bloodyrosemccoy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2013-01-05 11:17 pm
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2013-01-05 11:17 pm
A Beautiful Place
I may not be able to argue with Christopher Tolkien, but I have to say I agree far more with this article about The Hobbit--especially since my recent curiosity about Tolkien's languages has led to another attempt to read The Silmarillion.*
I'll add, though, that one of the best things about the movies is the pure JOY with which they take you on a tour of Middle-Earth. I suppose Radagast the Brown could have been edited out, Saruman needn't really have made an appearance, the plate-juggling didn't have to be there, and the Stone Giants were over the top. But before you dismiss them as useless nods to bookish Tolkien nerds, I want you to remember James Cameron's Avatar.
My response to Avatar could best be described as an intense, burning indifference. Before it came out the producers made much of the fact that it was a carefully constructed other world, with its own ecosystem and language and culture. And yet, when you saw the movie, you realized that the glowing world of Pandora lacked personality. Three hours went by and at the end of it I somehow cared less about everyone involved. I was vaguely familiar with maybe two Na'vi (Neytiri and Tsu'tey), but I couldn't conceive of what Neytiri did when she WASN'T shepherding Jake The Dumbass around. I didn't know whether there were favorite swimming holes. I didn't know who made Neytiri's formal necklace. I didn't find out what other villagers did with their time. I didn't even know any other Na'vi names, in a movie that was purportedly meant to showcase their world.** Nobody told off-color jokes that didn't translate, nobody had a favorite fruit, nobody played an instrument, nobody secretly saved Grace's giant copy of The Lorax because it was fascinatingly alien. They were just a mass of Na'vi.***
And they hardly dwell on the world. The great wonders are passed by in favor of dragging the dull plot along. "Oh, yeah, we've got hammerheaded peacock rhinoceroses. Meh. Let's have another heavy-handed argument with the speciesist CEO!"
Now remember the delight with which Radagast shows off his rabbits, or Bilbo sits down to a nice little bathrobe dinner, or the weird little minion of the Goblin King goes zip-stringing off the scaffolding. The movie is really proud of itself and completely in love with its source material, and it wants you to share that joy. And that doesn't just mean sweeping panoramas, but also the minute details. And since even Peter Jackson can't cram every wonderful thing into a movie, the details that do show up have to suggest that this world is going on even when you aren't looking at it. The Hobbit does that. Avatar not so much.
That, I think, is what a lot of people are missing. And yet it's the delight of stories (hell, that's the whole point of our own Torn World--to showcase both a big world AND the wonderful little people living day-to-day in it). So if you ever feel tempted to gripe about those Stone Giants, just remember that they'd have improved the hell out of Avatar.
*I tried to read it in high school, but quickly discovered that Tolkiens Sr. and Jr. have all the abilities of a history textbook writer and more when it comes to making totally goddamn badass tales staggeringly boring. If my brain goes numb while reading about a battle with a giant spider, you need to spiff up your storytelling.
**There's a moment in the film when Jake has had his vision quest or something--not actually shown--and has Become One Of The Tribe, when Neytiri points out that he can now "choose a woman." She then lists a couple of women in the tribe--Jane is the best singer, Sharon sure knows how to kill the everloving shit out of a deer--while obviously hoping Jake will pick her. What was supposed to be a cute, romantic moment in the film was completely lost on me while I grappled with the idea that Jake even KNEW any other women in the tribe. BECAUSE I SURE DIDN'T.
***Na'vi language creator Paul Frommer seems to be battling this anonymity single-handedly, or at least few-handedly with the help of a small but dedicated squad of hardcore Na'vi learners. His blog is a lot more fun than the movie, and the sample sentences tell you a lot more about Na'vi life, as well!
I'll add, though, that one of the best things about the movies is the pure JOY with which they take you on a tour of Middle-Earth. I suppose Radagast the Brown could have been edited out, Saruman needn't really have made an appearance, the plate-juggling didn't have to be there, and the Stone Giants were over the top. But before you dismiss them as useless nods to bookish Tolkien nerds, I want you to remember James Cameron's Avatar.
