The occasional movie in which the hero actually toys with the notion of not accepting his quest—“The Last Temptation of Christ” comes to mind, or even Han Solo’s departure near the end of “Star Wars”—are more interesting. We are not sucked into “LOTR’s” characters because there is not enough there to do any sucking. Without that emotional bond the action sequences are never quite as thrilling as they could be. Of course, you may not feel this way. You may find them the most human of all screen characters you’ve ever seen. Whatever. Keep in mind that of the 30 Academy Award nominations bestowed upon the trilogy, only one was for acting.
There have been many fine films in which archetypes are given no choice but to march along their preordained generic routes, in which all the events that surround them feel inevitable, but is there any purpose to this in “Lord of the Rings?” According to Greg Wright of Hollywood Jesus, there is: to create the impression that Tolkien’s story is the oldest of all, the one upon which all successive stories are based. But even then, shouldn’t we feel more like we’re watching choices being made? And if you create the story from which all others spring, doesn’t that mean you must obey every cliché possible? So why do this? Why make a movie comprised solely of the most common denominators of fairy tales if no examination, criticism, or meditation of them is made? How can we even know if Tolkien is trying to create this “oldest of all stories” or is he simply unable to defy fairy tale conventions? At least we know “Kill Bill” is intended to make something of a joke of the action movie by stripping away everything but the bare essentials.
Speaking of Han Solo, his function in the “Star Wars” films is to stand-in for the audience, not unlike Dr. McCoy in the old “Star Trek.” He is in this far-off, strange universe, but not of the universe. He comforts us with his familiar attitudes and he asks questions about the fictional world. Perhaps most importantly, he even makes fun of it a little for us, so that its ego is regularly deflated a bit. “Lord of the Rings” lacks any character whose purpose could be so complex, creating a kind of “members only” atmosphere in which we must accept the world on only its own terms, with no detachment, irony, or examination. The absence of the Solo-McCoy creates the aura of some viewers being among the “initiated”—who have read all the books, online references, and other sources, who will be catching all the throwaway lines and details—and some being “uninitiated.”
My friend Nathan puts it this way:
“I think the trilogy is targeting the 14-year-old male demographic. The films seem to do a fairly good job of that. It’s a complicated world with lots of weird names to remember and lots of secret passages to uncover. When I was a kid, I remember liking that ‘The Hobbit’ cartoon. I liked the idea of magic rings that turned you invisible and special swords named Sting. I even bought my own ‘magic ring’ in a border town in Mexico…but that’s another story.”
There’s also the matter that a really terrific adventure will have more twists and turns than “The Lord of the Rings,” which basically sets its characters in one direction and leaves them there for the next six-and-a-half hours. There are not really a lot of surprises and revelations, only a repetitive series of battles-to-end-all-battles, mixed with bloated dialogue and amazing sights. O’Ehley writes “the battle scenes, as impressive as they may be, become repetitious and after similar scenes in ‘The Two Towers,’ I began to suspect that maybe the whole series could have skipped an entire movie altogether and still have gotten to the point.” And as for the “romantic” subplots—never mind. Nathan has this to say:
“They’re just cartoons, both figuratively because the characters are exaggerated caricatures of reality and literally because the second and third installments seemed mostly like exercises in digitally pasting non-performances of un-inspired actors from sterile soundstages directly onto the irrelevant, poorly compiled ‘mess en scene’ of the kinds of paddle-less video games that are all the rage in the multiplexes nowadays.”
In the end, the trilogy is a sturdy embodiment of old archetype of small innocents lost in a big world. It is lavishly made, but not very soulful, and it’s worth noting that the trilogy’s final installment came out the same year as the more challenging, far superior “Master & Commander,” a human adventure that beats it on every level except the visual one.
Copyright (c) 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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