My Father's "Eviscerated" work - Son of J.R.R. Tolkien finally speaks out

http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father-039-s-quot-eviscerated-quot-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-j.r.r.-tolkien-finally-speaks-out/hobbit-silmarillion-lord-of-rings/c3s10299/

by porker • 14 years ago

153 191 14 years ago

worldcrunch.com

rjzzleep2• 14 years ago

> Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."

no, hobbit is worse. the first episode of hobbit was a 3 hour long trailer with zero substance.

ComputerGuru3• 14 years ago

Wait, what do you mean no substance? We had a rabbit-powered Santa Clause-esque sleigh, a "thunder battle" between two Michael Bay-esque transformers ("robots in disguise" as mountains), lots of silly makeup for the dwarves, Voldemort from Harry Potter made a cameo as the "pale orc," and we got to re-watch maybe 25 minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring again. Oh, and we learn that Kili is apparently related to Legalos, when you see his unrivaled agility and skill with a bow and arrow.

It takes a lot of effort and hard work to take a great story that would have easily made the best 3 hour movie of the decade and turn it into a 10 hour, 3-part ridiculous something. "No substance," he says!

mietek• 14 years ago

You see, the producers discovered J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to the Lucas and Rowling school of thought, and named Kili — or should I say… Kill-i — after the role he was meant to play in the story.

iand• 14 years ago

The giants were in the book. Everything else was in the books and writings around the Hobbit (apart from the rabbits of course). I'd heard that the Radagast scene was terrible but I didn't think it was that bad in the end - they portrayed him pretty well as one of the wizards that had lost interest in the peoples of Middle Earth in favour of animals.

adrianbravo• 14 years ago

You forgot the fast-paced escape from the goblin caverns.

rjzzleep2• 14 years ago

lol, this made my day. probably the best summary i have read.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I hate it when they do that. The worst part is when the MPAA henchmen break into my house and steal the copies of the original books that I legitimately paid for. I guess Orwell was right... control the past, and you control the future.

Or maybe Christopher Tolkien needs to STFU, sign his royalty checks, and let culture take its course. Or - gasp - get a word processor and earn his own keep.

I haven't seen the Hobbit, but as far as I'm concerned, Jackson owns LotR now. The best-rendered edition of the story is his.

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

I think people hating on The Hobbit were just mad they ran out of popcorn before the third act. It's a valid criticism that the film does run a little long to not have a definite conclusion.

pdonis10• 14 years ago

get a word processor and earn his own keep.

He has, by organizing, editing, and publishing all of his father's posthumous work, from The Silmarillion on. He is his father's literary executor, so he was doing his job, and publishing books that people will pay for counts as earning his keep.

varjag• 14 years ago

Funny, me and my friends certainly belonged to 15-25 age bracket when we got into Tolkien books.

As to literary qualities of Hobbit, well. I like it quite a lot less now than when I was 15.

dchichkov• 14 years ago

Best age for Hobbit is probably 6-8, and re-read at 13-15, with the LOTR...

tjr• 14 years ago

I had somehow managed to never read or see any of the Tolkien books or related films, until going to see The Hobbit a few weeks ago. I greatly enjoyed the movie, and have thus far greatly enjoyed reading the book (about 2/3 of the way through now).

I suppose I can understand how he feels though, as he is probably closer to the original material than anyone else alive today.

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

I find it hard to have sympathy for Christopher Tolkien, who hasn't exactly been a model steward of his father's imagination. I'm reminded a lot of Brian Herbert, who really hit left field with the posthumous Dune stuff.

Given some of his actions, calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, let's film a 16-hour word-for-word rendition of each book, because that will work on film. I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.

I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)

dantheman• 14 years ago

What's First Film Syndrome?

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

Unlike The Matrix, The Hobbit was created knowing it would be the first of a trilogy (early in production, a two-part series). As such, it spends all of its frames laying the groundwork for the next film. One reviewer, I forget who, described the experience as "all foreplay with no sex", which I agree with. That said, still a rousing ride and a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, particularly the Thorin/Bilbo story that concluded near the end.

kmfrk3• 14 years ago

All the things I have read about Christopher Tolkien have done anything but make me sympathetic to him.

He reminds me of what happened to the estate of James Joyce, which is a very sad tale: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/01/james-jo...

I don't know whether a series like A Song of Ice and Fire could every be adapted well, but the TV show has definitely ensured that more people will read, and most important remember, the work of R. R. Martin.

Whatever you may think about the artistic merit of LOTR and The Hobbit, I think Tolkien has still benefitted immensely.

jballanc3• 14 years ago

I think you're being too hard on Christopher Tolkien. The first time I read through The Silmarillion I was disappointed by how much it resembled a history text book...then I realized: it is a history text book. This interview just cements what I had already suspected: much as the history of the real world is mostly mundane, punctuated by a few good "stories", the same is true of Tolkien's works. Surely, when you see the Mona Lisa your eyes are drawn to the face and slight smile, but da Vinci still had to paint the background for it to be the painting it is. In some regards, this is the difference between art and pop culture. Once you get past the surface, pop culture is typically hollow.