My response to Avatar could best be described as an intense, burning indifference. Before it came out the producers made much of the fact that it was a carefully constructed other world, with its own ecosystem and language and culture. And yet, when you saw the movie, you realized that the glowing world of Pandora lacked personality. Three hours went by and at the end of it I somehow cared less about everyone involved. I was vaguely familiar with maybe two Na'vi (Neytiri and Tsu'tey), but I couldn't conceive of what Neytiri did when she WASN'T shepherding Jake The Dumbass around. I didn't know whether there were favorite swimming holes. I didn't know who made Neytiri's formal necklace. I didn't find out what other villagers did with their time. I didn't even know any other Na'vi names, in a movie that was purportedly meant to showcase their world.** Nobody told off-color jokes that didn't translate, nobody had a favorite fruit, nobody played an instrument, nobody secretly saved Grace's giant copy of The Lorax because it was fascinatingly alien. They were just a mass of Na'vi.***
And they hardly dwell on the world. The great wonders are passed by in favor of dragging the dull plot along. "Oh, yeah, we've got hammerheaded peacock rhinoceroses. Meh. Let's have another heavy-handed argument with the speciesist CEO!"
Now remember the delight with which Radagast shows off his rabbits, or Bilbo sits down to a nice little bathrobe dinner, or the weird little minion of the Goblin King goes zip-stringing off the scaffolding. The movie is really proud of itself and completely in love with its source material, and it wants you to share that joy. And that doesn't just mean sweeping panoramas, but also the minute details. And since even Peter Jackson can't cram every wonderful thing into a movie, the details that do show up have to suggest that this world is going on even when you aren't looking at it. The Hobbit does that. Avatar not so much.
That, I think, is what a lot of people are missing. And yet it's the delight of stories (hell, that's the whole point of our own Torn World--to showcase both a big world AND the wonderful little people living day-to-day in it). So if you ever feel tempted to gripe about those Stone Giants, just remember that they'd have improved the hell out of Avatar.
*I tried to read it in high school, but quickly discovered that Tolkiens Sr. and Jr. have all the abilities of a history textbook writer and more when it comes to making totally goddamn badass tales staggeringly boring. If my brain goes numb while reading about a battle with a giant spider, you need to spiff up your storytelling.
**There's a moment in the film when Jake has had his vision quest or something--not actually shown--and has Become One Of The Tribe, when Neytiri points out that he can now "choose a woman." She then lists a couple of women in the tribe--Jane is the best singer, Sharon sure knows how to kill the everloving shit out of a deer--while obviously hoping Jake will pick her. What was supposed to be a cute, romantic moment in the film was completely lost on me while I grappled with the idea that Jake even KNEW any other women in the tribe. BECAUSE I SURE DIDN'T.
***Na'vi language creator Paul Frommer seems to be battling this anonymity single-handedly, or at least few-handedly with the help of a small but dedicated squad of hardcore Na'vi learners. His blog is a lot more fun than the movie, and the sample sentences tell you a lot more about Na'vi life, as well!
no subject
I agree with you about Cameron's Avatar. I saw that movie once, and the imagery is gorgeous, and maybe I'll see it again sometime if the opportunity presents itself, but I'm not going to make much effort to see it again. Now he's talked about doing sequels, and if those happen I'll probably rewatch the first one to refresh my memory before the next one comes out. And I'll certainly see a sequel - the concepts of the world are fascinating and Cameron has said things about showing different aspects of Pandora and different tribes of Na'vi or something along those lines. Which could be cool. But the storyline itself in the first movie was nothing new by any means, and not terribly interesting.
Not that the basic story/stories that Tolkien tells are new, either. But there's a lot more complexity, and a lot more stories. Avatar is the same story as Dances with Wolves or any number of other similar stories where the magical native people save the white guy's soul and he then saves them from their enemies or even from themselves. Because of course they couldn't have saved themselves without a white guy leading them. Meanwhile, Tolkien's got the basic quest thing going on, but there's also the big armies and massive warfare that's going on at the same time and there's the politics between the different groups involved and the leaders of different groups, and all the other forces that get involved so there are lots of stories woven together with motivations.
