Lower Decks

I don’t know, you tell me: Is this the greatest time to be a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien or not? The reason I ask is, his son Christopher has recently released a second volume of recovered work, Peter Jackson finally made Lord of the Rings into an international blockbuster that won Best Picture at the Oscars, and ‘The Hobbit’ is now officially on its way for two more films. I know, I know, these modern volumes aren’t exactly the first time Tolkien’s old notes have been salvaged; in addition to a few miscellaneous collections, you’ve got ‘The Silmarillion,’ which has almost become as famous as the stories Hollywood has become so fascinated with, even if it doesn’t have such a distinctive tale to tell. Truth to tell, I’m not the first person who should be writing about any of this. I’m not the guy’s biggest fan, which isn’t to say I don’t admire and enjoy what he accomplished, but that I have no great devotion to it, either. Still, you can’t have a proper genre website without acknowledging this pillar of the modern canon.

And it is a pillar, make no mistake about it. You would, in all likelihood, have no Forgotten Realms, no R.A. Salvatore, no Dungeons & Dragons, no George R.R. Martin, no Robert Jordan, no World of Warcraft or Warhammer without the scholarly imaginings of a WWII linguist, who constructed not only a world but an entire history he set back before the memory of man. Without Tolkien, who knows what geek culture would even look like today? Oh, sure, you’d still have superheroes and starships, but would any of that resonate quite as much without our understanding of the word “fantasy”?

What Tolkien really did was resurrect the concept of mythology for our time, without anyone ever really saying so. Not mythology as in gods, but in grand heroic adventures, the likes of Jason, Hercules, Gilgamesh, and Beowulf. He put it in a world populated by elves, dwarves, and talking trees, and so yes, we have fantasy as we technically know it today, but much of it really seems to miss the point, that it isn’t just about trappings, but of what it’s possible to do within it, and no one, it seems, has ever been able to imagine it quite as brilliantly as Tolkien.

Famously, he got all of it started with the children’s fable ‘The Hobbit,’ in which the simplest creature stumbles on something no one really knows the significance of. It’s the most pure and simple of anything he told, and led directly into Lord of the Rings, where ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ makes everything quite explicit indeed, where Tolkien’s heroic vision really becomes apparent. It’s strange, though, that he imagines his greatest story in the worst period of his world, when everything is in decline, where no one even believes in man, who would, obvious to the reader, inherit the world regardless of the outcome, perhaps the cynical conclusion of a man living in one of history’s worst periods.

How much study has been done to interpret this? Like I said, I wouldn’t know. All I know is, Tolkien’s savior, Frodo the hobbit, or any of his companions for that matter, isn’t even strong enough to merit the victory of the ancestor who put it all in motion, who confronts Sauron directly, who literally cuts the ring of power from the tyrant’s finger, only to lose himself and eventually it, to be recovered first by someone completely ignorant of its power, and then by another, who by chance activates only the smallest of its abilities, right under the nose of the one individual who will know what it is. Everyone from there sort of stumbles along, until the ring is finally destroyed, a group and moral victory, but one that doesn’t speak all that highly of anyone, except for stalwart friend Samwise Gamgee.

Unlike his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien is not often accused of lacing Christian allegory in his work, but that doesn’t stop the suspicions, but I won’t really get into that, either. What interests me is only the immense work that was put into only the smallest fraction of this legacy, which can be found in the complete volumes of the Lord of the Rings. There’s so much more, clearly, that it’s mind-boggling. What other way is there to put it? How is there to wonder that he inspired even a tiny bit of imitation? From even the smallest fraction, no matter how expansive others might have gotten, how could they even begin to compare to what Tolkien created?

I don’t know if he started at a simple fascination, creating the languages, or with the idea of one story, ‘The Hobbit,’ perhaps (I do have a book that I’ll get around to reading at some point, about this), but the sheer effort that continues to unfold publicly has to have some precedence about it, too. For that alone, one has to admire Tolkien.

