| Thursday, November 14, 2002 |
17:50 - They're already doing remakes
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Last night I saw the new Fellowship of the Ring DVD boxed-set Director's Cut edition.
Well, let me backtrack. The evening started innocently enough, with a nice relaxing episode of South Park-- the new one with the boys in Tolkienian costume trying to return the One Porn Tape to the video store. Oh, how sarcastic. I love how Trey and Matt are clearly well versed in the real story, but they decided to cast the kids' version in a funky cross-bred D&D milieu for the purposes of the episode. (I didn't, however, enjoy watching it in the presence of a female acquaintance who insistently peppered the show with commentary that set my teeth on edge: The black kid's name is Token? <gasp> Oh my God! It's like, "the token black kid"! Ha haah hah! I wonder if they realized that?)
But the topic came up of the new edition of the actual movie that had just been released, so at 10:30 I decided to run down to Hollywood Video and pick up a copy, as well as some tacos on the way home. This I did, and we cast the One Disc into the DVD Player of Doom (never mind that there were three others remaining to be thus consumed). And lo, sleep was not to occur until about 4:00 AM.
This new version is for the fans. If nothing else were to make this evident, it would be the thirty minutes of alphabetized names of members of the official Tolkien Fan Society that has been tacked onto the end of the credits. I mean, good lord.
But the movie itself-- well, it feels more like the book now. The texture is completely different, and it's as much a result of a new and more leisurely sense of timing (supported by a completely rewritten and re-recorded score by Howard Shore) as of the new expository material that's been added throughout. There are more names, more fragments of history, more little pieces of texture tossed in-- and more of "Tolkien's Greatest Hits" (as defined at the infamous Bakshi movie review at the Tolkien Sarcasm Page), the memorable little quotes that punctuate the nice atmospheric little scenes that didn't add enough to the story to be included in the theatrical version. Midgewater Marshes, for example, gets coverage here: "What do they eat when they can't get hobbit?"
There's a new framing scene at the beginning, with Bilbo narrating a version of the "Concerning Hobbits" prologue. It's good stuff to have, and it fleshes out the Shire nicely. But my reaction to it was... well, ehh. What I found so fascinating about the theatrical version of the movie was how Jackson was able to allude to so much of the story, so many of the plot elements, through brief little scenes masterfully photographed and textured by music-- without having to make the scenes overly long or resort to too much exposition. Gandalf, as he holds out the envelope for Frodo to slip the Ring into it, conveys everything you need to know about the intensity of the contrast between the seeming innocence of the circumstances and the cataclysmic importance of this tiny little act. It's masterful directing that conveys the essence of several textural threads at once, all in a few crucial seconds of screen time. In the new version, scenes like that one (though not that one specifically) get lengthened just a teensy bit-- enough to change the flow and the rhythm of each one, just to the point of making it feel like a page read out of a book, rather than a multifaceted lens through which to view a piece of complex character interplay. The theatrical version had tight storytelling and timing. This one is more leisurely-- it takes its time, and it doesn't leave things to the imagination.
Many of the added scenes bring a great deal of depth to the story, and there are some great bits: Gimli's Khuzdul curse at Haldir, for instance, and the first look Frodo gets at the face of one of the stone trolls (which gives way to Sam's face sliding into view). Aragorn and Boromir nearly come to blows on a couple of occasions (in scenes that just don't seem to work properly, even if they do bring some more memorable book dialogue to the table). We hear the names Elessar and Valinor and Nenya and Sméagol. We hear hobbit drinking-songs. And we get to spend what seems like an eternity watching Galadriel pass out gifts, in what I knew would have been far too tedious to have made it into the theatrical version. (I was right. It's even sorta painful for me, as it is, and they still omitted several crucial gift-givings.)
Some sound effects have been changed in quite odd ways. The sound the palantír makes as Gandalf tosses the cloth back over it is now a very human snarl, instead of the staccato, bestial screech of the original version. And when Frodo sees the road go all fish-eye ("Get off the road!"), this version indicates the impending danger with a loud, high-pitched keening shriek. Subtle it ain't. I'd say most of the new sound effects are a bit over-the-top, in fact, and less than masterful-- as are a few confusing new camera angles, like the weird top-down shot with the blinding white back-light in Moria. (What the hell was up with that?)
Props to Howard Shore, though. The new score keeps the effective themes of the original, while bringing some new structural support to scenes in which the new melodies seem much better suited to the situation. Gandalf's The road goes ever on song as he arrives is now underlined by a score piece, to take just one example; the big heroic "adventure" theme that you hear as the party takes off from Rivendell is now tighter, without the weirdly off-tempo drumbeat, to cite another. But not all of the musical cues are improvements. Some feel distinctly out-of-place, like they were transplanted from a Disney movie or something Pouledorisian. The effect is that the textures of a whole lot of scenes have been changed very subtly but very deeply. It has a profound effect on timing, on mood, and even on character development. I'm still trying to decide whether it's successful overall.
In fact, I'm undecided on the whole movie, come to think of it. The new version is great for completists-- it has a lot more depth and world-building. But it's not as good a movie. It's just not as tight or as finely crafted as the original. It feels like a suit that's been altered over and over again, with material grafted from one place to another, and with a whole new dye job. It might be a better showpiece in the end, but it just doesn't have the purity of execution that the original had. If I were to pick a "definitive" version of the movie to point to and to prop up on a pedestal, I'm still leaning toward the theatrical one, even though the new one is so deeply geared toward the hard-core fans' cravings.
But I take heart regardless. Because in this day and age, when our most beloved directors are working full-time at hacking away at their own senses of integrity (E.T. with walkie-talkies, midichlorians, etc), Peter Jackson has shown himself to be one of those directors we'll be treating as a worldwide treasure and locking in a cryogenic chamber thirty years from now. He's doing something he loves, purely for the fans-- because he himself is the biggest fan there is.
From Meet the Feebles to the top of the world in one fell swoop. It's a phenomenon in the making.
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