Hallo!

Ich habe etwas sehr Interessantes gefunden, das ich sehr spannend zu lesen fand:

My big fat report on Tom Shippey's lecture, as threatened. Um, promised.
From Page to Screen: Problems Tolkien left for Jackson
Lecture by Tom Shippey
Thursday, April 1, 2004
Hope College
Holland, Michigan

About 60 people were in attendance, in quite a small room. It was standing-room only, and I ended up standing for the majority of the lecture, because we arrived just as Professor Shippey was being introduced. The whole thing lasted an hour, almost on the dot.
The main thing I noticed about the crowd was its variety. The majority of it was, as to be expected, college students, but there were people there as young as 10 and a number of senior citizens who did not appear to be professors. There were plenty of other ubergeeks there taking notes, and I would say that half of the crowd was not affiliated with the college.
Professor Shippey was a good speaker, clear and to the point, and with a dry sense of humor. He did use notes, but his thorough familiarity with the Tolkien?s writing was clear.
I?m just going to go through my notes, so you?ll get this as it came in the lecture.

Problems moving from book to movie
Shippey said there are three immediate problems that come to mind when you think about translating The Lord of the Rings from page to screen:

1. The Council of Elrond: This chapter is 15,000 words and features 20 to 25 speakers, many of them new to the reader. (Shippey said some day he is going to take an old copy of LOTR and use a highlighter to mark each time a new speaker begins talking at the Council; he said he has tried to do this many times just by taking notes and each time he comes up with a different number.) Additionally, there are even more speakers who are speaking within the speech of someone actually at the Council (i.e. Gandalf relating what occurred between him and Saruman). In addition, the meeting has a particularly inept chair in Elrond, who continues to lose control of his speakers and the focus of the Council. Peter Jackson got around this problem through the use of the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, where much of the information provided in the book in this chapter is given to the viewer from the start, and with a single voice narrating the story.

2. The storming of Isengard happens off-stage, so to speak, and is told in flashback by Merry and Pippin. This is a problem easily dealt with, though, by having the action simply occur in the movie, and that is what Peter Jackson did.

3. The palantíri. (Shippey noted that some of the problems here may change with the release of The Return of the King extended DVD.) Shippey skipped over this problem at this point and returned to it at the end of his lecture.

Would Tolkien have approved of Peter Jackson?s movies?
Shippey said that Tolkien saw at least one script adaptation of LOTR in 1957, which he marked up and returned to the scriptwriter in 1958, with some seemingly scathing remarks about it. Shippey has seen it and concurs with Professor Tolkien that the script was awful; among other sins, it addressed Boromir as ?Borimor? throughout the entire text. Apparently, Tolkien was also quite incensed that the script had Butterbur asking the hobbits to sign the registry at The Prancing Pony; Shippey said this type of error demonstrates the writer?s lack of understanding of the hobbits? world and shows that the script was ?careless at every level.?

However, Shippey said, Tolkien loved seeing artwork based on LOTR, and he was aware of the problems that would present in creating a film adaptation, the largest one being the sheer volume of the story. (Shippey noted here that in order to get three three-hour-plus movies, Peter Jackson did with the studio what Gandalf did with Beorn in convincing him to house 13 dwarves and a hobbit; Jackson started with two two-hour movies, which became three two-hour movies, which became three three-hour movies, which became two three-hour-plus DVDs, with who knows how long of a final edition of ROTK in store.)

Shippey said that Tolkien did not mind the abridgment of the work; what he did mind was the compression of the work, which would subordinate the quiet scenes for the action scenes. In other words, he would not have objected to the removal of the Tom Bombadil chapters from FOTR and the scouring of the Shire from ROTK. What he would have objected to is a movie that had action sequence after action sequence and none of the smaller moments that are still essential to the story.

Do the movies maintain the core of the narrative?
Shippey stated that the core of the narrative is that the Ring is wholly evil, one can safely do nothing with it save destroy it, and that he feels Jackson did maintain this focus. He noted that Jackson had not problem slowing down the action and actually showing the Ring to maintain the story?s focus on it.

The problem now becomes one of cost. When writing a book, the author can do what he or she likes, as the only real cost is that of their time (and Shippey here noted that the time of a professor in between terms is really worth nothing; since Tolkien liked to write on the backs of old student exams and since Shippey suspects he got his ink from the University as well, the cost of writing LOTR was nothing). With a movie, there is an enormous investment and the filmmaker is expected to make a return.

This leads to some ?playing to the gallery.? Shippey gave three examples of Jackson doing this:
1. The larger role of Arwen,
2. Legolas skateboarding down the stairs at Helm?s Deep,
3. Dwarf-tossing.

But in spite of these moments, Shippey said Jackson is quite good at quiet scenes, and it is clear to anyone familiar with the books that the scriptwriters carefully read the material, and slipped little bits in here and there that had been cut out of the main story line. Shippey gave three examples:

1. Frodo declaring, ?I will take the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way,? at the Council of Elrond. Shippey noted that the direction the Council takes in the movie is quite different from that direction it takes in the book, when Frodo makes this statement to an utterly quiet room. In the movie, the Council has erupted in heated argument, with everyone on their feet and shouting. Shippey believes Frodo states, ?I will take the Ring? four times, though the subtitles only show three -- he says Frodo?s lips form the words inaudibly once before he actually says it. But it takes him at least three times to be properly heard, and when he last says it, he states it just as Frodo did in the book, and to an utterly quiet audience.

