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DGHCaretaker
Nargothrond
Sat, 8:11pm
Post #26 of 32
(145 views)
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Do you want an historically accurate story or a compelling one? Sometimes we have to choose.
[Soapbox]
I know you've heard this before from me...
Since we're spending a whole lot of money anyway, make it an anthology of mini-series using a different cast for each time period with ageless characters (i.e., elves) spanning all the series. No such choice necessary. Same show - no compression, more story, less artificial adaptation.
(This post was edited by DGHCaretaker on Sat, 8:12pm)
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Sat, 10:45pm
Post #27 of 32
(133 views)
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That doesn't sound very fullfilling
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I think there's another option, and it's one that hadn't dawned on me until I saw the show: the second age material is, by its nature, backstory: it was never meant to be turned into story and is, in many ways, unfilmable.
By "unfilmable" I don't mean in terms of the required special effects. I mean in terms of the nature of the material. I mean, I see Charlie Vickers' performance of Sauron and it's...y'know, good, but it's not Sauron.
Because Sauron - not Thu, not Gurthaur, but Sauron as envisioned from the writing of The Lord of the Rings forward - really derives his effect from remaining undepicted to the reader, and to the viewer of Jackson's films (or Bakshi's for that matter). It's one of those things where nothing is more powerful than the imagination.
Likewise, the actual making of the Rings: it works in a montage, but in extenso it becomes prosaic, overly-reliant on magic and inherently demystifying. The less is said for "We'll show you how Mordor became Mordor" or the backstory concocted for Mithril the better. Depicting Valinor - ostensibly Elf-heaven - onscreen was always going to be flawed, even if it weren't just a rather-bouldery place where Elf-girls are bullied for taking up origami.
In a more subtle way, going to Rhun and, I presume going forward, Harad is self-defeating. We can GLIMPSE those places, sure, but to set entire storylines there...those places derive their mystique and exoticism from being the "land beyond." Well, the minute you spend an extended amount of time there, it's no longer "beyond."
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DGHCaretaker
Nargothrond
Sun, 12:29am
Post #28 of 32
(126 views)
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...Sauron ... [in] the writing of The Lord of the Rings forward - really derives his effect from remaining undepicted to the reader, and to the viewer of Jackson's films...
First, I enjoyed the books and films, and the films made the right choice to abandon the battle with a planned physical Sauron at the end of Return of the King film. But remember, he was physically depicted in the Prologue of Fellowship of the Rings film. That was an awesome scene, and still the right choice in the way that they did it.
But generally, I typically rail against books and films where writers do not have the courage or imagination for anything beyond the vague; no courage to depict the supernatural in concrete, grounded terms and image. It can and has been done well. Both styles were employed in LOTR. The balrog was made entirely real too. Or writers use lesser entities instead of the big boss. For example, The Exorcist invokes a third-rate demon instead of Satan himself. I was disappointed. Tolkien himself does the same thing with Sauron and Shelob instead of Melkor and Ungoliant, but he built a vast backstory to support it, so he is thoroughly excused from my complaints about this. Depiction is powerful if the writer is brave and talented.
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Sun, 9:05am
Post #29 of 32
(99 views)
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Sauron in the prologue and elsewhere
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is masked and armoured, and even in that form Jackson is concerned to not show him for extended periods of time. They had experimented with figuring out what's under the armour, but they were right to leave us to imagine that.
Jackson said that "depicting Sauron is depicting the undepictable, and when you're depicting the undepictable you don't depict much at all." He's not wrong.
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Meneldor
Doriath
Sun, 2:05pm
Post #30 of 32
(87 views)
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has seen Jaws, right? That "shark" was a big robot, and it didn't work very well. For many of the early scenes, the crew couldn't make it work at all, so director Spielberg figured out ways to film scenes without showing the shark. And that was much scarier than seeing it. IMO the climactic scenes that give us a good look at it don't work very well, because it looks fake.
So, I agree with PJ, better to not depict much at all.
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. -Psalm 107
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Sun, 2:29pm
Post #31 of 32
(86 views)
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but this is more like what, say, Jackson does with Smaug: he's in 20 minutes of a 9-hour trilogy. That helps keep his appearances special.
What I'm talking about is more like how you don't see Jesus' face in Ben Hur, or how Kubrick decided not to show the "transcendental" aliens in 2001: A Space Odyssey: Stuff that's just inherently undepictable.
Sauron, I would argue, falls into the latter category. Seeing a figure in armour is one thing but, says Jackson, "the minute you try to put your finger on a look or a definitive 'This is who this is' it's going to disappoint you."
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Sun, 2:31pm)
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Felagund
Nargothrond
Sun, 7:29pm
Post #32 of 32
(59 views)
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It was a real pleasure to read Michelle's words again. She remains a genuine loss to these boards, in my view, and I hope that she'll give us another go when S3 comes around. And that we, in turn, give her every reason to do so.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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