All that said, I think the original movies are artistic masterpieces (haven't seen the Hobbit yet, so I can't comment)...just masterpieces of a different sort, in a different medium.

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's Middle Earth's Bible, which is part of the reason why I disagree with its existence. Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have published his notes and thoughts in that form, and it dilutes Tolkien's published works of their artistic value.

saraid2169• 14 years ago

> Once you get past the surface, pop culture is typically hollow.

I'll be pedantic and take issue with that.

Pop culture is unable to stand on its own, but once you get past the surface, it's really more of a guidebook to the nature of culture which can rapidly become a very deep exploration if you have the stomach for it.

Art tends to be able to stand on its own outside of the culture it came from.

magicalist3• 14 years ago

Christopher Tolkien can be called many things. He hasn't always done the best job stewarding his father's world, erring on the side of conservatism and disapproving of anyone else's work based on his father's (rightly or wrongly). And he's kind of a jerk.

But the Brian Herbert comparison just means you've never read anything Christopher Tolkien actually published (or you never attempted to read Brian Herbert's terrible terrible work). The only publication where Christopher Tolkien embellished or added to his father's writings was The Silmarillion, published under pressure from their publisher to get it out the door as soon as possible after his father's death and when he was younger (relatively) and less sure about his bargaining position to leave his father's work untouched. The added narrative was mostly connecting prose, meant to keep the story more coherent, and one full chapter replacing a version that was hopelessly out of date compared to the rest of the updates his father had added over decades. He's repeatedly expressed regret about changing The Silmarillion (including again in this article), and has even laid out exactly what he added to the story so you can mentally edit it out.

Every single other book (that would be 13 of them, I believe) that he's published has been literally a written guide to trying to piece together a chronological view of all the undated scraps of rough drafts and notes his father left behind. The only thing he adds are clearly delimited notes about why he thinks some scrap came next and summaries about how some minor change made elsewhere suddenly made ripples of changes through future drafts of other sections, which he then proceeds to include verbatim.

In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work, short of leaving it unpublished. Again, he can be called many things (he really does seem to be like a total jerk, and there's no way any adaptation would have pleased him, even a word-for-word dramatic reading), but comparing him to Brian Herbert and what he did with Dune is beyond the pale.

Yes, Brian Herbert's work is just that bad :)

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

Allow me to clarify that the reminding of Herbert that Tolkien triggers for me is not based upon the quality of the work -- and I think you and I are going to agree on how bad Herbert's is -- it's only the territorial and overbearing defense of a creation not his own, often with ill effect.

In both cases, I wonder if we'd be better off had forward progress in the canon died with the author.

bmuon• 14 years ago

I take it you haven't read The Children of Hurin. It really has no comparison to the rest of Tolkien's work. Compared to the other books and collections, it feels like a John Grisham novel.

msie• 14 years ago

In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work

Odd, from what you just said, it seems he was respectful of his father's work. I just found that sentence hard to parse.

VeejayRampay• 14 years ago

Ahem.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_Tales

Not exactly prime rib eh?

pm902• 14 years ago

I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)

I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.

somewhat <SPOILER ALERT>:

The battle of five armies, which will show up in the last movie is likely to be much more epic than the book, based on Jackson's renditions of other battles of Middle Earth.

</SPOILER ALERT>

I would go one step further: Peter Jackson's adaptation has been nothing short of fantastic. He's been pretty faithful to the LoTR story, but his movies have sparked interest in Tolkein's universe among those who would have never known about it otherwise. None of my friends would even consider reading the Hobbit or LoTR, but they've all seen and enjoyed the movies. (A tiny minority even tried reading the book). Now, its something that we enjoy talking about over many afternoons

WalterBright2• 14 years ago

While I enjoyed the Hobbit movie, I was annoyed by the Jabba the Hut scene, and some of the slapstick that was lifted right out of Laurel and Hardy movies.

SageRaven• 14 years ago

I was greatly peeved at how many times Jackson expanded a 1- or 2-sentence mention in the book into major scenes. See Radagast and the stone giants for prime examples.

I think a PJ-style movie adaptation of The Hobbit would have fared well as a 3-hour theatrical cut, plus some extras for the Super Deluxe Director's Extended Blu-Ray Edition.

And why the hell didn't Bilbo's actual finding of the Ring from The Hobbit match the scene from the first LoTR film? Can't Jackson follow his own freakin' canon?

pdonis10• 14 years ago

I have to disagree, at least about the LoTR films (I haven't seen The Hobbit yet). I think Jackson "adapted" the story out of all recognition. It may well have drawn a larger audience, but the Middle-Earth that the audience is seeing is not the Middle-Earth that Tolkien wrote about.

Just a few points:

(1) The elves in the movies are way too immature. For example, Elrond, who is something like 6500 years old at the time of the War of the Ring, acts in the movies like an angst-ridden middle-aged father in a second-rate TV drama about Arwen wanting to marry Aragorn.

