Wednesday rewatch: The Fellowship of the Ring

[nineveh_uk]

Freshers' Flu arrived on schedule, having the consideration to first manifest as a little tiredness on my journey home from a family weekend in North Berwick (pouring rain on Saturday meant the Museum of Flight rather than the beach, but it was fun and we got to go on a Concorde*), and then full blast at bedtime on Sunday. I have spent the past three days off work. Today I discovered sufficient concentration to rewatch The Fellowship of the Ring** for the first time in years.***

It really is very good indeed.

I was massively disappointed with The Hobbit, a bloated theme park ride rather than a film, even though I enjoyed the additional material from Unfinished Tales, the Hunt for the Ring always being a favourite of mine. But part of that disappointment stems from how well Jackson had started off. Fellowship is tremendous. The landscape of Middle Earth is utterly convincing, the acting good, the pace strong, it works to bring to the screen a book that might have seemed to defy filming. I found myself thinking over and again that I wanted to see it on a big screen again, to marvel at the mines of Moria towering above me. I love the sense of scale it brings to Middle Earth as a place vast in both space and time. It is also a long since I heard the radio play (which must also be remedied), allowing me to hear the film dialogue without it constantly running over it in my head****. Quibbles I have (let's not 'hunt some orc') but I can live with them.

I was struck on this viewing how much Ian McKellen brings weight to it in the first third, when it is otherwise Hobbits and backstory. It's a really terrific performance of Gandalf as character(person) as well as wizard and noble mentor. We take him seriously, and thus we take the rest of it seriously. And on reflection, Viggo Mortensen is fine, but I wish that Sean Bean had been Aragorn! Mostly for Sean Bean, though I can't deny the memes would have been good, too.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Official Trailer #1 - (2001) HD" (Watch on YouTube)

I see the pervy Hobbit fancier Very Secret Diaries are still on LJ. I may need to re-read.

*There is something sad about the demise of Concorde. They're the ultimate symbol of excess, and I felt that the exhibition missed a trick when talking about their end by not mentioning the rise of the internet and increased options for not-in-person meetings if you were both rich and lacking time.

**Extended edition. That's quite a lot of concentration even when you know the plot backwards in high heels.

*** Gosh, VHS is really terrible, isn't it? Possibly the resolution of the video was designed for a smaller TV screen, but mine isn't huge. I'm going to have to watch something else to see if it is as bad.

****An annoying side-effect of a good memory, really quite distracting in my recent Pride and Prejudice re-read.

Comments

[perennialanna]

First I watched the trilogy.

Then I watched it with the actors' commentary (Hobbits lark around, Orlando Bloom sounds as utterly baffled about everything as he looks on the screen ("Elves don't really understand death/tiredness/boredom" - which comes across as "I am an Elf of very little brain"), Christopher Lee knows everything about Tolkein and is about to explain this scene with reference to the three scribbled-upon envelope backs Christopher Tolkein has not published yet, John Rhys Davies has worked with everyone and they're all absolutely lovely, and everyone has an anecdote about Viggo Mortensen "getting really into it" and injuring himself/a stuntman/both/several innocent bystanders and a very surprised sheep).

I'm two thirds of the way through on the directors and writers commentary now (this location is, this location is, we cut this because but now you can press pause and have a toilet break so make the most of it, here's another location, ooh, Peter Jackson has just had a bright idea and both his co-writers have started screaming "No!").

And that was the summer and autumn of 2018.

[toujours_nigel]

♥

[nineveh_uk]

That sounds an excellent way to spend a season or two. I've never seen any of the commentaries, clearly I need to! I'd heard about Mortensen getting really into it, didn't he break something at some point?

[perennialanna]

The bit at the start of Two Towers where he kicks an orc helmet by the smouldering pyre and yells in agony. The take they used was the one where he actually broke his toe.

[tree_and_leaf]

And adopted Aragorn's horse.

(I also seem to remember that at one point when they were filming the Prancing Pony scenes, he spent his breaks lurking in a corner of the set, wrapped up in his cloak....)

