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Posted on 12/14/2003 9:43:51 AM PST by Joe Republc
Maybe it's the pointy ears. Whether we're talking about "The Lord of the Rings" or "Star Trek," I can never fully embrace a franchise where characters wear prosthetic earpieces. Nor, for that matter, am I crazy about swords (whether forged in a lake of fire or capped with a shaft of light), runes, hellhounds or old bachelors in flowing robes.
Soon after the "The Return of the King" is released in theaters Wednesday, it will start harvesting millions of dollars and thousands of Oscar votes. Judging by the first two films in the "LOTR" trilogy, I don't doubt that "The Return of the King" will be a terrifically entertaining spectacle, maybe the best movie of its kind. But it's a kind of movie that leaves me as cold as the mists of Mordor.
As a critic, I try to view each film through the eyes of its intended audiences and not impose my own preferences on the marketplace. There are all sorts of people in this world, and there ought to be movies for every taste.
Yet, if you look at the list of the top-grossing films of all time, it's dominated by genre movies, from the soapy romance of "Titanic" to the dopey metaphysics of "The Matrix Reloaded." You'll see plenty of cartoons and caped crusaders - and not a lot of contemporary human drama.
The list is larded with big, fat movies that are skillfully lobbed at our inner child, the part of us that believes in heroism and happy endings despite the real-world evidence to the contrary.
Which is not to say that all genre films are sugar-coated. A trip to the dark side is part of the lure of "Star Wars" or "The Lord of the Rings." Fans of those franchises will tell you that they are metaphors for the ongoing struggle between good and evil. But so is the average episode of "Starsky and Hutch," and you don't need an Elvish translator to see how it relates to the world we actually live in.
It's been said that the "Lord to the Rings" trilogy was J.R.R. Tolkien's allegorical reponse to the ruination of the English countryside and the rise of fascism in the first half of the 20th century. But for my money, there are a dozen better books and movies that address those themes directly, without the intercession of hobbits. From D.H. Lawrence and George Orwell to Charlie Chaplin and Terry Gilliam, visionary artists have produced numerous novels and films that tackle a fallen world for an audience of clear-eyed grown-ups. You want an innocent's journey through a hellish post-industrial Europe? Try Jerzy Kozinski's "The Painted Bird."
For all the blood, sweat and tears, the "LOTR" books and movies are cloaked in an antiquarian fustiness that diminishes their impact. How deeply can contemporary audiences (particularly Americans) respond to a story in which the women are marginalized, a dimwitted servant hikes across mountain ranges to help his master dispose of some jewelry and free men are so besotted with monarchial malarkey that they would die to restore a king to his throne?
Yet millions of people are indeed enchanted by these stories. Partly that's a credit to the craft of the books and the movies. But it's also a measure of how digestibly simple the worldview is. While the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy may be too arcane for pre-teen readers (especially in the TV era), the fact that Tolkien wrote the precursor "The Hobbit" for his children muddies the issue of the "LOTR" target audience. The influential literary critic Edmund Wilson called the trilogy "a children's book which has somehow gotten out of hand" and derided it for "a poverty of invention which is almost pathetic."
In the '60s, the preciousness of the franchise, with its sexless elves and made-up languages, attracted the utopian flower children - and soon thereafter attracted satirists. I could never take the stories seriously after reading the Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" (which chronicled the bawdy misadventures of Dildo, Frito, Goodgulf, Arrowroot, Spam, Legolam, Gimlet, Moxie and Pepsi).
As soon as you understand that a universe where wizards can come back from the dead and a disembodied eyeball can wield power over all creation is also a world where monkeys might fly out of your backside, the spell is broken.
Critic Joe Williams E-mail: joewillliams@post-dispatch.com
I'll leave to my fellow freepers to shoot holes in this 'hollow' cricism.
At the heart of it is: anyone buying into a worldview of black-and-white good vs. evil is at best indulging their 'inner child'. The sophisticates, of course, acknowlege the 'real-world evidence to the contrary.' And probably prefer more, ahem, realistic drama like American Beauty. (With my naive view, I thought that was a twisted movie not only from a moral perspective, but from the whitewash they put on the PC characters.)
This kind of LOTR-bashing is going to become more prevalent until Oscar time. In the meantime, naive worldviewers like George Bush will muster our naive troops into capturing orcs like Saddam Hussein. And millions of Americans will love watching Lord of the Rings.
-- Joe
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The only sentence in the whole review that was worth the price of admission!
I can't say anything to that except what an absolute idiot. I first read LOTR around 8 years old and, for me at least, the Christian symbolism and the underlying meaning were clearer than Lewis' Chronicles series. It was only later that I got a lot of the other meanings behind it, but I do know one thing. This person doesn't need to review any other movies. I bet he loved the Crying Game though
Well if you're going to be an elitist, might as well go all the way. Kind of refreshing to see a little honest contempt for the masses, instead of the usual attempts to conceal it.
He was wrong, of course. How many of his books are still in print?
Is that what critics do? I never knew that. While he may not impose his own preferences on the marketplace, the author has no problem passing judgement on the so-called intended audiences. Elitist snob.
I have come to see Arwen as an Intercessor. In the books she isn't physically present very often, yet you sense her essence.
In the movies she shows up more often, I didn't like it at first, but then how could Jackson demonstrate her intercessory role/oversight??
I never did feel that Arwen was a passive little pansy, but had great strength, and lent that strength to Aragorn, and gave her "Grace" to Frodo. Color me silly, but I didn't find the Tolkien's women ineffectual at all.
I've got news for the author. As long as human physiology is what it is, women will be inherently marginalized in any society stuck at the hand to hand combat level. With very few exceptions, females who attempt to engage in such combat with males have very short lives. Roughly equivalent to putting a women's team into the NFL in the interest of being inclusive.
Doesn't mean some of such cultures may not respect their womenfolk for what they can accomplish. But it does mean that the women are utterly ineffective at the most important task of such cultures, defense against attack.
Sigh...soreheads who just can't stand to see anybody have fun (Isn't that one of Rush's definitions of a liberal?) and take themselves entirely too seriously seem to be DRIVEN to write dismissive garbage like this.
As for the movie, I can hardly wait. My daughter-in-law, son, and I have devised a plan whereby we can each see it two times (at least) together, and still have someone to stay with the babies every time.
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