The Lord of the Rings trilogy is not only a feat in the history of film, but also a milestone in fantasy literature. It is a rare work with both commercial and artistic qualities. Unlike many simple films and televisions, the Lord of the Rings is not only a restoration of the original, but also an excellent adaptation. While inheriting the spirit of the original, it also injects the modern script creation concept of Hollywood style.
As a work born a hundred years ago, what is the core of the original Lord of the Rings? What kind of textual blueprint has created the extraordinary reputation and great success of the film?
This starts with the original author Tolkien, the creator of the "Second World" in Middle-earth.
1 Tolkien's fantasy ideas
Unlike many pure authors who only focus on fictional creation, Tolkien is a linguistic scholar and has a deep research on literary and artistic theories on fantasy subjects. For this reason, we can save a lot of useless speculation and derive the core of the Lord of the Rings from his own words.
Tolkien’s fantasy views are embodied in his speech on "On Fairy Tales". He called his fictional works fairy stories. The concept is closer to what we now call fantasy and distinguished from the traditional fairy tales. . Tolkien believes that this type of subject matter contains four major elements.
One is fantasy. The fantasy story takes place in an illusory world different from reality, which Tolkien called the "second world". But unlike the fictional works of fairy tales, Tolkien extremely emphasized the integration and unity of the magical elements in the second world with other parts of the world. In other words, the fantasy world must be different from reality, but also logically rigorous and self-consistent, convincing, so that people can forget about the "disbelief" of the fictional world and be able to immerse them in it (if someone uses it again) The fictitious screenshots indicate that “it is meaningless to find authenticity in a fictional world”, you can take a screenshot of Tolkien’s quotations to fight back).
The second is recovery. Fantasy stories can make people revisit the things that have been ignored and neglected in life. I personally think that this can be understood as "defamiliarization", allowing people to understand their own world from another angle. This approach often appears in allegorical works. For example, in Gulliver’s Travels, ministers competed to skip rope, which can not help but make people reflect on whether the politicians in reality are really more advanced than acrobatics. The painful struggle of mankind in the Lord of the Rings for a peaceful life will further make people realize the value of peace and the meaning of life.
The third is to escape. Escape is closer to the entertainment function, which refers to giving readers an opportunity to free themselves from daily work, temporarily forget the reality in a strange and different world, and gain relaxation and pleasure. Just as the more people who enjoy the fruits of industrialization in the city, the more they like the simple scenery of the primitive countryside. For modern people, the fantasy journey in the medieval style also has an extraordinary appeal, which is the reason why most people enter the cinema.
The fourth is comfort. I think the word closest to Tolkien's intentions should be "cure." After experiencing intense and painful despair, the protagonist will definitely usher in a bright ending in the transition. Tolkien coined a word eucatastrophy for this, which is translated as "good disaster" by domestic scholars. This refers to an ending with tears in laughter. Although the ending is bright, it will also be accompanied by a touch of sadness. Just like the Lord of the Rings ending in the Lord of the Rings, although the Lord of the Rings is destroyed, many good things will disappear with it: the elves of civilization Departure, Frodo's trauma and farewell to Middle-earth, Aragorn and Alvin's love doomed to end in tragedy. In Tolkien's view, the Bible itself is also a huge eucatastrophy. The crucifixion, resurrection and departure of Jesus contain infinite healing and sadness. So according to Tolkien's aesthetic standards, he may accept Puella Magi Madoka in Japanese animation, but he will definitely hate the ending of works like Fate zero. In his opinion, it is very ugly to introduce the ugliness of reality into a fairy story, and to make good people unrequited.
