Greenwood posted:
Actually many of the purists do not accept
Eowyn, at least not fully. If you look at threads where the death of the
Witch-King is discussed you will find some of the same purists from this thread denying that Eowyn killed the Witch-King. Many contend that it was
Merry who killed him. So you see, even when
Tolkien writes a strong female character, some purists do not accept her and try to reduce her role. Once again Tolkien himself is not enough of a purist.
The impression that Merry slew the Witch-king is a strangely common misunderstanding.
Can you establish that this strange error about
Éowyn is more common among Purists than others?
Why are Jackson lovers so ready to accept the trivialization of
Gimli into a comical, ethnic sidekick: loyal and brave but not especially bright. Is that suggestion more viciously unfair than
Snaga's. Take both charges with equal seriousness.
People who don't like strong women would object to the role given to movie-Arwen? People who enjoy comedy at the expense of funny foreigners might enjoy movie-Gimli? Jar Jar Binks fans (and there are some) probably see no problems with movie-Gimli either.
But that proves nothing about the motivation of any particular person or of most persons. Argument on motivation is justified if you can make a case for the motivation. Sometimes it is just innuendo.
Greenwood posted:
Yet later in the same chapter when
Frodo offers to give
the Ring to
Gandalf the response is:
Quote:
" 'No!' cried Gandalf, springing to his feet."
No contradiction. Frodo is asks Gandalf to take over ownership of the Ring which is a different matter than Gandalf handling it for a moment or two. Gandalf explains.
Eowyn joins the ride of the
Rohirrim as
Dernhelm, and no one recognizes her! There are indications that the leader and the
men of the troop she is riding with are in on some sort of unspoken agreement to ignore Merry's presence.
I had always thought that Elfhelm must have known who Dernhelm was and that there was more than an
unspoken agreement to ignore Merry. It is one thing to find contradiction. It is another to invent it.
Why Elfhelm agreed to this charade is a bypass irrelevant to the tale though one Tolkien could have easily invented: loyal repayment of a debt owed to Éowyn by Elfhelm. Tolkien realistically describes the kind of unofficial looking-the-other-way implausible deniability which happens in all kinds of
organizations when rules are being broken. Elfhelm and his éored have been pressured into the situation and they studidly ignore it as best they can.
This means that all of them, including a Marshal of
the Mark are blithely disregarding the wishes and stated orders of their King. This is absurd!
Happens all the time both in stories and reality. People do disobey their king or captain or leader for good reasons and bad reasons with good and bad results. There are even
tales of mutinies!
At the battle before the Black Gates suddenly
eagles appear. From where? And just in time to carry Gandalf in to Mount Doom to rescue
Sam and Frodo. Now, really! Are we really supposed to mindlessly accept such a convenient appearance of winged transport. How "mindless" are we supposed to be? Tolkien is simply an incompetent writer.
Not mindless at all. Romantic tales of stowaways and arrivals of the cavalry at the last possible moment are commonplaces in adventure stories and heroic romacnes. Tolkien naturally follows the appropriate conventions or the tale would not be an heroic romance. The conventions include last minute rescues, wonderful coincidences and weddings at the end.
One can find fault with that
kind of story, from Greek legends through Fielding's
Tom Jones (where Fielding takes great fun in pointing out how he as author is linking the threads) to many modern tales. But it is hardly incompetent or mindless to purposely write such things.
Deus ex machina is usually considered a bit of a flaw but it sometimes does work very well.
Indeed it's reasonable enough that the Eagles decided to take part in the
Battle of the Black Gate on their own as they did also in the
Battle of the Five Armies. One can almost say, when they appear, "I should have expected they would turn up eventually," without saying it in scorn.
Now in forty years of reading LOTR it never occurred to me to consider Tolkien incompetent because of the above little inconsistencies and plot contrivances. I doubt I even noticed them the first few times I read the
books. But under the positions being advanced here by some they prove Tolkien is an incompetent writer and anyone who enjoys the books and considers them great literature is guilty of mindless acceptance of inferior writing.
