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The orcs & all of Sauron's minions have only one motivation: to serve Sauron unto death. Period. They've been bred & trained for that. Some of considerable power obviously have aspirations of supplanting Sauron—Saruman is a prime example—but as long as Sauron exists, even they must serve him obediently, whatever they may be secretly scheming otherwise. It's not unlike C.S. Lewis' conception of Satan in The Screwtape Letters—ultimately, all beings are consumed & subsumed by Satan. Similarly, Sauron ultimately sees all other beings as existing only as extensions of his own power; certainly that's his goal.
Yet ironically, Sauron himself is subordinate to Morgoth. It's only because Morgoth has been chained & imprisoned for eternity that Sauron can claim to be the ultimate power. And so in some corner of his being, he must fear the return of Morgoth. And he knows that any of his more powerful minions feel the same way about him. But as long as he's in control, he revels in his superiority over them, even as he always harbors that hidden fear, which continually eats away at him. The more his power increases, the more his fear of losing it increases as well. And the more he has to tighten his control over them.
This, a thousand times over!
We all have films we love, films that we hate to see attacked & disparaged, or interpreted wrongly—well, wrongly from our perspective, anyway. I try to keep that in mind & not get personal or too angry when discussing them. What's the use of getting ugly? It won't change anyone's mind; if anything, it'll just make things worse. At most, I'll try to explain just what it is I see & find in those beloved films that speaks so deeply to me. And different perceptions can be good, if we're open to at least hearing them out. I don't mind hearing a different take on a film—even if I don't agree with it in the end, it's made me think, and it shows me how someone else can have a very different & valid response to that film. This isn't a bad thing!
Agreed. And I welcome diversity & equity where it's organic to the original story—but "organic to the original story" is the key phrase here. In other fantasy worlds, such as that of Conan, or of Elric & Stormbringer, the diversity is there from the start, with many different races, different cultures, different customs, strong women characters. Nothing has to be distorted or shoehorned in. And I'd want to see that in any film adaptations of those stories—it would be great!
But Tolkien is writing about a specific & deeply personal creation, from a very specific worldview. I'd want that honored & respected in any adaptation of his work. And his creation is indeed quite Catholic: an expression of the man & his being. If someone wants to do a story where God or the gods are evil, then go to it, a la Phillip Pullman. That was as much an expression of the author & his worldview as Tolkien's work is of his. And I enjoyed those books on their own terms; they were inventive, gripping, and internally consistent, questioning the power & intent of organized religion. And that's worth exploring.
Again, though, Tolkien is writing from & offering a different vision, one that posits a moral structure to creation, where beauty & respect & love are all to be cherished & championed over controlling power, ugliness & cynicism. And that's just as worth exploring these days—if anything, it's a necessity.
If I'm remembering this correctly, it seems to me that Tolkien later expressed regret for not showing an orc redeemed, as he clearly believed it was possible, They are, after all, corruptions of Elves; and so some spark of their original nature may yet survive within them. That writer Robley Evans I mentioned in a previous post discusses the orcs & says at one point that he—and perhaps even Gandalf—feels a certain pity for them, as they are so obviously the helpless tools of Sauron (and Morgoth before him). And he also notes that they have courage & even a certain esprit de corps in their small groups—again, originally good qualities corrupted.
I was initially dubious about the casting of Sean Astin, but he really captured the essence of Sam, didn't he?
A recurring criticism of Tolkien is that his characters & his world are too black-&-white, either impossibly good or irredeemably bad. Yet as we see with Gollum, Saruman, Boromir, the Sackville-Bagginses, even the distrust between Elf & Dwarf at first, it's far more nuanced than that. As you say, redemption is offered freely to everyone—but not everyone accepts it. It is, in the end, always a matter of free will & individual choice.
This is a wonderful post. :)
Yes, sincerity, vulnerability, tenderness, etc., are indeed distrusted a lot these days, aren't they? There's the tendency to turn everything into "just a joke" instead. And even much of the satire & cynicism of the current day is more snark than scathing, spot-on satire. There's a fear of seeming weak, of being a target, if anything too honest & sincere is expressed. Anger & scorn can be loudly expressed, of course! But something more quiet & sincere? Not so much.
