What Does J.R.R. Tolkien’s Son Think of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Movies?
Christopher Tolkien considers the Jackson movie adaptations from his father’s books to be nothing short of disastrous failures. I simply can not agree with him and have been consistently delighted, frankly, by the nuanced presentations in Jackson’s movies, but it surely does make for some thought provoking reading to review Christopher Tolkien’s opinions, which you can read for yourself in their entirety here. The longer article is the first time Chris Tolkien has given a public interview, in forty years! Very interesting comments from him about his father’s vast treasure of unpublished work. Here’s is what Christopher Tolkien has to say about Jackson’s work:
Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”
It is hard to say who has won this silent battle between popularity and respect for the text. Nor who, finally, has the Ring. One thing is certain: from father to son, a great part of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien has now emerged from its boxes, thanks to the infinite perseverance of his son.
According to this 2003 article that came out shortly after the Lord of the Rings films, Christopher Tolkien turned his back on his son Simon after the latter dared to support Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of the books. Not because of the disingenuous “chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become”, but simply because the film rights had been sold 30 years prior and the family would not benefit financially from the new movies.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1422943/J-R-R-Tolkiens-grandson-cut-off-from-literary-inheritance.html
I’m glad that Christopher Tolkien has made available to us over the years more and more of Tolkien’s unfinished works and ideas, but I’m with you – I completely disagree with him on the movies, which I’ve loved. I find Christopher nothing short of a bitter, hateful old crank in that regard.
Well, I’m not sure I’d go as far as to call him names. He believes what he believes, passionately, and I respect him for that. I too can’t agree with him. I think with LOR, Jackson did a masterful job, and the extended “director cuts” really show how hard he tried to capture the many character nuances of the story.
I met a scholar who knew Christopher Tolkien a few years back, and he said Christopher was interested in nothing but the money to be made out of his father’s work. I find that hard to believe entirely — Christopher has worked too hard and too well to be a pure mercenary. And I don’t know what particularly sparked that harsh criticism from my acquaintance, but it would harmonize with what Eric says. I suppose I shouldn’t be passing along second-hand opinions in the first place.
I suspect there is a lot of jealousy in the literary world. And, well, I don’t begrudge the Tolkien family their share of the enormous profits being made from their father and grand-father’s literary work.
I probably shouldn’t have used such strong adjectives, and I certainly don’t begrudge them any money to be made (the first movies made upwards of a billion dollars, surely that can get spread around). I suppose I just don’t care for his dismissive attitude toward the movies, which introduced Tolkien to an entirely new generation.
My wife if a Lutheran middle-school English teacher, and her class is reading “The Hobbit”. They all gathered as a class before Christmas break on a weekend and went and watched the movie. I recently had the pleasure of being a guest speaker and explaining some of the background and history of Middle Earth, the ring, elves. etc. The kids are absolutely enthralled with the book, and several are planning on diving in to LOTR soon. The movies do nothing but feed their enthusiasm for reading, and for that I thank Peter Jackson & company, and that’s where Christopher Tolkien is way off base here.
By the way, thanks Rev. McCain for posting the early “History of the Ring” graphic – her students found it very interesting.
I don’t know about the disagreements about LOR, but I’ve found a delightul book that gives some insight to both Tolkien’s books and C.S. Lewis here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/on-the-shoulders-of-hobbits-louis-markos/1111267541
I remember reading “The Fellowship” right before Jackson’s movie came out in theaters (I was a lowly fifth grader at the time), and I was extremely pleased with his vision of Middle Earth–it matched what I imagined when reading the book to a T. I’d agree with C. Tolkien if he didn’t like some of Jackson’s added material (the journey into Osgiliath? What was that all about?), but Jackson and his crew did a fantastic job of creating that world.
Agree!
I really do sympathize with Christopher. I don’t even blame him for feeling the way he does. But I cannot agree with him.
Jackson’s movies have done more than any other single thing to introduce literally millions of people to Tolkien’s amazing works, millions of people who would never have picked up the books otherwise.
Usually I recommend people read books before seeing the movies which are based upon them. However, in the case of LotR, I do the opposite. See the movies first. Then read the books. You will have a far greater appreciation for the story once you have the bones of it. This is especially so given the stereotypes people have concerning the various mythical races. This is especially the case with the Elves. Jackson’s masterful portrayal will inoculate you from improperly equating them with elves as are found in much European folklore. Without that, you might not understand that these are an ancient people, with an advanced craft and culture, facts that can easily escape you if you had not read the background material in the Silmarillion.
@Pr. Martin Diers
Jackson and the WETA team also put Tolkien’s world in one more like ours, which is fitting given that Tolkien made his Middle Earth a mythical-past version of our “middle-earth” (that is middan-geard, or the world as his favorite people, the Anglo-Saxons, would have put it). I still geek out when I see how much that team modeled the Rohirrim’s cultural trappings on actual Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon artifacts (since Tolkien had them all speaking Old English anyway).
While I have thoroughly enjoyed (and over-analyzed) the movies, a reading of Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” certainly backs up his son’s position.
Yes, that is a brilliant essay, loved it.