Thank you for your well-considered thoughts on RoP. I appreciated the immense effort and skill that the writers, actors, and artists put into the show, but it did fall flat for me as well, for many of the reasons you cite.
As I was reading the first part of your essay, I was thinking, "you should watch some Miyazaki movies," and then came a whole section on the topic! I think the best of Miyazaki's films evoke the "faerie realm" in exactly the way Tolkien describes. Ah, to what RoP could have been. . . I am still hoping that the show can make some improvements for S2.
This is a very nice read, with lots of good points that I think talks to the RoP show runners tricky balancing act of adapting the 2nd Age material to which they had the rights while -also- connecting to the Jackson films. As much as I love the Jackson films they are even more guilty of focusing on big action set pieces at the expense of longer, lingering character development (which is why I prefer the extended editions). It might come off as gauche or like a cash grab, but I'd love to see Amazon do an animated anthology series set in Tolkien's Arda (like the Star Wars: Visions series) that tells small stories using different animation styles and that doesn't focus so much on EPIC, TRAGIC, OPERATIC FAERIE HISTORY (even if that was more to JRRT's taste). Reading your essay/review I was actually reminded of Tomm Moore's animated Irish Folklore trilogy (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers), which I hope you'll look for if you haven't already seen it.
It's embarrassing to realize I've never understood theater. Growing up on Disney animation and lots of novels, and then aging into an addiction to TV drama, I somehow came to believe that if there were actors, then what they are doing should be realistic. When it isn't, I've considered it "bad," whether or not it's actually low quality. Only recently have I come to understand that some great theater is meant to be unrealistic, that I'm meant to know that the actors are people and, together, we are exploring feelings and ideas. Having a parent read fantasy to me would have been very good for me. To have a loved one play all the characters, solely out of love, might have taught me to trust TV less and look more to the very-real and ever-elsewhere world of shared imagination for the truths I need to live well.
A smart guy once wrote lines for an actor to proclaim from the stage:
"O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
… But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object…
let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work…
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass; for the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history,
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play."
By this, I mean: a TV show is a visual medium. It starts off life as a different medium than the written word qua written word. It has demands and strengths and faults and capabilities the written word doesn't, and vice-versa. And if you like the book, you're not obligated to like the show, or vice-versa, for any number of reasons.
Thank you for your well-considered thoughts on RoP. I appreciated the immense effort and skill that the writers, actors, and artists put into the show, but it did fall flat for me as well, for many of the reasons you cite.
As I was reading the first part of your essay, I was thinking, "you should watch some Miyazaki movies," and then came a whole section on the topic! I think the best of Miyazaki's films evoke the "faerie realm" in exactly the way Tolkien describes. Ah, to what RoP could have been. . . I am still hoping that the show can make some improvements for S2.
This is a very nice read, with lots of good points that I think talks to the RoP show runners tricky balancing act of adapting the 2nd Age material to which they had the rights while -also- connecting to the Jackson films. As much as I love the Jackson films they are even more guilty of focusing on big action set pieces at the expense of longer, lingering character development (which is why I prefer the extended editions). It might come off as gauche or like a cash grab, but I'd love to see Amazon do an animated anthology series set in Tolkien's Arda (like the Star Wars: Visions series) that tells small stories using different animation styles and that doesn't focus so much on EPIC, TRAGIC, OPERATIC FAERIE HISTORY (even if that was more to JRRT's taste). Reading your essay/review I was actually reminded of Tomm Moore's animated Irish Folklore trilogy (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers), which I hope you'll look for if you haven't already seen it.
It's embarrassing to realize I've never understood theater. Growing up on Disney animation and lots of novels, and then aging into an addiction to TV drama, I somehow came to believe that if there were actors, then what they are doing should be realistic. When it isn't, I've considered it "bad," whether or not it's actually low quality. Only recently have I come to understand that some great theater is meant to be unrealistic, that I'm meant to know that the actors are people and, together, we are exploring feelings and ideas. Having a parent read fantasy to me would have been very good for me. To have a loved one play all the characters, solely out of love, might have taught me to trust TV less and look more to the very-real and ever-elsewhere world of shared imagination for the truths I need to live well.
A smart guy once wrote lines for an actor to proclaim from the stage:
"O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
… But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object…
let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work…
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass; for the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history,
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play."
By this, I mean: a TV show is a visual medium. It starts off life as a different medium than the written word qua written word. It has demands and strengths and faults and capabilities the written word doesn't, and vice-versa. And if you like the book, you're not obligated to like the show, or vice-versa, for any number of reasons.
One could also ask, how many changes can you make before it's something else?
Philippa Boyens & P. Jackson defend changes made to Faramir with: This is no screen material.
Maybe that's so, but I get the impression that you cannot understand source material and you don't have the skills to portray it as it's intended?