After the final Hobbit film is released next week, Middle-earth may never again grace the big screen. Last week, director Peter Jackson announced that the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has denied future film rights to any of Tolkien’s other works, including The Silmarillion.
Most fans were devastated. True fans were relieved. Tolkien’s writings are some of the most beloved in all literature, but Jackson’s movies are some of the most controversial in all film.
With such cherished and timeless works like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, a filmmaker has an enormous, often-overlooked responsibility to proceed only with the utmost care and delicacy, forethought and deliberateness, to preserve the treasure of the original story. No matter what he does though, he knows some people will still go home unhappy.
I was one of those people.
Like so many others, I was mostly disheartened by Jackson’s movies. Among other things, I was disappointed by the omission of Tom Bombadil, by the portrayal of Aragorn, by the depiction of Lothlorien, and by the fixation on war and battle scenes. Like many, I wanted to take a bar of soap to my brain to remove Jackson’s images and return to my own—not because his were bad, but because I liked mine more. And like so many others, I walked out saying, “The book was better.”
Such a statement, often heard about movies made from books, is not necessarily an attack on the filmmaker, but rather a testament to the power of the original author. And that’s exactly how it should be.
Yes, movies can bring a story to life in a very visual way, and some do a better job than others. But the imaginative process that occurs when reading a story is one of the most magical and remarkable of all human activities. Stories like The Lord of the Rings transport readers into another world, enabling a reader’s creative power to fill in the gaps, the details of landscapes and characters. The human imagination, infinite and boundless, will go wherever it wants—the best stories ignite that process, but movies invariably limit it.
For all his good intent, Peter Jackson forced viewers into his imagination, his interpretation, forever imprinting their minds with the images he saw upon reading, images that will prevent many first-time readers from forming their own. And it is precisely this reason that I don’t buy the common argument that bringing a book to life on screen will encourage more people to actually go and read the book. It’s true that after Jackson’s movies were released, book sales soared, but a) that doesn’t mean they were even read, and b) even if they were, they were read with Jackson’s images in mind. I pity those whose will never know a Middle-earth other than the one Jackson portrayed. It is, unfortunately, almost impossible to let one’s imagination run free once it has been confined to the images seen on a screen.
But worse yet is what happens to a story when it is forced into the predictable Hollywood mold. With The Lord of the Rings, many of the most beautiful moments, many of the magical nooks and crannies of the story, were altered or overlooked altogether to make room for that which audiences desire most—the plot, the drama, the action, the violence, the drums of war.
Tolkien’s son, Christopher, the head of the Tolkien estate, said in 2013, “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.” It is a great disservice to author, reader, and viewer alike to sacrifice a story’s deeper meaning for that which makes more money. Christopher went on to say, “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.”
Christopher, now ninety years old, may have pulled future film rights as his dying wish that his father’s other work be forever sheltered from Hollywood’s grasp. Tolkien’s truest fans would do well to respect that wish, even long after Christopher’s death, and let Tolkien’s remaining stories forever remain in books.
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