A Battle of Five Blogs — Why I would have filmed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in the North

On December 17, 2014December 1, 2017 By matthewrettinoIn Essays7 Comments

With the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies in theatres this week, some of my MythCon friends and I decided to participate in A Battle of 5 Blogs. We will all be posting about the movie, which concludes Peter Jackson’s trilogy. Although I have heard rumours of Jackson’s plans to make The Silmarillion, for the time being, it looks like this is the end of the epic journey that began at the turn of the century with the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

You can find links to the other blogs below.

Jim Moffet’s A Tolkienist’s Perspective @TolkienistView

Sorina Higgins’s The Oddest Inkling @Oddest_Inkling

Crystal Hurd CrystalHurd.com @Doctorhurd

Kat Sas of Raving Sanity @Katherine_Sas

And Brenton Dickieson’s A Pilgrim in Narnia @BrentonDana

When I think of the beauty of The Lord of the Rings films, one thing strikes me above all else. The landscape.

After more than a decade of the films, the panoramic shots of the Misty Mountains and the River Anduin still leave me with an impression of the sublime. While the soundtrack rushes by with the familiarity of an old song, the landscape still leaves me with an impression of the great, epic tenor of Tolkien’s trilogy. When Howard Shore’s musical scores echo that majesty, they become one with the landscape itself. I get goosebumps at just thinking of seeing that world from an Eagle’s-eye view, and I become reminded of the glories of my adolescent years–yes, there was some glory to them–bringing me right back to the trip I made in 2008 to New Zealand (and Australia) for World Youth Day.

Middle-Earth, a secondary-world surrogate for Europe and England, was filmed mostly in that absolutely beautiful country. During its colonial history, it was imagined as the England of the Antipodes, since the rolling green hills of the Waikato Valley so resemble the cozy English landscape. It’s no wonder, then, that Jackson would chose New Zealand–a more sublime England–to film the narrative through which Tolkien intended to build a mythic past for his country.

When I was there in 2008, I didn’t see any of the great mountains, but I did step gingerly across a sheep dung-strewn lawn in the rain to see a couple of hills with white boards cut out to look like Hobbit holes–what remained of Hobbiton after the camera crews had gone. Still, you couldn’t mistake the bizarre and oddly disorienting feeling that you were standing where the village had once been, now once again serving its purpose as a shepherd’s farm. How the powers of Movie Magic must have transformed it! It was like being in two places at once.

Throw in that this land is home to the Maori, and you begin looking for the tip of a wharenui (a village meeting house) to suddenly appear on the Anduin’s west bank. Of course you never see one, but the truth that the Maori had their own tales of elves, fairies, and dragons in their oral traditions lends a certain aura to the landscape of Aotearoa (“land of the long white cloud”; what the Maori call New Zealand, or ‘Middle-Earth’). Whatever way you slice it, New Zealand is an enchanted land.

So, you might ask me if I’d return to New Zealand if I got dropped with a $100 million check to film a remake. Despite my immense enthusiasm for New Zealand, I would politely answer, “No.”

New Zealand worked for Peter Jackson. But to craft my retelling of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I would likely film in the Northern Hemisphere. Not that I would object to doing a little filming on the North or South Island, if it was necessary, but the trademark of my new film franchise would be to underscore the harshness of Middle-Earth. The ideal place to achieve this effect would be to film in Iceland and the Nordic countries (along with–just maybe–Northern Canada).

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were both greatly influenced by the poetry of Old Norse and Celtic mythology, which mixed together like yin and yang in Tolkien’s work. While the sections inspired by Norse myth–The Battle of the Black Gate, Moria, Helm’s Deep–can be characterized as part of a more ‘masculine’ worldview of doom and glory, the parts drawn from Celtic myth–Lothlorien is the chief example–draw on ‘feminine’ nature- and art-centered systems of meaning. Both strands of influence blend together to create a mix of the apocalyptic and the joyful, of the inescapably sad and the sacrificially heroic. No happy ending arrives without cost to the hero.