(2) Way too much screen time is spent on stuff that isn't even depicted in the books and adds nothing to the story, such as Saruman breeding the orcs.

(3) There are some major plot changes that make no sense: for example, the part in The Two Towers movie where Aragorn apparently falls off a cliff and is lost. (When I watched the movie in the theater with a friend, who had already seen it and who has been reading Tolkien as long as I have, he told me when it got to this point, "Here's the part you're going to hate.")

(4) The Scouring of the Shire is completely missing; that's an integral part of the plot in the books and omitting it takes away a lot.

Again, if someone is just taking the movies as their own story, without knowing anything about the books, I can see how they would like it; but they're not seeing the same world that Tolkien wrote about.

btilly2• 14 years ago

I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.

I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "pretty good". Enjoyable action movie? Sure. Has all of the right characters? Check. Actually follows the plot? Complete fail.

Off of the top of my head, Bilbo should sign the contract the night before, wake up, and only actually go out because Gandalf comes and tells him that he's late. When Bilbo goes to investigate the trolls, the dwarves have no fire and no idea what is there. It should be Gandalf who gets the trolls to argue with each other, not Bilbo. Azog should not appear in The Hobbit. There should be no encounters with orcs until, possibly, the battle of the 5 armies. There should be no encounter of goblins, or wargs until after visiting Elrond. The dwarves should be made far more welcome - I personally had been looking forward to the Elvish songs they were supposed to be greeted with, and did NOT like seeing a bad repeat of the meeting between Aragorn and Èomer in The Two Towers. Gandalf should leave Rivendell with the party. The white council should not meet while the dwarves are there, nor in the book is there any hint of romance between Gandalf and Galadriel. (Useless trivia, Galadriel is actually Elrond's mother-in-law.) The dwarves should hear the stone giants - but not be caught riding them. In the cave where they were captured, Bilbo wakes, sees goblins in the back, then shouts (which is how Gandalf escapes). He doesn't wake, have an eloquent conversation, then have the floor cave in. The goblin fight sequence is very long, entirely made up, and the goblin cave we see (complete with rickety structures, the messenger, and so on) owes no debt to Tolkien. (Goblins chasing behind, yes. Rivers of goblins coming from all directions being comically killed by every dwarf in sight, not so much.) Bilbo should be lost by the party because he falls off of a dwarf's back while they are running, and not because he managed to avoid initial capture. Bilbo should not meet the goblin that Gollum was killing when he lost the ring. Bilbo should lose his buttons leaving the goblin cave, not squeezing through some random rocks. The whole tree sequence complete with heroic fight, trees being pushed over, and dangling over cliffs...? All made up. As a reminder, in the book the wolves discover them, they hide in trees, Gandalf throws burning pine-cones, the wolves are driven crazy, goblins come, turn the fire on the trees, Gandalf gets ready to pay dearly with his life and then the eagles come and save him.

That's just off of the top of my head. If I was to actually put effort in it, I'm sure I'd come up with a much longer list of differences.

Of all of the changes, the only one that I consider completely justified was making it light enough in the goblin cave fights for people to see. A bunch of running in the dark would not translate to the screen very well.

Random disclaimer. I have no idea how many times I've read the books. But my last two times reading the Hobbit were painfully slow - I read it to my son.

stan_rogers2• 14 years ago

To borrow a phrase from comedian Chris Addison, "[t]his isn't the pot calling the kettle black; this is the kettle calling another kettle a kettle."

Nursie• 14 years ago

Brian Herbert is a hack. IMHO, of course.

I would love to see a production of Dune with the budget and values of LoTR, even just book 1.

But yeah, I would definitely find some things to be annoyed about :)

jpdoctor• 14 years ago

> calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the pot calling the kettle black.

It's a little worse than that.

Compare how the stories were told back in the 80s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y (I saw this in first broadcast, and have probably been singing the song for 3 decades since.)

Peter Jackson wasn't an improvement on this? So let's be clear: This is not about showing respect for the stories. It is about the money.

stcredzero2• 14 years ago

Also: http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm

Evbn9• 14 years ago

What is First Film Syndrome? Seems you invented the term.

monochromatic• 14 years ago

> I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.

So have I, and as much as I wish it could coexist, I'm not sure it really can. For an entire generation, "Lord of the Rings" really pretty just means the movies.

jballanc3• 14 years ago

Honestly, I think the only thing you need to know to understand how the books and the movies differ is that, in the books, the ring is destroyed half-way through the last book...

pdwetz• 14 years ago

I was bummed when they changed the ending; I loved how in the books the Hobbits went back home and kicked ass.

simonh• 14 years ago

I prefer the ending in the film, that the go back to the shire as ordinary folk. That when Sam proposes to his sweetheart he does it not as a conquering hero, but as a humble, nervous young man. "It was the bravest thing he ever did". Perfect.

stan_rogers2• 14 years ago

I don't know... I always thought that Saruman as a cheap hood was the weakest part of the book, and it doesn't really work unless you also take the time in Fellowship to go into the whole Bill Ferny thing, which would lead to Maggot as more than a mention. At some point you have to make the story fit the screen, and I think Jackson did that admirably. Even keeping the Men of the Mountains going until the end of the Battle of Pelennor fields made sense, in that it didn't have to involve the Rangers and another whole army raised elsewhere. It wasn't the original story, but it was an elegant solution to a story-telling problem.