As I’ve said, I’m not his biggest fan. A lot of kids grew up reading him, and thus probably had no real choice about how they were going to be perceived, what they would choose to further amuse themselves. ‘The Hobbit’ is the seemingly harmless entryway, and perhaps equally, many kids have read it and left it at that. Or then again, maybe Peter Jackson has made that impossible for a whole new generation. I was aware of ‘The Hobbit’ growing up, and I have a vague memory of reading it, but I read it again later, and remember that more clearly, so clearly I didn’t grow up with him. I read Lord of the Rings for the first time during the period where the films were going to be a reality, but weren’t yet (the same pattern I was to follow with ‘Watchmen’). I thoroughly enjoyed the books, and the first film was equally electric.

Then, I don’t know, the phenomenon really started to take over. The critics started to love ‘The Two Towers’ and ‘Return of the King’ before they were even released. You have to understand, as far as genre films go, we live, permanently, in a post-Star Wars world. Everyone’s always looking for the next Star Wars. (I don’t know if I really need to for some readers, but people were already getting over them, a little, by the time ‘Return of the Jedi’ was released, and so weren’t quite as eager for the new trilogy as everyone, including those who flocked to ‘The Phantom Menace,’ assumed. But legends are as legends are.) Clearly, Jackson had done a version of the next Star Wars for a considerable number of people. Jackson himself, and his team, might have believed it at some point, because in the midst of the epic production, the inspiration started to slide away, assuming it was doing itself, like everyone else. That’s my interpretation, anyway, because I stopped being enamored as soon as December 2002 came around. It’s not as if the films weren’t and aren’t worth noting as exceptional…They just stopped being authentically Tolkien, and started being, well, Peter Jackson.

For some people, that might have been a good thing. For some reason, books and films, and especially films made out of books, really get some people going. They always assume, and believe because they assume, that films absolutely can’t be better than books. It mires many things. If a film based on a book has enough of its own apparent vision, then the book can be forgot. But it seems like it’s supposed to be faithful, or the book is beloved enough, or the filmmaker not trusted enough, then, well, you can guess what wins out. But Jackson and his Lord of the Rings, well, he won the lottery. Except, some people didn’t buy it. Some of the people who didn’t buy it, they hated all the things he changed. Me, well, like I said, I stopped feeling Tolkien, or even great filmmaking, and started feeling Jackson get away from himself, his own accomplishments, and yes, even the material, the material as in what he was doing, and Tolkien’s stories. I don’t believe a good film has to follow exactly what a good story has already done (back to ‘Watchmen’), but when changes are made for completely arbitrary reasons, what’s the point? To prove that you’re in control, and your fans will accept anything at this point?

In the almost decade since the films were first introduced, I’ve had a long and complicated relationship with them, but now I can finally say that I’m okay with them. There’s no point. In the end, they’ve taken J.R.R. Tolkien to a greater audience than ever before. They told the story, and in the moments where it really counted, even elevated it, as any dramatic, visual presentation will always do (and hey, that’s the point). Just because they’re not the new Star Wars (for me, but I’ve had plenty of contenders step up in their place, not the least being their contemporary companions, at least in the beginning, the Harry Potter adaptations) doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate them, for what moved me originally, and even for what didn’t. In their way, they were every bit the monumental achievement that was what inspired them. And there will be two more films to celebrate.

As a reader, I still find Tolkien in his increasingly complete sense to be a daunting challenge, and that’s the way it should always be for the great writers. How many of us, who daily celebrate him (or try really hard to avoid doing so in the classroom), have read every one of Shakespeare’s plays, or even the ones that are most cherished? Tolkien, in his way, was a modern Shakespeare, creating an elaborate stage on which to present his interpretation of the human struggle. That’s something that can’t so easily be imitated. But maybe, as we try, we’re finally making the case he deserves. And maybe this is the greatest time to be a fan of Tolkien.