According to Tolkien's evaluation system, the Lord of the Rings is certainly a typical work with four major factors. But in the historical sense, the biggest achievement of this work lies in the first point-fantasy. Tolkien was the first to truly cast a completely structured and detailed fantasy world, turning the few words in the fairy tale into a nearly solid fantasy reality. Before the Lord of the Rings, the fairy tales of knights and dragons would only tell readers that the story took place a long, long time ago. The protagonist is a king and a princess, but you don’t know how long this kingdom has its history, its ethnic and cultural origins, What is the climate and geography, how many subjects, how many feudal towns, and how many military strongholds there are under him, what kind of ruling strategy is pursued in the country, and what is the pattern of clothing. The Lord of the Rings is to personally create a complete fictional world, in which the settings of humans, dwarves, elves, orcs and dragons have become the standard paradigm of Western Fantasy-the elves are also transformed from fairy tales in Tolkien's writings. He has become the perfect image of a white man who is tall, heroic and wise.
But apart from its historical achievements, how should we evaluate the work alone? If you only follow Tolkien’s own standards, the Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly a perfect fantasy work, but this practice of being both a referee and an athlete may not be convincing, otherwise there will not be many opponents of the Lord of the Rings in the world. Criticism.
At least in my personal opinion, the biggest flaw of the Lord of the Rings is not reflected in the type of fantasy works, but as a general literary work, its literary nature is very weak.
2 The literary weakness of the Lord of the Rings
It may be related to his academic background. Tolkien’s works have a narrative and discussion style, and readers who are used to modern novels will soon be uncomfortable: you will find that the author pays more attention to and writes more often in the setting-ancient The legends, magnificent architecture, mysterious ancient language and relics, rather than the characters and plots of mainstream literature, have created its literary fragility, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
Flat characters
The character of The Lord of the Rings is highly fixed and face-like. One is that the height of the character is fixed. This is very similar to some classical works, such as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao is always a traitorous hero, Liu Bei is always a good man, Zhuge Liang is able to direct the battle from the moment he debuts, so wisdom is almost a demon, and there is no need for growth and transformation. The same is true for the characters in the Lord of the Rings. Good people will always be good people, bad people will always be bad people, warriors will always be warriors, and wise men will always be wise. The image of the audience will never change.
The second is the lack of digging depth of the characters, resulting in similar images. Due to the lack of in-depth exploration of the character's psychology, most characters in the same camp are similar. For example, the justice camp is upright and brave, and the evil camp is sinister and brutal. It is difficult to distinguish between people except for race and skill. And Aragorn, one of the protagonists, is a person who lacks personality traits. He has all the virtues of a positive role: justice, bravery, calmness, wisdom, superb martial arts, benevolence and kindness, but being comprehensive is often equal to nothing. Such a saint The image is nothing special, and it is difficult to resonate with readers.
A plot with heavy traces of axe
Even though the details are extremely heavy, the plot evolution of The Lord of the Rings is extremely far-fetched and unnatural. You will see many very "deliberate" plots: that is, Zhuge Liang's perspective is correct, but from the perspective of the parties, actions that are fundamentally unreasonable and greatly weaken the authenticity. If the axe fell into the river and was picked up by the fairy, it was acceptable, but the protagonist suddenly knew that there would be a fairy in the river, so it would be far-fetched to throw the axe in. Tolkien’s plot gives people the latter feeling.
For example, in the first part, Aragorn chose to pursue Meri and Pippin when the team was separated, but gave up Frodo and Sam who carried the ring. The reason was that the fate of the guardian could not be controlled by him, and he could not bear it. Watch both Mepi die. Those who foresee the plot know that this is for Aragorn to start the plot line to save Rohan, Gondor and return to the throne, but from the perspective of the parties, it is still a very stupid decision to refuse to protect the Lord of the Rings-who can rest assured of the two Hobbits with low combat effectiveness carry vital strategic weapons into the enemy's base camp? Who can easily abandon the mission of the ring because of his instinct as a man? This plot also appeared when the coalition forces attacked Mordor to cover Frodo. It was a very blunt and unnatural turning point. Only those who knew the plot in advance would do this.
Relaxed atmosphere and structure
This is embodied in two points: the villain is too weak and too many idle pens.
