Mythmakers Encore: Did Peter Jackson Get It Right? The Fellowship of the Ring Movie Reconsidered

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello everybody and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm an author and director of the centre, and today I'm joined by Jacob Rennaker. Jacob, why don't you introduce yourself? 00:27 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Hi, thanks, Julia. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Jacob Rennaker and I work kind of in the intersection of education and storytelling. I have my kind of educational background is a bachelor's degree in ancient Near Eastern studies, is a bachelor's degree in ancient near eastern studies, uh, master in comparative master's degree in comparative religion and a phd in religion. So looking at different storytelling strategies of different religious texts, ancient mythology and traditions and even contemporary texts and traditions, and creating essentially kind of creating dialogues between different stories, different authors, different ideas, including JRR Tolkien. 01:16 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, and actually today we're going to do a really deep dive into the films, the Peter Jackson films of Lord of the Rings, because we're now 20 years on, or more, from when they began filming, when the first film came out, and anybody who follows this on the internet will see there's been quite a lot of chatter about the difference between the films and the books, and we thought we would devote some quality time to looking at the choices that the script writers, that's, peter Jackson, fran Walsh and Philippa Boynes, the choices they made when they were adapting, and think through what that meant for those films. 02:03 And I suppose we're also thinking, if future filmmakers are going to come along and have another go which they probably will at some point, maybe as a mini series or whatever these days what you might do differently this time round. And Jacob, as well as those wonderful list of qualifications he gave, he also qualifies as being a fan of Tolkien, so it is also two fans talking to each other. So first of all, we're going to look, of course, at the Fellowship of the Ring. I don't know about you, Jacob, but actually of the three films, this is my favourite, are you yeah? 02:42 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) it's tough to say yeah. It's tough to say because it's really, you know, all one continuous story. In my mind it's just one long, you know one 11 and a half plus hour narrative. I love the beginning, so I love fellowship. Yeah, yeah, it's, it, is, it is, it is a lot more. You know pastoral, you're kind of eased into the story, whereas if you kind of start at Two Towers or Return of the King, then things are a lot darker and heavier. So it is a nice kind of stroll into the world of Middle Earth. So I do appreciate it for that. 03:14 - Julia Golding (Host) I think I like it most because it feels as though it got the book best. It really did live up to what I was hoping for, but anyway, that's just a personal choice. That's the one that if anyone was saying which is my desert island one, that's the one I'd take. I'd also better point out that Jacob and I are both people who watch the extended edition. So if we refer to scenes you haven't yet watched people, that may be because you're watching the theatrical cuts, but anyway. So let's go on. So first of all, let's look at, before they even actually started filming anything. What do you think about some of the changes that were made in Fellowship of the Ring, particularly in terms of casting? What strikes me most is the decision to make Frodo really young, whereas in the novel he's in his 50s. 04:14 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Right, yeah, it's an interesting choice, so I'm maybe kind of backing up a little bit. My first exposure to Lord of the Rings was the film, was the Peter Jackson film. 04:24 - Julia Golding (Host) Okay, that's interesting, so you'll be a different way around to me, yeah yes, yeah, exactly so is yeah. 04:29 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) And then from different people that I've spoken with, right, so I'm, and so I'm in in some senses, you know, not a pure, not pure enough, I'm not a, I'm not a pureblood, uh, no, no, no, that's harry potter. 04:41 Pureblood, right, right right, so I'm, yeah, so like I'm not intellectually pureblood. Uh, I right, right, so I'm yeah, so like I'm not intellectually pureblood, I guess, when it comes to Tolkien's world, as some would consider. But it was my entry point, so that was essentially. I only think of Frodo. That was. My initial exposure to Frodo was Elijah Wood, as you know, a I don't know. He's kind of in the film, seems to be a you know, early 20s or so kind of Frodo. So it makes sense to me and at the time when I saw it, when it came out, I was in my very early 20s, so I connected with him, so it was easy for me to see myself in Frodo because of the similarity in age. 05:22 And I'm sure that was absolutely a marketing and storytelling strategy from the Hollywood end of things, for which audiences you're trying to attract. How do you make it as successful as possible to as broad of an audience as possible? So, having a main character whose age is right in there, you're going to pull in younger audiences as well as the older audiences where most of the cast is, you know, are more adult, right that they're, you know, 40, 30, 40, 50 year old. That's easy, but how do you get a younger audience, age down some of your characters. So, yeah, I think it's, it's an it was a natural and, I think, inevitable choice. Um, and I'm I'm fine with it, because it got me into lord of the rings. I do appreciate the difference. What, so yeah, so Julia? What do you? It got me into Lord of the Rings. I do appreciate the difference. So yeah, so Julia. What do you see as maybe some of the differences in his character by shifting his age in the film to the Hobbit. 