What about this place in Iceland as a location for Moria?

Tolkien blends the tradition of götterdämerung–‘the Death of the Gods’–from Norse mythology, with the Celtic sense of fay magic being in continual decline. He Christianizes it using the Apocalyptic imagery of the Book of Revelation. His intention to create a myth for England ties the worlds invoked in The Lord of the Rings firmly to the weather-beaten, hard Northern tribes and nations of the late classical and medieval periods. These included the Celts of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as the Vikings of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

Following this historical logic, I would film a remake of The Lord of the Rings in the countries from which Tolkien’s source material came. I would film the Hobbiton scenes in Merry Olde England, since The Shire is so obviously English. But as soon as Frodo and Same draw closer to Mordor, the landscape would become increasingly treacherous and Nordic. Witness the number of volcanoes in Iceland, and you’ll see what I mean. Although Iceland does not have the lush forests of New Zealand, it would lend a stark, weather-beaten atmosphere to the film that would contrast with Peter Jackson’s luscious cinematography.

The bare rock faces in Northern Scotland and Iceland would lend a bare-bones feel to the movie and might upset audience expectations with its minimalism, but it could do so in a good way. In emphasizing the Norse character of Tolkien’s trilogy, the landscape could add a certain Game of Thrones Winter-Is-Coming vibe, in addition to leaving the camera to focus more intimately on the characters and their speeches. One aspect moviegoers miss out on, when they haven’t read The Lord of the Rings–or if they have forgotten it largely because they’d read it so long ago, like me–is how much of the novel is people giving speeches.

Who could forget Aragorn’s dialogue with the Uruk-hai at Helm’s Deep? Nearly everyone, actually. Including Peter Jackson, who left out the dialogue for obvious reasons. It would have been weird. Aragorn just entering a lyrical dialogue with the Uruk-hai, even in an antagonistic way, would have made about as much sense as including the Tom Bombadil scenes. However, these quirky bits–some but not all of which appear in the Warner Brothers’ animated films–are inseparable from the experience of reading Tolkien. I had to do a lot of slogging as a 13-year-old to get through all that, but I did manage to get through it. Not all of Tolkien’s poetry is great but his prose dialogue is certainly worth taking a second look at.

My production–if I am to have full control of it–would not be encumbered by the expectations of a popular audience. In one sense, this makes it an impossible project, since a box office hit is usually the only way to convince Hollywood to give you the $100 million budget you need. Yet, in this utopian world, I would not only chose to film in the North, but emphasize Tolkien’s Shakespearean language and his sense of comedy and tragedy.

I would link Tolkien to the great English tradition of literature that stretches back to the Bard, Christopher Marlowe, and John Milton. I’d make Gollum into a Caliban, Saruman into a Faustus, and Sauron into a Satan. The minimalism of the Icelandic landscape would act as the minimalism of the Globe Theatre’s stage. It would be a grand performance indeed. Throw in the fact that so many of the actors in The Lord of the Rings have training as Shakespearean actors, and you would have a more artistic version of The Lord of the Rings than Jackson could have ever risked producing.

Newfoundland would also be a prime filming location. How about the Tablelands as Rohan?

Yet the stark landscape would not all be bare rock, volcanoes, and ice. If you have ever been North in the summertime, or have seen pictures of it, as I have, then you will know that there is, actually, a colour palette up there. Red moss coats the valleys of Ellesmere Island, and Northern Quebec is full of endless pine forests that could serve for an interesting interpretation of Mirkwood. There would still be room for the Misty Mountains in Iceland. And the Scottish Highlands are just begging to be filmed. These locations would make no sacrifice of cinematographic excellence. There would simply be a stronger sense of authenticity to the setting and to Tolkien’s voice as an author.

