying CGI nonsense of the third, but it best illustrates both the tone-deafness of our remedial writing trio (Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson), and their almost sacrilegious disregard for the work of a far better storyteller.

The greatness of Bilbo as a hero - a strange appellation for him - lies in non-martial things. This is not only a function of his ridiculously small and weak stature, it is the heart of the story's interest. This is an important point. A fantasy writer is deprived of the "truth is stranger than fiction" grounding of harrowing factual stories of survival. For example, the movies 127 Hours and Zero Dark Thirty lose much of their punch as works of complete fiction. This is certainly obvious, but what is less obvious is that the storyteller that "makes it all up" has a much more difficult task to create and sustain believable tension and concern for fictional characters. Every reader will perpetually be suspicious of the Deus Ex Machina always at the fingertips of their author.

So, Tolkien, like every fantasy author, creates that tension by having the weakest in the story paradoxically prove to be the strongest...employing wits, cunning, guile and courage. Don't dismiss this point. Tolkien could've had Gandalf find an ancient spell, stroll into the Lonely Mountain, petrify Smaug, and end the story. The book would have been lost to obscurity, and the few readers would have laughed at the inept storytelling.

He also could have had an eagle carry the one ring that ruled them all in Lord of the Rings right to Mount Doom and drop it into the fire. All four books could have been neatly condensed into a ten page pamphlet, and we could have returned to watching Duck Dynasty.

The magic of these books is in the weakness of the main heroes. And their weakness is established against a backdrop of realism, the kind of hard knocks endemic to all real worlds.

You undoubtedly do not need this lesson, but I wish Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson would have been forced to listen to my lectures before attempting The Hobbit, because they obviously fail to understand these basic fantasy storytelling principles.

I expect their screenplay discussion unfolded as follows:

   "What's the next chapter, Philippa?"
   "Out Of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire."
   "Just as a starter, summarize the chapter for me."
   "The title," said Phillipa, "refers to the party escaping the goblins in the tunnels of the Misty Mountains only to find themselves trapped later that evening in a more hopeless situation."
   Fran added, "The scene would look like this -- they flee out into the sunlight and wolves pursue the party, sort of like hunting dogs. The wolves catch the party and tree them. Then the goblins arrive."
   "You mean orcs."
   "No, the goblins from the Misty Mountains. Where they caused the death of the Great Goblin. That's what they're running from."
   "But I want the blue orc in this scene."
   "That doesn't fit."
   "No one knows the difference between an orc and a goblin. So, the wolves do what?"
   "Tree the party."
   "Tree them?"
   "Chase them up big-time trees, which will be set on fire once the goblins catch up. Then they are saved by the Eagles."
   "So the party just runs away, stupidly climbs trees, and get saved by someone else? Way too wimpy. What's Bilbo do?"
   "He almost gets eaten because he runs the slowest and can't climb trees," said Fran.
   "Look, ladies, Bilbo is the hero. We're not establishing a hero if all he has going for him in the closing dramatic scene of the first movie is that he survives. Have him kill a wolf or an orc. Something heroic."
   "But, he's only about three feet high and weighs less than your grandson. Could your grandson kill a wolf?"
   "Who cares? He's got all kinds of sword skills, right?"
   "Uh, I think he lived his whole life without so much as picking up a sword."
   "Enough already. The wolves chase the party to the trees, but let's have the party kick some ass. Have Bilbo take out a monster orc. Then, our party being rescued by a bunch of birds as the climax to our story won't seem stupid. Make sure when they get rescued by the birds that Bilbo hangs by a thread or something, almost dies four or five times. Gotta make it dramatic!"

This scene where Bilbo slays an monstrous orc does more violence to character development in this story than any other writing faux pax I have documented.

(Click Picture for Movie Link) Bilbo, the size of your first graders, knocks down, jumps on and kills an orc larger and probably stronger than Schwarzenegger in his prime. LOL. Right before slicing up a wolf and parrying multiple orcs. BLOL.

Now all the drama in Mirkwood loses the wow factor; a fearsome orc-slaying, wolf-destroying hobbit should be able to handle a few small spiders, yes?

Realism -- the frantic dash of a desperate, frightened and unseasoned group from a horde of savage nocturnal creatures -- gave way to absurdity: a character as large and strong as a first grader with no martial background slaying a creature four times his size and perhaps ten times his strength...before turning away a wolf the size of a bear with his savagery.

In closing this three-part series, I am sure you now feel that I am insane. Who in the name of all that is holy frets about such things? Truly, I don't. I am presenting a principle here - great fantasy is intricately realistic - and having both a little fun and a little therapy at the same time.

Oh, joy...I hear a new Hobbit movie is in theaters.

Not An Oxymoron - Part Two

This post continues Part One of Not An Oxymoron wherein we discuss the greatest fantasy classic - The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - and why the changes done in moving it to the silver screen fail in their understanding of good fantasy.

Also, the reason for this obsessive discussion of The Hobbit, besides catharsis, is so that you understand the mind of the reviewer. One day, I may branch out and begin reviewing indie fantasy authors, but not until the classics have been properly honored here. This very moment I can think of two dozen titles that are breathtakingly superior to Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, two pedestrian series when compared to the fantasy classics.

So, the premise:

It is precisely the meticulous attention to detail -- i.e. realism -- that makes for the best fantasy. 

Let’s continue our assault on The Hobbit movie as an illustration of this theory.

3) Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson continue the classic story as the party moves out of Rivendell and into the Misty Mountains. Tolkien chose to develop the capabilities of the party slowly; they are still heavily dependent on Gandalf and easily captured by goblins in the mountain passes. It is Gandalf again who rescues the party from the chamber of the Great Goblin; all the party can accomplish is to run away, and they do this poorly (they lose Bilbo). Bilbo’s plight really presents him with the first opportunity to show his potential, a sensible development of this central character.

Note that if the later independent journey of the dwarves and Bilbo into Mirkwood is to have its intended impact, than the author had better establish the general incompetence of the party and their inability to prosper without a world-renowned powerful wizard to bail them out. This is presented in the encounter with the Trolls and expanded upon in the journey through the mountains.

Sorry. Woefully dull.

It makes perfect sense that those dwarves, having just fallen as far as an office building is high, can have the Great Goblin land on top of them and not get so much as a splinter. If you say, "Come on! It's just fantasy!" you may not understand fantasy...

Wouldn’t the party falling several hundred feet on a wooden structure that is disintegrating around them, crashing to the ground, and having a one ton creature land on top of them be more riveting? The answer is actually no, but maybe Phillipa or Fran couldn’t help themselves, so they produced a farce where they reconcile the 1000 foot fall with the need for the party to not have so much as a hangnail:

Video: Fleeing the Great Goblin

The tension created by Tolkien’s realistic tale where concern for the survival and success of the party is a real thing evaporates as you see dwarves obviously made out of the stuff of Superman.

Realism: A frightful struggle to escape in the dark from indescribably evil creatures – gave way to the absurd: dwarves slaughtering goblins by the dozens, flying through the air and impervious to injury. All because three failed stewards of Tolkien’s tale think telling a story is less interesting than CGI nonsense.

I lied – we will wrap up our analysis in Part Three of Not An Oxymoron with the final two examples.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not An Oxymoron - Part One

The second installment of The Hobbit is about to hit movie screens everywhere, and I am dreading the event. Those who've read my Surprised by Books post understand my love of Tolkien, and that I am compelled to go see what the idiot savant Peter Jackson has done to one of the most endearing children's books – a book that today would fit into the young adult genre – of all time.

The Classic

Part of Jackson's problem plagues pretty much every Hollywood action writer drawing breath: grandiosity. In their work, these screenwriters have declared that only larger-than-life, spectacular events are compelling. The more improbable the event, they think, the more interesting. This could not be further from the truth. I would suggest that it is precisely the little things that transform a story from a sensory experience into an alternative reality that smells, feels and tastes like the stuff of life. Once realism is obliterated in a cascade of CGI stunts, then the truly heroic – essential to every fantastic tale – falls flat. 

This is counterintuitive but essential to good fantasy. The best fantasy is realistic. My reviews of fantasy going forward will pay homage to the achievements of writers in creating a fantastic setting that draws in the reader with its plausibility. And the success is in the mundane details.

The first installment of The Hobbit is an excellent case study (and why I so dread the second). Examine all the major rewriting of the master's original work, and you will hear in your head the same fatal declaration:

"This part isn't exciting enough and doesn't have enough action or drama to keep the audience engaged."

As a result, writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson – all who possess less storytelling skill in their entire family trees than Tolkien possessed in a single strand of hair – endeavored to transform elements of The Hobbit perceived to be insignificant into something momentous, and by doing so they transformed what was truly endearing into theater of the absurd. (WARNING: For those who have not suffered through The Hobbit movie, the following will not make much sense.)

Bert, William and Tom

1) To them, the classic scene of the three trolls discussing how to cook dwarves – whom they easily capture in the book – detracted from the powerful Thorin persona that the screenwriters wanted to project, and so they destroyed Tolkien’s lovely comedic touch that revealed the desperate immaturity of the company and the absurdity of their quest to dispatch a dragon – any dragon – let along one of the mightiest ever seen in Smaug.   

Realism – the audacity of a small band of tradesmen and craftsmen and one overwhelmed, out-of-place hobbit defeating a dragon that had destroyed a small civilization – gave way to the absurd: fierce dwarves, stunning fighting prowess, and a hobbit who – despite living 50 years of sedentary quietude with no more drama than how to avoid his annoying aunt – is fearless and bold under pressure. All of this is accomplished with the utter writing inanity of appealing to the (heretofore unknown and unimagined) latent hygienic concerns of creatures who have a history of happily eating anything raw: organs, intestines, mucus, blood, limbs, etc.

Rivendell

2) The journey from the butchered troll scene to Rivendell, even though it does not merit its own chapter in Tolkien's original, is apparently devoid of excitement. Thus, our merry band of writers ignore the carefully crafted cultural back story that sets Middle Earth apart (in this case, the geographic idiocy of wargs located in the region, ignoring that goblins loathe and have trouble functioning in daylight, that anyone would be even aware of this small band’s existence, etc.), and decide to drop a squad of sunlight loving, teleporting orcs west of Rivendell in a region patrolled by Dunedain (Rangers). To do such violence to the integrity of the story for the illogical thrill of once again overselling the prowess of this band of dwarves reveals that nothing is sacred to these writers except cheap thrills.

Realism – that simple tired exhaustion brought on by long, arduous trips on short provisions – gave way to the absurd: the necessary redefining of the strength of 14 children-sized persons and what it is to be an orc or to travel in the region west of Rivendell. All for an unrealistic thrill.

The ultimate shame is that Walsh, Boyens and Jackson don’t realize that the original tale – carefully told in all its realistic detail – would have been a tour de force.

Stay tuned - the Part Two of Not an Oxymoron has THREE more examples that I know you can't wait for!