06:17 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, it does shift everything and say put Martin Freeman in as Frodo instead, because Martin Freeman was more age-appropriate for the Hobbit. It's still a really good casting. But in the books Frodo has a certain authority and maturity that he doesn't in the films. The films are a coming-of-age story. I can make arguments for why it's appropriate. So I always think of Frodo in particular as very much a First World War recruit, someone too young who's asked to sacrifice his life for everybody else. So that element definitely works. And there's also the argument that Hobbits at 50 are not as old as us lot at 50 because they've got longer lifespans. I don't think it's a mistake. I can see exactly why it was done. But it is an area where another go at the film. It would give the next generation of filmmakers a different place to go if they wanted, and that would be really interesting. Um, it makes the hobbits less, less idiotic, less not idiotic too strong, less. 07:33 Um rambunctious yeah, it makes them a bit more sort of sorted if it's a slightly older uh group who are going. 07:42 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) I think yeah, so if you see, go ahead. 07:45 - Julia Golding (Host) No, I was going to say there is a little bit of. They do seem completely clueless in a way which I think is beyond the clueless. They are little people in a big world, but they play up the humor and the fact that they don't quite make the right calls at some time, which isn't quite the same as the book. 08:04 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, I was just thinking when you were saying, you know, casting somebody who's more age appropriate and how that would provide a different angle for filmmakers and storytellers In the film, visually and in terms of kind of tropes, you could have Frodo's journey as midlife crisis, right, and that's a very different take on why you're going out on this journey and what you're having to prove to yourself, right, what you're trying to understand about life. It's kind of a looking back, kind of a retrospective when have I been, what have I done with my life and what do I actually want to be? Now that I'm partway along and I'm now on the downhill slope, what do I really want to be doing? And so, seeing the journey of the ring as kind of, yeah, him taking his life into his own hands instead of sitting complacent in the Shire and then kind of being thrust in one sense, but then also choosing to enter into the last half of his life, into this life you know, life changing and world changing adventure. 09:05 So yeah, that's a completely different angle from the coming of age, you know, where it's just kind of this continual, you know kind of upward trajectory to then becoming a completely fully, you know, well-rounded, realized adult. So now, what if you started there at the adult starting point, rather than the, you know, somebody fighting the inevitable decline into mediocrity, complacency? So that's a completely different. So I think that's fascinating and I would love to see somebody have that take. 09:34 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, the danger would be it would feel a bit too similar to, I mean, because actually the Hobbit is like that, isn't it? Yeah, right, but I think, looking at it from the positive side, what that casting choice did do is that you, Frodo is beautiful. He's got a beautiful inner. He's like angelic almost, isn't he? His big blue eyes. There's a beauty to him which I don't think. 09:56 There's quite a few jokes in the actual book about the fact that he's put on a bit of weight, and you know there's he needs to get in shape, um, so it has a. There is a difference. There's he needs to get in shape, um, so it has a. There is a difference. There's just a different feeling from Frodo the film version, from Frodo the book version, but it does mean that there is a different. I mean, it's always good if there's new pleasures when you go to the book, uh, or go to the film. I mean, um, I think this gives us two bites of the cherry. We can have one version of the story, which is the film, and another, which is the book version. Okay, so, going into the actual, the way the script is written before we talk about the sort of structure of it. But the register and the diction. Do you think they captured, in how they approached the script, the right sort of Tolkien-esque language? You're a language expert. 10:50 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, it's a good question again, because my first exposure to the world of Tolkien and Middle Earth is the films. So as I'm reading it, it's hard for me to divorce the voice inside my head from the different actors who were portraying those. Those voices, um, but yeah it is. It is really interesting, right with the difference. So I think one of the things that works well is having, yeah, different, yeah, diction for different areas of the shire, right so diction right, so so you can, so you have these different instead of the Shire, right? 11:24 So Kitten's diction right, so you have these different instead of just saying we're just going to have randomly chosen different kind of a hodgepodge of different British dictions used by the different characters. That can actually be in your favor if you kind of consider different areas of the Shire as being different kind of linguistic areas where they're staying in the same place, they're not moving around, and so of course they're going to develop a certain cadence and different styles of speaking. So in that sense I think it does. I I didn't. When I was first watching the films I didn't see that, but now in retrospect I know that could have been a accident of casting. That actually could, upon reflection, prove to be fortuitous. Uh, in saying that the shire isn't a monolithic culture, right that these are people who have geographically interconnected but distinct areas. So I might be giving them too much credit for what they're doing, but I'm happy to do so. 12:37 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, if you watch the makey of, which is one of the pleasures of the extended edition is, I think Billy Boyd says it was almost like it is an accident of casting in that sense in that he's Scottish and so the Tooks get to be Scottish. Even the name Took feels as though it should be. It could be, you know, sounds Scottish. Um, there is a slight problem about just it's not. Then it's not very big, the Shire, so mildly different accents within a short space, I suppose might be a bit funny really. 