Misunderstanding Tolkien

By Daniel Larison • December 2, 2012, 6:41 PM

So Robert Rodi has apparently never read The Two Towers:

Peter Jackson triumphed with his earlier “Lord of the Rings” trilogy because that immediacy — that urgency — miraculously came through, being only occasionally undercut by modern ironic moments (as in Legolas and Gimli’s competition to see who can tally up the most kills in any given battle).

If this is Rodi’s best example of a “modern ironic moment” in Jackson’s movies, he should reconsider his entire argument. The competition between Gimli and Legolas is part of Tolkien’s original story. Jackson expanded on the competition and continued it in the third movie, but the friendly rivalry between the two was an important element in the characters’ relationship in the second book of the trilogy. Rodi wants to create the impression that the new adaptation of The Hobbit is infusing the story with too much “modern irony” (which seems to be the wrong word for what he’s objecting to), but he clearly isn’t familiar enough with Tolkien’s own work to recognize which parts of his stories were created by the author and which were added or modified by the screenwriters.

Posted in books, film. Tagged Gimli, Legolas, Peter Jackson, Robert Rodi, The Hobbit, The Two Towers.

8 Responses to Misunderstanding Tolkien

Charlie says:

December 2, 2012 at 8:09 pm

I see what he’s getting at with the Legolas/Gimli stuff. I don’t think he’s really objecting to “irony.” It’s more that, starting with Two Towers, Gimli becomes comic relief in a way that clashes with the tone of everything else. “Nobody tosses a dwarf!” may be a funny gag on its own terms, but it’s at odds with a movie that breaks into Celtic-scored slow-motion for the death of an important elf and has the protagonists genuflecting before Gandalf’s horse. I’m not poking fun at Lord of the Rings, only pointing out that it takes tremendous command of tone to alternate between light humor and high fantasy. I don’t think Jackson always pulled it off.

I can’t quite tell if Rodi is criticizing Joss Whedon or just describing his style. But I don’t think Whedonesque self-awareness is quite as novel as Rodi thinks it is. Whedon’s characters (I’m thinking mostly of Buffy here) live in a culture where folklore about monsters is passed down through pop culture. It would feel strange if they encountered vampires and didn’t use their own culture as their frame of reference. Or take something like The Lost Boys. The movie’s clearly not meant to be taken entirely seriously. But it’s also “realistic” to assume that, if vampires did exist in a world that resembled our own, only kids who took comic books seriously would be on the lookout for them.

There’s a balance to be struck with this. Obviously if all the characters do is bang on about how weird it is that they’re in a scenario that resembles a movie, it gets old quick. But acknowledging that they’re confronting creatures that they’ve encountered in fiction (or myth) is just normal. I think the characters do it in the original Dracula novel.

The trouble with something like the dwarf-tossing in Two Towers, or with one of the seven dwarfs doing a “say hello to my little friend” gag in one of the new Snow White movies, is that those jokes indulge the audience’s frame of reference at the expense of allowing the characters to behave realistically. It’s perfectly “realistic” for American teenager Buffy Summers to reference monster movies, but it’s not “realistic” for one of the seven dwarfs to be quoting Scarface.
Charlie says:

December 2, 2012 at 8:18 pm

Just remembered that “nobody tosses a dwarf” is in the first movie, with the call-back in Two Towers being that Gimli asks Aragorn to toss him and swears him to secrecy. But I do think the overall point is still valid–Gimli ended up shouldering nearly all of the comedy in the second movie, to diminishing returns.
shrillcosby says:

December 2, 2012 at 10:26 pm

Charlie: That’s all well and good, but the critique of Jackson’s adaptation that Gimli shoulders too much of the burden of comic relief (a critique with which I agree), it seems completely unrelated to the critique Rodi is making. “Nobody tosses a dwarf” befits the sense of wounded self-importance, misplaced pride, and wanton fearlessness that characterizes Gimli in the movies. Perhaps you think that this diverges too much from the books, but it nevertheless comes from within the character’s frame of reference, not outside of it.