Tolkien's original villain's expressive power is very insufficient, and the enemy's combat power fluctuates up and down. The Angma Witch King was the first general under Sauron, but on the top of the storm, he combined the four ring spirits and was beaten away by Aragorn alone. He also used the extremely low combat method of carrying a poisoned dagger. Following the protagonist all the way, he was swept away by Rivendell's moat and ended in embarrassment. For this reason, on the eve of the White City Guardian War, Gandalf's talk about the terrible Angema Witch King seemed quite ridiculous. When I read that the Witch King Angma attacked Xiurdon with a mount, and was finally killed by a woman and a halfling, I felt that the Witch King was a weak person from the beginning to the end, not as Tolkien expected. Give the reader despair first, and then return to touch and comfort.
In addition, there are a lot of redundant brushstrokes that affect the overall atmosphere, that is, those chapters that cannot contribute to and influence the subsequent plot. For example, Tom Bombardier's setting is useless in the plot except to increase the burden of explanation-the author has to explain why Tom is so strong and invincible, and why the justice can't rely on Tom to defeat Sauron, or even let him help protect the Lord of the Rings.
Stereotypes and racial discrimination minefields
Tolkien’s world is a typical duality of good and evil-humans, elves, and dwarves are good people, orcs, trolls, and goblins are bad people. The latter have no human rights, and righteous forces do not need to treat them ethically. It is also a kind of setting. But once the over-symbolized opposition between good and evil penetrates into race and region, it is a bit subtle.
For example, the most advanced Numanor civilization originated from the gods in the West, and its stronghold in Middle-earth is also in the West, while the evil Mordor forces are in the East, such as Sauron and Harad.
The symbol of Western civilization is white, which is also the color of Minasteris, while the east is red and black; the righteous Western humans are white, and the Eastern people are dark-skinned. Is it because the mixed blood with the ogres causes the skin to darken, orcs Goblin orcs are darker, more stupid, backward, brutal and irrational. Reading this work, readers will intuitively feel Western civilization, Eastern evil, white-skinned justice and advanced, dark-skinned evil and backward. However, in international public opinion, the political issue of skin color is far greater than the dispute between East and West. In addition, women are beautiful and not enough drama. Therefore, if this work is broadcast today, it will receive more criticism.
The above is the problem faced by the director of The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson. His task is to better avoid its weaknesses while maintaining the essence of the original work. In fact, he did it well, and the method he used in a nutshell was to reconstruct the original work with the script writing method.
3 Reconstruction and inheritance from the original work to the script
It is also a fictitious creation, with completely different requirements for movie scripts and novels.
The author of a novel will assume that readers have a certain degree of patience to accept a long story. Readers have greater freedom when reading, can quickly browse or savor it, and have plenty of room to complete the journey of the whole story.
But movies are different. Regardless of their cultural level, audiences with what expectations and motivations, they can only watch the story in about two hours. What the film must ensure is to maintain the reader's interest and attention as much as possible during the two-hour period, and release the complete information in a way that they can accept.
What is the most spiritual element for readers?
The change of characters, the tense atmosphere and the intense dramatic conflict.
This is precisely where the original book lacks and is made up for in the movie.
Character reduction and arc perfection
The change and growth of characters is so important in the script, not only because it can provide an opportunity for the evolution of the plot, but also because it fits the psychology of the audience: everyone wants to change and wants to become a better person, compared to the beginning A perfect protagonist, a character who has become strong in the ordeal is more likable and more immersive. This is why almost all Hollywood stories like to tell people who are not good at the beginning to solve the crisis by self-epidemic, that is, the completion of the character arc, because the market follows this set.
The main reason for the boring characters of the original Lord of the Rings is that the characters are so full that there is no room for growth. What the movie version does is to portray the overly superior characters in the original book to be more mundane, weaker, and closer to ordinary people.