13:09 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Right right. 13:11 - Julia Golding (Host) There's a couple of. In the Hobbits, obviously you've got Dominic Moynihan, who's a Brit, so his accent's fine. There were a couple of times when just a few tiny moments as a British person, when Elijah Wood drops it, it's right at the beginning when he says to Gandalf, you've only just arrived. The accent isn't quite there, and that was a shame because it jars. And then the Sam accent is kind of mummasishyar, which is fine, it is fine, yeah, it's fine. It is fine, yeah, it's fine. But the funniest of all the accents is of course, boromir, because Sean Bean just does Sean Bean, and Sean Bean is speaking his natural northern accent, but nobody else seems to do so in. 13:59 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Pondor. 14:01 - Julia Golding (Host) But the most delightful thing has happened since Andy Serkis read the Lord of the Rings. The entirety of it is that he has given everybody in Gondor a Sean Bean accent. 14:13 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) It's just brilliant. 14:16 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, everybody in Gondor should have gone that way. Yeah, I think, on the whole seeing it's a cast from many different English speaking places and also some of the actors are not first language English speakers I think they did pretty well and the actual rhythm of what they wrote and how it was written. Some of the lines are really beautiful and it's very well. I think they've got a good ear. The script writers Okay. So, in the Fellowship of the Ring, what are your perfect moments? 14:55 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, so in terms of, like, visual imagery, right. So in film, right, the visuals are what are primary and the sounds scape right behind it. So you know, howard shore's score is inseparable from the visuals, right? They're all kind of working together in concert to provide this kind of overwhelming, uh soaring, uh perceptive experience. So for one of those, I think, for me is Aragorn's introduction, the first time you see him. 15:33 That image of him and just his pipe and just like the illumination from the little bowl of the pipe to then illuminating his face in this shadow of the hood and in the dark corner, and just the sound of the fire, right, kind of like crackling to life and the light. So illuminating his face is just, yeah, striking, haunting, almost Right. And especially for somebody who didn't know, who wasn't familiar with the story going in it, was it provided there was ambiguity there, right. So I didn't know, going in, exactly what the character was going to do or what the character was going to be, so that was, it was kind of awe-inspiring with perhaps some ominous quality to it and I couldn't, you know, you didn't know exactly what state. 16:30 Because of course you're looking at this, the camera's looking at it kind of from the hobbits perspective, right, they don't know who this character is, right, so you're kind of seeing it as they see this shadowy figure in the corner who's just kind of creepily staring at them. So I thought they, they captured that well. But you know, on re-watching and knowing this character, I still think it's incredible. Uh, character introduction for somebody who's coming from the darkness and then, in a sense, is going to be illuminated, right, who's going to step into the full light, uh, in this like dazzling brilliance, um, so yeah, it's great how about yeah? 17:09 - Julia Golding (Host) yeah, that is, that's my, that's my moment of all the films and it's actually based on a line in the book about the embers catching his eyes in the when he lights his pipe. So, Tolkien, provided the the uh camera angle on that one. So, as you pick that one, I think for me the Balrog sequence is one of those where the acting, the visuals, the tension, the drama, the music everything is like a perfect set where both the book and the film are meshed and it just feels really, really good yeah. 17:43 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) yeah, that's, it's straight, it's striking. Yeah, it's striking. Do you have any? Before we talk about the bigger structure things, are there any moments for? 17:56 - Julia Golding (Host) you which are fails. No, I have a few more perfect moments, okay, if you'll allow me. Yeah, this is really quick. 18:00 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again with Aragorn. I think they do so much and I can't like Viggo Mortensen is just, you know, impeccable. 18:10 - Julia Golding (Host) I can't imagine anyone else there wasn't it. And then, yeah, exactly which is going to change? 18:15 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) right, which I, yes, I, which could have been divine intervention, I don't know um, but he, so you just how the and one of the things that I think, yeah, then we talk about, you know, because maybe some of the changes in characters a little bit further down um, in our conversation, but you know, when he's, when aragorn is uh singing part of the lay of luthien, right about baron and luthien, just kind of, you know, kind of like humming, singing that softly as he's taking uh, the hobbits, right, they're stopping and Frodo asks him you know, what do you? What are you singing? Um, and you know he's, he's explaining the story and then, you know, Frodo asks him you know what happens to this? You know this elf maiden who gives herself, you know, to this human man and he just says you know, she, she died, and just like that moment, kind of capturing the melancholy of Aragorn as a character and kind of caught between different worlds himself, um, I think that sets the tone really well and builds his, his character, uh in in a very um, uh, not just visual but like auditory way and you just kind of get a sense of feel for it. 19:25 - Julia Golding (Host) So anyway, that's that's just to put that in brackets. I think that's a wasn't in the theatrical cut. 19:34 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) I don't think oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right I mean I've long times as I saw the original version. 