I’ve just enjoyed the second of the three movie nights at a friend’s house watching the full extended editions of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. As I stated in my essay describing my experience of watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time in many years, it’s intriguing to see how my judgment of Mr. Jackson’s films has changed or mellowed with time. This is especially true of The Two Towers, which is the film I enjoyed least of the three and the one which deviates most drastically from Tolkien’s book. I still suspect that this will be the one I consider the least good of the three, though I’m avoiding calling it the worst because such a word-choice would imply that it was bad, which it most definitely is not. In fact, it struck me as very good and much better than I’d remembered it being.
I was particularly struck that the things in the film that I considered bad when I originally watched it are not as bad as I’d thought. Take, for instance, the Ents who are largely employed by Mr. Jackson as comic relief. This violated my literary sensibility because Tolkien treated them with the utmost seriousness, bestowing a great deal of gravitas on them as the oldest rational creatures in Middle-earth; oldest, that is, except for the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, whom Mr. Jackson had omitted completely from The Fellowship of the Ring. Treebeard is possibly my favourite character in the whole book, and Quickbeam, who is used by Tolkien as light relief, is positively Chestertonian or Hopkinsonian in the sheer joy that he displays in the presence of the goodness, truth and beauty of Creation.
In Tolkien’s work, the Ents embody Tolkien’s understanding of Tradition, linguistically and ecclesiologically, which is to say that they evoke his philologist’s understanding of the rootedness of language and his Catholic understanding of the rootedness of the Church in those doctrines, tried and tested by time and enshrined dogmatically, which form the living body of the Church’s teaching tradition. It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish because each word is not merely a label, signifying some up-to-date fashionable sense, but is a genealogical etymological tree of living meaning, stretching back to the roots of meaning itself. The ecclesiological dimension is connected to the longevity of the Ents, who live for countless generations of men, transcending and outliving the transient ages of history, much as the Church has done and is doing. An Entmoot, like a Council of the Church, is a rare occurrence in history because Ents, like the Church, have no need to be “hasty” in coming to decisions, even in times of crisis, because most crises resolve themselves through the mutually destructive collapse of the secular forces that cause them. And yet when the Ents, or the Church, do come to a definite decision or resolution the consequences are binding and have seismic ramifications.
All of the foregoing is lost in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation, a fact that irritated me immensely when I first saw the film. How could something with such gravitas be treated with such levitas? How could Mr. Jackson be flippant about such things? How could he make a joke of the Ents and all that they signify? It was almost sacrilegious! But that was then, and this is now.
Now I see things differently.
I see them differently because I am no longer trying to see them through Tolkien’s eyes. The film is not Tolkien’s work. It is Peter Jackson’s. It is not a re-presentation of Tolkien’s work but an adaptation of it in a different storytelling medium. The thing that is essential to a bona fide adaptation, i.e. an adaptation done in good faith, is that it stays true to the spirit of the work it is adapting. Mr. Jackson does this, for the most part, even if he feels constrained to exercise artistic license in excising some characters and adapting others to the demands of storytelling in a different medium. When I see Peter Jackson’s Ents through Peter Jackson’s eyes I see them as playing their part in the film with the degree of levitas that the story, as a film, demands. In ceasing to compare chalk and cheese, i.e. literature with film, I can enjoy the cheese as cheese and not be disappointed that it’s not the chalk I was expecting or demanding.
This criterion of judgment is equally applicable to other manifestations of Mr. Jackson’s artistic license which had irritated me when I had first seen The Two Towers. I found myself enjoying the interpolation of Arwen into the story, reminding us of Aragorn’s betrothal to her and of their self-sacrificial love and loyalty towards each other, and serving to heighten the romantic tension between Aragorn and the wonderfully portrayed Éowyn.
Gandalf’s exorcising of the demonic spirit of Saruman from the possessed Théoden works very well, even though I had disliked this scene intensely upon my initial viewing, because it adds a much-needed supernatural dimension to the story, as do the occasional scenes when characters, such as Aragorn, appear to be praying.
All these things are well and much better than I remembered but all’s not well in the absolute sense. I still feel that Mr. Jackson is too enamoured of computer-generated special effects, using them well in the case of the characterization of Gollum but using them excessively in the excessively long battle scenes. The scene in which Legolas uses his shield as a surfboard in the midst of battle is as ridiculous as ever, and the characterization of Faramir as Boromir’s clone and not as his more virtuous brother impoverishes his crucial role in the drama as a much-needed counterpoint. These are, however, mere quibbles. The Two Towers is nonetheless a masterpiece.
This essay is the first in a series on Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptations of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The first can be read here.
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Editor’s Note: The featured image is a still from The Two Towers (2002).