Jare• 14 years ago

I much prefer the movie approach where The Shire and its inhabitants remain largely oblivious to and untouched by all the evil, death and suffering that has happened. It's almost as if everything happened so a little part of the world could remain innocent like a child.

acabal2• 14 years ago

I'm a little torn on this.

On one hand, the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting" (as was Peter Jackson, I believe, which is why he refused to direct the Hobbit movie for such a long time). That's a downright criminal practice and "victims" perfectly describes those unfortunate enough to be targeted.

On the other hand, JRR the man passed away years ago, and his son is almost 90. Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit? How long should his children, and their children, and their children, expect to control and profit off of the work of a long-dead man? (Yes C. Tolkien did some original stuff with Silmarillion and Hurin but we're talking Hobbit and LotR here.)

That's a loaded question and obviously C. Tolkien and companies like Disney think copyright should be eternal. (And no doubt New Line now wishes its own copyright on its little gold mine would remain eternal too.) But personally I think stuff should enter the public domain much more aggressively for the good of culture and society.

In such a world C. Tolkien might have made a little cash for a while, perhaps been happy that his family created a cultural touchstone, and maybe went on to do something original and no doubt productive with his own talent. But we'll never know, and now he's spending his last days growing increasingly embittered because he feels that he's lost control of something he didn't even create in the first place.

zanny• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call it loaded, because the same companies trying to screw over Tolkein Junior want these unlimited copyrights to stifle culture and innovation and hold a vicegrip on information. They are just hypocrites, but that is nothing new, they have been for decades.

If the big businesses get to fuck over every new idea under the sun that borrows from creative works of the last century without a license, the descendent's of the creators of those works that still, by the hands of the same enterprise, inherit the licenses deserve their compensation. It is the house of cards built by Hollywood and they want to live in it.

pekk• 14 years ago

The validity of copyright really isn't the issue here... if anyone and everyone could make Tolkien films then C. Tolkien's desire to get paid might be worth discussing, but that simply isn't the case.

jspthrowaway27• 14 years ago

As a possibly-incorrect point of pedantry, I don't think New Line holds the "rights", though they distributed the film. Doesn't United Artists hold the rights? To be frank, I skimmed Wikipedia before leaving this comment, and I remain unsure.

EDIT: Ah, Saul Zaentz's company, Middle-earth Enterprises, licensed the film rights to New Line. TIL. What a complicated situation.

Turing_Machine• 14 years ago

Ah, yes. Zaentz. The guy who once sued John Fogerty for sounding too much like...himself.

IvyMike2• 14 years ago

> the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting"

I agree with you that this is an amoral practice, but the thing I can never understand: since virtually everyone is aware of this con, how is anyone still taken in by it?

I mean, by all accounts the negotiations for the LOTR rights were tense--but neither Jackson's nor Tolkien's lawyer figured out to put a "percent of box office" clause in there?

thasmin• 14 years ago

It's technically legit. Here's one way they could do it. The movie studio makes no money on the movie. The studio sells the movie to the distribution company for a fixed amount. Then the distribution company made $300 million on it, but that's not part of the contract.

philwelch• 14 years ago

The film rights to Lord of the Rings were sold in the 1960's.

nikcub4• 14 years ago

The LOTR film rights is a separate issue, since that was from decades ago.

But for other films, think of it like with VC terms and startups. The best ideas can dictate their terms and get points on the gross, while the ideas in the middle have to accept a deal where they get points of profit in order to get the film made.

Somebody like Eddie Murphy can demand gross points, while a first time indie filmmaker cannot.

derleth• 14 years ago

> Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit?

Especially in this case.

Do you know why Dungeons and Dragons was able to be so Tolkien-esque without being sued? Because there actually was a court case, decades ago, and the only thing the court ruled that the Tolkien people (I don't know if J.R.R. was still alive at the time) actually owned was the word 'hobbit'. Everything else was taken from the public domain. Hence 'halflings' in all subsequent D&D works.

Not that Dune, to pick an example, was that much more original, but with Tolkien's work it's especially easy to pick out the borrowings.

Evbn9• 14 years ago

The languages and plots were original with Tolkien. The races were not.

Ingaz• 14 years ago

It's not only a question about copyright laws, money, etc.

Popularization of JRR works sometimes disgusting.

The most disgusting thing(for me, and I think I'm not lonely): LONG ELVEN EARS.

JRR almost reinvented elves. He transcend them from butterfly-like insects into unearthly beautiful beings almost like humans, but in every aspect better.

This effort is ruined: now everybody knows that elves are "guys/gals with long ears". Of cause: it's a lot easier to make long ears, than to make ... unearthly beauty.

