Rose-Tinted Nostalgia: The Critical Drinker and Twenty Years of Jackson’s Rings

December 2023 marks two decades since the Jackson adaptation of The Lord of the Rings reached its finale. This is the anniversary of something I remember very well, having seen each successive Jackson movie come out over successive years. I also remember my immediate reaction to each as well, which may be summarised as:

• Fellowship: The Prologue and Shire are awesome, things go downhill from Bree onwards.
• Two Towers: Helm’s Deep is incredible.
• Return of the King: Denethor has been butchered.

At the time, I thought The Two Towers was the best of the three, but now I recognise that Fellowship is the true masterpiece. My feelings about The Return of the King remain mixed.

However, what bugs me a bit is running across the likes of this:

The funny thing: I am clearly of an age with Critical Drinker, since the late 1990s/early 2000s were also my teenage years. And I had come to Tolkien much earlier, and adored those books to pieces.

But my memory of the Jackson movies – and the online fan reaction – are very different to his. Every single culture war argument made today by Critical Drinker was made by certain people within the fandom twenty years ago. Jackson and his team were indeed criticised by the usual suspects for Political Correctness Gone Mad, or some such – a particular focal point being the decision to have Arwen replace Glorfindel at the Ford of Bruinen. The expression XenArwen was in common forum usage, and one very vocal commentor savaged Jackson for being “an arrogant director who is raping the text.”

(Even Theoden’s gender-neutral “no parent should have to bury their child” was criticised).

Nor is it simply the specifics of gender portrayal that have been swept under the rug. What was at the time seen as crass commercialisation and the dumbing-down of a much-loved story is now seemingly regarded with affection. Critical Drinker doesn’t note the issues of Gimli as comic relief, nor Legolas surfing on his shield, nor the ludicrous nature of the skull avalanche. Way back in 2001, I even devised a certain parody poem… and I was someone who was supportive of the movies:

The Fall of Gil-the-Fad

Gil-galad was at Burger King

Where cash registers gladly sing:

Buy a burger and get him free

Along with Durin and Finwe.

The queues were long, consumers keen,

The neon lights afar were seen;

The sword and spear that he could wield

Went nicely with his plastic shield.

But tie-in products had their day:

For poor Gil-galad none would pay

And onto scrap heaps fell his star

In skip bins where the Spice Girls are.

I think one gets the picture. We also know that Christopher Tolkien hated the Jackson movies, and thought them little more than action movies for 20 year-olds. To claim that Jackson was some pure and unadulterated depiction of Tolkien’s vision is wishful thinking of the most deluded variety. Jackson’s movies were intensely commercial, with all that comes with that, and on certain key points, his grasp of basic themes ran very thin indeed.

Well and good. So why does Critical Drinker praise Jackson to the skies and condemn Rings of Power? Well, to be fair it’s because the Jackson Rings movies are actually good (as movies, less so adaptations), and Rings of Power is underwhelming. But really, I think it’s primarily because of the inherently ludicrous nature of culture war. For each successive generation, the artistic output of one’s childhood is to be treasured, and considered beyond reproach… and certainly to be preferred to the decadence of the current era.

However, that decadent present will eventually become someone else’s nostalgia trip. In 2040, we might very well have grumpy pseudo-Purists holding up Rings of Power as superior to Tolkien adaptations of their own time. And if that sounds absurd, it should at least communicate how someone like me feels, who has literally lived to see the phenomenon of Jackson Purism – a concept oxymoronic twenty years ago. Jackson represented the coming of Revision, of which Rings of Power is a logical outgrowth, complete with character changes and screams about the intrusion of politics.

One can be a Tolkien Purist. One can think Jackson’s movies an excellent adaptation. But one cannot do both.

• December 20, 2023
• Poetry, Tolkien essays, Watching, Youtube
• 3 Comments