Wesleyan University The Honors College Sentiment and Spectacle: An Analysis of Narrative and Style in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings by Caroline Conrad Class of 2014 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Film Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2014 1 Concerning Hobbits: An Introduction J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novel The Lord of the Rings has historically been considered unsuitable for adaptation, though many attempts have been made through a variety of media, including radio, stage plays, and unproduced screenplays. Tolkien himself thoroughly believed the book did not lend itself well to adaptation, particularly through the medium of film, as he described in multiple letters. In a letter to his literary and film agent Forrest J. Ackerman, Tolkien argued that “the ‘interleaving’ of the events in the two main threads, Frodo-Sam and the War…produces a jumble that would be bewildering to any viewers not well acquainted with the book. The latter would not recognize the story as the one that I have told at all: the events, the characters, and the moral significance have all been altered and distorted.”1 However, starting in 1997, Peter Jackson, working with his partner Fran Walsh and screenwriter Philippa Boyens, accomplished exactly what Tolkien had deemed impossible by adapting The Lord of the Rings into an epic cinematic trilogy with a comprehensive, “interleaved” narrative. Howard Shore’s score alone won three Oscars and three Grammies; in various categories, The Lord of the Rings films gathered an unprecedented thirty Academy Award nominations and seventeen wins. This is only a small representation of the two hundred and forty-nine total awards won by Jackson’s films; The Lord of the Rings trilogy is also in the top five highest-grossing franchises in cinematic history, the exact rank varying between fourth and fifth 1Prokhorova, 69 2 depending on the source.2 The commercial and critical success of Jackson’s films brought the fantasy genre to new heights of recognition: The Return of the King is the only fantasy film ever to have won the Oscar for Best Picture, and is tied (with Ben-Hur and Titanic) at eleven for the record of most Oscars won by a single film. The success of the Lord films generated a new interest in Tolkien’s book, and the films were among the first of the wave of fantasy adaptations that has been a growing industry trend in popular cinema since the early 2000s.3 New productions like HBO’s television show Game of Thrones show a clear influence from Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings in both narrative content and formal style. Given the high level of critical and popular interest in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it is unsurprising that numerous essays and books have been written on the films. There is a wealth of literature concerning the production and marketing of the films, focusing on the franchise that grew out of them. A significant number of the essays in collections such as Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, edited by Ernest Mathijs, and How We Became Middle- Earth: A Collection of Essays on The Lord of the Rings, focus primarily on the production of the films and franchise, and how the world accepted them in terms of popular culture. These essays fail to thoroughly address the specific stylistic and narrative decisions Jackson made in creating his blockbuster films, discussing the recognition they received without analyzing exactly how and why 2Gathered from a variety of websites and books 3 Approximately 20 fantasy films were produced in the 1990s, versus the over 50 fantasy films produced between 2000-2010, a significant percentage of them adaptations. 3 the trilogy achieved that success. One could say they’re missing the formal “forest” of filmmaking for the “trees” of marketing and post-production commercialization. There is also a high incidence of critical literature that focuses on evaluative analysis of the films in terms of their adherence to, or departure from, Tolkien’s novel, without consideration of why Jackson made the changes he did, or what the failings of not altering the story might have been. Kristin Thompson’s The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood, and Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy, which features an essay by Thompson and is edited by Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny, contain more of a dialogue about Jackson’s films in terms of the obstacles he faced throughout the adaptation process; these books discuss how Jackson succeeded in overcoming challenges, rather than evaluating the films’ worth based primarily on fidelity to the book and Tolkien’s mythopoeia. These essays will serve as a foundation for the points I raise in analyzing the efforts Jackson, Boyens, and Walsh made to expand the accessibility and appeal of the Lord films while staying as loyal to Tolkien’s work as possible. Thompson illustrates how the