(Excuse me my Runglish )

braveheart1723• 14 years ago

best comic book guy answer ever

Evbn9• 14 years ago

I thought the Dwarves were the ones that were like humans but better.

stargazer-33• 14 years ago

A quick note about elves: it's a misconception that before Tolkien's work an elf was pictured as a fey. Nordic elves were very Tolkien-ish, for example.

saraid2169• 14 years ago

Elves are totally mentioned in Genesis 6. JRR Tolkien merely gender flipped it.

Elrond is not pleased.

eli_gottlieb4• 14 years ago

I would not say, "in every aspect better". One of the major themes of Lord of the Rings was that the elves are tied to nature but not really to history. They can't evolve as Men and such can, and so as history drags on they just sort of decay with entropy until eventually becoming nothing more than ghost-wraiths, voices on the wind... unless they pass into the Uttermost West, the only place protected from entropy such that elves can exist eternally there.

virtualwhys• 14 years ago

I'm actual a strong advocate of "deferred inheritance", which is to say, when one of your wealthy ancestors donated vast sums of money and/or property to X organisation, his/her descendants implicitly have the right to take it all back at any point in time -- imagine the havoc that would cause ;-)

twelvechairs2• 14 years ago

You are putting the wrong argument to this situation. C. Tolkein is obviously far less concerned regarding the financial situation 'to control and profit off the work of a long-dead man' (in your words) and far more concerned with the disneyfication of the stories and characters. This come across pretty strongly in the article, for example he says "The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing".

The way he chooses to pursue this is denying/restricting crappy productions as far as possible.

I happen to agree that Tolkeins books were quite special and the films pretty run-of-the-mill. I'm not so sure thats a big problem, or one that can be solved using copyright to block other interpretations, however I am sure the primary intent is not monetary.

acabal2• 14 years ago

I understand that he's not primarily concerned with money, but I still think that after a certain, comparatively short amount of time after the creator's death, IP should be released to the public. If the public wants to Disnify it, then so be it; the originals are still around for the rest of us to enjoy. Actually I think this perspective was how copyright was first imagined--it was only recently made outrageous by corporations like Disney.

C. Tolkien seems to disagree, and his desire for complete control over books he didn't even write seems to be both stifling genuine re-imaginings of modern classics by a long-dead author, and making him fairly unhappy.

I'm picking on Tolkien but obviously this applies to a huge amount of IP out there that's in a similar situation.

raverbashing2• 14 years ago

"The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing"

He is wrong but it certainly looks like that.

You don't have to care for the commercialization of the stuff and Happy Meals with Hobbit toys. The aesthetics and philosophy are still there.

anthonyb3• 14 years ago

I might agree with you, except that's it's not really how "the public" sees fit, is it? It's been turned into a Hollywood blockbuster, rather than something closer to the original book.

Why does the movie even have to be "The Lord of the Rings" anyway? Most of the races and themes are fairly well public domain - there were lawsuits around D&D that saw to that. Peter Jackson doing a fantasy action movie would still do well.

teilo• 14 years ago

I sympathize with Christopher. I won't even say that he's wrong to feel the way he does.

However, I do not think what has happened with the films is wrong at all. I think it is a fine and lasting tribute to Tolkien. It has done more than any single thing to introduce a vast audience to this fabulous world and to Tolkien's original work, millions of people that would never have picked up the books otherwise.

kqr2• 14 years ago

With regards to the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy:

  Cathleen Blackburn, lawyer for the Tolkien Estate in 
  Oxford, recounts ironically, "These hugely popular films 
  apparently did not make any profit! We were receiving 
  statements saying that the producers did not owe the 
  Tolkien Estate a dime."

In "Hollywood Accounting", a $19 million movie can make $150 million and still not be profitable.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollyw...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/the_friday_podcast_an...

pm902• 14 years ago

We all know what high ethical standards the movie industry adheres to. The lawyers they hire must be experts in these accounting shenanigans

vidarh• 14 years ago

Their lawyers don't need to be experts: It's trivial. It boils down to buying services and rights from other companies you control, such as production companies for past movies you didn't grant royalties for to channel the revenue straight out again.

tsotha2• 14 years ago

Isn't it amazing how wildly successful films like The Return of the Jedi never made a dime, and yet Hollywood seems eager to make more every year?

TheAmazingIdiot• 14 years ago

I'd like to see this used as evidence that the movie viewing may cost 12$ for a ticket, the movies are actually worth negative dollars.

Use their own tax cheating against themselves.

ojbyrne• 14 years ago

Just to be somewhat fair, the next paragraph describes the Tolkien estate filing a lawsuit and getting 7.5% of the actual profits. Yes, it's still horrible, but it's not that different from Silicon Valley or any other US business.

curiousdannii2• 14 years ago

If films aren't making any profit then how are they being hurt by file sharing?

nikcub4• 14 years ago

you are combining two very broad generalizations there

slowpoke• 14 years ago

I seriously do not understand his problem. I don't like LotR either, but its cultural impact is huge and it does in no way devalue the gigantic literary work that Tolkien has created. Idiotic copyright lawsuits won't change reality, either.

bborud• 14 years ago

I'm sorry, but I think Christopher Tolkien is a pretentious cunt who has wasted his life squeezing the last drops out of his father's writing career. He should have spent his life creating original material rather than fussing endlessly over someone else's creative output.

