The Glass Is Half Full

Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2004)

With the third installment finished, what can be said for Jackson's adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings"? The films were lovingly made. The films were lavishly made. Sets, costumes, special effects, soundtrack--all very impressive.
Still, I feel let down by these films. The most generous thing I can say about Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" is that it's . . . decent. If I were evaluating the trilogy simply as a swords-and-sandals fantasy epic, I'd probably have higher praise for it. But this isn't just another swords-and-sandals fantasy epic--or at least, it isn't supposed to be. This is a film adaptation of a minor classic of British literature. And when you work with a classic, you have certain responsibilities to the original text that Jackson didn't live up to.
When you make a film adaptation of a classic--for instance, a Shakespeare play--you cut and rearrange material as necessary. But you don't add material. You don't write new lines; you don't invent new conflicts; you don't import Hollywood cliches. Yet that's what Jackson did with Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." We see it from that first battle scene in "Fellowship," which looks like something out of "Attack of the Clones"; and then we get that canned confrontation-turned-into-laughter reunion of Frodo and Gandalf; and then we see Merry and Pippin behaving like the Three Stooges with a stolen firework; and so on and so on, down to the imported breakup-and-reconciliation dynamic between Frodo and Sam on the way into Mordor, to Denethor's improbable-but-photogenic fiery plunge off the top of Minas Tirith, to the Rocky-like melodrama of Sam's carrying Frodo up Mount Doom, to the soap-opera passion of Aragon and Arwen's final kiss. Hollywood cliche after Hollywood cliche. Jackson had the decency not to try to "improve" on Tolkien's story (I shudder to think what a Disney adaptation of "Lord of the Rings" would have come out looking like). But the classic feel of Tolkien's novel gets watered down by anachronism.
I've wanted to be generous in evaluating these films: I've tried to do the glass-is-half-full thing. But half full is also half empty. I'd hoped for better from the maker of "Heavenly Creatures." All that advance hype about the sets and the costumes and the props led me to hope that Jackson was going to recreate on film the spirit of Tolkien's trilogy, which grew out of a lifetime's immersion in the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon antiquity, mediated through the Romantic vision of the nineteenth century. Instead, Jackson's trilogy looks like Tolkien as read by a Star Wars fan who plays Dungeons & Dragons every Friday night.
I don't want to minimize Jackson's accomplishment: the glass IS half full. Still, Tolkien deserved better. As a lover of "The Lord of the Rings," Jackson is passionate and lavish; but he isn't altogether faithful.