Whose motivations did we really get in Avatar? Jake's, yes. Not even much of Neytiri's other than defending her people, her world and her way of life. We know what kind of relationship Grace has with the Na'vi but we don't know why that's so important to her. And over in LotR, we've got things like Elrond's mistrust of the strength of men dating back to Isildur not destroying the ring when he had the chance. We've got the long-standing grudge between Dwarves and Elves and then Gimli and Legolas becoming friends. We've got the problems between Gondor and Rohan, and their very different leaders and the reasons why Rohan was reluctant to come to Gondor's aid and the reasons why they did it anyway, not to mention Theoden's whole arc by himself. And so much more. And even enough hints to guess that Rosie Cotton wanted to get together with Sam but that she wanted him to make the move to prove himself. She's only in the very beginning and end of both the book and the movies and she's just a tiny part and it's still clear what her motivations are.
And the same is true with The Hobbit, and not just the motivations that are openly discussed, like Thorin's and Bilbo's. Those history bits, showing why Thranduil was pissed at the Dwarves and how he was so pissed that he came to see what Smaug was doing to them, and then left without helping them, but only after he knew that they'd seen him. Talk about a massive slap in the face!
And with LotR and The Hobbit, you get more when you see them again and you want to see them more than once, whereas with Avatar, once was enough!
no subject
The really sad thing is that there's a whole deleted scene in Avatar explaining a lot of Neytiri's backstory. She had a sister. YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT, DID YOU? She had an older sister who went to Grace's school and then the sister vandalized some mining equipment so the humans sent tanks and guns after her and she ran to the school and was vaporized in the doorway WHICH EXPLAINS A LOT. There are some other deleted bits of characterization that make it, if not great, at least a little better (the CEO actually has twinges of conscience; derpy science nerd guy cops an attitude because he thought HE'D be the one to fix everything; etc.) But even that isn't much, and the bad guy's entire motivation seems to be a cartoonish dedication to evil.
Contrast that with the LotR films. The extended editions especially amaze me with the complex character arcs--Aragorn is laconic but you still get the full sense of his reluctant rise to being a king. (He also manages something rare--a brooding hero who doesn't make me want to smack him and tell him to shape up. Much.) Faramir has a real struggle in the movies with family loyalties versus Doing The Right Thing. Wormtongue gets totally fed up with Saruman, realizes he's made the wrong choice, and flails out a moment of vengeance.. Book!Bilbo is ... Book Bilbo. And while they all do a lot of speechifyin', they manage to Show Not Tell quite a bit.
Speaking of, Sarah McLeod is responsible for one of my favorite moments in the trilogy. It's about two seconds long. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are back in the tavern at the end of their adventure, and they cut to a shot of Rosie cleaning the counter, and she does this wonderful thing where she ducks to toss a hopeful look at ~*~Sam~*~ and then she quickly looks away when she realizes he's looking back and--it just says VOLUMES. I made a point to learn her name just because of that moment.
no subject
And Cameron can also handle romantic motivations, too, damn it. So why do we have no real idea why Jake falls for Neytiri other than that she's exotic and right there. We have no clue at all why Neytiri falls for Jake. And with that cut background you talk about, it makes even less sense! I did get that something awful had happened involving Grace's school, but no more than that. So why would someone who has every reason to hate humans fall in love with Jake? There's got to be more than just proximity and we never saw anything other than that.
I love that little bit with Rosie! And Frodo referring to Sam talking to Rosie as the bravest thing Sam had ever done. And then when Sam comes back home to Rosie in the end, with the kids. There's a love story told in essentially three tiny bits of scenes (four if you count Sam talking about Rosie to Frodo before the Eagles come save them) and yet you see the motivations - Sam's been watching Rosie for ages, probably most of his life, and been too afraid to say anything. But he's been watching her and he knows her so it's not just proximity to a pretty girl. And Rosie's had her eye on Sam and been hoping he'll make that move but she needs to see that he's willing to make that move himself. And in the end, he's willing to say goodbye to Frodo who means so much to him and come back to Rosie and the kids. Just the way Sean Astin handles that, when Sam comes back, it's believable.