I think he owes Peter Jackson an apology for pissing on the greatest thing to have happened to the Tolkien books in many decades.

What a whiny asshole.

kostchtchy• 14 years ago

I wish the younger tolkiens were not such artistic snobs and would produce more material for my role playing games- both computer and pen and paper. Moar contentz already. I guess if you're a literary art-snob you retire to France and criticise and rarely produce. Pity

mitchi3• 14 years ago

He really doesn't like the movies Peter Jackson made? Shit. Other authors weren't so lucky with their movies... The LOTR series is a real success.

tsotha2• 14 years ago

How does that make Tolkein lucky? According to the LOTR producers the trilogy didn't make any money, so they don't owe the family anything.

mitchi3• 14 years ago

keep on reading, they got their money in the end. Besides, their books were making piles of bacon

mynameishere• 14 years ago

Stephen King didn't like Kubrick's "The Shining", one of the best book adaptations ever. People just like to complain sometimes.

exodust• 14 years ago

King recently announced a sequel to the Shining, 36 years after the original. Danny is grown up and working in a care centre. All seems well, but then something from Stephen King's brain knocks at the door!

I never liked the LOTR movies for the reasons described. Certain scenes are spectacular, and Gollum is cool, but that's about it for me.

For a great Peter Jackson movie that suits his epic action style, try King Kong.

enneff• 14 years ago

I wish PKD could have lived to see Blade Runner, (the original) Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly. He would have loved them.

mitchi3• 14 years ago

I think too. It's funny you mention PKD because he sold Paycheck $200 and another only $2500

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/philip.html

nikcub4• 14 years ago

PKD did see an early cut of Blade Runner, and commented that it was 'exactly as i'd imagined it', which was ironic since neither Scott nor the art and set design guys had actually read Androids.

edit: Wikipedia says "given an opportunity to see some of the special effects sequences", but i'm certain that Scott says in the documentary that he showed him a complete early cut of the film

Camillo• 14 years ago

Surprisingly, one of the most interesting things on that page is the comment by Thomas John Mosbo explaining a subtle but profound difference between the way the One Ring is destroyed in the book and the way it is destroyed in the movie.

pdonis10• 14 years ago

I noticed this too, and I agree with Mosbo's take on it.

tomasien2• 14 years ago

To call Jackson's work an "evisceration" is just so misguided I can barely stand to read on. J.R.R. Tolkien was an academic of the highest caliber, and it seems his son has retained his love of the more arcane and in-depth aspects of the Middle Earth world. I, personally, agree with them: I find the Silmarillion to be the most interesting work of Middle Earth, but that's only because I'm a massive geek.

As far as a pop-culture and on-screen rendition of the books go, Jackson's work has been superbly loyal to the source literature and to the audience who pays to see them.

This is just straight-out snobbery, and I don't care for it.

marze• 14 years ago

Cartoon physics meets gratuitous story changes. The Jackson films have gone downhill from Fellowship (which wasn't too bad) to the unwatchable Hobbit film.

floody-berry• 14 years ago

It has been loyal insofar as the character's names are the same and occasionally including lines verbatim from the books (although sometimes in the wrong place).

I don't actually know if them myriad of changes, small and large, made the films more accessible to someone who had never read the books, but calling the work "superbly loyal" is laughable - especially the Lord of the Rings "Extended Editions" which contain almost no material from the books whatsoever.

geargrinder3• 14 years ago

While the Jackson films may be entertaining and good in their own right, they aren't very loyal to Tolkien's source material, or even their own canon, as someone else has pointed out.

For a Tolkien fanatic like myself, they are almost unwatchable. I can understand changing details and dialogue because it is a different medium. But Jackson changes the motivations and major actions of many of the main characters in LoTR.

tomasien2• 14 years ago

Ah he has a book coming out. Mystery solved.

teeja• 14 years ago

Never a fan of Tolkien's works, many friends have been, and I still recognize what's not in the movies. But I don't underestimate the power of the literature that moved so many.

It's not diminished one iota by any attempt at a performance in another medium. Some who've not read the originals may be misled about them for a time, just as a great piece of music may be misrepresented by a crappy performance - say, what Karajan did for Beethoven (not saying Jackson did that or not) - but never diminished by it. One is momentary, one is lasting.

beloch• 14 years ago

I don't mean to sound so mean, but I am kind of looking forward to the day when C. Tolkien is "out of the way" and J.R.R's materials (which are hopefully somewhat organized by now thanks to CT) can be turned over to an author who is able to spin a proper tale out of those notes. Middle Earth is a great setting, but it took a consummate story teller to make LOTR into a three-volume page-turner. I'm not terribly interested in reading what CT has published. It's like reading a screenplay for an unfilmed movie or code for an unfinished video game. While it's interesting, it just feels like spoiling what could be a great first-read somewhere down the line.

vowofnow• 14 years ago

"In an era where most people would sell their souls to be talked about..."

