Tolkien was a little.... special that way. But the fact that there was so much backstory doesn't actually improve the film, because *we don't see the backstory*. Keeping it internally consistent across a long-running story is one thing - and I think 9 hours of feature film counts as long-running - but the thing is, we never SEE a chance for internal consistency and predictability-based-on-past-exposures to crop up, because they're throwing in little references to everything and never examining the same thing more than once.
So, I do pretty much agree with you on there, in principle.
Thing is, there's also ANOTHER reason to throw out all those references and names and places and things: Because it's a convention of the genre and one of the style-defining elements of Tolkien's writing. I'm not saying it's good or bad[1], but it IS one of the things that tells you immediately that you are reading Epic Tolkien Fantasty(tm).
Which means that, at least in part, there's a good reason to include it in the movie version - to get the FEEL of the translated work across. Which doesn't exactly help you, since you don't know the translated work and aren't a fan[2] of the kind of things that use the same thematic shortcuts.
[1]: I personally can't stand it and think The Lord Of The Rings was a barely-passable series of books that escaped complete editor-fail-induced unreadability only on the strength of the story, regardless of Tolkien's incompetence at relaying the story, but I am inexplicably in the minority on that one.
[2]: Since you'd never read Tolkien, I feel confident in guessing you're not a fan of the genre.
Tolkien invented an entire universe and presented its history in the form of a vast epic, like the Norse and Old English epics he loved to study. The "unreadability" has more to do with the grim, epic Anglo-Saxon cadence he was invoking than any actual failure on his part, or his editor's.
Accusing Tolkien of being an incompetent novelist is a bit like wailing that da Vinci was rubbish at making stamps, and the Mona Lisa was his worst yet. You'll NEVER fit that damn thing on a letter.
The "unreadability" has more to do with the grim, epic Anglo-Saxon cadence he was invoking than any actual failure on his part, or his editor's.
Also his poor word choice, lousy pacing, extended distracting digressions to cover things unimportant to the story, habit of leaving plot threads hanging for hundreds of pages while he moves on to something else, and the fact that he wrote an entire book set *after* his story ended, in which no new story was begun.
If your argument is that he wasn't TRYING to write a coherent novel, okay, sure - but he was writing a novel, and deliberately doing it badly in a way that a semicompetent editor could have fixed is not really all that different from accidentally doing it badly in a way a semicompetent editor could have fixed.
It's like... doing a "comic book issue" where you have a splash page of an aardvark pope and then 30 pages of white-on-black bricktext explaining why women are evil and exist only to contaminate the author's precious bodily fluids. It might be ART, it might even be an entertaining read - but it ain't a comic book in anything approaching the standard sense.
The fact that you, subjectively, do not like it does not mean that the author, objectively, is an idiot. This is the main point I wish you'd back off on.
Yeah, it's dense, yeah, it errs on the side of using certain types of words in order to maintain a consistent linguistic style. Yeah, sometimes Tolkien forgets he's telling a story and not writing a Middle Earth sourcebook - but it's not a novel, it's an epic, it's not a story so much as it is a slice of the history of a made-up world, rendered in a particular style.
I found LotR unreadable when I picked it up when I was 12, having previously read The Hobbit and loved it, so I can see how anybody picking it up expecting your standard fantasy novel is going to be put off. It wasn't until years later, after I graduated from university, that I finally read it through and saw everything he was trying to do and became enthralled by it.
You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it, and, well, what am I supposed to say to that? It's not what you want it to be. My condolences?
I didn't say he was an idiot, I said his writing was deeply flawed and could have been greatly improved with a few passes from a competent editor, and that even with a few simple cuts and a few rearrangements of scenes and no other textual changes it would flow better, throw the reader out of the story less, and generally not be so much "the book where you slog through the writing to get at the interesting worldbuilding and fantastic story".
You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it
No, I keep saying that this orange is a bad example of an orange, perhaps the orange tree should have been given water and not Brawndo The Thirst Eliminator, and maybe it should have been allowed to ripen fully and not picked while just a bud, but, hey, when you get past that, there are still some really tasty bits on this orange. And if the farmer had, y'know, done any of the things that produce GOOD oranges, this might be one of the best oranges ever.