19:41 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, it's been so long for me too um, okay, so is there anything where you think it doesn't quite work? We'll get hate mail, probably for this, but I know I know let's be critics yeah, yeah, yeah from the script point of view as opposed to. 20:00 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) That's sort of primarily, yeah yeah, yeah, so something that's difficult is the wizard's duel between Gandalf and Saruman, so one of the things, so the things that it does well and doesn't do, right, so that's kind of that's not something that you're really seeing depicted in the books. Is that, like the full onon? You know, wizards duels is different, right from you could have gone. Well, you know it's coming out at the same time that, uh, harry potter films, right, so they're in generally the same time. So, different approaches to magic, right, depicting magic, I think they're two interesting kind of boils, right. So, um, harry potter, the world of Harry Potter, magic is a tool that people use to accomplish certain ends, and so a wizard's duel is going to be this kind of see what sticks in a hope that you'll find some one of the spells that you've memorized by that point has can, can do some sort of damage. Um, but with Tolkien, his magic here is kind of baked into the world. Uh, in the sense that magic, to me it seems that magic is more of a tone than it is a tool for Tolkien, so it kind of pervades the world itself, and so I don't know, there isn't kind of a clear description of how magic works in Tolkien's world. It's just kind of the supernatural force world. It's just kind of the supernatural force, almost kind of like more star wars, esque in this, something that's kind of pervasive and there's some way to tap into it. But that's not. Tolkien isn't concerned about explaining the magic, he's just taking that as a given that the magic magic exists. Magic is, uh, and that's you know, embodied in the elves and just like their demeanor, so like the elves are magic, kind of this, this walking embodiment of Tolkien's view of magic. 22:10 And so this wizard's duel kind of coming back to that scene is it's not a shoot-em-up gunfight like you do have in Harry Potter, with wands as essentially projectile weapons, but there's a force that they're dealing with. They're kind of almost fighting with ideas and ideals, which I find really fascinating. But how do you depict that visually, especially with two actors who are not, you know, I don't think either of them would have described themselves as action heroes or action actors. So you're, you're left kind of, and so I think they, instead of showing, you know, projectile CGI, raise beams of light shooting at each other. You have kind of you know they're, they're, they're using force. That you're kind of left to the imagination to like what exactly is happening there. So and so I think conceptually that that works. 23:13 I like that approach, but visually it is difficult when you have older actors, uh, and they're trying to depict some sort of fierce kind of physical competition. Uh, it's hard, it's hard to capture that. So there's some moments that are difficult to to take seriously, especially in light of contemporary filmmaking, uh, and action sequences. So that's when it's a it's it's a mixed, it's a mixed bag for me that sometimes it's easy to to take me out of the film experience. 23:48 - Julia Golding (Host) I can see why it was done, because it's trying to well, it's action, speed things up, you know. But it's also a sense of, I think, in the book it's very much the doors are closed and you've got to stay here tough. There isn't a he's constrained, but not in the way that it happens in sort of a physical battle. It's more the spider, you know, the web closes. That's more the feel. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Really, you're right, it is quite odd to have magic used in more of a replacement for a punch up. Um, there are a couple of times in the book where, of course, Gandalf does use magic in a more showy, showy way, you know, like lighting, lighting a flame, but he always, he always says it costs and he doesn't want to do it, he's very reluctant. So there's a bit of a step outside. Yeah, oh, that's interesting. I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure I hadn't, really it hadn't bothered me before, but now I'm going to think about it For me. One of the scenes that doesn't work it's in the extended edition and it did get cut from the main thing is as they approach Moria, Gandalf takes Frodo aside and basically says look out, Boromir's gonna try and take the ring, and it's one of the scenes where there's a bit too much exposition and I think that's probably why it was cut from the theatrical edition. We know we get it and so it's also just feels a bit odd, a bit jarring, that scene. So I think that was one of the ones that perhaps didn't need to go back in the extended edition. 25:44 And there's another scene which jars um for me, which is the one when, um, they're on weathertop and aragorn says I'm going to go off and look for black riders, basically, and Frodo drops off to sleep and the other three hobbits start cooking. Uh, and Frodo wakes up and says what are you doing? Yeah, that is not in the book. They know that they're being pursued, they know that they're in danger. In fact, I think Frodo and Merry is, or is it Fibon? Anyway, Frodo, they're with Aragorn searching and then see the Black Riders moving about and fear they've been spotted. It's much more. They're much more sensible, much more aware that it's a life and death situation and that's one of the changes to make the hobbits a bit more. 26:39 I was saying they sometimes come across as being a little bit idiotic. That is one of their moments, and you can see that maybe that's in order to show the distance they go, because they're the guys frying up sausages in the face of danger, and then they become the heroes and the you know, the heroes of the battle. It's a journey thing, but me, I just think, really I think I have problems with that scene. Okay, so, on the whole, not that many problems with many scenes, though Not too bad. 27:14 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) There's some. Visually, there's some, I mean, with CGI. They're working. It's difficult with casting different actors who, size-wise, are in relation to each other different. So I think they did a great job with what they had to do, right. So you know, John Rhys-Davies is a dwarf who is not my exposure, and you know, first love for him was in the Indiana Jones film. 27:38 - Julia Golding (Host) He's a very tall gentleman. 