I appreciate your thoughts on the Ents. I had not thought too deeply about them in the past. I enjoyed the Peter Jackson movies quite a bit when they came out, although they left me vaguely unsettled. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel considerably less respect for them. LOTR was written by a intellectually deep, very wise devout Catholic. The film adaptations were created by someone who, respectfully, is not. With many book-to-movie transitions the irritation with the differences are minor. In the case of LOTR, the differences between book and movie go to the core of the creator’s world views and fundamental attitudes about life. I haven’t watched the LOTR movies in years, though. Maybe another viewing would help.
Yeah, I hated that “Legolas on the Surfboard” scene too.
Excellent commentary, Mr. Pearce. I had never thought of the Ents that way. I need to get your book on LOTR!
I have not seen the movies nor will I but I do like to read Pearce !
I hold the rare opinion that LOTR Two Towers is the best of the trilogy. Fellowship was too sentimental, and Return of the King, while very fulfilling, was tied up too neatly… almost like a Hallmark Channel film.
I especially appreciate the sense of dread & toil most prominent in Two Towers. It closely mirrors our own life experiences: Cycles of corruption (King Theoden) and Redemption (Helm’s Deep). Gandalf’s charge down the hill with the Rohirrim to save Helm’s Deep evokes images of Judgment Day and the triumph of Good over Evil.
I just rewatched the movies as well. I must agree that Mr. Jackson is too enamored of computer-generated special effects. This unfortunately becomes more conspicuous upon rewatching when you can be more keyed into details.
One example, not a particularly egregious one: during the charge of the Rohirrim, I thought to myself: such a charge would have been depicted more realistically in a ’30s Western movie. The way the horses fell from arrows just looked cartoonish.
Most of the battle scenes are pretty awful in my opinion and way too drawn out.
Let’s not forget that Tolkein was quite a purist whose principal motivation was to tell a tale worth telling, regardless of the size of the audience it reached. Jackson’s goal was quite the opposite as his big-budget films required a broad audience in order to at least be commercially viable. So Jackson had to satisfy the demands of less discerning viewers than those for whom the books are such a rich treasure while being faithful enough to reach this smaller, but very influential, latter group.
Seen in this light, I think the movies are an astonishing achievement as they were far more faithful to the text than I thought I had any right to expect, particularly in the amount of dialogue which is recited verbatim. For example, part of Gandalf’s discussion with Frodo regarding Gollum which appears in Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past,” is very effectively moved to the mines of Moria, yet the dialogue is preserved with care. Incidentally, I find that Gandalf’s reply to Frodo is a complete response to the entire project of capital punishment.
Thanks for being such a generous writer on Chesterton, Tolkein, and so many others.
My Biggest beef with the Two Towers was casting. In my many readings of the Trilogy, I felt that the portrayals of Boromir and Faramir were very important. Borimir was described by Tolkien as more like the men of middle earth and Faramir described as one in whom the blood of Numenor came through. The other person who was either miscast of misdirected–not sure which–was Denethor, who was also more Numenorean and noble. The movie made him come off as petty and arbitrary.
I also enjoyed the movies. I did not mind the surfing scene nor other little additions. My least favorite of the series was the third movie, because of the sappy ending sequence, with the hobbits, that seemed all out of context it was weird.
After having been traumatized years ago by previous cartoon attempts at LOTR, I was extremely pleased, overall, by the trilogy.
Faramir as a clone of Boromir was perhaps my biggest disappointment in the Jackson film based on the Two Towers. Compared to that, the army of elves (or was it an elvish cheerleading dance squad) at Helms Deep and the crude attempt at a “dwarf tossing” joke were merely annoying. Likewise, I recognize the real cleverness in their visual treatment of Gollum. But I was disappointed by the writers’ secularist limitations that made them unable to comprehend the moral struggle against sin in Smeagol, the real drama of the possibility of redemption through the small sliver “of will yet unenslaved” (in Lewis’ memorable phrase from “Nearly They Stood”). In place of Tolkien’s profound reflection on sin, free will, and divine providence, the film presents a completely psychologized split-personality disorder rooted in an adolescent trauma.
Ugh! I was smiling as I read this, caught up in memories of a great film, until you reminded me of the travesty and tragedy that is it’s handling of Faramir! The other changes I can accept. This one was a huge loss.
My children,Tolkien fans one and all despised the movies. Yet the lure of the wonderful “masterpiece” visual renditions keep them coming back to the cinematic trilogies. They usually watch them in a “ fast forward” mode with clicker in hand. They simply cannot stomach the imposed false tension between Frodo and his beloved Sam or the debasing of the noble Faramir. However they are also huge fans of Mr. Pearce, so I am unabashedly forwarding this series of articles to one and all for the sake of “balance!”