Aragorn added weaknesses that were not in the original book: his lack of self-confidence and subsequent self-exile. Before the crisis of Arwen's distress, he had not been able to overcome the ancestor's demon who was tempted by the Lord of the Rings;
Faramo became more cold and angry, unlike Aragorn No. 2 in the original book, so wise and calm as if he had read the script. He was as alert and disdainful as Frodo at the beginning, and finally learned the meaning of the journey of the ring from his brother's death, and made a noble move;
Frodo is more like an ordinary person. The wise, noble, and awesome savior qualities in his original work have diminished;
Aragorn's future wife, Arwen, was not so firm, and even planned to follow his father's will and return to the West. Her transformation is to finally overcome doubts and choose to believe in the power of humanity and love. His father Elrond is not as wise and compassionate as in the book, but like an ordinary father who is worried about his daughter. From the beginning, he strongly opposed the combination of Aragorn and his daughter, and then he took the initiative to send the holy sword is a journey of change for this role;
The King Hidden of Rohan is considered to be more modified, and I personally think that the image is excellent. The Hidden in the movie is very real, not the heroic image of an old hero who sacrificed heroically in the novel. He had the depression, confusion, and fear before the Great Helm Valley, the hatred of Gondor for not helping, the withdrawal and self-blame when confronting Saruman, and the momentary hesitation when he received the beacon. He did not appear to be a fearless legendary warrior, but an ordinary old man who knew what his fear was, but urged himself to overcome it. This character carries a heavy burden and advances in self-doubt every step of the way, and finally died in a glorious battle.
This is how the movie deals with it: it blurs the boundary between ordinary people and heroes, and sings the praises of mortals and their changes more prominently than the hymn to the hero’s divinity. This technique may be controversial in terms of artistry, but it is undoubtedly more suitable for modern movie audiences than the original work.
Countdown to join
Countdown is a common technique in movie works, and its function is to tighten the slack plot. This is why villains like to install bombs and kidnap hostages on a regular basis, so that the protagonist can fight the fire against the clock and mobilize the readers' full devotion.
Countdowns often appear at critical junctures, and time is tight: If the Boss named summer homework will destroy the world on September 1st, it will be more known on the night of August 31st than let the protagonist learn the news in July. The effect of a bolt from the blue and the process of defeating the boss will be more dramatic.
The slackness of the original book is also the result of a lack of countdown-there is no clue to push the protagonist to act as soon as possible. Typically, after the White City Defence War ended, Sauron had just been defeated and he couldn't act immediately, and Frodo's whereabouts were unknown. Should the righteous forces recuperate? The timing was very embarrassing, because there was no reason to prompt the justice party to act, so I could only rely on Gandalf to predict the plot with a magic stick-I watched the sky at night, and felt that we should be dispatched at this time.
To this end, a countdown is added to the movie-Alwyn is about to lose his life in the shadow of Sauron.
From the perspective of setting alone, the plot differs, and some fans of the original may think it is absurd-Sauron’s number one horse, Angema, can’t cross the river at the door of Ailong’s house. The poison can’t even kill a halfling, and it can rely on long-distance thinking. Kill his daughter? But from the perspective of the movie, I think this plot is successful. It succeeds in speeding up the plot: if Aragorn does not solve Sauron within the countdown, his beloved woman will die, and Elrond has to overcome the prejudice and help as best he can. Daughter, the method is to complete the recast of the holy sword for Aragorn. For this reason, this countdown directly triggered the recasting of the broken sword, the Elf King personally sent the sword, and Aragorn finally rose to the road to the dead. In the third part, the ups and downs before the war were created, and the relationship between the two was plumped. The progress of this line of love is almost non-existent in the original book.
Closed loop structure
The movie is actually more like a short story. The duration and plot are highly limited, so it is necessary to increase the utilization of characters and scenes. Regarding how to make full use of every element in the work, there is a theory called Chekhov’s gun, that is, the elements that appear in the work must be used in the end, and the elements that are not used should not be allowed to appear at all. ——Just as a gun appears in the work, it must be fired at a certain time. It is a creative style that strives for frugality and economy, and it is also very suitable for movies with tight rhythms.