That is because they aren't errors. All of them are
easily explained or are norms in the genre.
Most errors of which Jackson is accused cannot be saved by supposition or appealing to conventions of genre though Jackson supporters try. That is a
big difference.
There are problems in
The Lord of the Rings far more difficult to explain than the ones you failed to make into flaws. Some are straightforward continuity errors arising from bits of earlier drafts not being rewritten or simple forgetting, e.g. the moonlight on the West Gate of
Moria.
Why is
Strider wandering the wild armed only with a broken heirloom? (He probably as a
knife but apparently nothing else ... not even a
bow.) And despite Strider's statement that the broken
sword was not much use, two-thirds of a sword in
Aragorn's hands would have been enough to deal with four unamred
hobbits. One must defend Tolkien by fan-fictioning reasoning about why Aragorn could be wandering alone with this broken sword. Yet lack of explanation is not bad explanation. And one can reasonably interpret Aragorn's words about the sword being not much good as meant to reassure Sam rather than as a statement of fact in those circumstances.
Jackson changed all that, presumably in part to avoid these recognizable difficulties.
There is also the question of why book-Saruman allowed book-Gandalf to keep his staff. (One can invent reasons.) Jackson also fixed that. That the staff is not broken in fighting the
Balrog is probably a fix to make more credible Gandalf's later defeat of the Balrog.
There is a moral issue in book-Aragorn's hidden agenda to take advantage of the War to attempt the kingship. Jackson removed the issue.
You might have mentioned these.
Of course it is debated whether Jackson really needed to fix these difficulties considering how much he broke elsewhere.
There are real problems in the chapter "A Knife in the Dark" and throughout
The Lord of the Rings that cannot be disposed of like the non-problems you raised.
The flaws in the book seem to me to be less serious and to come far less thickly than they do in the film. Part of the reason critics concentrate on such hard errors, however trivial, is that hard contradictions are easier to
prove in debate than matters of style and tone and pacing and character. The Jackson-purist can more credibly and perhaps honestly deny perceiving the problems that the critic sees when style and tone and pacing is at issue. Errors more clearly
proved are harder to deny.
The mantras "I accept it!" and "I don't see the problem!" don't work so well. If one points out enough such errors it becomes harder for an opponent to claim that the less provable lapses are all illusory.
Films like
Casablanca have notorious lapes in logic and yet are still considered great films. But two or three great errors in logic and sensibility, even when they involve the foundation of the plot in the film are more easily overlooked when all else is so well done. Jackson stumbles more with far less reason.
Tolkien's LOTR, in its entirety, is a magnificent work.
Yes.
Jackson's film trilogy is also magnificent (in its entirety).
Only parts of Jackson's films work well.
Both have details that can be criticized (and I do not dispute Jackson's has more than the book), but the details do not justify a charge of incompetence as a writer leveled at Tolkien nor a charge of incompetence as a director leveled at Jackson.
Would you prefer
inadequate to
incompetent for something like the silly beard trimming in the exorcism? The word used doesn't change my wonder at how such silliness got in.
In my opinion, no reasonable person not blinded by prejudice, who watched these films after reading the books, could possibly doubt Jackson's considerable familiarity with the books.
Considerable familiarity is a vague enough term to be hard to argue for or against. What is odd is the strange mixture of clear and brilliant film making and excellent adaptation mixed with shoddy and careless film making and bad adaptation of a kind that suggests a stereotypical Hollywood director dumbing down and gimmicking up and missing the heart of anything touched.
It seems like a masterpiece by one director who fully understood the book has been finished by a clueless hack.
How the films actually came to be so mixed I do not know.
I merely point out that if you are going to throw the word at Jackson based on the trivial things I have seen cited, than the charge can equally be laid on Tolkien. I think the charge is absurd in both cases.
Concentration on a single word rather than what is meant evades the issue that Jackson fails outrageously on occasion (and fails less outrageously very often, at least compared to his source). You earlier deny
equally and deny that you meant the charges against Tolkien seriously.
Where is your argument?