Inevitably Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has attracted scholarly attention. Apart from my own book, there are about half a dozen anthologies in print and undoubtedly more publications will follow. A notable new one, Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy has just become available...
It is listed on both Barnes & Noble and Amazon @ $35.00.
Kristin has published anemail interview with its editors, Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny, friends of hers.
Table of Contents for Picturing Tolkien:So far the books on the Lord of the Rings films have focused largely on the history of the filmmaking and the franchise or on the reception of the films. What approach does your anthology take?
While we asked authors to either talk about the films or do comparisons between the films and the books, we also asked that they not use this as a forum to criticize the films in comparison to Tolkien’s novels, but rather to address the films as another sub-creation, a sort of alternative version of Tolkien’s story, which is how we believe all book-into-film discussions should be approached. We therefore have a mix of essays with different theoretical orientations as well as different writing styles. We wanted to include the many perspectives critics have on how the films and the novels worked.
So we have essays on the films themselves, on fan cultures in relation to films and novels, and on the various kinds of armor and weapons created for the films specifically as interpretations of the information in the novels. We also have essays on the development of the storyline in each version, individual characters in films and fiction, and even considerations of what works better in film or in the written word (several of those). Our theme was not the films, nor the books, but sort of like the two expressive universes, how they related to one another, and where they did and did not intersect. Nevertheless, I am sure it is clear in each essay that Tolkien’s version is the primary, authentic one and Jackson’s, as he also asserts, is built on this vision but, as with all creators, on his own background and experience.
Acknowledgments vi
Preface by Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny 1
Introduction 5
I. Techniques of Story and Structure
Gollum Talks to Himself: Problems and Solutions in Peter Jackson’s Film Adaptation of The Lord of the Rings
KRISTIN THOMPSON 25
Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures
VERLYN FLIEGER 46
Two Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
JOHN D. RATELIFF 54
Tolkien’s Resistance to Linearity: Narrating The Lord of the Rings in Fiction and Film
E.L. RISDEN 70
Filming Folklore: Adapting Fantasy for the Big Screen through Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
DIMITRA FIMI 84
Making the Connection on Page and Screen in Tolkien’s and Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
YVETTE KISOR 102
“It’s Alive!”: Tolkien’s Monster on the Screen
SHARIN SCHROEDER 116
The Matériel of Middle- earth: Arms and Armor in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy
ROBERT C. WOOSNAM- SAVAGE 139
II. Techniques of Character and Culture
Into the West: Far Green Country or Shadow on the Waters?
JUDY ANN FORD and ROBIN ANNE REID 169
Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems the Blood of Kings
PHILIP E. KAVENY 183
The Grey Pilgrim: Gandalf and the Challenges of Characterization in Middle- earth
BRIAN D. WALTER 194
Jackson’s Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth
JANET BRENNAN CROFT 216
Neither the Shadow nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film
RICHARD C. WEST 227
Concerning Horses: Establishing Cultural Settings from Tolkien to Jackson
JANICE M. BOGSTAD 238
The Rohirrim, the Anglo- Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F : Ambiguity, Analogy and Reference in Tolkien’s Books and Jackson’s Films
MICHAEL D.C. DROUT 248
Filming the Numinous: The Fate of Lothlórien in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
JOSEPH RICKE and CATHERINE BARNETT 264
About the Contributors 287
Index 291
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