[Published in the Baltimore Sun on December 16th, 2001.]
I love fantasy-adventure stories. Yoda, for instance, was a childhood hero of mine. For a while I went around speaking like him: “Mind what you have learned, save you it can!”
I still have a poster of Luke Skywalker that has survived my turbulent youth and my girlfriend’s storm-trooping. It’s been relegated to the garage, though, and I fear its final destination is the dreaded trash compactor.
I’ve been following the recent Lord of the Rings trailers and advertisements with great interest, and I must admit, the trailers look exciting. New Line Cinema has certainly spent a lot of money (nearly $300 million) to make Middle Earth believable.
Wizard director Peter Jackson has orchestrated an almost incredible 274-day shooting schedule (all three films were completed in rapid succession). He rounded up 2,400 production people from around the globe, scoured 100 locations, built 350 sets and deployed more than 26,660 extras in the truly multicultural battle scenes. That’s a lot of hungry orcs.
Seeing Gandalf (the wizard) and Frodo (the ring-bearing hobbit) brought to life in the trailers, if only for a few seconds, reminded me of my first encounter with J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, which occurred the summer after my horrendous eighth-grade year. I had just earned a D in English and a D-minus in history–gifts from the gods, as I didn’t read any of the books or do any of the work.
A few days after the school bus stopped coming around, my mother stole into my brother’s room, retrieved The Hobbit and quietly left the well-worn volume on my bedside table. I was hooked from the first line: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Thus began the literary adventure of my adolescence.
I’d like to say that reading the Tolkien sagas that summer turned me into a reader, and becoming an avid reader changed my life. The truth is probably a lot less dramatic and much more complicated.
All I know is that when Gandalf tapped his staff on Bilbo’s perfectly round door (the one with the shiny yellow brass handle) and invited him to undertake an adventure, that knock came on my door as well. Maybe I was just ready for the adventure. Perhaps I would have become engaged in my own life’s journey if my mother had placed another book on my table (or no book at all). Some answers are beyond even a wizard’s comprehension.
But I do have one answer to a question that’s been hounding me for the past few weeks: I won’t be going to see any of the Rings movies. And I hope I’m not alone among Tolkien’s fellowship.
There’s something deeply personal about Tolkien’s language–something almost magical about the sheer magnitude of the universe of Middle Earth that not even the powerful medium of film can capture, much less deepen. I don’t think I could bear what Hollywood–even a New Zealander like Peter Jackson–will do with the Ents.
I’m not against making films of classic literature in any genre. I’m not an iconoclast, either. My private boycott is based on a bit of wisdom best summed up by Holden Caulfield in that little book most of us read back in high school: “Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.” (Incidentally, Holden has never been filmed, even though J. D. Salinger has been offered millions by studio execs hell-bent on etching some star’s image across our reading of The Catcher in the Rye. Holden would be proud of his creator, for Mr. Salinger may be a little kooky, but he’s no sellout.)
So, while this movie premier is drawing me to it like the power of the One Ring, I’m not going. I know that in cave-like theaters everywhere lurks a computer-animated Gollum. He’ll certainly look slimy and wizened. S-s-s-s-s . . . My precious!
But there’s nothing more real and sad and triumphant than the Gollum of the imagination.
[Mark Franek is a dean of students at the William Penn Charter School, where he also teaches English and coaches soccer. He lives in Philadelphia.]
[Illustration]
Photo(s); Caption: 1. Tall order: Elijah Wood plays the 3-foot-6-inch hobbit Frodo in the new movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. But can film capture the magic of J.R.R. Tolkien’s words or the magnitude of Middle Earth? 2. Book One: “The Fellowship of the Ring” leads off “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy Dec. 19.; Credit: 1. – 2. NEW LINE PRODUCTIONS