27:40 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) He is right. And so having to depict these people, who are normally tall and the hobbits right, when they're in scenes with humans and wizards and elves, and sometimes just because of the constraints of computer-generated imagery, super imposing different people into different scenes, sometimes it does seem a little, a little off you can. 28:08 - Julia Golding (Host) You can tell that they're not actually there together yeah, after the council of elrond there's one moment where it's that that bit. I think probably the cgia was just a touch behind there. There's a feel of it's like two people, sort of two, two layers of people. Anyway I mean tiny, minor, but but that. We're being finicky, aren't we here? 28:29 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) If that's the worst point, then yeah, oh, yeah. 28:31 - Julia Golding (Host) I mean, these are our favorite films. We should have said that, okay. So let's talk about the larger script decisions now. And there's the issue of pacing and cuts. So's start with where it starts. For those of you I'm sure you all know if you've read the books, it starts with a long prologue concerning hobbits by Tolkien, which you don't actually have to read. You can skip to the first chapter and then it goes into a quite a slow build-up to the party and in the film you of course get the montage of the history of the ring with Galadriel, cate Blanchett, with the voiceover explaining. Quite a long setup, actually, in terms of film time, in terms of film time. So what do you think of that particular script decision? To not start in the Shire, in fact, but you start the prologue with the history of the Ring. Good choice, bad choice. 29:36 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) I think, from a filmmaking perspective and keeping in mind the audience, I think it was a good decision to appeal to as large of an audience as as possible, right, so you're setting the table, you're kind of building the frame that the story is going to sit inside. You know, of course that's so. There's different audiences are interested in different parts of the story and so, like in the books, one of the with the rearrangement of of scenes and things, right, so pulling that section from the council of elrond, so that's when the hobbits first learn of this. So, uh, we're in. So in in the books, we're more in the from the perspective of the hobbits, as they're. So we're learning things as the hobbits are learning them as they go along. Right, so we're just as much in the dark as they are, and these things are a revelation. So we know why they're making the decisions that they're making. They make sense, whereas if you put it against that larger backdrop from the outset, then you're not going on the same journey that they are. You're kind of in the third person, kind of omniscient narrator setting. You have the information before the characters have it. So you're not going to empathize as deeply with the characters because you're judging them based on the bigger picture and why they're doing something, why they're not doing something, and you can judge them in a different way than you could if you were actually learning the information at the same time. So I understand, from a filmmaking perspective it makes complete sense. 31:08 I think it's a good decision to get the audience up to speed because it's a different type of film than like a discovery film. 31:17 So, for instance, just a recent one that is kind of like discovering as you go Christopher Nolan films, tenet I don't know if you saw Tenet, okay, so his, a lot of his are kind of like puzzle box stories, right, so you're never given an explanation from the outset. 31:37 Part of the joy of those movies is kind of working through the labyrinth that he's creating and discovering what is actually happening. And then it kind of becomes self-referential and you're having to then go back and re-watch the films, having this you know, revelation of information and seeing it again. So that's that's one type of you know, cinematic audience experience is learning about these ideas as you go, learning facts, learning about characters, other people as the main character is, or setting everything up or a lot of it. You know, giving a big, you know, large amount of background at the beginning. So I think I I think, with the type of film that the sort of audience that they needed to appeal to, putting that sort of prologue, a historical prologue, uh works well there yeah, I agree I think yeah, I think it became um a very popular tool that has been copied in other films since. 32:33 - Julia Golding (Host) So it it may be that, um, in a way we've almost become too used to it, but actually I think what it did do is it it? It kept the audience. So it promises. This is actually big battles, this is actually big baddies, this is great beauty. 