Abhorred of the Rings

Peter Jackson is not the lord of the rings. He's not even an adequate representative; he squandered his chance to commit the greatest fantasy novel of all time to the big screen on weak scripting and lots of special effects.

I'm not so closed-minded as to deny that the special effects were, indeed, special. They were pretty mind-blowing. But The Lord of the Rings isn't some cheap sword-and-sorcery paperback to be treated like any other Conan-esque literary burlesque: it's great art. More specifically, it's great Christian art, which I suppose makes Jackson's experiment in postmodern humanism kind of impressive in its own way.

The Return of the King by Tolkien contains one of the most terrifying and impressive scenes in all literature. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli travel the Paths of the Dead to enlist the help of the Dead Men of Dunharrow, the Oathbreakers who promised to help Isildur in the War of the Last Alliance. They pledged their swords to Isildur at the Black Stone of Erech, but they broke their promise and were cursed to remain as shades until one would come to call them to fulfill their oath.

In the book, Gimli is so terrified of the Dead that he ends up crawling through the darkness on his hands and knees. It's pretty scary. Legolas has no fear of the Dead because he's an elf; Aragorn simply knows his power over the Men of Dunharrow. In the movie, the Grey Men are portrayed as green comic relief, roughly the size and texture of cartoon farts. No one is afraid of them, not even the Corsairs of Umbar whom they actually fight in this excuse for an adaptation; in the book, the Corsairs kill themselves rather than face the Dead. In the movie, Gimli banters with them, though no one says anything particularly witty (or witty at all, for that matter).

This is just one example of a billion trillion to prove why this film is so bad. It may seem like a rather inconsequential incident to have a cow over, but that's just because the movie treats it so poorly; it's actually one of the central symbolic motifs in the novel.

The Christian symbolism: Aragorn is the returning king, a Christ-figure come to restore what was broken and lost (which he does when he reforges Narsil, accepts the crown of Gondor, etc.). In the case of the Dead, just as Christ led captive a host of captives in Hades, so Aragorn leads the Dead in one final mission before releasing them to their rest. There's more to it than that, but you don't need any more to realize what Jackson has done.

He simply stripped deep Christian metaphor of its power, majesty, and significance, and left a goofy scene that isn't good cinema, good fantasy, or good anything.

I really want to just go on and on about how awful these movies were. Like the fact that Gandalf basically tells Pippin to find courage and guidance in his heart (Gandalf would never say that), or the goofiness of the Mouth of Sauron (one suspects such an entity would not be goofy, whatever else he may be), or the whole business with Faramir. The whole business with Faramir; seriously, what was going on with that?!

So, Peter Jackson succeeded in turning a great Christian novel into a bit of consumer trash. He deserves no praise for this. He deserves to be making films with Jack Black and computer-generated monsters. It's just sad; the saddest part being the fact that he's created a generation of people who think they're fans of The Lord of the Rings when in fact they're just fans of postmodern solipsistic relativism. Jackie, I hope you're happy, though I suspect even the millions you made on your filmic/literary prostitution can't accomplish that.