[perennialanna]

After sleeping in the stable for several nights to build the necessary trust with the horse...

[nineveh_uk]

How very Daniel Day Lewis!

I had forgotten about adopting the horse, that is rather endearing.

[white_hart]

I quite like Fellowship, though not as much as I did when I first saw it as it has been retrospectively spoiled by some of the things Jackson did in the second and third parts of the trilogy; mostly FARAMIR WOULD NEVER, but also discomfort with the presentation of the Fellowship as the heroes of the war and not just the POV characters, which diminishes several of the characters who are introduced later on (OK, that might just be the long version of FARAMIR WOULD NEVER, though it also includes Elves at Helm's Deep), and the way Gimli never gets to stop being comic relief and develop into the character he really should be.

[nineveh_uk]

While I am so far on Team FARAMIR WOULD NEVER as to have jotted down a short fic on the subject*, ultimately I live with it as the price I have to pay for an adaptation. Ultimately I am so grateful it exists that the gratitude outweighs the annoyances. I actually get more annoyed with the presentation of Denethor, which doesn't even have the excuse of being a choice that achieves something narratively, just trashes the character. Not least because John Noble looks so wonderful and could clearly have acted the part as written in the novel.

[perennialanna]

I choose to look at it as having happened too soon - Tolkein aimed to create a mythology, not just a long novel, so the films can stand as a slightly different take on the cycle, just like a thousand and one versions of the Arthurian material. It's just that the films came along 50 years after the original telling, not 500.

I am entirely in sympathy with Jackson's ditching Glorfindel in favour of (a) giving Arwen something to do, and (b) reducing the total elf count.

[tree_and_leaf]

"Not another fucking elf!" - H. Dyson.

[perennialanna]

I've seen that remark attributed to just about every Inkling. I would like it on a t-shirt.

[caulkhead]

I am also FARAMIR WOULD NEVER, but the bit that always annoys me is Theoden being under an actual spell, rather than being an old man who was convinced he was in a much worse way than he actually was because Wormtongue kept telling him so.

[nineveh_uk]

That annoys me, but having said that I think that it does work in the way the film is done as a whole, but giving us an opportunity to see New Persil Gandalf at work, and the wizard who was formerly defeated by Saruuman now able to beat him. But we lose the straight evil of manipulation, and the parallel with Denethor who unlike Theoden is not able to throw it off (admittedly he is being manipulated by someone a lot more powerful).

[nineveh_uk]

I like that perspective! And of course Tolkien wouldn't assume there would only ever be one version.

Agreed re. Glorfindel. While I am glad we didn't have Arwen Warrior Princess at Helm's Deep as once threatened, she does need introducing and I like that the films fit in the stuff from the Appendices.

[ironed_orchid]

when I first saw it as it has been retrospectively spoiled by some of the things Jackson did in the second and third parts of the trilogy

Oh god yes this!

I was so happy with the cuts and changes he made to Fellowship. my first few attempts to read Fellowship had failed because it takes then NINE WHOLE CHAPTERS to get to Bree, so I was thrilled with cutting most of those out and some supporting characters.

But then Towers had all these terrible changes and wtf was up with Théoden's makeup? After that I didn't trust Jackson any more, and I only saw the first installment of The Hobbit.

[nineveh_uk]

I enjoy the trilogy as a whole, but I strongly dislike The Hobbit even though I'm not particularly attached to it as a book. I think I gave up at the cinema after the second film. I wonder whether anyone has done a fan edit that takes the good material that is actually in there and makes one decent two hour film out of it.

[ironed_orchid]

I'm probably more attached to The Hobbit as book than I am to LOTR. It was one my dad read to us when we were very small and one of the first chapter books I read myself. I also think it's better story telling than LOTR, but that's mostly because it is trying to be a children's story and not a saga thinly disguised as a novel.

[nineveh_uk]

My fundamental mistake with The Hobbit was to read it after LotR, when it inevitably disappointed me by not being more LotR, but I can see it would be appealing at a younger age.