The Lord of the Rings Just Isnt All That Good

Why the hell does everyone love the Lord of the Rings movies so much? Particularly the wrong ones. The first was the only one of the lot that had any real depth as a motion picture.

Take, for example, The Two Towers, the absolute worst of the trilogy. Peter Jackson opted for an excruciating 45 minute battle scene, cutting back and forth between the ridiculously fake-looking Ents and the battle of Helm's Deep. This scene was three times as long as it needed to be, and was a true detriment to the rest of the film.

Unfortunately the writers of the series favored battle and war over things like character development and dialog. Yes, I realize that the films were already three hours-three hours and twenty minutes, in the case of Return of the King-but the reason the first was the best of the three was that it showed change. Elijah Wood has two character states throughout the entire series-worried, and hugging. The friendship between Gimli and Legolas, masterfully worked out in the book, is never explained in the movies. Arwen's role was completely exaggerated, changing her from the ideal that Aragorn is fighting for to just another character.

I can almost forgive Jackson his failings as a writer in deference to his brilliance as a director… almost. The one unforgivable sin, however, was that he completely cut out the brilliant ending that Tolkien wrote for the Shire. Anybody remember the Scouring of the Shire? Well, apparently Peter Jackson didn't like that part, just like he apparently hated Tom Bombadill. You can tell he wanted to throw Frodo into the fires of Mordor, too, but was unable to for fear of having to live through the Nerd Riots of 2003.

Still, his decision to cut the ending is unforgivable. The ending that Tolkien wrote for the Shire was not only brilliant, it was as true to life as anything in the series. The books, for those of you who don't know your Tolkien history, was written starting in 1939 and was completed in 1954. Most of it was written in the English countryside after Tolkien fled London to avoid the Bombing. Now, even at the end of the war-even when we had forced the Germans to surrender and bombed the Japanese to kingdom come-Tolkien realized that everything changes. In the kind of endconf that he was writing about, everything changes-nothing is the same. Nobody can go home unchanged, because of the magnitude of the war. That's why he had Saruman destroy the life of the Shire, and that's why he dug up Bagshot Row. The ending to the book was infinitely better because it realized the fact that everything has changed now. Maybe I read it at an important time in my life-I was 14 when I read it-but it helped me realize that nothing ever really works out perfectly. For Jackson to neglect the portion of the story that made this incredibly important point… I walked out of the theater quivering with great vengeance and furious anger at the ruining of perhaps the best portion of the series-or at least the most meaningful.

I don't deny the direction of Jacskon-he's rather incredible. But the writing of the series of films quite frankly blows. Aside from the first half of the first film, the entire series is just a string of dramatic one-liners and deaths in battle--never any of the main characters, mind you, oh no, that couldn't be--that makes me, as a connoisseur of fine film, make me want to throttle the writers. Most people's brains were glazed over by the special effects and sheer vastness of the series-which is, I admit a powerful force-but to be blinded to the sheer awfulness of the writing is rather displeasing.

Ugh.

Maybe it's just late. It's now 6:45 in the morning, and I haven't slept (and probably won't for the next 2 days-it's New Years Eve, and I have college crap to mail in the morning) and I'm fucking exhausted. I've written three movie reviews, one rant, and god knows how many essays in the last 8-10 hours, not to mention had a heavyweight of a conversation with my girlfriend. But despite all that… I'm disappointed with the series. I was looking forward to the ending of ROTK so much… Oh well. I still have The Manchurian Candidate to look forward to, right?