I like the John Lennon example, as he went back-&-forth with that fear of being vulnerable, sometimes hiding behind a gibe, but sometimes being astonishingly naked. When he dropped the protective sneer, he could write & perform something as haunting & moving as "Julia" for example. And Paul? He seemed more openly sentimental, but often spoke through fictional characters in his songs. Yet when he wrote as nakedly as John did, he gave us "Maybe I'm Amazed." I love all their work, but when they held nothing back, they were at their best.
Returning to Tolkien, Peter Jackson explained his rewriting of Faramir as being due to his inability to believe than anyone could be that decent & honorable. It was a mistake on his part. Faramir isn't a plaster saint in the books, he's just more aware of his own weakness & understands the full danger of the Ring, as Boromir couldn't. He doesn't reject the temptation of taking the Ring from Frodo because he's Just Too Good, but because he knows that he isn't strong enough to resist it—the very reason both Gandalf & Galadriel rejected it. In short, Faramir is sincere. And because he is sincere, he doesn't blame Boromir for briefly succumbing to the lure of the Ring, but grieves for him. And he's as honest with Frodo as he can be under difficult circumstances. And with Tolkien's world having a moral structure, Faramir's sincerity is rewarded.
I guess it doesn't, not for studio heads who only see "title of known & respected film classic + new actor of the current generation = $$$$$$$." Much easier than trying to make something brand-new that might have the same impact.
And sometimes that even works. The Jeff Bridges version of True Grit was made from the novel, not the previous film version, and does stand on its own. So we'll have to wait & see about this remake, I suppose. Still, it'll be quite a hurdle to go up against a film presence as distinctively unearthly & unique as David Bowie, though.
Oh, man, this was a fun series!
I've always meant to read Travels With My Aunt, and now you've given me the nudge I need to finally do so. :)
As are your kind words. :)
I agree, look at Pre-Raphaelites, clearly following in the footsteps of the Romantics. William Morris is foremost among them with his earlier retellings of myth, including the story of Sigurd the Volsung; and late in his life, his fantasy romances such as The Wood Beyond the World & The Well At the World's End, which many scholars of fantasy regard as the first real fantasy novels. Lord Dunsany's exquisite short stories from shortly after Morris also partake of that mythic tone, with an emphasis on preserving the beauty & wonder of the imagination.
Oh, yes, Bakshi's Ringwraiths! They do evoke a visceral, almost tactile sense of ugliness, decay, corruption .. the corruption of their souls, forsaken to gain power, and so losing themselves by that act.
And yes to his Gollum, too. I know that he's seen as Frodo's shadow, what Fordo would become if he succumbed to the Ring ... but I also see him as the inner being of all Sauron's servants, and even Sauron himself: a shriveled soul, self-damned by the power they crave that is always destroying them. If you strip away all their dark, brutal, horrific exterior, inside they are Gollum. If anything, Gollum is in some ways stronger than they are, because he's still capable of redemption, as we see in that poignant, tragic scene with the sleeping Frodo. Some part of his soul is still alive & longing for the good that could be reawakened in him. Sauron & his servants are beyond that. Saruman is a case in point, when he is offered redemption by Frodo. There's a flicker of yearning in him, but his pride & fear are just too strong, and he deliberately throws away his chance.
Also agree that his Sam was a mistake, going too much for the comic relief country bumpkin than the deceptively simple, feet-on-the-ground sturdiness, loyalty, and solid decency that's the heart of the character.
Yes, Mia clearly has MAJOR family issues & always has had them. It's interesting that adopted son Moses Farrow, who obediently & fearfully parroted Mia's accusations as a small boy, grew up to become a family & marriage therapist who rejected those accusations & re-established his father-son relationship with Allen.
My impression is that Mia came from a horribly dysfunctional, damaging childhood, and that she was its victim. Unfortunately, such victims sometimes go on to victimize others, because it's all they know emotionally from their most formative & vulnerable years.
In all three cases, these men were delving deeply into their psyches, grappling with primal spiritual questions that were of life-&-death meaning to them, and coming to terms with them via the creative act. And this dynamic, positive process continued throughout their lives.
There are two books that helped me to understand Blake when I was a younger man, both books from the early 1970s. One was by Robley Evens, 1 of 4 in a series called Writers For The 70s, about writers then popular with young people. (The others were Vonnegut, Brautigan, and Hesse—the last of whom incorporated much of Jungian archetypal material into his novels.) Evans' book was about Tolkien, and he explores the parallels between Tolkien & Blake, often in Jungian terms. (And Jung, of course, was in turn one of the great influences on Joseph Campbell.)
