As a Tolkien nut, but a relative non-“purist” when it comes to Peter Jackson’s brilliant movies, I’ve always felt that The Fellowship of the Ring is the best adaptation out of the three films, whereas The Return of the King is the best movie on its own merits. And to that I hold. But, re-watching the first half of Fellowship with Becky the last two nights (in an effort to scare the baby into being born!), I found myself thinking of the movie — or, more precisely, the movie-as-adaptation — in a slightly different way: imagining myself as an anxious fanboy going to see the first LOTR film for the first time, wondering what it will be like — and being overwhelmed with glee at the result, particularly in the first 30 minutes or so.
I have to “imagine” this because, believe it or not, I was not really a “fanboy” when I went to see Fellowship for the first time in 2001. I hadn’t read the books in years, and although Tolkien references were deeply subsumed into my family’s internal lore and lexicon — for instance, we would routinely refer to barren-looking vistas as “Mordorish”; we used “Balrog” as a verb, meaning roughly “to bother”; my Dad and I used to play the “You cannot pass!” game frequently when we would cross a bridge on foot; etc., etc. — I hadn’t really given the actual books, the source materials for all this inside-baseball family nonsense, much thought in ages. Indeed, to give you an idea how much my little-kid Tolkien fandom had fallen by the wayside, I actually didn’t remember at first, when we went to see FOTR in the theater, that Saruman was evil!
Another indicator: I was actually looking forward to the first Harry Potter movie, which came out in November of ’01, more fervently than I was looking forward the first LOTR movie, which came out a month later. Now, needless to say, the Potter books are wonderfully entertaining, but they absolutely pale in comparison to Tolkien’s magnificent works of literature. But in the fall of 2001, I’d read Rowling’s books more recently, and was an active Potter fanatic. By contrast, after years of being read The Lord of the Rings by my mother as a little kid, and after reading at least portions of them myself as a preteen, I hadn’t given them much thought in a very long time, beyond the family silliness mentioned above.
It wasn’t until after I’d seen Peter Jackson’s Fellowship that my long-lost love of Tolkien was rekindled. I quickly bought a new edition of the trilogy and re-read it (and re-read it and re-read it), and I was absolutely fanatical about LOTR by the time the Two Towers movie came out a year later. But, back in December 2001, I was not a fanboy. I was just a run-of-the-mill moviegoer when I first saw Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey grace the silver screen.
All of which is by way of prologue, to explain that I missed the opportunity to be that anxious fanboy, waiting with great anticipation and trepidation to see whether Peter Jackson would do justice to my beloved books, or butcher them a la Ralph Bakshi and *cough* Rankin & Bass. By the time The Two Towers came out, I was most assuredly a fanboy — but I also already knew that Jackson would do a great job, because he had already demonstrated as much with the first movie. So the anticipation was there, but not the trepidation.
Anyway, on Wednesday night, we watched just the first half-hour of Fellowship, from the prologue through to Bilbo’s departure from The Shire. (Last night we watched from that point through to the end of the Council of Elrond.) Although I’ve probably watched the movie, oh, two dozen times by now, sometimes a fresh viewing brings fresh insights, and several things struck me Wednesday about that initial half-hour.
First and foremost is the simple fact that Peter Jackson took a half hour just to do what is all basically introduction! But it’s crucial introduction — we get the Ring’s back story, we meet Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and the other hobbits, and we discover The Shire — and it’s a testament to Jackson’s skill that he was willing to linger so long in those opening scenes. A lesser director might have breezed through all that stuff to get to the action of the race to Rivendell, but Jackson understood the importance of thoroughly setting the scene.
Secondly, the attention to detail in those opening scenes is staggering and wonderful. After wowing us with the sweeping Last Alliance flashback battle scene, Fellowship proceeds to take its sweet time showing us the little details of Bag End, panoramic vistas of The Shire (and pitch-perfect characterizations of hobbits), and a wonderful rendering of Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party — not to mention fantastic introductions of the key characters. (“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to!”)
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly for purposes of this post, the devotion to the source material is obvious, from the various direct quotes to the details like Gandalf humming “The Road Goes Ever On.” Indeed, having just recently re-read the opening chapters of Fellowship, I was struck by how faithful the movie’s opening half-hour is to the book. After Bilbo leaves The Shire, things start changing drastically — the 19 years between Gandalf’s visits are condensed into, seemingly, a couple of months at most; Crickhollow and the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-wights vanish entirely; Gandalf tells Frodo to head for Bree, which is mysteriously just across the Brandywine River; the Nazgul come much too close to capturing the Ring on numerous occasions; the Eye of Sauron appears ridiculously early; etc., etc. — but up until Bilbo’s departure, even a true purist would, I think, have precious little to object to.
In this way, I think Jackson was very smart: he front-loaded Fellowship with faithfulness to the book, if you will, only making his various (mostly understandable, IMHO) changes to the plot after first earning the trust of the fanboys in that initial half-hour. I can easily imagine being a Tolkien nut, entering the theater hopeful but skeptical, and then being very much won over by the brilliance of the opening scenes. After earning “credit” with fans in this way, Jackson was then able to do things like exclude Bombadil without offending all but the most nitpicky of purists, because hey, this guy clearly “gets it,” and he has clearly created something that is — in toto, if not in every detail — faithful to Tolkien’s work.
Anyway, I’m sort of jealous of those fanboys and their experience eight years ago watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time. Becky says she’s always sad when she finishes reading a good book for the first time, because that first reading is an experience you can never get back again. Similarly, the initial flood of joy watching the opening scenes of Fellowship, and realizing this was going to be a really, really good film rendering of the book you love so much, must have been pretty awesome.
I like this. See, I was a Tolkein nut when this whole thing started (although, admittedly, not as nutty as some). Thus, I was nervous but hopeful, and was not disappointed.
I think it was fairly common knowledge among those following the movie that Tom Bombadil wouldn’t be making the cut (and neither would the Scouring of the Shire). And although I would have preferred to see them in, I totally understood why – I have a young movie director of a friend, and have picked up some pacing info by osmosis. Basically, I had always figured those two events would be cut for pacing reasons. You can barely get away with inserting something as weird as Bombadil in a book – no way would he make sense in a movie. And the Scouring, although important, doesn’t work too well in a movie – it should be over, dang it!
In any event, I loved it, and agree that the 30 minutes spent in the Shire, although not normal in action type movies, was very important for both fans, and to show audiences what Frodo was primarily trying to save.
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