32:51 Um, whereas some people I know have been defeated by the book because it does take a while. It feels quite childish because it was started life as a bit more in the theme of the hobby. It took Tolkien a while to make his mind up that he was actually making an adult book, and so there is elements of the more childlike world which, if you don't hang in there, you could mistake for being the tone of the film. So I think it was a very good choice and we're not expecting the book and the film to be the same product. It's one of the ones where, yeah, good decision. I think Okay. 33:30 What about the cuts that were made in order to? I think they were made really for pacing and just so that you don't. You know you've got to get in and out of a theatre within a reasonable length of time. So the major cuts are, of course, tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, which is like a connected set of incidents. It happens in the old forest between leaving the Shire and arriving at Bree and the Prancing Pony. There's also what else is cut. There's quite a there's quite a lot in the Shire that's cut. Things like the visit to farm a maggot is cut. There's quite a lot of the journey is only just touched on. I think they did quite well with the journey actually, but there's a whole series of events before they get to Moria which they, which they don't do in full. They touch on the crebine and they climb up the mountain, but that sequence is more extended. But I think probably in terms of people listening to this, the big ones are missing out on Tom Bombadil. What's your view on that? 34:58 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) yeah. So I yeah again. Having seen the films first, I had no idea that tom bombadil was a thing. So when I first read the book I was very surprised on who who was. Who is this character who just keeps who's rhyming uh and kind of bouncing along uh and the yeah. So I, I mean, I, I think it's, I think it works well, works fine for creating a story, for a film that, if there were things that you needed to cut, I suppose that's something that you could do without. If the main thrust of the story is following Frodo and his journey and the fellowship itself, then Tom Bombadil doesn't really play a huge role in their individual transformation. So if you're more concerned about the character transformation and character arcs, sure it absolutely plays a part in that development. But cinematically, yeah, I think it was a wise choice to kind of condense things there. 36:02 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I was less sad to see Tom Bombadil go than the Barrow Down bit. 36:08 And the thing is you can't do one without the other. But the thing that's particularly good about the Barrow Downs is it's where they get their swords from. Aragorn isn't just by chance carrying a load of swords around, and also it links to the past, so there's an element of the world building. This is, you know, in the day, where somebody does a mini series Lord of the Rings. You know, in the future, this is. I'd really be interested to see what someone does with this on a larger canvas, where they don't have to worry about packing it all into three hours or two hours. Um, because I think it, particularly the barrow downs, could be really spooky the mist and the confusion, uh, that would be great. 36:52 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) I'd love to see that yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think yeah. So, peter, and what I would love to see peter jackson's take on that, because he started, you know, his career in film was beginning with kind of horror film. So I bet he would be, you know, uniquely qualified to to kind of catch that, because some of the, some of the scenes that he does, the scary scenes, are very scary. Uh, they're, they're, they are terror scenes. Right, it's horror. 37:21 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah. 37:22 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) So I would love to see that too. 37:24 - Julia Golding (Host) But I, I think I agree with you that it's it, you know it's, it's the thing that has to go, um and it and he is discussed briefly at um, discussed briefly at the Council of Elrond, and they basically say, if you give him the ring, he'll forget about it. He's not a safe pair of hands, it has no power over him, but he has no power over the ring, so he is completely separate from its, from its fate, and it is about the ring, this, this story. So, yeah, I think that's a good. Another thing that's missing is the songs and the poems. So they do get some of them in, but not as many as Tolkien has. Are you happy with that? 38:08 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, I mean the poems are delightful and moving uh in in the, in the books, and so you know, because, like you said, the other, these are different experiences. The film experience is different. So, in terms of you know, some of the extended uh poetry that you have there that is really melancholy, that captures the you know kind of pervasive sadness, uh, that exists in this world of Middle Earth, that's going to be hard to keep. You know, the attention if you're wanting to attract a broad audience. You know your younger audience is not going to want to sit through you know recitation of, you know eldish poetry they're going to that's, they're certainly not going to come back. 38:56 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, and there's also a lot of comic verse that gets wheeled out as well. Elvish poetry they're gonna, that's they're. They're certainly not gonna come back. First, it gets wheeled out, right right, so younger audiences. 39:00 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, the, the, the. The cow jumping over the moon. 39:03 - Julia Golding (Host) Uh, the extended poem there, there's just a line, do you remember so great? 39:08 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) uh, I love, I love, I love, I love that. Just what what Tolkien does with you know, with the, with the traditional kind of you know, you know english uh rhyme and just kind of spinning it out and doing some really fun things with it, yeah, so that'd be a different film. I mean, if, if you're looking at again, if you're recasting Frodo as in his 50s, then I think you could include, if your target audience is kind of shifted you know the demographic has shifted to a firm, adult uh audience, then including some of those, those poems, uh, I think would would be a delight to include. 