authentic visualization of Middle-Earth was a result of the historical approach Jackson took in researching the design concepts of the films in all areas, including costuming, scenery, and set design. I will expand on her theory that this effort Jackson made to visually establish Middle- Earth with as much detailed realism to Tolkien’s mythopoeia as possible was a sort of compromise for the Tolkien fans who might be alienated or put off by the 4 changes Jackson made.4 I will analyze in depth how Jackson negotiated this balance between Tolkien fans and commercial audiences unfamiliar with the Lord book; my thesis is not going to discuss the franchise or marketing of the film; instead, by analyzing specific scenes and characterizations, I will break down Jackson's films in terms of the desired and realized effects he achieved through a manipulation of stylistic and narrative devices; in doing so, I will highlight the ways in which Jackson got the audience invested in the trilogy through his use of conventions of melodramatic and popular cinema. I will focus the decisions Jackson made throughout the adaptation and filmmaking processes to achieve this blend, analyzing the films as both three distinct works of cinema, and as a cohesive trilogy, all based respectfully on Tolkien’s novel. As this thesis addresses the decisions Jackson made throughout these processes, in broad terms and with specific examples, it will become apparent that his incorporation of melodramatic and popular devices in reconstructing the characterizations and narrative events of The Lord of the Rings is what allowed Jackson’s fantasy adaptation to triumph critically and commercially. I will analyze, in detail, the decisions Jackson and his screenwriters made in omitting and fabricating specific events or scenes, and what the filmmakers achieved through those alterations. Building off of and referencing the writings of film theorists and scholars Ben Singer, Peter Brooks, Linda Williams, Steve Neale, and Franco Moretti, I will explore how Jackson manipulated the interaction between narrative and style as well as pathos and action to direct 4 Thompson, 86 5 audiences’ expectations and emotions throughout the interleaving narratives. Through the distinctive pattern of crosscutting Jackson employs to navigate between the main and subsidiary plotlines (the Ringbearers and the War, respectively), the director reordered the telling of the story without disrupting the chronology or thematic purpose of the narrative events that are the heart of Tolkien’s novel. The transitions between the multiple plotlines are visually demarcated by the clear differences in setting and mise-en-scene, and Jackson’s deft handling of characterizations and narrative development allows the audience to follow the layered story without confusion. The beautiful and evocative score reflects and heightens the emotions and tensions stirred by the narrative and formal stylization throughout the trilogy, adding to the dramatic and tonal effect and smoothing transitions between the plotlines. While Jackson maintains the themes of Tolkien’s novel in many respects, his films do place a stronger emphasis on the romantic subplot of Aragorn and Arwen and the action and battle sequences of the War of the Ring; in these scenes, Jackson created situations of suspense through parallel editing and visual juxtapositions that are emphasized by the suggestive tone of the score, consistently rising and falling dramatically as situations progress toward a climax. Similarly, Jackson reworked Tolkien’s characterizations of most notably Aragorn and Frodo, but also Sam, Merry and Pippin to emphasize their individual journeys and align audiences with all five of them throughout the trilogy. Reflective scoring and mise-en-scene likewise accompany the scenes of individual self-discovery or intimate 6 exchanges between these characters, heightening the audiences’ emotional experience throughout the trilogy. In adapting a book as long and intricate as The Lord of the Rings, there are a number of challenges, in terms of the compromise between fans and mass audiences, as well as the compromises necessitated by the adaptation and filmmaking processes described throughout this introduction. In the following chapter, I will discuss how Jackson overcame these challenges through his skillful restructuring of the narrative and inclusion of direct quotes and events from Tolkien’s book. By repositioning some of the more notable quotations from the Lord book within in the films’ restructured narratives, Jackson underscored the thematic significance and emotional impact of some of Tolkien’s most poignant scenes, allowing them to resonate more deeply, even with audiences unaware of their original context. This inclusion and relocation of direct quotations and scenes from the Lord book will be discussed in detail, as well as the laboriously detailed realization of Middle-Earth that functions as a compromise for the more obstinate Tolkien fans who might take issue with Jackson’s films.