Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Wargs of Fandom! - Page 6
© Michael Martinez
Peter Jackson is trying to depict the significant events of an entire fictional war in three movies. But if you had only three movies in which to tell the tale of World War I, or World War II, could you be comprehensive? Of course not. No one could. So, you would resort to compressing characters and events in order to cover as much ground as possible. You would also use a little smoke and mirrors when necessary.
Let's take a look at one of my pet peeves: Peter Jackson's Middle-earth is way too much like Medieval Europe. Tolkien's Middle-earth bears little resemblance to Medieval Europe, and drew upon many classical (pre-Medieval) and modern (post-Medieval) influences, from Greco-Roman history and mythology to Victorian/Edwardian England.
But Tolkien had the luxury of reminding the reader in every other chapter that there had once been an ancient civilization which surpassed the civilization of the Shire-folk. The movies had to make do with a prologue and an occasional glimpse of ruins. By dressing up the ancient Elves in Greco-style armor, Peter implies that the Second Age is to the Third Age as the Greco-Roman classical period is to the Medieval Europe period.
Suddenly, the pseudo-Medieval motif makes a little more sense. We are seeing Peter Jackson's Middle-earth in a period of decline and decay. It isn't so much that the Time of Men is at hand as the Time of the Elves is passing. Of course, it could just be that John Howe was given overwhelming authority to depict Middle-earth as he sees it and since he distorts Middle-earth heavily toward pseudo-Medieval fantasy, that's just the way it came out. But I want to believe that the theming is a little more purposeful than that.
Having seen "The Two Towers" at last, I can say that some things are starting to look a little better for me. They do not satisfy the purist's yearning for a faithful rendition of Tolkien's Middle-earth, but I never expected to receive anything like that. There were too many obstacles in the way.
But I must concede that there is a level of faithfulness I did not notice before. It obscures the obvious faithfulness, and though some might be quick to claim that compression cannot in any way be deemed "faithful" to the hand of J.R.R. Tolkien, I must be just as quick to point out that, if that is really the case, then why the heck are you people reading (and enjoying) The Silmarillion? It doesn't matter who composed the published Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien himself has repudiated the authority of the book.
The copyright of the article Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Wargs of Fandom! - Page 6 in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Wargs of Fandom! - Page 6 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Michael Martinez's J.R.R. Tolkien topic, please visit the Discussions page.