The dullness of Treebeard?

[Lúthien Séregon]

I can’t help but wonder about this.

In the Director’s commentary of TTT, Peter Jackson said he got a few complaints in reviews that Treebeard was slow and boring. He admitted that the song of the Entwives in the film was a “celebration of the fact that he was dull”, an attempt to make it humourous rather than boring.

He said, when reading the book, he got the feeling that Tolkien had made Treebeard so serious that it was like it was meant for fun to be poked at him, or something along those lines anyway. I thought this was a bit odd for him to be openly admitting that he thought Treebeard was meant to be dull.

What does everyone else think to this attitude towards the Ents? Did the film really benefit from this kind of attitude, as Peter Jackson stated?

 

[Mrs. Maggott]

Treebeard was meant to be "deep" which, apparently, Mr. Jackson has translated into "dull". I wonder what he would have thought about Socrates, Shakespeare, DaVinci and Einstein? Would he have found them "dull" as well?

Alas, I think that Mr. Jackson's comments tell us more about Mr. Jackson than Treebeard - including just which of the two is actually "dull".

 

[joxy]

Originally posted by Lúthien Séregon
[BWhat does everyone else think to this attitude towards the Ents? Did the film really benefit from this kind of attitude, as Peter Jackson stated?[/B]

The attitude is yet another example of the weirdness of PJ's mind in respect to the books. If he had just got on with the job he was presented with on a plate, making a film directly from as much of the books as he could find time for, then he could, and I'm pretty sure would, have come up with an excellent product. As soon as he begins to work out ideas of his own, he gets into those weird contortions of the story, and the film suffers horribly. As Mrs M points out, these reflections he makes in the various parts of the EEs tell us a lot about the sort of mind he has - more than he would want revealing, if he realised what he is doing.
Benefit from the attitude? It comes perilously close to being ruined by it.