Frodo, Drama Queen

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We’re rewatching the Peter Jackson LOTR films with my son, and I’m also reading him (much more slowly!) the novels. So I’ve been comparing and contrasting a little.

I’d say that I still quite like the films. Peter Jackson is especially good at bringing home the terror and pain of impending battle…and of course the war set pieces are also quite spectacular.

There are definitely problems in the parts that don’t involve overwhelming dread or out and out carnage, though. You can see the problems that sank Jackson in the Hobbit — those being that he basically doesn’t trust the audience to pay attention unless he’s shouting at them.

In the second half of the trilogy, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are supposed to travel wearily across Mordor with basically not a whole lot happening except the traveling and the weariness. It’s not clear why this has to be a problem precisely; there’s plenty of fighting and mayhem and tension going on elsewhere, after all. But Jackson and his writers just freak the fuck out, turning Faramir into an unmotivated antagonist here and having Frodo become a paranoid nutcase and mistrust Sam there.

The Faramir thing is stupid, but not crippling. Making Frodo turn paranoid, though, seriously undermines the heart of Tolkien’s story. Frodo is certainly weighed down by the ring, and it is certainly a corrupting force. But in the novels, he also stands firm against it; he suffers, and is bowed, but does not break. In fact, the suffering is, I think, seen as purifying — the ring wastes Frodo, but what is left behind is, as Gandalf says, a light, not a darkness.

Frodo is supposed to be, in other words, a Christ figure. Suffering, undertaken for others, ennobles him. The journey and the burden make him, not evil and weak, but wiser and more gentle.

Jackson, though, needs conflict; and so Frodo has to turn mean and really quite, quite stupid so that he can mistrust Sam and there can be fallings outs and coming back togethers and drama, drama, drama. As a result, it’s not really clear in the film why Frodo was chosen to take the ring in the first place; surely, after all, any random ringbearer could have turned into a paranoid nutcase. And with Frodo sidelined as a moral guide, the place of suffering and sacrifice in Tolkien’s world is also largely sidelined. The quiet nobility of the meek is central for Tolkien. But it’s something Jackson doesn’t understand or care about, and so, in his version of the story, and almost as an afterthought, he left it out.

4 thoughts on “Frodo, Drama Queen

  1. I think the films also underplay Sam’s importance. Not smart, but loyal and kind. Saving the world by quietly making sure everyone has a proper meal is too underappreciated, in my book.

  2. As long as I’m being argumentative today…this post didn’t seem right to me, insofar as the book DOES have Frodo questioning Sam…and Gollum manages to plant the seed that fat, hungry Sam does want to eat all of the Elvish bread…leading Frodo too question him. Isn’t this part of what the ring is about…It’ll bring out all of your most “evil” human traits (jealousy, possessiveness, mistrust, etc.)_–the questioning of Sam is impt. to show this…and Frodo’s capacity to overcome it eventually reflects well on him (and on the concomitant capacity for “all of us” to overcome it). I reread the books last time I watched the (extended cut, director’s edition of) the films…and they seemed to more or less line up on this. Are you watching the extended movies…because, I think that Faramir’s motivation was one of those things cut in theaters and then added back….though I agree that that whole subplot seemed unnecessary.

    I also think Sam’s importance is heavily played in the films (or, at least, in the extended version–since I can’t recall which stuff I saw in the theater and which on my couch)–

    I liked the films in general…though some additions/subtractions did seem unnecessary/gratuitous.

  3. My memory is it’s a lot more subtle in the book. That is, in the book, Sam offers to take the ring, and Frodo gets pissed at him…and then immediately says, basically, “that’s not me, it’s the ring, but it has a hold of me and I can’t give it to you now because of that.” There’s waaaay less of Frodo being paranoid, and way more self-awareness of how the ring has affected him. And he’s got a much better grasp on how much Gollum can or can’t be trusted.

    It is a subtle difference…but it’s the subtlety that the film loses.

    There are lots of great things in the movie. The whole Eowyn storyline which is more or less not there in the book is just heartbreaking in the film. Boromir’s effort to convince Aragorn of the worth of Gondor is also really well done in the film, and not there in the book. Lots of great imagery, etc. But Peter Jackson is just not a very subtle guy, and Tolkien is, and so there’s some disconnect there.

  4. “Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are supposed to travel wearily across Mordor with basically not a whole lot happening except the traveling and the weariness. It’s not clear why this has to be a problem precisely; there’s plenty of fighting and mayhem and tension going on elsewhere, after all.”

    I think the problem is the rigid plot design of the typical action movie. It’s true that Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli chapters have plenty of action, but it’s not enough to simply intersperse action chapters in-between the much more sedate chapters with Frodo. The expectation of action movie audiences is that tension will be constantly ratcheting up until the big climax. So the Frodo chapters present a big problem for a director who’s tasked with turning LoTR into a big summer blockbuster. Either they have to be cut down or radically altered.

    I happen to like the narrative pacing in the LoTR novels, and there’s an argument to be made that audiences are more flexible on these matters than filmmakers give them credit for. But Hollywood filmmaking is usually about sticking with the formula that works.

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