39:44 - Julia Golding (Host) And I think you know compelling for an older audience, yeah yeah, because the reason he puts on the ring in the book in um the prancing pony is because he's very awkwardly singing a song. Then he gets a bit carried away and so it's actually funny but terrible. It's one of those. It's a particular tone that Tolkien has, which would be lovely to see that, because obviously these choices are made because they've got to make cut somewhere. But the way that the reason he puts on the ring is sort of Pippin's fault. In the novel it's, pippin starts to say something, Frodo decides he's got to add a distraction, gets up on the table and starts singing, which is like the worst thing he could do. I think it's just hilarious Anyway. So there is, yeah, just pointing out some areas which a future scriptwriter can have a go at. 40:42 So, coming towards so much we could discuss, but coming towards the end of what we're going to talk about on Fellowship of the Ring, I think one of the biggest things there are two things really I wanted to talk about. One is the swapping of characters and the other is how places are imagined and personified. So on the swapping of the characters, there's a big change which is in the book. After Frodo is injured, the elf who comes to help is in fact an elf called Glorfindel, who's a very from the old lineage, who's a friend of Aragorn, and in the film, memorably, you get Arwen coming. So, Jacob, how about that? What do you think of that change? 41:39 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Jacob have at that. What do you think of that change? I think it's yeah, and again from the. So that wasn't something initially seeing at first that I had noticed, until I read the book and I saw that it was a different. There's a different person. 41:46 So from the, the story that the filmmakers wanted to tell or what they wanted to emphasize it makes. It makes complete sense to me, because you wanted to have arwen as a larger part in the story of the film than she was, uh in the book. And so glorfindel doesn't show up later in the books, right, so it's kind of further later in two towers and uh and return to the king, um. So if you have a character. So one of the tip for screenwriting is, if you can combine two characters, do because you're able to have that one character, do more um and carry more narrative weight, um, rather than splitting it up and having just kind of proliferating uh characters. 42:36 Because in filmmaking it's an art of uh kind of simplification, right, minimum minimalism, maybe not simplification, but minimalism, right, you're trying to get the the the greatest impact out of the fewest amount of lines, out of character choices, out of scenes. You're trying to get as much as possible into each scene out of scenes. You're trying to get as much as possible into each scene, um, so so it makes sense from um, from a filmmaking perspective, uh, to combine those characters and let arwen kind of save the day there, because that's our introduction to her, is, as this, you know, active uh, character, um, so I think you're able to maybe have patience later, later, with her, as she's kind of mostly in the rest of the other two films is mostly just choosing to sit around and read elf poetry and pine over Aragorn and kind of wrestle with that. So I like that for what it does for her as a character and streamlining the story. What do you think? 43:50 - Julia Golding (Host) I think it's an improvement. So I think one of the problems about Lord of the Rings is the passiveness of well, with the honourable exception of Erwin, who will get to Anon, yeah, there's not much roles. And you are, as a modern filmmaker, going to be saying, where can we leave her? Open up the chinks. And this is a really good one, a really good one. They did actually think of making her active all the way through, but they rode back from that. I think they even filmed her being at Helm's Deep. 44:23 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Helm's Deep, yeah and yeah, Armour I think there are some photos of her in Armour and then I think, due to in part due to fan kind, of pushback on that, they reeled back a bit. 44:37 - Julia Golding (Host) So it would definitely be for those of you who are about to write the next version of this. I think it's definitely the kind of thing to do more of without breaking the spirit of the book. 44:50 I noticed in the new Amazon series they've obviously made Galadriel the young Galadriel into very much a warrior, even the teaser trailerriel into very much a warrior, even the teaser trailer. She's, you know, very badass. Um, right, right, but I think that 20 years on they wouldn't have been forced to row back from putting her in a more active role. So, yeah, so the final thing I wanted to ask you about Jacob is the places, because I think that in many ways those films are defined by what each place feels like um, the muddy road, then to, uh, the kind of alpine feel of it's, a sort of italianate stroke, alpine feel of Rivendell. Then you've got the mountains, you've got Moria with the dark mines, then you've got, uh, lothlorien with its silvery sort of tones and blues, then you've got the Great River and, my favorite of all, the Argonath, the statues of the Argonath. What did you feel about that version of how they realized the book? 46:14 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Well, I was amazed that it was all shot in the same physical place, right? So new zealand has all of those different, uh different climbs, right, those different, uh different types of settings. Um, so I'm eager to make a pilgrimage there at some at some point. Um, so it's, yeah, I, I thought yeah, again, visually, they did an incredible job differentiating the different areas again, with not just the terrain but also, yeah, the kind of color palette for each of those, right? So, um, yeah, uh, you know, lothlorien uh looks different visually than rivendell does for instance. 46:57 - Julia Golding (Host) That's what I don't like. I don't like laurian. I think it's too dark, it's too yeah, too twilight yeah in the book described as um silver and gold right, right. 