Christopher Tolkien has given an extraordinarily rare interview with the French paper Le Monde, which has now been translated into English. I can't vouch for the translation, not being a French speaker, but it certainly is much more coherent than the Google Translate that I attempted to read of the original French article. I don't have a lot of time to comment, but there are some remarkable statements in here.
One thing is clear, assuming that is an accurate translation and that Christopher is not misquoted: no longer can it be said that Christopher Tolkien has not publicly criticized Peter Jackson's films!
http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_trans ... -felt.html
I'll be curious to hear other's reactions.
Christopher Tolkien speaks!
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Voronwë the Faithful
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Christopher Tolkien speaks!
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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WampusCat
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What a fascinating article. Thanks for posting it.
This is the quote that made me stop to think:
Popularity is often the enemy of substance, and a blockbuster film necessarily skates across the surface more than it dives deep. But for me, the films in many ways reflected those depths, despite some of the sillier changes.
Gandalf. The Shire. The lighting of the beacons. The yearning in Gollum's eyes. The charge of the Rohirrim. The eagles' flight. Some images were so right and connected so completely to what I had experienced in the book that they added a new dimension to the old familiar words.
I find it terribly sad that Christopher Tolkien was so appalled by what wasn't done right that he could not thrill to what was done right.
This is the quote that made me stop to think:
I loved the beauty, seriousness and philosophical depths of Tolkien's work for several decades before the movies came out. Could it really be that all that has been lost?"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the esthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away."
Popularity is often the enemy of substance, and a blockbuster film necessarily skates across the surface more than it dives deep. But for me, the films in many ways reflected those depths, despite some of the sillier changes.
Gandalf. The Shire. The lighting of the beacons. The yearning in Gollum's eyes. The charge of the Rohirrim. The eagles' flight. Some images were so right and connected so completely to what I had experienced in the book that they added a new dimension to the old familiar words.
I find it terribly sad that Christopher Tolkien was so appalled by what wasn't done right that he could not thrill to what was done right.
Take my hand, my friend. We are here to walk one another home.
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Totally agree, Wampus. I can understand how he feels but I still wonder if Christopher Tolkien has actually seen the movies yet, whilst making the statement he does about them? I understood he had refused to watch them...
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I find it a little sad to be honest. Rather than rejoice at the millions of new readers (over 1000% increase in sales) he chooses to criticise that which brought people to buy those books in the first place.
Honestly, at the risk of sounding ageist, I wonder if CRT is simply too old and set in his ways. It seems to me that he has spent so long immersed in his fathers papers that he has lost sight of the simple joy in them, mourning the lost symbolism and philosophy instead of reveling in a story well told.
Honestly, at the risk of sounding ageist, I wonder if CRT is simply too old and set in his ways. It seems to me that he has spent so long immersed in his fathers papers that he has lost sight of the simple joy in them, mourning the lost symbolism and philosophy instead of reveling in a story well told.
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Impenitent
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Could be, Al.
My feelings about it all are unfixed; it's been too long since I re-read the book (and The Silm - traditionally, I read that first and then followed with LoTR as that seemed chronologically consistent to me), and I haven't watched the movies in total and in sequence for at least 3 years, so it's all gotten fuzzy around the edges for me.
My feelings about it all are unfixed; it's been too long since I re-read the book (and The Silm - traditionally, I read that first and then followed with LoTR as that seemed chronologically consistent to me), and I haven't watched the movies in total and in sequence for at least 3 years, so it's all gotten fuzzy around the edges for me.
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Old_Tom_Bombadil
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A very excellent article, Voronwë. Thank you for sharing it with us. 
Wampus, that part
Truthfully, Christopher Tolkien's response is pretty much what I expected. Have you ever read his father's responses to a proposed film in Letters? I imagine that the senior Tolkien's response to Jackson's films would have been far more dramatic. Ronald Tolkien also had very strong feelings about the strange behavior exhibited by some of his fans.
To be honest, I can't entirely blame Christopher. The dwarf tossing nonsense and so on that Jackson placed in the films is ridiculous. (I believe that John Rhys Davies is probably to blame for a lot of the silliness, although as screenwriter, director, and producer Peter Jackson receives the ultimate blame.) People talk about how much Jackson changed Faramir, a relatively minor character, but what about the changes to Frodo? You have a young man barely out of high school playing the character that was a mature, 50-year old hobbit in Tolkien's novel. On one hand, I understand that the filmmakers felt they needed to make "enhancements" to Tolkien's work to broaden its appeal to a wider audience. However, I feel that many of them were unnecessary.
That's pretty much how I imagined things to be. I have long used the term 'Herculian' to describe Christopher's efforts to organize and publish some of his father's work. I see that M. Rérolle does the same.He also received his father's papers after the death: 70 boxes of archives, each stuffed with thousands of unpublished pages. Narratives, tales, lectures, poems of 4000 more or less complete lines, letters and more letters, all in a frightening disorder. Almost nothing was dated or numbered, just stuffed higgledy-piggledy into the boxes.
Wampus, that part
struck me, too, but not in the same way."Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the esthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away."
Truthfully, Christopher Tolkien's response is pretty much what I expected. Have you ever read his father's responses to a proposed film in Letters? I imagine that the senior Tolkien's response to Jackson's films would have been far more dramatic. Ronald Tolkien also had very strong feelings about the strange behavior exhibited by some of his fans.
To be honest, I can't entirely blame Christopher. The dwarf tossing nonsense and so on that Jackson placed in the films is ridiculous. (I believe that John Rhys Davies is probably to blame for a lot of the silliness, although as screenwriter, director, and producer Peter Jackson receives the ultimate blame.) People talk about how much Jackson changed Faramir, a relatively minor character, but what about the changes to Frodo? You have a young man barely out of high school playing the character that was a mature, 50-year old hobbit in Tolkien's novel. On one hand, I understand that the filmmakers felt they needed to make "enhancements" to Tolkien's work to broaden its appeal to a wider audience. However, I feel that many of them were unnecessary.
No, they're not lost, at least not to those of us who know and love the books. To the world at large, however, perhaps they are.WampusCat wrote:I loved the beauty, seriousness and philosophical depths of Tolkien's work for several decades before the movies came out. Could it really be that all that has been lost?
Even those who deplore Jackson's films should at least credit them for introducing Tolkien's works to a vast new audience, even if some of them are now writing very bad fan fic.Alatar wrote:I find it a little sad to be honest. Rather than rejoice at the millions of new readers (over 1000% increase in sales) he chooses to criticise that which brought people to buy those books in the first place.
