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 Bigger is Better?
...filmmaking technique has reached a new apex of Bigness... Yet if we compare Tolkien's own sketches and paintings of Middle-earth with Peter Jackson's films, it's pretty easy to see a difference. What's the downside to Supersizing Tolkien; and what's the upside?
Analysis by Greg Wright
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THE RETURN OF THE KING
MONTHLY FEATURE: MARCH 2004
Bigger
is Better?
This page was created on March 22, 2004
This page was last updated on
May 31, 2005
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| Bigger is Better? |
American novelist Booth Tarkington, writing roughly contemporary with J.R.R. Tolkien, was concerned with many of the same issues as the British author. In 1927's Growth, he wrote:
...there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as elsewhere—a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil and laboured there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good American hearts—Bigness. ... Year by year the longing increased until it became an accumulated
force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger! Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became a mighty Will. ... We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is patriotism and honour! Bigness is love and life and happiness! ... With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the tread of hurrying
multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to emerge discernably—a cynical young mongrel, barbaric of feature, muscular and cunning...
Even 2000 years ago, Jesus knew that bigger barns and new mill-races weren't the answer to happiness. And Tolkien saw the growing problem as clearly as Tarkington, also fearing the transformation of Men and Elves into Orcs. And Tolkien's literary solution, of course, was the "Scourging of the Shire." Ironically, of course, it's precisely because filmmaking technique has reached a new apex of Bigness that a live-action version
of The Lord of the Rings has become possible. Yet if we compare Tolkien's own sketches and paintings of Middle-earth with Peter Jackson's films, it's pretty easy to see a difference. What's the downside to Supersizing Tolkien, and what's the upside? |
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Exhibit One: The Mûmakil
Okay, now this is truly one of my pet peeves. Even in the previews, I thought the mûmakil had been overdone. Impressive, though? To say the least. Quite a cinematic creation. But are they maybe too big? Let's take a look at how Tolkien described them.
Grey as a mouse,
Big as a house,
Nose like a snake,
I make the earth shake,
I make the earth shake,
As I tramp through the grass;
Trees crack as I pass.
With horns in my mouth
I walk in the South,
Flapping big ears.
The poem "Oliphaunt," which Sam recites in The Two Towers, goes on to call the creature "Biggest of all, / Huge, old and tall." And when Sam and Frodo actually encounter one shortly after, it seems to Sam "much bigger than a house... a grey-clad moving hill." Tolkien himself goes on to note in the same passage that "the mûmak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk
now in Middle-earth; his kin that still live in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty." |
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Still, as I watch them in action in Jackson's Battle of the Pelennor Fields, I am reminded that Tolkien said that "fear and wonder, maybe," enlarged the mûmak in Sam's eyes. Tolkien, after all, while acknowledging the mûmak's "great legs like trees," and putting "what seemed a very war-tower" on his back, did not put four tusks on him. A minor point, to be sure—but indicative of our thirst for Bigness.
As Jackson's Rohirrim charge the mûmakil, I then cringe—and not only because of the valiant futility of the attack. "Wherever the mûmakil came," wrote Tolkien, "there the horses would not go, but blenched and swerved away; and the great monsters were unfought, and stood like towers of defence, and the Haradrim rallied about them." Only two archers, it seems, ventured close enough to shoot arrows at the eyes of the beasts, and both were trampled.
In Tolkien, the mûmakil didn't charge like cavalry, and they didn't decimate the Rohirrim. And then it dawns on me—the similarity between Jackson's battle with the mûmakil and the assualt of the Imperial Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back. And the scene becomes like cinematic one-upsmanship. Effective, yes—but Bigger! Better! More! |
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Exhibit 2: The Nazgûl
Despite the fact that Jackson gets the scene at Minas Morgul wrong—in Tolkien, the Witch King leads his army forth on horseback, not aloft—I cringe every time I see it. No—I cower. Literally. That's the power of the Black Breath, to be sure.
But as the Nazgûl wheels away down the Morgul Vale, I still think, "Now, does that thing really have to that big?" But again, Jackson's crew gets much of the creature's anatomy right: "naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers." But Tolkien gave it a beak, not razor-toothed jaws; and, rather wisely, he saved a detailed description for the battle over Theoden's body. Jackson gives us too much detail of the
Nazgûl far too soon, and then is forced to up the ante on himself.
Of course, the steed of the Nazgûl, and its wingspan, must be large enough to bear an armor-clad ghoul; but in Jackson's vision, it has to be bigger yet. While for Tolkien they "circled above the City" and remained "out of sight and shot," for Jackson, they've got to be right in the fray—and big enough to pick up and throw mounted riders. Bigger! Better! More! |
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Exhibit 3: Caras Galadon
Three times in The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien describes the tree-borne architecture of Lórien. The first instance is a simple talan with a portable screen at one side. It isn't even big enough to hold all of the surviving Fellowship. The second instance is at Cerin Amroth, and from the "lofty platform" Frodo is able to get an unobstructed view of far vistas—including Caras Galadon, a "hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers: which it was he could not
tell." And at Caras Galdaon itself, we are told that there are walls and a gate, and a "road paved with white stone." As Frodo ascends to meet Celeborn and Galadriel, he "passed many flets: some on one side, some on another, and some set about the bole of the tree, so that the ladder passed through them. At a great height above the ground he came to a wide talan, like the deck of a great ship. On it was built a house, so large that almost it would have served for a hall of Men
upon the earth..."
So even with Tolkien we get Bigger! Better! More! But still, Tolkien is clear that there is a modesty, simplicity and spareness to the dwellings of Lórien—not the opulent grandeur of Jackson's version. Even at Caras Galadon, the ascent is made by ladder, single file, not by the grand staircase in Jackson's movie. And I wonder if the tree dwellings of George Lucas' Ewoks forced Jackson's hand. |
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Exhibit 4: Rivendell
But the most egregious example in the whole series is Rivendell. Several times Tolkien drew and painted Rivendell—and in each instance, it's literally "The Last Homely House." An apparently single, isolated building—large, no doubt, once you got close to it. But Jackson's Rivendell? Bigger! Better! More!
"So what's the upside?" you ask. After all, it seems I'm doing nothing but carping about the details of a grand work of art. I did say there was an upside, didn't I? Well, what is it, then?
Jackson's next picture is one he's been working on for years—King Kong. What better project for a director who excels at—is even obsessed by—Bigness? And to a certain extent, Tolkien's story does demand an aptitude for bigness. Peter Jackson really was, in my opinion, the right director for the job. |
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And Here's the Upside
It does take an aptitude for Bigness to convey the scope and breadth of Middle-earth. Was Moria overdone? No. Was Isengard overdone? No. Were the Argonath overdone? No. Were Edoras and Helm's Deep overdone? Not at all—even understated, perhaps.
And when we come to Minas Tirith, and the Battle of the Plennor Fields, I think (for the most part) that Jackson gets the scope just right. The size of the armies and the size of the battle are right. The terrible cost of genocidal battle is captured. Heroes die. The devastation is palpable.
Now, I've talked to people who find all the violence excessive, and opressive. Many have made the same comment about Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. But if you want to capture Tolkien, that's a road you've got to go down—because Tolkien knew what he was talking about. He'd seen the horror of war first-hand. And as he explained in his essay "On Fairy Stories," he knew that dyscatastrophe—real danger, sorrow and grief—are necessary to eucastastrophe—
the joy of deliverance. You don't get the resurrection without the crucifixion, Tolkien observed.
And that's a bigger, better idea. |
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