47:08 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) I would have loved flowers you know the eleanor flowers. 47:12 I think they needed to turn the lights on exactly, yeah and yeah, and I can see why they did that Right. So they're compressing, they're, you know, compressing time, right. So if you, you know, you, you think, as an audience member, essentially you're you think that maybe this took a few days, maybe maybe a week, but it was a pretty fast week, whereas, yeah, in the book these things are spanning over and right when, when they stay in, uh, right in uh forest, lorian um and lothlorian they're, you know the moon is different from you know, when they, when they go into, uh, the forest, then when they come out of it, so that some immeasurable amount of time has passed in there, um, so I think, you know, as a film, they're trying to say that they're only basically staying, they're sleeping over at, having a sleepover, uh in lothlorien, and then they're uh, moving on. So it is dark. I would have loved to have seen, because in the books that's one of the things that Tolkien does best um is, in his nature, writing, right. 48:14 His description of the natural world is in my most recent reread, which I just finished a month ago or so. 48:22 Just, that was one of the things that stood out to me this time was just his prose specifically about nature and so how he describes that forest and you're right, like the silver and golds and just the leaves, and I can't even paraphrase it because it's sacrilege to do so, but how beautiful the phrases that he uses, how clearly perceptive Tolkien as a person was to the surrounding world and nature in general. So he in a sense is able to kind of re-enchant the ordinary world through his description of these, you know, elvish forests. That definitely had, you know, an impact on me and my perception as I was listening to this, to his words. As I'm out in nature, you know, on a walk with my little, almost two-year-old child, I'm looking at the world differently, right, and I'm seeing it as magic. And so, yeah, I think you definitely lost that in the film setting it. At night you can't see the beauty. There's kind of an evening, kind of twilight beauty of sorts. 49:37 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, that's what it's all about, isn't it? I mean, I can see why they chose to do that, but it was just the place where sometimes they picked a landscape where it was just better than my imagination but my imagination of Lorien is better than what they did it felt too much like being in a studio. There wasn't enough fresh air, um. So again, we're thinking about possibilities for future adaptations. That's one place where I think you could really have a go at doing a different take uh and surprise us all and enchant us all yeah 50:10 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) okay differentiate that from rivendell because, they're different, right, they're different kind of elvish cultures and in a sense so I thought the rivendell, the set design was that was good phenomenal, that's really good uh. But doing that same sort of treatment in, right, our other forest, uh, and our other kind of elvish miniature kingdom, but yeah, kind of develop that and give it the same sort of care, uh, that you did to Rivendell, I would like to see that there's probably people um shouting at us, you know when they're listening. 50:43 - Julia Golding (Host) That's my favorite scene anyway, it's just personal taste. These, these are yeah it's beautiful. 50:47 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) It's beautiful. If I want a nighttime forest, yeah great, love it. I would go there, I would. I would stay the night there. I would stay more nights there than one. 50:56 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, on the cushions under the tree. 50:57 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Right, yeah. 50:58 - Julia Golding (Host) Not up the tree. I'm a bit worried about rolling off the edge. So, Jacob, we've done quite a deep dive into Fellowship of the Ring, and I always finish the podcast by asking my guest where in all the world is the best place for something? And, as we've talked about John Rhys-Davies and the dwarves, where do you think in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to be a dwarf? We're talking here obviously of the folkloric dwarf characters like Gimli and his brethren elsewhere. 51:35 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest) Yeah, I would have to say Narnia, in part because there's such a variety of characters and creatures there that are active that I feel like dwarves don't seem as much as outsiders as they do, say, in Lord of the Rings, right. So when you're in a world that only has four kind of men and elves that are kind of in the same stature, are kind of given the focus, um, that you know, hobbits and dwarves are kind of seen as lesser, right, they're kind of played up for comedic relief, um, whereas in narnia you have, if you have talking animals, right, a person who's a different shape and size than a, you know, homo erectus, like, isn't that? That's that, doesn't that doesn't seem out of place. Uh, it just seems like another character alongside this, this beautiful variety of creatures and characters with different personalities and rich cultures. So I think I, if I was a dwarf, um, I think I would uh, enjoy the world more and probably feel more at home and be happier in narnia than even, say, middle earth yeah, I I actually totally agree. 52:52 - Julia Golding (Host) I I've been struggling to think of somewhere better. I know, um, I think of lots of places. I wouldn't like to be one. There's actually many more of those. I don't want to work down a mine singing hi-ho, hi-ho. That's really off the agenda. And, as you say, very often wolves aren't given the respect. It's just a size difference. Get over it, and I think Narnia does get over it. So I agree with you on that. Thank you so much, Jacob. We'll be back to talk about the two towers next, but thank you very much for listening. 53:31 - Speaker 3 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford plus. Visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide.