Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!

"I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." ~John 15:15

The Paschal greeting/Easter acclamation in multiple languages

Tamriel's Loremaster - It's A Real Job!

I suddenly realized yesterday that I'm going to be a Loremaster when I grow up.  When not plugging away at the thesis, I happily spend my breaks gathering fluff and data from Star Wars, Warhammer, Fable and, more recently, The Elder Scrolls, compiling my findings into lists and charts as I daydream about fanciful realms and high doings of eternal fame.  This I do in my free time, and then just for fun.  For Lawrence Schick, it's a living.

The Loremaster of Tamriel hip take on Col. Sanders!

The UK edition of WIRED has the story, interviewing Loremaster Schick as the anticipated Elder Scrolls Online makes its debut.  Schick's job is to imagine things, and manage a team of imaginers, who craft characters, books, and trivia in order to spice up the world of Tamriel.  I suppose there are some games that require no insight to understand the situation - I once knew a guy who had no idea about the storyline of his own Call of Duty game, perhaps out of loyalty to the argument that, "if they are shooting at you, then shoot back" - but for worlds as in-depth as Tamriel or Azeroth, fluff is more than half the point, and at least as much the fun.  The loremaster occupies an enviable position, spending his days dreaming and conducting meetings about NPC names and dialogue, and enjoys a resume packed full of work experience in all manner of RPG backgrounds.  Though I certainly can't speak for others, I confess that any interview wherein they ask "are you an Elder Scrolls fan?" is one in which I would happily find myself.

Serious Dwarves

Although I have expressed disappointment about the newest interpretations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, this blog post by J.J. Cohen makes a fascinating argument in the movies' favor - at least insofar as dwarves are concerned. 

Therein, Cohen points out that, unlike much pop culture, or even Tolkien, Peter Jackson has created an epic for the dwarfish perspective, one that takes those of lesser stature seriously and awards them their place in the spotlight (maybe, you'll see.)  I most certainly agree, for once wishing that I could be Thorin when I grow up - not that I should sell my soul to a shiny gem, develop a manic obsession with defeating an unbeatable firelizard, and endanger all my friends in the process; rather I want to let my hair go, cultivate an enormous beard, and go traipsing about exotic locals while shod in heavy leather boots and bedecked in chain mail and a roomy overcoat lined with rabbit pelts.  Might be fun.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of All that is Good and Holy

I’m going to have to rescind that waiver from Purgatory for Mr. Jackson.  Having seen The Desolation of Smaug and the total overhaul of my childhood daydreams of elves, bards, and dragons, I left the theater completely confused.  Not to say that I did not enjoy the movie; I enjoyed it immensely!  It has humor and action, plenty of color and, once again, does a spectacular job of realizing Middle-Earth.  But in contrast to last year’s initial frustration with An Unexpected Journey slowly turning to feelings of appreciation and acceptance, my warm first impressions of Smaug have since cooled.

A lot of people, both those I have spoken with and reviewers online, are calling Smaug an improvement over Journey, but I personally do not see it.  Many reviews have inexplicably decried the “over-long” Bag-End introduction to Journey (which remains my favorite segment of that film) while complimenting Smaug on getting right to the action.  In a similar vein, another review praised the film as having more drama, which basically means more action-packed hack-and-slash, less Tolkien.  Is that a bad thing?  Let us just say it is certainly not a good thing. 

This is not The Hobbit you are looking for…

What needs must be point out first is that which becomes glaringly obvious by the 5min mark in-film: this movie is not based on The Hobbit; merely inspired by it.  Everything on the book’s back cover this there – Beorn, dark forest, forest elves, barrels out of bond, Laketown, Bard and the Master (a lot of them, actually), the Lonely Mountain, and naturally the dragon.  However, not much else makes it into the movie that did not originate in Jackson’s imagination; literally nothing from the book goes untouched, and precious little is for the better.  “Oh, you people have to have the movie exactly like the book!” scoffed one online comment.  “No,” the next comment answered (and I paraphrase), “that isn’t it at all.   We diehards recognize that the movie is going to be somewhat different from the book, as is the case with all such projects; we’d just prefer the movie at least resemble the book in some way.”  I could not agree more.  That is not to say, however, that every innovation in the movie is a bad thing…

The Arkenstone

Perhaps the best invention on Jackson’s part was the development of the Arkenstone from flashy bauble to king-maker, despite the total absence (to my knowledge) of any such significance.  The notion that a jewel should be the crux of the dwarves’ quest plays perfectly to Tolkien’s universe in a way that even that great author did not even hint at in his own novel (like so much of Tolkien’s world, this particular trinket gets introduced about the time it actually comes into view, which is admittedly anticlimactic insofar as critical plot devices are concerned).  Long before magic rings came to dominate fantasy fiction, the objects of power in Middle-Earth were jewels – the most notable being the three titular Silmarils from Tolkien’s earliest work, The Silmarillion – possessed with powers of enthrallment strong enough to seal blood oaths between empires and see the same reduced to rubble.  This history is borrowed from liberally to spruce up the Arkenstone – seven elf brothers become seven dwarf kingdoms, the boys swearing to recover the Silmarils from Sauron’s boss, the dwarves swearing to come to the aid of one who holds the Arkenstone.  Moreover, the extended edition of An Unexpected Journey goes even further by drawing in another story from The Silmarillion to explain why the elves of Mirkwood are so hostile to the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain: in the book there is not much reason that I can remember, though the elf king does express a passion for green gems in the last chapter of the book, while in the movie the same king instead believes himself cheated out of numerous white gems – that cheating bit being an element from the Silmarillion.  So now Thorin’s desperation to have his Hobbit burglar purloin the Arkenstone takes on a world’s worth of meaning as opposed to just the rock’s glamor.

Bilbo

And speaking of burglars, what might one say for Mr. Freeman this go ‘round?  Sadly, not much, good or bad.  For being called “The Hobbit” there is a depressing lack of Baggins throughout the film.  That has not stopped Jackson from still further demolishing Tolkien’s masterful character, as this time Bilbo gets “darker” and ring-hungry, a total departure from the book’s more frolicking depiction of the Ring in its dormant pre-LOTR state.  In those scenes where Bilbo does act like his literary counterpart, Freeman is once again remarkable, but these moments are terribly infrequent, disrupted by a new focus upon the increasingly erratic Thorin and the displaced rabble-rouser Bard, demoted from his post on the Laketown guard in the book to a mere bargeman in the film.  In both the dwarf’s case as well as Bard’s, Jackson seems to be trying to recreate the parallel storyline that Aragorn enjoyed in LOTR, the scruffy diamond in the rough en route to glorious heroism and kingship.  Unfortunately, the classy dichotomy between Frodo and Aragorn, wherein each gets enough treatment to pull off the dual narratives, is so far lacking in this new trilogy, the Bilbo/Thorin story leaning overpoweringly in the dwarf’s favor.

Thranduil (Lee Pace)

"Do not speak to me of dragon fire!"

Thranduil is the elfin king of Mirkwood, an insular anti-hero who more wants to protect his realm than really be of help to passing adventurers.  The elf king is another triumph of Smaug, as actor Lee Pace pulls out all the stops in his depiction of a nearly unhinged monarch only just kept in check.  The elements of the elf king’s personality that first made me dislike him are the very qualities that I have since been convinced are what make him so outstanding a character.  The costume designers loved Pace for his elegant build compared to more burly actors, and as Thranduil he is like something out of Harry Potter’s eclectic cast, alternating between stony reserve and willow-whip fury.  This took me by complete surprise, as I had gotten too used to the stoicism of most elves, an almost “Sorry, but I left my soul in Heaven” sort of bearing.  Unlike his more elite cousins, Thranduil wears his emotions on his sleeve, eyes widening and literally glittering through some special effects when he waxes eloquent about the white jewels so dear to his heart, then widening further in genuine shock when Thorin dares to insult him, before narrowing in a raging glower that suggests that he would like nothing better than to go bat-crap crazy on the nearest breathing person.  And it is not even the extremes of acting that make Pace such a winner, but the subtleties as well.  In his interview with Tauriel, the king turns to bestow on her what I interpreted as a genuine smile, but coming from a high-functioning sociopath, it filtered through layers of reluctant grimace so as to be rendered terrifically awkward, almost as if Thranduil knew that he was expected to smile in polite company, yet could not quite master the act.

Tauriel (and Kili)

As for the most obvious addition to Tolkien’s Hobbit – even more so than the misbegotten Pale Orc – I actually liked the inclusion of Tauriel, as she saves Legolas from having to rely on his maniac dad for a foil.  In a movie that seemed to simply want to revive the Legolas fandom without actually developing him in any way (to leave room for LOTR?) Tauriel was a stroke of genius, allowing for some elven common sense and intercultural camaraderie that does not force Legolas to hit it off with Gloin before Gimli.  She also serves as what could be a backdrop for Legolas’ more cosmopolitan views in LOTR in contrast with his dad’s insularity.  In a sense, she is Thranduil’s opposite, independent where the elf king is narrow-minded, friendly where he is hostile, and this leaves Legolas in the middle, considering his options for the future.

I am sorely tempted to not even touch the romance between Tauriel and the hitherto under-developed Kili.  In short, I hated it and still do, though to judge from the sheer volume of mushy/quirky fanart cropping up in my Pinterest feed (that’s right) I’m probably outnumbered in this opinion.

So if I may momentarily indulge in a canon rant: inter-racial marriages were always taboo in Middle-Earth.  As far as I recall, there were only three or four and they were all between human men and elven women, and entailed a tremendous amount of traumatic drama.  Remember the stress surrounding Arwen’s decision to stay with Aragorn in The Return of the King?  That was because, true to Tolkien, she was choosing between eternal life as an elf in the West, or a life dedicated to a mortal man that, once he died, would wane into a grey twilight existence – as Arwen’s life indeed does in the Appendices (happy endings, huh?).  But the inherent problem that Tauriel and Kili will be unable to shake is the sheer quirkiness of their relationship.  This would have been less a problem had Jackson simply given them a Merry/Pippin - R2D2/C-3PO relationship, one that might spawn from mutual interest, but would progress no further than junior-high level jibes and eventual respect and friendship.  Instead, Jackson had the mind-numbing idea to actually allow the romance to progress to the Twilight stage, complete with an Arwen-esc faith healing on account of the shorter fellow’s mortal wound (caused by a Morgul arrow, no less – seriously, do these rare blades just grow on Morgul trees these days?).  That was definitely the lowest point of the film for me.  Remember how you cringed with vicarious embarrassment for someone else?  Yeah.  It especially hurts because Evangeline Lilly (Tauriel) had specifically requested that she be spared a love triangle, a request that the studio originally honored – then rejected. 

Given the extremes to which this nonsense has progressed, there can only be a few possible outcomes for this romance.  The least likely is a marriage in Erebor (though given the egregious abuse already dealt Middle-Earth, I will not yet rule that out), though more likely is the ubiquitous “eye contact” connection during the final celebration scene (probably the coronation of Fili, if I have understood the foreshadowing correctly).  Or they might even “stay together,” either by bidding Bilbo farewell whilst hand-in-hand or at least in close proximity, or by wandering off into the sunset, all of which conveniently remove Tauriel from Legolas’ radar in time for The Fellowship of the Ring.  My personal prediction, and one that incorporates Kili’s demise (that’s right, Fili, Kili and Thorin die in the book – no spoilers here, The Hobbit was 76 years old last September!) is that they collapse dying in each other’s arms during the Battle of Five Armies, exchanging a few final words of comfort before a ruined statue or slab of wrecked masonry collapses on them.

