Middle Earth to Hollywood is Suuuuch a Long Flight
And some notes about wigs | Vol. 3 Iss. 2
Welcome back to my travelogue. Have you ever needed a vacation from your vacation? That’s me, this week. Middle Earth has been great, and the people and culture are definitely… interesting. But I needed a smoothie. So I caught a flight to California, which was so long but at least I was in business, which isn’t even that much more expensive, and you get so many amenities.
Anyway.
Hollywood Baby!
Spoiler warning: Does this have spoilers for The Fellowship of the Ring? Yes. Are you allowed to tell me spoilers for later than that in the series? Absolutely not.
Journey Part 2 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Movie!
I watched this movie with Will in the middle of a long, lazy Saturday that also included Korean food and a trip to the dog park. This might be the ideal setting for any movie, but it certainly worked for this one.
In general, I think it’s really hard to adapt books, especially longer ones, into movies. You lose a lot of nuance and detail, and you have people who already love the story who are going to be on the lookout for those changes.
A lot was lost in the transition from book to movie for Fellowship. And, in this case, I think the story is better for it.
The book is, for better or worse, meandering. I really felt like I was on a journey with these characters, and part of the joy and the frustration of that journey was that it wasn’t always clear where we’d end up.
The movie does not have time for this. It replaces the meandering feeling with a lot more clear signposting from moment one. It also takes advantage of not being tied to Frodo and the other hobbits’ perspectives to show us so much more of Gandalf’s story on screen, rather than in after-the-fact catch-ups.
This starts with the opening narration, which serves primer on Middle Earth history centered on the One Ring. There are some slight changes from the version of that history that’s in the book, but I’m willing to make those sacrifices to have the history clear and early, especially as someone who made the mistake of not starting with The Hobbit.
It continues, and I think this is crucial, with clearer stakes (the destruction of the free world in Middle Earth) and a clearer plan (go to this particular inn) for the start of Frodo’s journey. This is also a section where the movie seemed to make the most cuts, some of them to scenes that were definitely interesting in the book, but which I think are also acceptable sacrifices for this more straight-line journey.
I did miss some of the weirdness of that section of the book. We lose a scene where the hobbits get eaten by a tree and the entire Tom Bombadil plot, both of which were very strange. Did they contribute to the throughline ring-disposal arc in the book? No. Is Tom Bombadil a god? Deeply unclear. (Wait, that was also a section with an additional woman! Justice for her!) We also lost the bit where they’re kidnapped by a barrow wight. What is a barrow wight? Not sure.
I see why these bits got cut for the movie, because they’re not load-baring and they don’t necessarily fit the tone they went for with the film. But I’m glad I read the book and got to experience them there, in their full, weird glory.
The movie keeps the really key stops on the road trip, including Rivendell, Moria, and Lothlorien, which all look great and I think convey pretty well those sections of the book. (Even if Moria is filled with a frankly astonishing number of orcs. (And then Sarumon also has crazy numbers of orcs, including an orc/goblin hybrid (?) that I really don’t think was in the book.) I also think it’s a great choice to end the movie about ten minutes later than the book ends, so that the Boromir plot is tied up nicely and we’re sort of sling-shotted into the setup for the next movie, with Frodo and Sam on one journey and Legolas, Strider, and Gimli on the other.
My main complaint for additions is the Strider/Arwen romance stuff. This movie is, as we’ll get to, filled with gorgeous people, so I understand the impulse to give us a love story, but when so much has been cut to focus the plot down to the Ring and Frodo, it felt very odd to take those breaks for meaningful looks. Some of this, when combined with slight changes in what they highlight about Strider’s backstory, feels like an attempt to give him clearer stakes, but I think he can be a compelling character without an elf girlfriend.
Arwen did have more to do in the movie, which I appreciated, but the total of women in this movie is still her, a dancing hobbit lady, and Cate Blanchett.
Speaking of Cate Blanchett! And other beautiful people
I didn’t find Cate Blanchett’s character (Galadriel) quite so menacing in the book. Maybe I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the beautiful treehouse city, but I thought the vibe was more mysterious than scary. The movie definitely goes with slightly scary, which I worry has to do with Galadriel being a very powerful woman. I do think Blanchett did a good job with what she was given script wise, and she can do immortal elf quite well. And she looks great.
I don’t know that I’ve really seen an Orlando Bloom movie before this, but he also looks great.
But not as good as Viggo Mortensen. I took two and a half pages of increasingly hard to read notes on this movie, but one of them simply reads “Strider is hot.” And I stand by that. The cheekbones! The jawline! The mysterious cloak! It’s all working.
He’s not in this movie to be hot, but Ian McKellan is a delight in every single scene. I wrote in my last blog about the coziness of Hobbiton, and the introduction scene in the movie, as Gandalf rides through on his cart and farts out fireworks at the little kid hobbits gave the coziness of the book with a wonderful added playfulness from Gandalf.
I realized from my incessant IMDB app visits during the movie that this came out the same year as the first Harry Potter film. Which means that there were auditions, around the same time, for two old, playful, mysterious literary wizards. And, no disrespect to Richard Harris and Michael Gambon, but if they could have given both roles to Ian McKellan I think he absolutely could have pulled it off.
(Do you think any of these old men shared rides between the auditions? There had to be overlap, right?)
Also slightly overlapping? Elijah Wood and Daniel Radcliffe look like cousins. I think it’s their eyes, maybe, and their face shapes. Also they both have red head best friends!
Some Stray Notes:
The wigs in the movie are incredible. All the hobbits with their little curls look fantastic. Orlando Bloom’s ponytail looks fantastic. The beard/wig combo they have on Ian McKellan is great. A+ for all of it.
Are wizards human? (Will looked it up. No.)
Is Sauron human? (No one looked it up. Don’t tell me. Spoilers.)
The cake at Bilbo’s birthday party is comically large.
I, like Bilbo, would like to see mountains and finish my book in quiet.
I think the farthest I’ve ever been from home was Ostuni, Italy.
There’s so much smoking in this movie. Is “the leaf” just weed?
Having characters named Sauron and Sarumon is unnecessarily confusing.
A lot of the Sarumon stuff isn’t in the book, at least not the first book. But I think it sort of helps in giving us a clear antagonist while still saving Sauron for (literally) down the road.
Roxie came and sniffed the TV and got scared of the Black Riders.
You can see why this movie has been good for New Zealand tourism. Mostly for how cute Hobbiton is!
There was, I hate to say it, hardly any singing in this movie. And it’s still nearly three hours long!
What Else?
Work
I wrote one more Linda McMahon story.
Other Books
I cheated on Tolkien a little bit to listen to the audiobook of Lynn Painter’s Accidentally Amy. Plot wise, it wasn’t a perfect book. I thought some of the problems/history set up in the beginning would pay off in a more personal/less HR-related way, but the characters were compelling and the woman reading it was really good.
Television
I’m very late to this party, but we’ve signed up for HBO for a month or two and are watching the second season of Our Flag Means Death, the best gay pirate rom-com on television. I really enjoyed the first season of this show and am sad it took us this long to come back to it, and that it didn’t get a third season.
The costume designers on this show must be a) working extremely hard and b) having a lot of fun. The mix of period clothes and anachronistic pieces really flows together. Why does Blackbeard have a one-sleeved leather shirt? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because he looks great. Also bonus points to whoever is in charge of Blackbeard’s wigs.
Roxie Again