What an outlandish and completely rediculous intro. I stopped reading right there.

IvyMike2• 14 years ago

Everything I ever heard on the subject says that Tolkien "wanted to write a mythology for England" when he started writing LOTR.

Mythologies are almost by definition uncontrollable, so the fact that it's taken on a life of its own in a way proves that Tolkien actually succeeded with his initial goal.

wissler• 14 years ago

I have a hard time seeing how the work was "eviscerated" -- last I checked I could still buy the actual work, i.e. Tolkien's books (which I'm sure got a bump in popularity from the movies).

tesmar2• 14 years ago

Anyone wanting to know the perspective in which JRR Tolkein wrote his fantasy ought to read this PDF:

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien...

You should be able to then judge whether or not the movies have done justice to the spirit in which his books were written. Judge for yourself as C. Tolkein may or may not be right.

After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong. It helps to know the mind of the one you are reading.

pdonis10• 14 years ago

After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong.

I read this essay years ago (in The Tolkien Reader), and I couldn't disagree more. If the standard is being faithful to the spirit in which Tolkien wrote, I think the movies got a lot wrong and very little right. There's plenty of discussion of this elsewhere in the thread so I won't belabor it, but I'm surprised that anyone could read "On Fairy-Stories" and think that that spirit is what the films portray. The films are Hollywood action movies with a "fantasy" veneer; Tolkien's essay was talking about something very different.

stcredzero2• 14 years ago

> Over the years, a sort of parallel universe has formed around Tolkien's work, a world of sparkling images and of figurines, colored by the original books of the cult, but often very different from them, like a continent that has drifted far from its original land mass.

I much prefer the Legend of the Seeker author's attitude toward the television adaptation: The story in the two different mediums are each their own separate things, to be enjoyed in their own separate ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Truth#TV_series_ad...

Let's face it, there are certain people who will read the books and enjoy them for what they are. Then there are other people who won't read the books but will see the movies. What difference does it make?

As for the "Hollywood accounting," that's unfortunate. All parties in a deal should feel they benefit, and none should feel hey have short shrift.

corporalagumbo2• 14 years ago

A lot of "tough shit" responses here. I like to sympathise with sensitive people - I think Tolkien was clearly a very sensitive, quiet, private man, and Christopher similarly. I don't think Tolkien ever imagined his work becoming as popular and mass-culture as it did. He took it so seriously I think it would have shocked him. And from the way this article describes it, Tolkien's work formed the bedrock of a very sensitive, private, tender father-son relationship - and that bedrock is now being smeared around every cinema and toystore in the world. Rightly or wrongly, that must hurt a lot for Christopher.

Perhaps nothing should be allowed to remain private. Perhaps privacy is an affront to the rights of the people. But I don't think so. I think everyone has special, private things from their lives - special things they would be upset to see appropriated and distorted at will by other people with little to no understanding or reverence for the meaning those things hold to you. Christopher is only different because the things that made his childhood special and to which he feels protective have become an unstoppable blockbuster film series.

Hell, I can sympathise. Maybe it's just snobbery, but damned if I don't feel disgusted by the shameless, opportunistic faux-Tolkienism whipped up by by New Zealanders in the wake of the films. Nobody in New Zealand gave a shit about Tolkien before the movies. It was only when people realised that it was going to be huge that suddenly everyone became a lifelong Tolkien fan and every farmer next to a film site was running a Hobbit tour... You know, my grandpa read The Hobbit to me when I was young, and he even has a photo from when he met Tolkien (before the books took off.)

Edit: On another note, I think it's a bit rich for Hackernews readers to criticise Christopher for snobbery/possessiveness - after all, the whole bloody point of Hackernews is to discourage average internet users, prevent that 'Eternal September' thing - and maintain a conversation to an elite-defined standard. Everyone has their own snobbish preferences I think.

ramblerman• 14 years ago

"Perhaps nothing should be allowed to remain private. Perhaps privacy is an affront to the rights of the people. But I don't think so."

What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with privacy. Tolkien sold his books publicly and then sold the rights for the movies.

We can certainly argue about the quality, and correctness of the films, as well as the due compensation to the Tolkien estate. But privacy, really?? It's not like hollywood execs snuck in and recorded these bedtime stories in the dark. They were sold by their owner.

corporalagumbo2• 14 years ago

I wasn't talking about the legal situation. I was trying to sympathise with why this man might feel wounded - after all, he was young when that decision was made, and he didn't make it. And neither he nor Tolkien everimagined how big LotR would become. But he still has to accept and deal with something very private and special to him being reshaped and reappropriated for the whole world, in a way completely alien to his own feelings about the works.