Smaug

But that dragon, oh my word, that dragon!  Smaug himself is worth the price of admission!  Voiced by none other than Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, Smaug is the ultimate flying wyrm, whipping his immensity about with a combination of thunderous footfalls and surprising serpentine grace, and breathing not just fire, but eruptions that set the theater seats to shaking.  This arch-enemy comes across as a sort of Darth Vader of the story, heartless and evil to the core, yet so awe-inspiring and just cool that there is no fear or loathing – I just wanted to see more!  So in a sense it is not a bad thing that Smaug was given such a protracted action scene, bizarre though it became, because it allowed him to roam about and play Godzilla before taking to the skies to ring in the end credits.  Yet the saddest departure from the book is to be found in Smaug’s brief appearance.  In the books he is introduced via a couple appearances and one conversation before exploding from his lair and demolishing the mountainside while the dwarves cower in the collapsed tunnel.  But in the movie Smaug plays cat and mouse with the dwarves, who shrewdly draw him into several Loony-Tunes style traps (the last being especially absurd) and tongue-lash him with constant taunts until he flies off in a rage to demolish Laketown, inexplicably leaving Bilbo and the dwarves behind to keep an eye on his treasure. 

Not only is such a conclusion to the “fight” just poor writing, the entire sequence diminishes the dragon’s splendor.  By demeaning and humiliating the monster, the dwarves remove that terrifying transcendence of all possible harm that makes Smaug the ultimate nemesis.  Dragons in Middle-Earth can only be harmed if struck in the armor’s chink, though they can be stolen from and outwitted in a game of words when their own malice and arrogance are used against them.  But to bound about and physically abuse the dragon (even to no end) just smacks of lazy story-telling – to say nothing of the ridiculously Hollywood-trope laden “fight” scene, what with molten gold, sabotaged masonry, and carriage rides that could have been lifted right out of Temple of Doom. 

Just…Why?

The one question that has been growing in my mind for the last year is a giant question mark.  Why, with all the money, resources, talent, and international goodwill did Jackson deviate in even the smallest way from Tolkien’s marvelous and carefully crafted achievement?  I am not even angry anymore, simply baffled and mildly disturbed.  Such ambition was never out of reach, but the whole project has been – to judge from the spectacular successes of ten years past – completely out of character. 

I have heard an argument that this is a long movie and must necessarily be different from the book, what with all the extra information.  Yet I don’t see how that could be, since the very nature of a long movie versus a short book means that every opportunity to be true to the book is present.  Part of what made Jackson’s LOTR so breathtakingly masterful was its faithful adaptation of Tolkien’s intricate narrative (though some might disagree).  My edition of The Lord of the Rings has The Fellowship of the Ring clocking in at 387 pages, The Two Towers at 330, and The Return of the King at 285.  That means each movie had to cover on average 334 pages, and that does not include the extra content, such as the amazing introductory sequence about Isildor and the Ring or the crucial romance between Aragorn and Arwen.  By contrast, my Hobbit is only 289 pages long, leaving each of these new movies a meager 96.333~ pages to tackle before getting creative with the LOTR Appendices.  Yet for reasons unknown, Jackson decided to completely abandon The Hobbit in favor of something more in keeping with Hollywood stereotypes. 

So while it was definitely entertaining, we are not amused.  The Desolation of Smaug is spectacular after the fashion of CGI movies, but as with the changes imposed on Unexpected Journey proves again to be much less interesting than what Tolkien himself originally devised.  In this way Smaug is, for me at least, the low point in Jackson’s tenure as Middle-Earth’s official film-maker. 

[There is another plus: as soon as the credits started to role, a boy down in front yelled, “It can’t end now!”  Yes, young man, it most certainly can end.  You must learn, as I did ten years ago, to wait a whole twelvemonth for the sequel!]