I’m not the first–and nor will I be the last–blogger to offer my opinion on how I would have filmed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit differently. I’m also not the only one who feels that the Dungeons-and-Dragons/Twilight feel–a contrasting mix!–of the recent Hobbit movies were an insincere treatment of Tolkien’s children’s story. However, I do not blame Peter Jackson for this. He had to meet the expectations of his mass audience. He has succeeded as an entertainer, and I appreciate that Hollywood is a difficult place from which to work as an artist. Yet, without being so tethered–in some kind of moviemaking utopia where I could make a multi-million dollar indie fantasy film–I would have filmed The Lord of the Rings while drawing out the rhythms and cadences of the North.

When I hear Howard Shore’s soundtrack in Jackson’s film, when I seen the landscapes of New Zealand, I am submerged into a world that has the same degree of literary dignity as the most significant works of English, like Hamlet, or–perhaps especially–Beowulf. Goethe’s Faust and Dante’s Divine Comedy might also make this list. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, even though it largely maintained an epic tenor, still seems too small a narrative to fill that vast world entirely. Perhaps this is as due to over-familiarity with the movies as anything. To recover our sense of Tolkien’s language and landscape, my film would attempt to achieve a deeper, dramatic resonance that would encounter those mountains, lakes, and forests.

Mt. Odin on Baffin Island. Fairly self-explanatory Nordic connection and cinematographic value! — Mt. Odin on Baffin Island, Canada. Fairly self-explanatory Nordic connection and cinematographic value! Odin was the chief god of the Norse pantheon. There is also a Mt. Thor and Mt. Asgard.

Picture Credits:

Newfoundland: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tablelands_Landscape_Newfoundland.jpg

Iceland: http://pixabay.com/en/svartifoss-waterfall-basalt-iceland-108039/

New Zealand: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Udsigt_new_zealand2.jpg

Baffin Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Odin

MythCon 45 Day 2: Where does fantasy fit?

On September 19, 2014October 10, 2014 By matthewrettinoIn MythCon 2014Leave a comment

Richard C. West, Scholar Guest of Honour

Day 2 of MythCon began Saturday morning. After breakfast, I really came to appreciate how many people had come to Wheaton College. In addition to seeing many of the faces I saw on Friday, Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, was there.

Allow me to explain one thing about this guy: I first listened to his podcast years ago, likely when I was still at Dawson College in Liberal Arts, and from him, I first learned about Tolkien’s “On Faerie-Stories” and eucatastrophe. I had no idea previously how to read Tolkien through a critical lens, but listening to Olsen’s podcasts gave me the vocabulary. Only this was years and years before I got serious with my Honours thesis. I was listening to the podcasts for intellectual pleasure, but it planted a seed, and that seed grew. Pretty well, you could say Olsen indirectly inspired this blog.

After breakfast, our first order of the day: Scholar Guest of Honour Richard C. West gave his talk “Where does fantasy fit?” This question was the theme of the conference. West has been a Tolkien scholar since the 60s and his 1970 book Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist became a key source for subsequent bibliographies.

Tolkien associated “green suns” with faerie–two words that describe the nonexistent is what fundamentally lies behind the structure of fantasy. Opening with this remark, West proceeded to give an early history of the fantasy genre. He gave a catalogue of fantasy novels including Starplex by R.J. Sawyer (a sci-fi novel which contains a green sun), James Stevens’ Deidre, E.R. Eddison’s Worm Ouroboros, Mervyne Peak’s Gormenghast trilogy, T.H. White’s Once and Future King, and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, which inspired Michael Moorcock’s Elric series. Throughout his talk, he attempted to show how fantasy and science fiction have always grown together as a genre.

Next was a panel talk: “College-level Tolkien: Teaching Middle-Earth Sixty Years Later.” Brian Walter moderated and Chip Crane, Verlyn Flieger, Kristine Larsen, and Corey Olsen were answering our questions. Crane talked about how he uses the films to teach the books: for example, analyzing why Peter Jackson made Arwen summon the river to wash away the Black Riders, rather than having Frodo make his heroic stand alone, as he does in the book. Kristine Larsen talked about using Tolkien as a lead-in to scientific discussion in the classroom–the early chapters describing creation in The Silmarillion are a text in point. Verlyn Flieger had been smuggling Tolkien into the classroom almost from the time the books first came out. She takes Tolkien as a war writer, no less relevant to modernity as Hemingway. In his playing with language, Tolkien is similar to James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake. I’d have to read Joyce to confirm that.

