Tea at Trianon: JRR Tolkien’s Demands for a ‘Lord of the Rings’ Adaptation

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 18, 2024

JRR Tolkien’s Demands for a ‘Lord of the Rings’ Adaptation

From Far Out:

Although Tolkien died in 1973, his estate have remained keenly involved in any productions that utilise any elements of his work, so there’s a chance they’ll be as thorough as the author was when he responded to Morton Grady Zimmerman’s screenplay for a planned Lord of the Rings adaptation with extensive notes.

Setting the tone for what was to come, Tolkien apologised in advance for the nit-picking to follow. “I have at last finished my commentary on the Story-line. Its length and detail will, I hope, give evidence of my interest in the matter,” he wrote before setting the stage for his dissatisfaction.

“They may be irritated or aggrieved by the tone of many of my criticisms. If so, I am sorry (though not surprised),” the author continued. “But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.”

The abridged version is that Zimmerman didn’t do a very good job in Tolkien’s eyes, making so many changes to the source material that it was borderline unrecognisable to the person who wrote it. The timeline was condensed far too much for his liking, Tom Bombadil’s “language was sillified,” Aragorn singing a song belted out by Sam in the book was “wholly inappropriate,” and he wasn’t thrilled with the entire narrative devolving into bombastic wizard fights at the expense of the depth he favoured in his writing. (Read more.)