Only a tiny bit of screen time in three massive movies was devoted to Sam and Rosie's love story, but it's believable. A lot of screen time out of one (admittedly long) movie was devoted to Jake and Neytiri's love story, and you still have no idea why they fell for each other.
no subject
Jackson can recognize some of the details Tolkien added that helped characterize, and he adds in other moments if necessary.
Tolkien himself thought that Sam's romance with Rosie was one of the central pieces of characterization for Sam's hero's journey, which became the most important part of LotR for him. So a tiny handful of scenes really does carry a lot of weight.
no subject
no subject
I love the setting. I love the potential of all of the groundwork the team laid down. But that's all it is--potential. It came across as just plain incomplete in the movie, no richness to it at all. Things happened that made no sense, things weren't explained at all. I mean, I can understand trying to show an outsider's perspective, and they wouldn't know everything, but that doesn't mean that everything's not there, they just don't notice it. If that makes sense. I really hope Cameron lives up to actually showing Na'vi culture and whatnot in the next movie(s) because dammit, I shouldn't be having to trawl the entire internet and spin-off games and books to find the information that should be in the movie to begin with.
no subject
And even Grima wasn't just doing things for the Evuls! and neither was Gollum. Their motivations were twisted, Grima's mostly by ambition and whatever name you'd give his feelings for Eowyn, Gollum's by the ring, but you knew they had those motivations.
Cameron can do better, too! Look at The Abyss. I think he should do himself and his storytelling a favor and stop pushing for bigger and flashier.
no subject
As for Avatar... as a reef tank nerd, I was rather underwhelmed with a lot of the scenery. I kept saying to myself, "Oh, I know that "plant", that's a species of zooanthid coral, oh, that plant's a gorgonian, that one's a..." you get the point. The world felt a less like an alien world to me and more like someone was really impressed with their friends aquarium and decided to swipe it.
no subject
*Although I do have a scuba diving certificate now, even if I still can't quite believe it. I need to go back to the Red Sea some day, with tubes instead of just a snorkel...
no subject
I read quite a bit of the Sil and retained only tiny fragments. I read some summaries later of the history of Middle Earth and kept thinking "Wait, that's AWESOME, how did I miss THAT?"
no subject
The plate-juggling was absolutely necessary. That's canon. I was thrilled to see that bit in the film, because Tolkien's work has songs coming out the wazoo, and that's not really present in Jackson's LotR films. It was good to have some of that left in for "The Hobbit".
I never saw "Avatar". After the trailer, I couldn't imagine wanting to. When a film's main attraction is splendid and glamourous imagery, a three-minute trailer does the job. Sitting through the three hours of the actual film is superfluous.
no subject
See, YOU understand!
Admittedly, the musical numbers were a bit tiresome in the LotR books, but they fit in better with The Hobbit.
no subject
no subject
YES THIS.
The songs are important, and showing the dwarves' first disruptive and yet not quite disastrous intrusion into Bilbo's life is also important.
no subject
Same here. Husband wanted to see it in the theater, and I sighed and told him I would only go if he would buy me a doughnut and a smoothie afterwards. He didn't really care either, he just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. As for me, I was just physically and emotionally completely bored for three hours, and I agree with every single thing you said here about it. Visually, very lovely. The rest of it was Meh.
I love movies that want to share their joy and let people see it. So many if my friends have that intense burning indifference for "The Hobbit" and while I can understand, I want to see it because this is a film I want to FEEL - who cares about why they want to stretch it out for three movies? It's PRETTY and it LIKES YOU.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'm still worried about the battle scenes in the sequels, though. If I know Jackson, the fight against Smaug will be drawn out into a 20+ minute battle featuring multiple characters, rather than the anticlimax it was in the book, and the Battle of the Five Armies will probably take up about 60 percent of the third film, interspersed with the fight of the Wizards against Sauron (and I have no idea what that will entail. I suspect Tolkien never did either, which is why he was vague about it).
no subject