Expectation Management

[kate_nepveu]

I've been trying really hard not to get my hopes up too much for 6:30 p.m. tonight, when we go see Return of the King (what else?). As I've said elsewhere, I hated the movie Two Towers. And I hear that Denethor doesn't come off well, and there's no Saruman or Houses of Healing, and there are apparently six different endings (okay, for me that's a feature not a bug, but it will annoy Chad), and while I love the following paragraph from Stephen Hunter's review in the Washington Post, it does suggest that the Corsairs has been taken out:

And the battle turns, so it works out, on something that every Great War vet must have thought about at moments of crisis on the battlefield. Suppose, he must have thought, all the men who died here, suppose suddenly now, in the day when Heaven was falling, the hour when Earth's foundations fled, suppose we were helped by our own dead, who would rise and carry the day. Men who've seen a lot of death would necessarily think that; and so it is that Aragorn arrives with the Army of the Dead, and turns the tide against the dark hordes from Mordor.

But I'm still really excited by the commercials and trailers and all the good reviews. And this is bad, because I know there will be things that I don't like and I don't want my inflated expectations to overreact to them.

So here's the scary way of managing expectations that I saw elsewhere (in a locked post or I'd link; if the suggester wishes to take credit here, please do):

Pretend that Peter Jackson died (or quit, or what-have-you) just after finishing the second movie, and George Lucas has taken over.

(I said it was scary.)

Comments

[ex-mahoney365.livejournal.com]

*g* I have a built-in expectation manager: I thought the books were boring with some interesting bits, and that the first two films were pretty good and a lot of fun. So I'm excited to see this movie because I expect it to be not as boring as the book, and just as fun as the other movies. If it also manages to be a really damn *good* movie, too, icing!

Curious: how have you heard Denethor comes of badly? Was he badly acted, or not enough time given to him? I remember the character in the book being pretty freaked out and not someone I could admire - a guy who wasn't evil so much as just selfish and awful. I kind of liked that about him. :)

[kate_nepveu]

I see Denethor as a complex, once-great, and tragically flawed character, whose weaknesses were preyed on by Sauron via the palantir. I've seen reviews that said that this complexity and depth are missing from the movie, and that he just comes off as shrill and insane.

Considering what a nice job the movies did with giving Boromir dimension, who I've never liked in the books, I was hoping for better--but they seem to have set it up so that the characters are in opposition (understandable, but I stubbornly maintain not necessary).

[ex-mahoney365.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Denethor was all that. But I suppose it would be tough to give him his due in the movie, considering all of the other territory to be covered. I mean, that story thread is pretty bizarre, and doesn't strictly move any of the main stories forward. I sort of expect that Denethor will be a sort of deus ex machina for Faramir's story, or a tension-building counterpoint to the attempt by Gandalf et al to unify forces, and that's all, since filling the character out more would take up time. Shrill and insane might fit that bill.

It's too bad, since he was an interesting character. But, honestly, beyond Eowyn's "I am no man" bit and the actual chucking of the ring into Mt. Doom, I have no preconceived notions of what I think should be in the movie. Jackson makes good fantasy action flicks, and that's all I really expect.

(You know what's funny, I had a brief conversation with a 20-something guy at the movie store back when The Two Towers came out. I commented that I didn't think the LOTR movies were All That, and he wafted poetic about them very defensively. I said "there's no character development." He looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. I said "But the battles were pretty cool," and he was all oh yeah man dude so awesome. LOL It was just funny that for all his 'greatest movies ever made, and so faithful to the wonderful fabulous books,' when it came down to it the cool battles were what really got him going. *g*)

[kate_nepveu]

Well, I'm not sure I agree about the character development. The changes to the characters from the books are almost all to give them an internal journey: Aragorn being wishy-washy about the Kingship, Arwen being wishy-washy about cleaving to Aragorn, Treebeard being wishy-washy about going to war, Faramir being wishy-washy taking the goddamn Ring!!!--sorry, that one really annoys me. I don't like most of these changes, but there they are.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Aragorn was a total flake in the books, too, wasn't he? I mean, wasn't that the whole deal about how he was just fucking around in the wilderness, skiing and crashing on his friends' sofas instead of approving appropriations bills?

[ex-mahoney365.livejournal.com]

I agree that the movie did attempt to give the characters some development. Aragorn went from being completely flat and colorless in the book to having some conflict (wishy-washyness, yes. *g*). But I guess to me the characters still feel roughly two-dimensional. Nothing they do suprises me, and nothing they do seems much of a change from how they were when the story began in the first movie. Well, with the exception of Frodo and possibly Sam. They do seem affected and changed by their experiences, which is development of a definite sort. I felt that about them when I read the books, as well.