The other problem with Rodi’s argument is that The Hobbit has a completely different tone from LOTR. It’s not a mythic, densely layered epic, it’s a children’s adventure story. In fact, the worst thing that could happen to the Hobbit (and is what seems to have happened) is Jackson attempting to match the epic tone of LOTR. The fact that Rodi seems unaware of the obvious tonal differences between the Hobbit and LOTR is an even stronger sign that he apparently hasn’t read them.
Glaivester says:

December 2, 2012 at 10:30 pm

The trouble with something like the dwarf-tossing in Two Towers, or with one of the seven dwarfs doing a “say hello to my little friend” gag in one of the new Snow White movies, is that those jokes indulge the audience’s frame of reference at the expense of allowing the characters to behave realistically

Although that would not be much of a problem in the Snow White movie, as the movie was pretty much a parody anyway.
Brendan says:

December 2, 2012 at 10:55 pm

“Nobody tosses a dwarf” befits the sense of wounded self-importance, misplaced pride, and wanton fearlessness that characterizes Gimli in the movies. Perhaps you think that this diverges too much from the books, but it nevertheless comes from within the character’s frame of reference, not outside of it.

The sentiment comes from within the character’s frame of reference, yes, but the manner in which it’s expressed… both phrasing and delivery are defined, not by the character’s frame of reference as it exists in the film’s serious moments, but by the need of a not-terribly-clever action-movie screenplay for comic relief at a given moment. The “kill contest” that Rodi misidentifies as Jackson’s invention is another example of the same phenomenon. At one point in the films Legolas, peeved to find Gimli is ahead, shoots an orc corpse in the head, saying that it was twitching. Gimli replies “It’s twitching because it’s got my axe in its nervous system.” Which is mildly funny as far as blockbuster dialogue goes, I guess, but betrays a certain inattention to the diction of a high fantasy setting, or perhaps a belief that that diction can coexist with blockbuster dialogue in a credible movie. I don’t think it can, but rather a lot of people seem to disagree.
Charlie says:

December 2, 2012 at 11:04 pm

Although that would not be much of a problem in the Snow White movie, as the movie was pretty much a parody anyway.

I haven’t seen it; you’re right that those kinds of jokes wouldn’t actually clash with the overall tone if those jokes were the point of the movie. But I do think that too much winking at the audience can be a problem even with parodies. One of the things that make parts of the Shrek movies and the entire Scary Movie franchise so tedious is that they fail at being parodies. A parody offers some kind of comment on the original, but a lot of these movies just throw in pop culture references as if provoking the audience to say, “I recognize that” is the same thing as telling a joke.

Perhaps you think that this diverges too much from the books, but it nevertheless comes from within the character’s frame of reference, not outside of it.

That’s true. I think Brendan makes the point better than I did–it’s not that there’s a lot of overt winking at the audience, and more that the tone of a lot of the Gimli comic relief clashes very badly with the internally-consistent high fantasy setting the rest of the movie is trying to create. It’s not that fantasy has to be humorless, but the jokes shouldn’t take you out of the fantasy. For example, it’s clearly within Gimli’s frame of reference that he would be too short to see over ramparts designed for men, but using that as fodder for a joke as Absolute Evil is approaching Helm’s Deep is so out of step with the moment that it comes off as pandering to the audience.
Rob in CT says:

December 3, 2012 at 9:46 am

Detail wrong, gist of complain right.

Gimli was used as clumsy comic relief one or two too many times. I loved the films, but they weren’t perfect. Dwarf-tossing? Bleh. And the “central nervous system” remark really, really stuck out. Though I admit, I actually liked the “would you like me to get you a box” bit, because of Gimli’s laughter in response. That one actually struck me as a vaguely natural moment. The tension of situation is exactly why there was some need for comic relief. YMMV.

It’s funny… for me, larger divergences from the book sometimes “felt” like less of a problem: for instance, having a company of elf warriors show up from Lothlorien to help defend Helm’s Deep. That wasn’t as jarring, for me, as “central nervous system” because while it totally didn’t happenin the book, it wasn’t obviously out of character (it actually *is* out of character for the elves, who by that period are almost entirely reactive/defensive, but I’m wandering pretty far down the Tolkien geek road now).
jb says:

December 3, 2012 at 10:36 am

The other problem with Rodi’s argument is that The Hobbit has a completely different tone from LOTR. It’s not a mythic, densely layered epic, it’s a children’s adventure story.

Tolkien himself was worried this problem. I mean, the great wizard Gandalf just pops by one day and invites a random homebody hobbit to accompany him on an “adventure?” Seriously???

Tolkien’s own effort to reconcile the lightness of The Hobbit with the epic seriousness of LOTR was The Quest of Erebor, which basically retells the story of The Hobbit, except that it’s all Very Serious now. The Quest of Erebor was supposed to be included as part of LOTR, but it ended up not being published in Tolkien’s lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson drew on this for the movie, although I don’t think he could do so officially since he only has the rights to LOTR and The Hobbit, and the Tolkien estate has not been friendly to the movies.