Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy (review)

Picturing Tolkien is a collection of sixteen essays tackling Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy from a ten-year perspective not possible for earlier attempts at assessing its merits and misfires. The Jackson versus Tolkien debate may not be as heated now as it was in those early days after the films rolled like a deep ocean tsunami over the consciousness of Tolkien scholars and fans worldwide, but it has certainly not abated. It is, instead, more measured and thoughtful.

A quick scan of the Table of Contents of Picturing Tolkien will reveal a number of familiar names from the academic community, heavyweights all. You might be tempted to think, "Oh boy, here we go." You'd be wrong.

Instead of the long-expected evisceration of Jackson's film trilogy, what you'll discover in these pages is a fascinating cross-section of opinion— and expert knowledge—on this monumental visual retelling of Tolkien's Middle-earth saga. You may learn things you didn't know. You may also find that ten-year-old hindsight counts for a lot. You will definitely find compelling arguments on both sides of the Great Peter Jackson Divide. There are many voices in Picturing Tolkien, and it is well worth the reader's time to listen to them all.

When evaluating a book of this nature, given the crowded field of books about Tolkien, it's helpful to apply certain benchmarks. Does the structure of the book work—is the collection even in content and not weighted more toward one topic to the exclusion of others? Are the articles equally strong, with no filler or weak arguments sandwiched among the stronger ones? Are new perspectives offered, and do old arguments carry new weight? Within each essay, is the intent clearly stated and satisfactorily reasoned. Does the conclusion effectively pull all the threads of the discussion together? Although your mileage may vary depending on which side of the Divide you find yourself on, it's safe to say this collection wins a solid "Yes" to all these questions.

The collection is conveniently structured into the two main points of argument surrounding Jackson's version of Tolkien's sprawling novel: story/structure and character/culture, with eight essays in each section. The book begins with the strongest film defense (Kristin Thompson), followed by the strongest book defense (Verlyn Flieger), essentially establishing the two opposing points of view up front. This is a valuable way to begin, because it helps put all the other essays in perspective, setting a point of reference for how well Jackson's adaptation has succeeded or not.

Thompson's contention that "it's better to have a film with energy and entertainment value that takes liberties than one that sticks to the original with bland respect" immediately invites the counter-argument that once you begin to unravel the carefully woven tapestry of Tolkien's fiction by taking those liberties, you end up with a tangle of unhooked plot points that keep requiring new material to repair the rip in the fabric of story. Thompson cleverly relies heavily on Shippey, the gold standard for Tolkien scholarship, to set her point that Jackson's screenplays are a satisfying alternate road to Middle-earth. As evidence, she gives a detailed analysis of Jackson's successful and creative solutions to some of the adaptation's most difficult challenges, in particular the "Gollum talks to himself" scene. Flieger's succinctly argued essay (it's one of the shortest in the collection) clearly sets the opposing viewpoint that the "constraining literality" of computer-generated fantasy filmmaking makes it unsuitable for adaptation of a work such as Tolkien's, which is so heavily dependent on language and its role in creating the world of the mind. Her evidence is the Tom Bombadil sequence...