The other book is Where the Wasteland Ends, by Theodore Roszak, the man who coined the word "counterculture"—but his book is about the objective, reductionist, mechanistic worldview that dominates Western culture. He devotes several crucial chapters to the English Romantics, and has an excellent exploration of Blake & his vision. But much of what he explores about the Romantics as a whole will resonate with the serious reader of Tolkien: the respect & love for Nature, the divine & sacred power that creates & suffuses existence, the healing power of beauty & compassion, the rejection of power that's made only for the sake of more power & more control, the rejection of the mechanistic & the soulless & the merciless.
As I said, for me, good starting points. And there are many other fine books about Blake as well. If you begin delving into his work, I hope that you'll find some of the same wonder & mythic power that you've found in Tolkien.
A couple of interesting links about Blake:
http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2015/08/12/william-blake-and-the-imagination-which-liveth-forever/
http://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/book-reviews/35-tolkien-archetype-and-word
While Blake is known by most for his shorter poems—"The Tyger" ("Tyger, tyger, burning bright ..."—it's in his longer, prophetic poems that he really works out his personal archetypal mythos. Like Tolkien, he was an artist as well as a writer & myth-maker; in Blake's case, he incorporated the art & text into one, using the technique of copper-plate etching that was revealed to him in a dream by his dead brother. In his mythos, various godlike beings that are portions of Albion, the Eternal Man (and thus also every man) contend with each other, because they've been separated from one another. They also appear in different forms, with different names, across the aeons. Sound familiar? :)
Interestingly, one of those figures is named Orc—in benign form, a fiery, revolutionary youth who overturns the power of cold, mechanistic reason & dogma; in his less benign form, a figure chained by that cold power & thus become a raging, violent harbinger of destruction.
The parallels with Tolkien? Both men's work is that of a lifetime, of a personal mythic vision that expresses the soul of the man, his worldview, his spiritual outlook. Both are distinctly English. Both see a fallen world that yet contains the divine & the sacred, which will one day be redeemed in the end—a world felled by an insatiable hunger for power & control, that destroys & controls, bur that is creatively void—it can imitate the creations of the divine, but only in ugly mockeries of them.
There's a third name to be mentioned here, too: that of Carl Jung. At about the same time that Tolkien was first glimpsing & struggling to create his mythos, Jung was undergoing the psychic descent (some have called it a near-psychotic breakdown) that resulted in his creation of The Red Book—and of course the Red Book of Westmarch is the hobbit-preserved history of Tolkien's early Ages. If you look at the paintings both men did, you'll note how much their trees resemble each other, in fact.
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He voices a very good Legolas. :)
I can understand that the rotoscoping isn't to everyone's taste. I like it & it works for me, but that's just me.
It's hobbled by the budget running out by the second half, and that it only gets as far as the Battle of Helm's Deep. Yet in some places, I think it outdoes the Jackson films—for instance, the temptation of Galadriel is played in an understated way that makes it superior, to my mind. I love Cate Blanchett, but she could have carried that scene all by herself, without any of the CGI bombast.
Bakshi's version is uneven, no question about that, but it's also strikingly inventive. And John Hurt as the voice of Aragorn is superb. I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and I've rewatched it again over the years. It holds up quite well for me on the whole, despite some dubious choices along the way.
This entire discussion is wonderful & thoughtful & rich.
And I agree—in many ways, Fellowship is my favorite, both book & film.
What you wrote above about the story becoming deeper & revealing more with every return to it is spot on. This is what distinguishes Tolkien from the many fantasy writers who followed him, no matter how good & impressive their work is on its own terms—Tolkien's was (and is) the work of an entire lifetime, drawing on the depths of the man, his psyche, his heart & soul. Everything he was, everything he believed in & revered devoutly, is in his work. Every page is suffused with mythic & poetic power. It's as unique & powerful an individual, personal work William Blake's body of work. And to my mind, worthy to stand with Blake, without any quibbles or qualifications. True & enduring art indeed!
In the books, there's a scene where Sam & Frodo witness a battle between the Easterlings who serve Sauron & the forces of Gondor. Afterward, Sam comes upon the body of a slain Easterling, and he wonders if it was his choice to go to war or whether it was due to Sauron's lies, and if he had left family & friends behind who would mourn him. It's a small, quietly reflective moment, with Sam seeing a fellow being lying dead at his feet, rather than just The Enemy.
Agreed.
And those issues re: Mia's brother? He went to jail for sexually abusing two boys.