But Tolkien’s creation is just the opposite. His novels are full of silent guns—the elements that appeared before have no effect on the development of the story, or the effect is too inefficient relative to the narrative cost spent. This is the basis for the substantial reduction of the Lord of the Rings movie version. The plots of Tom Bombardier, the guide of the Luo Khanate, the Gondor princes headed by the Cygnus, and the recapture of the Shire have been deleted because these characters are difficult to serve the main theme. It is also difficult to allocate enough scenes to complete the characterization, instead of increasing the burden of narrative for nothing, for example, delete all of them. The vacated scenes have enriched the two battles between Saint Helmet and Baicheng, and supplemented the missing dark lines in the original work, such as the emotional lines of Aragon, and also added many details that reflect the hero's humane characteristics.
Strengthening and dramatic shaping of evil forces
The problem of Tolkien’s villain's combat power has not been completely resolved in the movie version, but it has been greatly improved: it not only depends on the excellent script, but also cannot do without strong expression.
The tepid battle scene in the novel has been greatly enriched, and it has been perfectly reflected in the guard battle between Holy Helmet and Minas Tirith. The army of orcs covering the sky, the trebuchet that shredded the city walls, the desperate ring spirits walking in the sky, and even the Harald war elephant that has been featured in the novel but shines in the movie. And the sad record of the Witch King Angema finally got the opportunity to enhance his expressiveness in the movie: he smashed the old man Gandalf's cane and shot him off the horse. At least at that moment, the audience felt a sense of tension as to whether the old man would be killed by the Witch King, which was difficult for the straightforward narrative of the original book.
Other aspects of Hollywood properties
Of course, as a large-scale commercial film, this film also left traces of Americanization and Hollywoodization in other aspects. For example, the image of Dinether is related to the mental retardation of the government in Hollywood works.
Hollywood heroes are used to saving the world from corrupt governments. The government must be corrupt enough for heroes to show their brilliance. For this reason, if the head of government is not the ultimate boss, it is better to be an idiot pig teammate. The incompetent portrayal of Dineser in the film is also a reflection of the American public's political correctness of the government. In the original work, although Dineser has fallen into extreme defeatism, his dignity is still there, and his intelligence is not affected. Wearing armor and a sword while sleeping reflects the unyielding mind that he had before the will was destroyed. Many forces rescued each other, and Dineser's prediction was even correct. Perhaps the British Tolkien has more respect for the ruler than the American tradition.
Compared with the image of the noble demigod in the original work, Aragorn has been added with more struggling colors, increasing the conflict between him and his father-in-law, and emphasizing the hard work to marry a woman who is far superior to his own background. One-off content. When the decadent Dineser went against the situation, Aragorn turned the tide, just like Roosevelt did to Hoover to save the United States from the economic crisis: both a noble political birth and a struggle experience, he is indeed the best candidate for the protagonist.
In addition, some gag and acrobatic shots actually weaken the atmosphere and epic sense of the film, such as elves skateboarding and shooting arrows, throwing dwarves as weapons, Luo Khanate women double-wielding one-handed swords to chop elephant legs, letting halflings control horses, etc. The acrobatic moves are quite flamboyant.
But what is commendable is that the whole work still maintains the basic character and seriousness of the atmosphere. The introverted style that emphasized character in the Middle Ages was covered by the unassuming American style. It can be considered that the contribution of Hollywood style in this film far exceeds the effect of the drama.
4 The Fantasy Age of Post-Lord of the Rings
There is often a misunderstanding in film and television reviews adapted from other media. It is believed that the reason for the failure of the work is that the original work has not been successfully restored. The original work may be a novel, game or comic, which is better than the adapted film and television drama in the eyes of fans. The essence of this argument is to regard film and television as a vassal of text or comics, and that the screenwriter only needs to copy the existing content on the screen, ignoring the independence of film as an artistic genre.