Comparing Tolkien to the Modernists certainly does sound like a brilliant strategy–and possibly awarding as an MA thesis. But Tolkien studies does have its pitfalls–Olsen told us many non-scholars register for classes at the Mythgard Institute, expecting an easy saunter. At the same time as you shouldn’t dumb Tolkien down as a teacher, you must be careful and precise when dealing with his works as a scholar.

Eleanor Simpson presented an excellent paper after lunch, “Tolkien’s Evolution and Clarification in his Portrayal of Nature through Fantasy: Foreshadowing Critical Animal Theory and Anti-Speciesism.” Speciesism is the prejudice or bias towards your own species, versus the interests of another species (ducks, rabbits, trees, aliens). Referring to the theoretical work of Peter Singer, Simpson gave a structured analysis of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, describing how Tolkien represents animal, plants, and rocks differently in either book.

Although Old Man Willow in LOTR is a tree described as a menace, Treebeard is the epitome of the dignity Tolkien saw in trees. The author’s evolution, or progression, towards anti-speciesism is irregular, but he does become more of an eco-writer in LOTR. Whereas The Hobbit contains the skin-changer Beorn, a bear who is significant to the quest only because he has another form, a man, The Lord of the Rings contains an little-know episode with a fox. The fox approaches Frodo and Sam, who are sleeping in a forest clearing, sniffs around for food, and wonders what danger in the wood could have brought the hobbits to sleep in the open. He then runs away to quest for more food. The episode is striking because the fox is fully his own character, with his own motivation (to find food and determine if there is a danger in the wood). Although Tolkien anthropomorphizes the spiders in The Hobbit, Shelob in The Lord of the Rings is fully a spider, and Sauron’s peer.

Ryan Lawrence’s talk “Tolkien’s Creative Process: Retelling and Expanding Norse Saga in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” rather than focusing on how the author invented his own stories, focused on a description of his use of source texts. After all, Tolkien is an “unoriginal” author. Or perhaps “traditional” is the right word: rather than inventing his own, new stories, he constantly returns to old, make that very old, texts.

In the Codex Rigius, there is a story of Sigurd, Germanic hero of the Volsunga Saga, but a “great lacunae,” or gap, has caused about 8 pages to become lost. Scholars have been puzzling over this lost piece of narrative. What story fit within this break with the text? Tolkien’s creative juices flow whenever presented with these kind of gaps, the empty, silent spaces of history. In his own treatment of the Volsunga Saga, Tolkien elevates the figure of Sigurd to Christ, redeeming the pagan Norse gods–perhaps paving the way to Aragorn’s character. To aid his work, Tolkien only had the translation provided by William Morris and Erikr Magnusson, whose text was in English couplets. Tolkien, a poetic translator badass, made his poem into alliterative verse to keep it consistent with Germanic style.

To close the day, I attended a final paper presentation by Rebecca McCurdy, “Comedy, Tragedy, Romance: A Study of Tolkien’s Eucatastrophe.” How does eucatastrophe fit in a genre that mixes comedy, tragedy, and romance? This was a presentation I knew I must attend, given McCurdy’s focus on eucatastrophe and her angle on genre, which was not dissimilar to the theory behind my Honours thesis. McCurdy–not to mention one comment made during the earlier panel–made me rethink my Honours thesis, a little.

