In A Hole In The Ground

I guess as a writer I should never really write, “I wasn’t certain what to write this week.” But honestly is something new I’m trying.

It’s not working so well, but I’m giving it the ole college try.

Sometimes, when I don’t know what to write, a reader/friend has put in a request for something special. Sometimes I think they’re tests. “Can Rob really write about anything?”

Well, no, I can’t.

I once had a really, really hard time writing a meaningful letter of apology. I just couldn’t stop laughing.

Be that as it may, my friend Paula (hi Paula), asked me to write a review of the recent release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The unwieldy title alone should have doomed this production to midnight showings at coffee houses where college-agers, wearing black and sipping itty-bitty $8 cups of espresso discuss the overall vapid-ness of the rapport between the characters and the development of the social commentary along specious lines.

What a bunch of phonies.

I know I would never own anything completely black.

Ok, I have a pair of black pants I’m told make my butt look good.

But that’s it!

Hey, Paula (does anyone else wanna sing, now or is that just me?) this is for you. And unlike the last time I wrote something on these lines, it’s not for someone with a restraining order against me.

Damn 100 yards anyhow.

The Lord of the Rings movie, as any good Tolkien-ite (as in the author, John Ronald Ruel Tolkien) will tell you, is a three-part story based on the, you guessed it, the three part Trilogy (the original trilogy, not the one that ham-fisted, saprophite Lucas made), The Lord of the Rings. Interesting fact here, Tolkien originally intended for The Lord of the Rings to be released as a single novel. The publishers, fearing to lose profits on what would become one of the biggest selling novels of the 20th century, felt this was “too unwieldy” and broke the text into three parts selling for roughly $10 each for the hardcover (this was the 1960s after all). It was also the same publishers who broke up Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. The original text had Taylor and Nova riding up to a half-sunken Statue of Liberty.

Those damn, dirty publishers.

It’s a madhouse, I tell you, a madhouse.

The total U.S. gross on The Fellowship of the Ring, to date, is roughly $225 million (of which at least $50 is mine). For those of you who don’t know or care, but to put this into perspective (and flaunt my knowledge of the movies), Peter Jackson’s budget was $109 million for all three movies.

Let me say that again so that we don't lose the point amongst all the funny comments I'm attempting to make: Jackson earned back 2 1/4 times the budget of all three movies on the release of just the first movie.

That’s not a bad take with the other two movies already in the can and waiting for release. In New Zealand, Peter Jackson’s homeland, the movie smashed through box office records like an angry dwarf with a battle axe. It has already garnered nominations from the Golden Globes for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, which is usually the precursor for Academy Award nominations.

But most agree that this is only a fluke.

And the next two movies will be flukes as well.

They also agree that internal combustion engines will take us into space and that oxygen isn’t really necessary for life on Earth to continue.

I think these reports come from Detroit.

One of the first things you’ll notice in this latest movie adaptation (bonus points if you can name the three others), if you’re familiar with the text, is that there are changes. Oh, how there are changes. There was no way to film the story for a modern audience, remain completely true to the text and still make a profit. Since this was a make-or-break movie for Peter Jackson, he made changes. There were enough changes that were well-documented enough to elicit huge debates on the Tolkien boards across the Internet world. Freaks and geeks from every knothole and out from under every rock under the Misty Mountains displayed their dissatisfaction with even the choice of Jackson as the director of what was certain, in their opinion, to be an ill-fated film.

Some even threatened violence, or at least violence in the way only geeks can offer. “I will refuse to see it, and I urge everyone else to do the same.”

Strong words, my friend, strong words.

But Jackson need not have feared the pasty, purist-mob of Tolkien-ites winging copies of David Day’s A Tolkien Bestiary at his head.

Most Tolkien purists have burned their copy of Day anyhow.

Well, gee Rob, wanna blather on more and not tell us what the movie is about?

Oh, sorry.

Well, as with the books, the movies runs on multiple levels. First, there are these little people, Hobbits, who mostly tend their fields during the day and sing and dance at night (or when a house falls on the Wicked Witch tormenting them). One of them, by chance or by design, found the most evil object in all of Middle Earth (roughly on the 7th floor of the Earth Office Building): the One Ring, which can control all the other Rings of Power, enslave minds, and make all potato chips soggy.

Sinister, isn’t it?

Fortunately, though, everyone knows just what to do with this little gold trinket. Pawn it.

No, wait, that wasn’t it. Ah yes, here it is: Destroy it.

But how does one destroy the incarnation of evil?

Well, its got to be tossed into the fires of the volcano where it was forged, deep in the heart of the enemy’s territory where an army is actively seeking it and avoiding the dreaded Nazgul Ring wraiths who will give you an awful case of heartburn. Aside from this little walking-party, there’s the love affair of Arwen and Aragorn, who can’t marry until he, Aragorn, unites the lands Arnor and Gondor as their king.

And I thought my love life was complicated.

Then there are some elves and some dwarves and some men. A couple of smallish battles, skirmishes really, and I think a talking elephant.

Oh, and a wizard. But he falls out of the story rather quickly.

All in all, and box office receipts be damned, this is a great film. I am, of course, amazingly biased in this regard, as I have been reading and re-reading Tolkien since I was in the 6th grade the second time. I was there on the opening night with all the other nerds, geeks and freaks, some of whom were accompanied by amazingly beautiful women.

Don’t ask if there’s a correlation, I only make the observations.