Drama (was What I didn't like about TTT)

[abigailnus <abigailnus@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z <lupinesque at y...>" <lupinesq=
ue at y...> wrote:
> Pip wrote:
>  
> > "Waiting for Godot" (Samuel Beckett)is quite a successful play; 
> > despite it being so (deliberately) boring that a good production is 
> > signalled by less than a third of the audience leaving at the 
> > interval [theatre joke]. 
> > 
> > But even Godot has dramatic tension and conflict at its heart. 
> 
> Exactly.  Conflict, dramatically speaking, doesn't have to involve 
> battles or rivalries or even outright arguments.  It can be as 
> subtle a matter as a single human heart trying to assimilate a 
> painful belief.  So we might travel up this thread a couple of steps 
> and wonder how we got to the pronouncement that The Lord of the Rings, 
> as written, has insufficient conflict to sustain a film.

to which Pip replied, very correctly:
>Because while LOTR has dramatic moments, it's not dramatic 
throughout.>

And then offered a very fine breakdown of the Aragorn-Arwen 
romance and why it contains no conflict whatsoever.  I'd like to 
point out that this is hardly the only place where LoTR lacks 
drama.  I think this ties in to something Amy said when replying 
to my message upthread.

I wrote:

> All in all, I'm a bit tickled by the people who are only now 
> remembering to be concerned about the liberties Jackson 
> has taken with his source material. Did you not notice 
> that most of the first quarter of FoTR was just cut out of 
Ø the movie? 

to which Amy replied:

>Notice it? Heck, I applauded it! OK, that was just about Tom 
Bombadil and I mostly did it to bug Tabouli. <g> But seriously, 
omitting scenes is one thing, adding them is another. I am much more 
tolerant of the former liberty.>

It occurs to me that there were quite a few added scenes in 
FoTR, which addressed another sort of conflict that Tolkein was 
very short on - character conflict and emotional arcs.  There 
are very few characters in LoTR who can be said to be 
conflicted, or who go through an emotional arc.  Frodo is the 
most obvious one, as his journey is almost entirely one of spirit 
- ultimately, it's his decision to carry the ring to its destination 
that is meaningfull, not his ability to cast it into the flames - 
which in fact he lacks.  Gollum has so much emotional conflict 
that he is of two minds about everything.  Eowyn might be 
said to have an emotional arc, but I've always found its 
resolution - 'oh, look!  A cute guy likes me!  I will cast off my 
crippling depression and abandon my death wish, embracing 
life and matrimony!' - rather unsatisfying.  Of the three 
characters who make up the book's holy trinity of heroic 
protagonists - the boy coming of age, the warrior/romatic 
hero and the sage/general of war - only Frodo can be said 
to be emotionally available to the reader, and to experience 
emotional conflict.  It is through this conflict that we learn 
about characters, and learn to understand them, which 
means that as much as I love Aragron and Gandalf, they 
will always feel less real to me then Frodo.  

So let's look at the scenes Jackson added to FoTR which have 
to do with Aragorn.  Obviously there's all the Arwen stuff - 
meeting her in the forest, most of their tryst in Rivendell.  In 
that same scene, however, Arwen tells Aragorn that he is 
'Isildur's heir, not Isildur' (the importance of this message is 
emphasized by an interaction between Elrond and Gandalf 
where Elrond voices his millenia-old disappointment with 
Isildur's failure to destroy the ring).  Boromir and Aragorn 
have a stilted exchange before the shards of Narsil, both 
obviously feeling awkward and cagey.  At the council of 
Elrond, Aragorn demurs before Boromir, only to have 
Legolas proclaim his lineage for all the world to hear (I really 
hated this the first time I saw it, but much like Aragorn and 
Arwen's engagement, I understand why it had to be there) 
- Aragorn himself makes no further comment.  After Frodo 
escapes from Boromir at the end of the film, he meets 
Aragorn, and persuades him to let him go alone to Mordor.  
Aragorn acknowledges that he would eventually try to sieze 
the ring, and vows to Frodo that if it weren't for this, he 
would have gone with him to Mordor despite his desire to go 
to Gondor.

The image that emerges here is of a man riddled with self-doubt.  
Aragorn wants to be king, but has no idea if he's made of the 
right stuff for it.  He also wonders if he would succumb to 
temptation as his ancestor did.  None of this exists in the book.  
If Aragorn ever wonders if he's capable of walking into Gondor 
and just siezing the reigns of power, we never read about it.  
There's no doubt, there's no conflict, and Aragorn becomes less 
interesting and less believable to the reader as a result.

On the flip side, where Aragorn is made a little less perfect, 
Boromir is raised in the viewers' esteem - all of his added 
scenes (with the exception of his first meeting with Aragorn) 
are geared towards making him more likable.  Where Aragorn 
is practically stand-offish at times, Boromir is jovial and 
friendly (except when he's lusting after the ring, of course).  
His relationship with Merry and Pippin is more fully fleshed 
when we see them mock-swordfighting.  After Gandalf's 
death, Aragorn insists that they keep moving, but Boromir 
cries 'for pity's sake, give them a moment!'.  His last stand 
is fully depicted - which I admit has nothing to do with 
emotional conflict, but it is such a wrenching scene that I 
just had to mention it.  It is followed by his dying speech to 
Aragorn, which is the mirror image of their first meeting.  
He acknowledges Aragorn as his king and pledges his 
allegiance to him.  This scene ties together both character 
arcs - Aragorn learns to see himself as a king only when his 
subject does.

So, to sum up, there are scenes added to FoTR, and they 
do try to shore up the story where Tolkein is weak - 
character exposition.  I realise that the additions to TTT are of 
a less emotional nature - I'm still not defending Aragorn's fall 
off the cliff - but I'm certain there were reasons behind them.  
I'm going to see TTT again on Saturday (and I plan on renting 
FoTR and watching it beforehand, whee!) - I'll try to pay more 
attention to the Osgiliath scenes, maybe I can figure out what 
Jackson was trying to do with them.

Abigail