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DGHCaretaker
Nargothrond
Sat, 8:11pm
Post #26 of 39
(279 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 39
(267 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 39
(261 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 39
(235 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 39
(223 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 39
(221 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 39
(193 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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DwellerInDale
Nargothrond
Tue, 3:54am
Post #33 of 39
(115 views)
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I can't really agree with this idea that the Second Age is unfilmable because certain places and characters should remain as unseen backstory elements that would lose their sense of mystique if actually shown. Watching a Second Age drama such as The Rings of Power simply demands a change in perspective for those who have read the trilogy and/or seen Peter Jackson's movies. Yes, Charlie Vickers isn't Third Age Sauron, but that's the point: in the telling of this part of the Rings saga, Second Age Sauron is a main character and not a hidden evil presence. That role has shifted to Morgoth, who is discussed frequently but only shown in a blink-and-you-miss-it vague image. Perhaps some viewers can easily make this change in perspective, whereas others find it difficult.
Taken to its logical conclusion, your argument would have Numenor remain as backstory, seen only perhaps in glimpses, but the prospect of finally seeing Numenor was one of the most anticipated aspects of the show among the fans. Thus, one can reasonable make the opposite argument for why the Second Age is filmable: the fans actually get to see characters and places that heretofore they could only have imagined.
Don't mess with my favorite female elves.
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DGHCaretaker
Nargothrond
Tue, 4:48am
Post #34 of 39
(108 views)
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...the fans actually get to see characters and places that heretofore they could only have imagined.
I think it's something akin to "Never meet your heroes. You'll always be disappointed." But for the truth I'd choose the real over vague every time. I want to see things as they really are. IOW, I like my stories to commit; to answer all my questions. Then I can choose to disagree with it and rewrite it my my own head canon. As I said, with admittedly intentional hyperbole to stress the point for conversation, I see leaving things to the reader/viewer as unimaginative cowardice. Yes, even Nolan's Inception's totem.
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Noria
Hithlum
Tue, 3:21pm
Post #35 of 39
(65 views)
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Celeborn does need to appear at some point in RoP, but I’m in no hurry.
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Of the four options Demosthenes presents, I prefer ‘Celeborn died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and was re-embodied after the Halls of Mandos’, as long as that return is as an identical adult. Elves may be immortal but Celeborn as a prisoner, lost in the woods or in hiding for century after century after century seem both unlikely and unappealing to me.
The Halls of Mandos may be Glorfindel’s canon story but Celeborn is more important to RoP’s narrative than Glorfindel and I’d be surprised if the latter ever appears. Don’t care, either way.
Whatever story the writers produce to introduce Celeborn, it may well be kind of lame, like the Mithril thing. But I will just shrug and move past it, just as I did with some elements of the LotR movies.
We may find Galadriel to have been changed by her near-death experience and to be moving closer to 3rd age Galadriel. That would please all the misogynists out there but I would miss her, though presumably that’s where she’ll be by the end of the series. I find passionate, feisty, obnoxious warrior Galadriel more interesting than her later version, just as I prefer the fiery and flawed Elves of the 1st Age to the tired and tame beings we meet in LotR. However Celeborn returns and whatever Galadriel has become, neither of them will be the same person that they were when he left to go to war and their reconnection could be an interesting story.
The sun yet shines
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Noria
Hithlum
Tue, 3:27pm
Post #36 of 39
(64 views)
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I can't really agree with this idea that the Second Age is unfilmable because certain places and characters should remain as unseen backstory elements that would lose their sense of mystique if actually shown. Watching a Second Age drama such as The Rings of Power simply demands a change in perspective for those who have read the trilogy and/or seen Peter Jackson's movies. Yes, Charlie Vickers isn't Third Age Sauron, but that's the point: in the telling of this part of the Rings saga, Second Age Sauron is a main character and not a hidden evil presence. That role has shifted to Morgoth, who is discussed frequently but only shown in a blink-and-you-miss-it vague image. Perhaps some viewers can easily make this change in perspective, whereas others find it difficult.
Taken to its logical conclusion, your argument would have Numenor remain as backstory, seen only perhaps in glimpses, but the prospect of finally seeing Numenor was one of the most anticipated aspects of the show among the fans. Thus, one can reasonable make the opposite argument for why the Second Age is filmable: the fans actually get to see characters and places that heretofore they could only have imagined.
The whole point of this adaptation is to tell the story of the 2nd Age as history, not legend, just as movie LotR did, and to show the characters as they were then. I want to see all of that. I’m really enjoying Vicker’s human-like Sauron.
The sun yet shines
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Meneldor
Doriath
Tue, 5:00pm
Post #37 of 39
(59 views)
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I see leaving things to the reader/viewer as unimaginative cowardice. As I already said, Spielberg's choice to let the viewers' imagination run rampant in Jaws made for an iconically scary movie experience.
And as a long-time Star Wars fan who thinks The Empire Strikes Back is cinematically and dramatically the best of the series, I'm reminded of the snow creature that attacked Luke in the first scene. Like the Jaws shark robot, the abominable snowman costume didn't work very well, so the director and editor only allowed us a couple of brief blurry glimpses, and that worked well. Then Lucas came out with the "special edition" years later and filmed some new shots with a new monster that was clearly seen in focused lengthy shots. It wasn't very scary. That's one more example of letting the watchers' imagination come up with something scarier to them than whatever the film makers dream up.
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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Ataahua
Forum Admin
Tue, 7:18pm
Post #38 of 39
(47 views)
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I can see both sides of this coin.
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To your point, no matter how much I tried while reading LOTR, I couldn't picture the gardens of Orthanc to be big enough - or understand the layout of Helm's Deep - until I saw them on film. Jackson's designs were a big help.
But also, there are times when leaving it up to the audience to fill in the blanks makes for a bigger impact. Whether it's character motivation or deep history, providing just enough information for the audience to infer the details can make the story settle deeper into your bones, as it were. That takes a lot of writing and editing skill to pull off well, though.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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Noria
Hithlum
Tue, 11:02pm
Post #39 of 39
(33 views)
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I agree that less is often better, particularly in scenes involving suspense.
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Your examples are good. Another is the intro of the T-rex in Jurassic Park. I’m not sure if any technological limitations were involved (I believe they had some difficulties) but the way in which that creature is teased is very effective, making its final introduction all the more spectacular. So I get it.
And I agree that PJ made the right choice in not giving Sauron a physical presence in RotK, but that might be a little bit of purism in me manifesting itself.
RoP is different. In the 2nd Age Sauron still had a human-like body and was interacting directly and extensively with Elves, Men and even Dwarves. His deception and manipulation of those peoples is the story, RoP’s story at least. It would be pointless for him to be an unseen shadowy character. We need to see what he’s doing. If fan projections come true and the 4th season ends with the drowning of Numenor, it would be bad enough to have an entire season without the visible presence of the lovely Charlie Vickers.
There are already several mysterious happenings in the series that might or might not involve Sauron. We don’t know where he went and what he did in the unknown amount of time between his 2nd Age re-embodiment and getting on that refugee ship.
Did Sauron instigate the Orc attacks that caused the refugees he met to flee their homeland?
Did he poison the Great Tree in Lindon?
Did he stir up the Barrow-wights? What about the broken bridge?
Did he cause the earthquake that damaged Khazad-dum?
Etc.
The sun yet shines
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