2. Frodo?s statement to Gandalf of, ?I wish it need not have happened in my time,? and Gandalf?s response of, ?So do all who live to see such times. But all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.? In the book, this discussion takes place in Bag End, in a scene that has been pared down considerably in the movie. But it shows up again not only in Moria, but is reiterated at Parth Galen. (Shippey noted the pronoun change at Parth Galen -- what had been ?all we have to do? becomes ?all you have to do?; he also said he agreed with that change.)

3. A far green country (yes, that scene, the one that made my head explode). In the book, Frodo dreams of, or has a vision of, Valinor while he is in the house of Tom Bombadil, but all of this material is gone from the movie. However, when Gandalf and Pippin are at the siege of Gondor, as the last defenses are about to fall, Gandalf speaks to Pippin of death, and how it is not to be feared, and he uses the words that Tolkien used to describe Frodo?s dream of Valinor. (Shippey went on at length about how this is an obscure passage from FOTR -- long one of my favorites in the entire work -- and how impressed he was that the scriptwriters took note of it, but that he doubted most viewers picked up on the reference. Everyone will be happy to hear that I resisted the urge to yell, ?I picked it up! I got it! Me! Me! Me!? The urge was there, though.)

Shippey added, almost as an aside, that Jackson also was ?gutsy? enough to use Tolkien?s ending of Sam returning home from the Havens, a very quiet, anticlimactic, un-Hollywood-like ending to a film, and including what Shippey called the ?saddest last words of any work of the century,? -- ?Well, I?m home? to end the film on.

Shippey finished this part of the lecture up by stating that he does not think Jackson subordinated the quiet moments of LOTR for action.

Gollum/Sméagol
As almost as aside, Shippey said here that he thought Gollum/Sméagol was well done, but they mispronounced Sméagol, though he had provided the correct pronunciation. (Shippey was a consultant for the film in providing the pronunciation of names. He also noted that is was the only name mispronunciation in the films.) It seems that ?Sméagol? should be said ?smay-gull.?

Three major changes Shippey does not understand
1. Aragorn going over the cliff before going to Helm?s Deep
2. Faramir?s inversion
3. Denethor?s downgrade (he noted that this might change with the ROTK extended DVD)

Why did Jackson include these changes? Shippey said that Jackson wanted to personalize the story more by giving several characters larger roles, in the three examples above, Arwen, Sam and Pippin. He also was focused on a theme of unity -- this led to the Elves arriving at Helm?s Deep. These focuses of Jackson?s have a great deal to do with the civilian audience he is presenting the movies to, as opposed to the post-wartime audience Tolkien was writing to. The need to have a civilian audience relate to the characters accounts for the changes to Théoden.

The palantíri
Here Shippey returned to the topic of the palantíri and the problems they present to a filmmaker. Shippey said that the palantíri are used four times in the book:
1. By Pippin on March 5. Sauron sees him and mistakenly concludes that Saruman has the ring.
2. By Aragorn on March 6. Sauron sees him and mistakenly concludes that Aragorn has the Ring.
3. By Saruman throughout the narrative, until Gríma tosses his out the window. Saruman sees the power of Sauron growing from the palantír and mistakenly concludes that there is no resisting him.
4. By Denethor on March 13. Denethor sees Frodo captured at Cirith Ungol and mistakenly concludes that Sauron has the Ring.

Everyone who looks in a palantír sees something that is true but from it draws the wrong conclusion. ?OK, so don?t look in palantírs,? Shippey said. ?In fact, if an Elvish lady should approach you with a mirror, I wouldn?t look in that either.? The point here is that speculation should not be a guide to action. Rather, each person must ?look to their front,? a phrase familiar to WWI English soldiers. The only thing anyone should be concerned about is doing their own duty; they simply must trust that others are doing the same, even if it seems it is not so. Shippey used Aragorn leading Legolas and Gimli from Parth Galen as an example here -- he believes that every choice he has made since the breaking of the Fellowship is wrong, but in the end it turns out that things could not have gone more right. He also quoted Churchill saying that he will, ?Keep plugging along, I suppose,? when he had received disastrous news and been asked by a frantic subordinate what was to be done.

What Tolkien is trying to tell us about, Shippey said, is providence. He gave us a line from Milton to describe what Tolkien is trying to do: ?Assert Eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to man.?

Does Jackson give us an image of the workings of Providence in the movies? No, Shippey said, but added that he does not think this is possible in adapting the book to film.

In conclusion
Shippey said the right person to judge the movies is hardly him -- in fact, he said he is one of the worst choices to judge the movies. The right person to judge the movies is someone who watches the movies several times and then reads the book for the first time. He said he would really like to hear what such a person had to say.

And to end, Shippey said:

?There?s one road to Middle-earth, and that?s the book, and there?s a another road to Middle-earth, and that?s the movie, and I?m quite pleased that we have them both.?

He did take questions but I did not take notes on them. I asked a question about Sam taking the Ring at Cirith Ungol and how that decision worked within the idea of ?looking to your front,? but I will talk about his answer and my thoughts on this elsewhere.

I warned everyone not to ask me for a detailed report! If you have made it all the way to the bottom, I hope you enjoyed reading about it. I thoroughly enjoyed Professor Shippey?s lecture, and was very glad I went.

Quellen:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/baylorsr/107947.html
http://www.theonering.net
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"Es gibt nichts, was man nicht mißverstehen oder mißbrauchen kann." -Alfred Nobel
"... Nanna nenn' ich Nökkvis Tochter..."
"Loki was the one falling into darkness, and when he did, you could hear him laugh."