And you tell me "Well, the farmer was TRYING to grow apples."
That's just it, though, I don't see the writing as flawed, I see it as part of the cool factor. For me the writing style is all the best parts of the stuff we studied in Old English - which was my favourite class in university - with the added advantage that it's in modern English. And I think that was the intent; a modern epic. Fixing the "flaws" would kill the book; what you see as bad writing I see as brilliant.
I don't know, maybe we're two guys standing over a banana yelling "APPLE!" "ORANGE!" "APPLE!". Any minute now someone is going to wade into this thread bellowing "RASPBERRY" and it'll just get ugly. We should probably just agree it's a tasty fruit and move on with our lives.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-18 08:36 pm (UTC)So, I do pretty much agree with you on there, in principle.
Thing is, there's also ANOTHER reason to throw out all those references and names and places and things: Because it's a convention of the genre and one of the style-defining elements of Tolkien's writing. I'm not saying it's good or bad[1], but it IS one of the things that tells you immediately that you are reading Epic Tolkien Fantasty(tm).
Which means that, at least in part, there's a good reason to include it in the movie version - to get the FEEL of the translated work across. Which doesn't exactly help you, since you don't know the translated work and aren't a fan[2] of the kind of things that use the same thematic shortcuts.
[1]: I personally can't stand it and think The Lord Of The Rings was a barely-passable series of books that escaped complete editor-fail-induced unreadability only on the strength of the story, regardless of Tolkien's incompetence at relaying the story, but I am inexplicably in the minority on that one.
[2]: Since you'd never read Tolkien, I feel confident in guessing you're not a fan of the genre.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 01:21 am (UTC)Accusing Tolkien of being an incompetent novelist is a bit like wailing that da Vinci was rubbish at making stamps, and the Mona Lisa was his worst yet. You'll NEVER fit that damn thing on a letter.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 01:30 am (UTC)Also his poor word choice, lousy pacing, extended distracting digressions to cover things unimportant to the story, habit of leaving plot threads hanging for hundreds of pages while he moves on to something else, and the fact that he wrote an entire book set *after* his story ended, in which no new story was begun.
If your argument is that he wasn't TRYING to write a coherent novel, okay, sure - but he was writing a novel, and deliberately doing it badly in a way that a semicompetent editor could have fixed is not really all that different from accidentally doing it badly in a way a semicompetent editor could have fixed.
It's like... doing a "comic book issue" where you have a splash page of an aardvark pope and then 30 pages of white-on-black bricktext explaining why women are evil and exist only to contaminate the author's precious bodily fluids. It might be ART, it might even be an entertaining read - but it ain't a comic book in anything approaching the standard sense.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 02:44 am (UTC)Yeah, it's dense, yeah, it errs on the side of using certain types of words in order to maintain a consistent linguistic style. Yeah, sometimes Tolkien forgets he's telling a story and not writing a Middle Earth sourcebook - but it's not a novel, it's an epic, it's not a story so much as it is a slice of the history of a made-up world, rendered in a particular style.
I found LotR unreadable when I picked it up when I was 12, having previously read The Hobbit and loved it, so I can see how anybody picking it up expecting your standard fantasy novel is going to be put off. It wasn't until years later, after I graduated from university, that I finally read it through and saw everything he was trying to do and became enthralled by it.
You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it, and, well, what am I supposed to say to that? It's not what you want it to be. My condolences?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 03:04 am (UTC)You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it
No, I keep saying that this orange is a bad example of an orange, perhaps the orange tree should have been given water and not Brawndo The Thirst Eliminator, and maybe it should have been allowed to ripen fully and not picked while just a bud, but, hey, when you get past that, there are still some really tasty bits on this orange. And if the farmer had, y'know, done any of the things that produce GOOD oranges, this might be one of the best oranges ever.
And you tell me "Well, the farmer was TRYING to grow apples."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 03:26 am (UTC)I don't know, maybe we're two guys standing over a banana yelling "APPLE!" "ORANGE!" "APPLE!". Any minute now someone is going to wade into this thread bellowing "RASPBERRY" and it'll just get ugly. We should probably just agree it's a tasty fruit and move on with our lives.