Even in the happily-ever-after faerie-story, a comedy, eucatastrophe is constantly in a tension with catastrophe, or tragedy. So saying catastrophe cannot blend into a eucatastrophic novel is technically not true. Happy endings and trying times exist in all fairy tales. Besides, plenty of modern authors have written catastrophic fantasy that is not quite horror or absurdism–we call it dark fantasy. Furthermore, McCurdy challenged me further with her example from C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, which highlighted how eucatastrophe needs catastrophe in order to become “joy beyond the walls of the world, as poignant as grief” (“On Faerie-Stories”). I may need to refine my thesis, or at least add a footnote as a disclaimer!

As if that wasn’t enough for a day, after dinner, we had a collaborative reading of Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf. Since I, alas, did not take any Old English courses, I could not read the original, but I did get up to read a translated paragraph where Beowulf does battle with Wiglaf, his ward, against the dragon.

Following this, I has a Sam Adams in the hospitality room and had a conversation with Corey Olsen. I also struck up rapport with Sorina Higgins, whose Twitter account @Oddest_Inkling is all about the Christian-occultist Charles Williams and his wild, genre-bending works of fiction. I also noticed my earlier acquaintance Mark Williams was up for an award–a Mythopoeic Award for his hilarious novel Sleepless Nights. The only way to describe it is as a cross between Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Remains of the Day. It is the most British book in the universe, and it is told from the perspective of King Arthur’s butler. (In the end, disappointingly, when the announcements happened on Sunday, Mark did not win. But then again, Neil Gaiman, who was nominated, did not win either. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker took home the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature.)

And so ended another brilliant day at MythCon!

Stay tuned to hear all about Sunday–and how my presentation went!

Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia

7 Ways in which Saruman is like John Dee

On December 20, 2013December 17, 2013 By matthewrettinoIn literature8 Comments


The Vinciolo Journal turns 1 year old January 5th, two days after J.R.R. Tolkien’s Birthday, so in celebration of both events, I am making a series of Tolkien-related posts. This is the first of several … 7 ways Saruman resembles Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer and geographer John Dee.

In comparing these two figures (the visual similarities are themselves suggestive), I am in no way trying to slander John Dee or imply that he was a maniacal, power-crazed wizard. He was a humble, lonely man–as lonely as any man favoured of the Queen could possibly be, although his intellectual influence had enormous implications, not least with regard to the colonization of the New World. However, there are so many similarities between these two magicians that it cannot be easily ignored.

So, without further ado, here is my list:

1. Physical resemblance to Christopher Lee

Not only is John Dee a magician, but he looks like a wizard himself–and Christophe Lee portrayed the wizard Saruman with exquisite tact in The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. The flat gaze and the white beard are the chief forms of resemblance between the actor and wizard. Although Dee’s hair is not as long Lee’s Saruman, his hair may still be white, provided he is not bald beneath the black bonnet he’s wearing in his portrait. Set Saruman in black robes and attach a starched ruff around his throat and, after a haircut, you basically have John Dee.

2. Crystal balls

Saruman has his palantír while John Dee has his shewstone. Both are crystal balls they use for magically surveying the land. Made by Fëanor, greatest of the Noldor and maker of the Silmarils, the palantír stones were mostly lost in Middle Earth, except for a few. The stone seen in the film is at Orthanc in Isengard, the same stone Saruman uses to communicate with Sauron and keep track of the progress of the Fellowship of the Ring. There is another stone in that the steward of Gondor controls at Minas Tirith. As for the shewstone, or “seeing stone,” of John Dee, it is displayed currently at the British Museum. You can see it if you like. Rumour has it that it is a sacred Aztec polished obsidian stone taken from Mexico during the Spanish conquest.

John Dee's Shewstone at the British Museum — John Dee’s shewstone at the British Museum

palantir — Saruman and the Palantir of Orthanc

3. Spoke with ‘angels’

The warning Gandalf gave Saruman about the palantír, that “you never know who else might be watching,” is also applicable to Dee’s shewstone. Both crystal balls give you the power to speak with spirits–but also for the spirits to talk to you. Dee and Edward Kelley used the shewstone to communicate with angels, who gave Dee revelations from the world of the dead. Supposedly, the angelic language Dee developed called Enochian came as a result from such spiritual meetings.

