Peter Jackson’s Big Hit
The magic of cinema and the New Zealand director’s skill turned Tolkien into a cultural totem for posterity.
The film adaptations of the LOTR trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, are well known worldwide and were, at the time, an event that went beyond the sphere of the fans to reach a mass audience.
How did Jackson achieve what the books had not? How did he manage to excite both readers of the books and those who had not read them?
Any literary adaptation is always hard work, not always successful, in which the understanding of the work being adapted is vital to transfer the literary work’s spirit to the screen.
Thus, the first important thing is that those who write the screenplays must have a deep knowledge of the material they are working with, which Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Jackson demonstrated. This trio of screenwriters managed to transfer Tolkien’s imaginary to live action marvelously.
Although today we have a distorted vision, since films are already part of our popular culture and we identify the frames without any problem, it is worth remembering that at the time of its release, those who went to the movies were fascinated by a fact: the credibility of Middle Earth.
The world that appeared on the screens was just as readers had imagined it for decades (those who did not know the books entered that world without problems), which was already a first great point in favor.
With the gateway to the universe solved it remained to see how the great and deep plot of the books was on screen, knowing that it could not contain all the scenes without involving a very high volume of footage.
The decision to select the passages appearing in the books was the great effort of the screenwriters, who undoubtedly had extensive debates about what to include and what not to include in the final script.
The final choice was a reconversion of the tempos, with plots that changed parts (some that appeared, for example, in the second book did not appear in the second film but in the third, etc.) and some additions of their creation to give the film trilogy a sense that worked.
There is debate about some successes, and some deficiencies (which there are) ended up being a minor detail, as the triumphs had a much more predominant role throughout the trilogy.
The great success was knowing how to codify the books from a literary to a cinematographic scope.
The language of cinema has changed a lot over the years, and at the time when The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King were released, the codes were transparent and translucent.
As a Tolkien lover, Peter Jackson understood this codification perfectly and made it his own when shooting the films.
Thus, a believable Middle-earth was combined with a dynamic and powerful narrative, with great moments of action combined with others of contemplation, dialogue, and meta-narration in which what could not be explained through images was provided orally.
It is interesting to note that despite its great length, each part of the trilogy works exceptionally, with hardly any valley moments (parts in which perhaps the audience’s attention can diminish) and with a solid construction of characters to the extent that the script could not transfer what Tolkien wrote.
The proof of this success in the adaptation can be found in the place the films occupied in popular culture.
Today, almost everyone knows the names Frodo and Gollum, knows what Mordor is, or uses the word orc with the harmful physical connotations it has in Tolkien’s books.
The LOTR films were the big personal achievement of Jackson and his screenwriters, and we, as fans of Middle-earth, will never be grateful enough for the immense gem that is the film trilogy.