In fact, as mentioned in the previous article, movies have long formed a unique operating system. Therefore, a truly excellent adapted film should have the unique form and rhythm of the film, rather than as a restoration machine of the original IP. Therefore, many excellent adaptations have the texture of independent movies, such as Nolan's Batman trilogy. The deconstruction and reconstruction of the original comics is precisely its excellence.
And this evaluation also agrees to apply to the movies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Peter Jackson condensed the relatively loosely structured original book into a clearly structured business script. In the plot, a large number of characters and sections that did not contribute to the main line were deleted, and the rhythm of the plot was controlled by strengthening the villains and setting a countdown; in terms of characters, the universally adopted de-sanctification adaptations of heroes gave them secular motives. And weaknesses, while maintaining the original flavor, while inheriting the four elements of Tolkien's fantasy, it caters to the needs of contemporary audiences as much as possible. It can be said that it was the adapted script that allowed Tolkien's style of narration, discussion, and straightforward narrative to obtain a more compact sense of rhythm and a more distinct character image, which became the Lord of the Rings movie that was accepted by more people.
But can you say that Peter Jackson's adaptation is already perfect?
Maybe not necessarily. We can see that the plot of the movie version is of course standard, but it also contains some clichés. The method of turning the legendary hero into a mortal makes great reference to the template of the Hollywood script. The frustrated young protagonist, the emotional route of the hero and the hero, the handsome elves and the funny dwarves that attract women, still remind the audience that this is a walk all the time. Commercial blockbusters on safe routes. But I think, like Tolkien’s original work, the success of Peter Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings does not lie in the novelty and ingenuity of the plot, but in the creation of the "second world"-just as Tolkien created for the first time A solid and reliable fantasy world with infinite details, Peter also presents this world on the screen with extremely high choreography techniques-the majestic palace of Kesardum, the quiet night sky of Lothlorien, the moonlit waterfall in the Western Window The seven-story high city of the Guard Tower, and the doomsday wonders of Modo lava rushing are all extremely shocking visual creations. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which integrates them, has become a model of fantasy aesthetics.
And this kind of splendid and magnificent fictional aesthetics independent of mainstream literature just reflects the independence and vitality possessed by the Lord of the Rings as a type of fantasy literature. Neither Tolkien's original work nor the adapted film is a work rich in literary value in the traditional sense. On the contrary, it has great disadvantages in characterization and plot performance compared to mainstream literary works of the same masterpiece. But just like Tolkien’s own point of view, fantasy stories do not necessarily pursue the true humanity and society that mainstream literature cares about, but through the creation of the second world, people can become children who listen to fairy tales again, giving people what they cannot get in traditional literature. A sense of yearning, fascination and comfort.
But from another angle, Tolkien's practice of pushing his fantasy value concept to the extreme has caused this concept to come to an end faster. No work can challenge the Lord of the Rings within the four-element framework of Tolkien until someone finds another way and creates a new fantasy value system. George Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a typical example. If Tolkien treats fantasy readers as big kids who are eager for comfort and gives them a ballad-like warm and timeless ending, then Martin emphasizes that "life is not a ballad" and uses more modern existential values to shape a cold and ruthless world of ice and fire. , To pull the reader from the daydream to accept the scourge of reality. With the increasing exposure of fantasy works, this genre is increasingly associated with vulgar mass products. Ding is even reduced to an embellishment element of Shuangwen, and it is not surprising.
Therefore, the proliferation of fantasy today is not only attributable to Tolkien, who was at the peak of his debut, who was overly successful, but also to Peter Jackson, who used the movie trilogy to promote the niche genre of fantasy to the mainstream. The latter's inheritance and reconstruction of the classic original works have blown the wind of fantasy into millions of households. Countless screenwriters, writers and game developers still benefit from its achievements and continue to contribute Western fantasy works of varying levels. As its best successor, The Song of Ice and Fire, continues to be difficult to give birth, we are also looking forward to whether the successor of the Lord of the Rings can get out of the sky and let the fantasy genre regain a new life in a wider cultural soil outside the Middle Ages.
First published in station B column:
https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv5522359
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