In a similar way, Saruman uses his palantír to speak with a fallen ‘angel,’ Sauron. Indeed, The Silmarillion reveals that Sauron is a god-like or at least angelic being. He is one of the Maiar, the spirits who serve the Valar, though one who became corrupted by evil in his service to the Great Enemy Morgoth. When Saruman begins to peer into his palantír in search of knowledge, he discovers the Ring of Power, which he comes to desire for himself. However, he becomes twisted, desiring power above all else. In the end, he betrays the forces of the West and captures Gandalf in his tower, committing “the treason of Isengard.”

4. Consorted with a necromancer

This one was implied in #3. Edward Kelley was a necromancer who communed with angels and the dead. On the other hand, Saruman communicates with “the Necromancer,” which is a name given to the vague, evil presence that lurks in the shadows of Mirkwood in The Hobbit and later is revealed to be Sauron himself. Supposedly, Sauron was into demon summoning and raising the dead back to life at this time, instead of leading orcs to war against Gondor.

5. Polymath Wizards

Saruman and John Dee were both wizards of great learning and were capable (or thought they were capable) of using magic. Furthermore, both wizards possessed plenty of non-magical knowledge. Dee was a mathematician, cartographer, and mechanic, once in his younger years designing a bird with artificial wings that could fly. Saruman was something of a chemist as well, designing the gunpowder which his uruk-hai use to demolish the walls of Helm’s Deep.

6. Spy Network

Astonishingly, both John Dee and Saruman had spy networks. Frodo and company must worry about spies from the White Wizard as much as they worry about Sauron’s own Black Riders. In addition to the ruffians Sauron employs to infiltrate and scourge the Shire in The Return of the King, he has a swarm of crows called Crebain, which he uses to spy on the Fellowship. John Dee’s spy network consisted of a network of foreign agents abroad, many probably on the lookout for Catholics plotting in France to return to England and kill the Queen. He may also have used spirits and the magic of his shewstone to spy on enemies abroad.

7. Similarity to John Faust

At last, Saruman and John Dee are both so attracted by mysterious power that they make deals with the devil they later severely regret. They have what I call a Faust complex. Doctor John Faust was a historical scholar in Germany who is said to have made a deal with the devil, whom he summons at a crossroads at midnight in a necromantic ritual, in order to attain forbidden knowledge of magic. In the end, after squandering his time, Faust is dragged to hell by demons. His story has been adopted innumerable times: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust Parts I and II by Goethe being the two chief examples. The Godfather is another takeoff on this archetypical story: Michael Corleone makes a “deal with the devil” to enter the mob and then remains locked in, becoming supremely powerful at the price of his soul.

Saruman’s deal with Sauron is a similar complex. “There is only one Lord of the Rings,” warns Gandalf, “and he does not share power.” Saruman learns how to breed uruk-hai from Sauron and plans to ravage Middle-Earth for his new master, planning to find the One Ring for himself and become master of all. But in the end, his designs fall flat. When nature rebels and the Ents take over Isengard, a powerless Saruman is force to flee to the Shire, where he avenges himself by desolating the land. Finally (spoilers here), his longtime servant Gríma Wormtongue stabs him in the back, frustrated by his own master’s cruelty.

John Dee’s Faustian narrative is a little less extreme. Of course, his story is not fantasy, but historical. Nonetheless, Dee makes a deal with Edward Kelley to speak with angels and becomes mystified. Actually, scholars now believe Kelley created an elaborate hoax: Dee never spoke to angels directly, but through Kelley, who they supposedly possessed. Kelley may well have faked the whole thing, however. Upon his return to England, he became unable to acquire aristocratic patronage, probably because many could not see the value in his knowledge, or because they were frightened by his connections to the occult. When he died, it was of natural causes and in poverty. Real life often doesn’t follow the contours of archetypical plots. Nonetheless, Dee’s gradual isolation and loneliness as a result of his ties to the occult might have seemed damnation enough to him.