Like I said, maybe he is wrong to feel possessive, maybe not. But I still think just writing him off as a hyper-sensitive, overly-possessive snob, as a few HN readers have done, is very mean-spirited.

smky802• 14 years ago

I read a lot of comments that people felt the movies were pretty loyal to the books, so I thought I would add my own little rant to add some perspective for those who maybe read the LOTR books when they were ~15 or so and never read the Silmarillion.

The movies are fairly loyal to the books from a pure "action" perspective, in that they're about some midgets that find a ring and try to drop it in a volcano, there's a wizard, a ranger who's supposed to be a king, some elves and dwarves and stuff, and some battles, etc ...

The movies are NOT loyal at all to the broader mythology and spiritual aspects of Tolkien's world. The movies are full of scenes where these aspects are sacrificed in order to add very tiny bits of drama and action.

Case in point: Elrond's racist rant in "The Two Towers" movie to his Elf daughter Arwen, trying to convince her not to marry the mortal Man Aragorn. Look, I get it from a screenwriter's perspective: it adds some drama to the Aragorn/Arwen love story (which doesn't get much play in the books), it modernizes the story a bit to add the racism angle, and Elrond is a minor character in the movies anyway, so why not make him a Heel?

The problem from a broader perspective in the Tolkien universe is that Elrond (the Half-elven) is himself a descendant of Elves, Men, and Maiar (angels). His ancestors are among the great heroes of the First Age of the world. And in fact the reason why Sauron's boss isn't ruling the world at the time of LOTR is because Elrond's half-elf dad went himself to the Gods to request their help, on behalf of both Elves and Men. He was returning to the Gods a jewel containing the original Light of the world, that Elrond's human great-great-grandfather rescued from the Devil so he could marry Elrond's elf/angel great-great-grandmother. Oh, and Aragorn is a direct descendant of Elrond's brother Elros. And Elrond himself had lived 6000+ years by the time of LOTR and had fought alongside Men at the end of the Second Age.

From that perspective, the scene in the TTT movie, and the characterization of Elrond in general, is ridiculous. And the movies are full of these sorts of changes, where a little bit of drama/action is added at the expense of RUINING the story from the broader perspective of Tolkien's mythology.

anthonyb3• 14 years ago

dwarf tossing!

Digit-Al• 14 years ago

I would say two things in response to this.

Firstly, think of the plight of the screenwriter who has to a) adapt a story that will take most people about a week to read into a three hour film; and b) has to create something that will make lots of money. I can completely understand the resentment felt at a beloved book being turned into a very different film - I have seen a number of well liked stories turned into something completely different (see my next point). I think you just have to view film adaptations as a completely different product.

Secondly, there is a long history of books being turned into films that do not bear much relation to the original work. A few examples from my own life. The Stephen King novella "The Running Man" was turned into a film that contained the same themes, but was a very different story. The film "The Lawnmower Man" was also taken from a Stephen King short story of the same name. The story of the film bore absolutely no relation to the film, and to this day I can't work out how they could possibly draw any relation between the two. A long time ago I hired a video of a Dean R Koontz story called "Watchers". I had enjoyed the book and jumped at the chance to see a film adaptation. I was to be disappointed. What I watched, whilst having the name of the book was not an adaptation of that book - the story was completely different. I can only think that they wanted the name of a popular author to help sell their shoddy film.

smky802• 14 years ago

Yeah I get it. My point is just that a lot of people consider the movies to be fairly loyal to the books, and I have to agree with Christopher Tolkien that they really do "eviscerate" the story and aren't much more than action movies aimed at 15-25 year olds. That's not to say other people can't enjoy them, many do.

I've thought a lot about how I would do the LOTR movies or the Silmarillion as a TV series if I had the chance! And I really think the choices Peter Jackson made suggest (1) a weak understanding of the source material, and (2) not an especially strong film-making ability, and nothing PJ's done since LOTR has convinced me otherwise.

shmerl• 14 years ago

While I usually prefer film adaptations to be as truthful to the original as possible, I think in order to be be good films, they sometimes need to introduce something new. A simple example mentioned in the article are women. I don't really understand what they complain about. While book story can ignore some aspects of the world, visual film is a different matter. Imagine picturing Dale without showing any women. While Tolkien doesn't speak about female Dwarves for example, ignoring them completely while picturing refugees would be simply unnatural. The same goes about Elves and etc.

However not all changes are the same. When characters are changed in some weird manner, which makes them very different from the books - it already becomes bothering and there is simply no justifying reason for it, except for director's ego. In the Lord Of The Rings there were several such examples. For example Aragorn, Boromir and Frodo were changed in a big way. Their actions in the film didn't match their characters from the book (i.e. for their book versions it'd be unnatural to do certain things which they did in the film). So I partially agree with criticism, but only partially. Making a carbon copy of the book probably wouldn't make a good film.

generalseven• 14 years ago

This article says Chris Tolkien hasn't spoken to the press in about 40 years.

Consider what the hacker community was like forty years ago, and the meaning that LOTR had to this community forty years ago compared to now.

I could be wrong, but maybe that could be what Chris Tolkien means by "eviscerated."

My Father's "Eviscerated" work - Son of J.R.R. Tolkien finally speaks out

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