From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #204 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, December 29 2001 Volume 03 : Number 204 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: LOTR, yeah with some spoilers ["David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: LOTR, yeah with some spoilers At 11:00 PM 12/27/2001 , I wrote: >The first volume has, I think, except for a >few glimpses in the distance NO onstage orcs. Boy, was that stupid. The battle in Moria, of course. Sorry about that. Yet the main point is still valid: the film way over-emphasizes the orcs, in a way more appropriate to the sequels. And if Jackson likes orcs that much, who knows how much further overemphasized they will be in the sequels. All we learn in _Fellowship_ about orcs in Isengard is Gandalf's statement that "wolves and orcs are housed there." That's it. The battle at the end of the movie is also handled differently. First, in the book it's at the start of v.2: I can understand why Jackson moved it, but still, it fits a different part of the story. Secondly and more importantly, in the book it takes place entirely offstage: we only learn what happens by sound in the distance, and then from Aragorn arriving after it's all over. That Aragorn fights an orc in the movie, the main _factual_ change, is not the important one. The important one is the complete change of tone by emphasizing it, lengthening it, putting it on stage, and dwelling on the orcs. Jackson is fascinated by orcs. (So is Alan Lee, his designer, judging from the choice of subjects in his illustrated LOTR.) Tolkien was not. To Tolkien, orcs were just spear-carriers, bad guys because you've got to have armies of bad guys in this premise. And that's why we have the insoluble problem of whether orcs are irredeemably evil, because Tolkien didn't give much attention to the problem. He gave more serious thought to the moral role of the Men in Sauron's service, even though they hardly appear at all. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #204 *****************************