I should say, this is not to mean I don't like the characters. They're just as fun as the rest of the movie, and I don't mind their being for the most part static archetypes. Though I agree with you re Faramir. I loved canon Faramir, and I thought that his constant right-mindedness, and the fact that he *wasn't* tempted by the ring, showed a strength of will that was admirable and impressive. It made what Denethor attempts to do that much more heart-breaking. Not everybody needs to be a dysfunctional child of a dysfunctional family to be a good character. I only accept that change because Jackson et al made a good point in the TTT commentary (I think it was the commentary - might've been an interview), that the ring is built up to be this great force of evil, and for some random guy to wander through the story at that point and have absolutely no problem resisting it rather lessens the evil oomph. Movie-TTT-Faramir still makes me cringe, but that's a good point.

[kate_nepveu]

Re: Faramir, if they'd set it up as in the books--he gave his word first, and then found out--they could have showed him having a monumental struggle to keep his word, but still winning out over temptation. I think that would have still shown it was Eeevil. But I'm ranting and probably repeating myself, too, and anyway, no-one's giving me millions of dollars to make movies.

[orzelc.livejournal.com]

This is one of the few areas where the extra footage on the DVD made a difference-- his taking the Ring makes a lot more sense after the scene with Faramir, Boromir, and Denethor in Osgiliath.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

True, but I was still irritated.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes, it makes it clear that the change at least had deep roots. Someone was talking about this . . . Ah.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/veejane/115841.html

I still hate it.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I'm on your side on this one, for whatever it's worth (probably not much). I hate it, too, and even the scene in the extended version didn't make me think much better of the change to Faramir's character.

Oh, and I'm still in anticipation management mode until tomorrow night (hard to get away on a weeknight with a long commute). Which hasn't stopped me from reading spoiler-filled reviews....

--Trent

[kate_nepveu]

But it was nice to see Boromir again. I really like what Sean Bean did with that role.

[kate_nepveu]

PS--no more invite codes required to sign up for LJ, so if you want your own account to comment, very easy. They're working on ways for non-users to sign comments better, too.

The movie is not the book

[thette.livejournal.com]

I started writing a comment, but turned it into an entry of my own.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/thette/92489.html

Re: The movie is not the book

[kate_nepveu]

I *know* the movie is not the book. I'm not complaining about every deviation. Okay, I love the Corsairs scene, but I can see how it makes sense to take it out, if they have--that was more me trying to manage expectations by listing it. I thought it made sense to take out Bomadil, and the Barrow-Downs, and the Scouring. And my worry about Saruman is about him not being in the *start*, when the breaking of his staff and all isn't there. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. I'll see in 2.5 hours.

My real problems are where the movies deviate in ways that suggest an entirely different attitude toward the underlying themes and morality of the original books. I ranted about this at length elsewhere, so I won't repeat myself here.

But it's not that I hate the movies because they aren't books.

Re: The movie is not the book

[thette.livejournal.com]

That was during one of my short stints on rassf, so I read that post back then.

I don't know if you know that I haven't read the books, because I think Tolkien was a bad writer. He tried to emulate myths, but managed only the translated or talked-down-to-children version. (Real myths are in verse.)

When I read Norse, Greek, Jewish, whatever, mythology, the characters fall as flat to the ground as Tolkien's do. That is excusable in verse, not in prose. (I'd love to be able to read Hebrew, if only to appreciate the letter rhymes and other constructions in the Old Testament.)

Re: The movie is not the book

[kate_nepveu]

Well, I don't agree with you about the writing, but the actual question is, have you attempted reading Tolkien when he's explicitly writing mythology (sort-of) in _The Silmarillion_?

Re: The movie is not the book

[thette.livejournal.com]

Not since I was twelve, but I will try it again.

I'll probably turn into a Simarillion-only fan. (Though KJ says it was largely written by Christopher Tolkien and GG Kay.)

Re: The movie is not the book

[kate_nepveu]

I don't know about written. I'd believed it was assembled by the two of them, out of the many many layers of drafts and versions of myth that Tolkien spent forever writing and re-writing.

To me it reads much like, oh, _Bullfinch's Mythology_ or something like that. It took me a while to appreciate, but it's definitely grown on me.

(I used to read the first couple of sections to relax and go to sleep, so don't be surprised if they aren't really exciting. => )