Being a Tolkien fan is all about the reading experience

It occurred to me the other day that I could probably be classified as a bit of a Tolkien fan. I’ve been soaking up Tolkien’s books ever since I was about 10.

I had to pose in the entrance of the 2012 Hobbit Artisan Market in Wellington …but that’s the limit of geek, for me.

I must have read The Lord Of The Rings a dozen times or more. The Hobbit as often. I have the maps, I saw the movies, and I went to the exhibition of movie props.

But I wouldn’t call myself a total Tolkien fan. I don’t dress up in the costumes – you know, green cloaks that render you invisible against green grass, green rocks, green water, green sky etc.

My copy of The Lord Of The Rings is from three different editions. Nor do I collect memorabilia, or go to Armageddon comic-con gatherings to ogle merchandise and be photographed beside the guy who swept the studio floor on alternate Sundays while they were shooting out-takes for The Return of the King.

It is a limited kind of enthusiasm; and I also view what Tolkien did in a literary sense with a suitably critical eye; he wasn’t perfect, and he wrote a lot of stuff the hard way.

So what is it, for me? Well, it’s the reading experience. Tolkien created a world that became real for the reader. He did it by description – if you open The Lord Of The Rings at virtually any page, you’ll find evocative descriptions of the settings – the sounds, the smells, the feel.

He did it by depth; his world was rich with its own mythology and history, rich with culture, with language, with peoples of all kinds, all of them carefully described.

Not actually Rohan. Tussock and Echium – Patterson’s Curse, in the top of Lindis Pass.

He did it with scope; his themes struck chords with the very heart of western thinking, western mythology, and western culture; epic battles between good and evil, between right and wrong. Clear-cut, scarcely shaded in any greys.

And he did it by giving us heroes we could identify with – not Aragorn, who was the archetypal mythic  hero; but the hobbits, who were ordinary, everyday folk. Effectively, people like us – people who we could identify with and journey with, who became heroic.

A message of hope, swathed in all the things that speak to our sense of culture, right, wrong – and place.

That’s why I like Tolkien. Have you read his books? What draws you to them – for you, is it the reading experience, or something else?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up: more writing tips, humour geekery and other stuff.

How Tolkien became part of my life. Is he part of yours?

Forty years after I first encountered the work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, I am still on a wonderful journey of discovery in his world.

I had moment to think about it on the weekend when my wife and I passed through Miramar, Wellington and stopped at the ‘Weta Cave’. It’s a store run by Weta Workshop, who made the props for Peter Jackson’s adaptations of Tolkien’s work.  In typical Kiwi fashion it’s in an unprepossessing building of late 1930s austerity construction.

Weta Cave – unprepossessing ordinariness masking the home of something truly extraordinary.

Most of the buildings in the area are like this. It’s the heart of Peter Jackson’s movie-making empire. You wouldn’t think so, to look at it. But that’s the magic of movies for you.

It’s all in an ordinary industrial-style street. I don’t know if these warehouses, directly opposite Jackson’s post-production building, are part of the studio or not, though interesting drumming noises were coming out of them when I took this photo.

Though the Park Road Post Production building is pretty impressive.

I took this from the street.

The visit – coupled with last week’s viewing of The Hobbit movie - got me thinking. I wouldn’t call myself a ‘fan’. I approach Tolkien with a critical eye, I don’t consume every word.  Each volume in my copy of The Lord of The Rings is from a totally different paperback edition and I’ve never bothered to get any of the different illustrated, one-volume or ‘collectors’ versions issued since.

But I like his created world and his writing very much indeed, and have ever since I was eight or nine - about as long,  in fact, that I’ve been writing myself.

It was the Pauline Baynes map that captured me first. Her artwork  was evidently frowned upon by Tolkien himself. But it spoke of adventure, of exploration – of the unknown. I wanted to experience that magic – to live that world. I started imagining. A little later, I read The Hobbit. And I was hooked. I still have that copy of the book, the third edition paperback with Tolkien’s own ‘Death of Smaug’ sketch as cover art. It’s totally battered. I don’t know how often I’ve read it. Lots.

A year or two after that I read The Lord Of The Rings. And read it again. And again. And again. And many times again after that. I’ve read it only twice since I was a teenager – but I can still pretty much quote passages from it.

Check out the wear and tear. Is my copy of ‘The Hobbit’ much-loved, or what?

Tolkien’s work spoke to me on many levels. He conveyed a sense of wonder on an epic scale, yet in terms that brought that wonder back to ‘ordinary’ through the hobbits. I could share their sense of discovery, of growth, as the world unfolded for them – and which they had to find the strength to handle.

Later, as I learned more about literature and writing, I came to realise just how much of the essence of the western mind Tolkien had put into his work. My enjoyment of his world became a journey of discovery - re-awakening a sense of wonder when I read his material.

I am still on that journey, and it is a wonderful journey indeed.

How about you? Are you a Tolkien enthusiast? What drew you to his work? And if he’s not your cup of tea – well, what doesn’t appeal? It’s all valid. I don’t like some of his material myself, actually – too inaccessible, too academic; or written in ways that don’t capture. As I say, I approach this with a critical eye – not adulating fandom. But what he imagined remains very much a part of my life.

What are your thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

A small eternity watching ‘The Hobbit’: a personal view

On the weekend my wife and I went to see The Hobbit.

The Hobbit is one of my favourite books, Jackson is one of my favourite directors, and we live where it was made – there has been a buzz around Wellington for years. Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings – all three parts – was stunning. It was stunning as a story, stunning for Jackson’s deft handling of an epic canvas. Stunning for its effects.

Gollum in Wellington airport passenger terminal – a marvellous example of the model-maker’s art.

So we had plenty of build-up for this one. And in many ways it did not disappoint. The actors were superb. The effects were brilliant. The set dressing was astonishing. The attention to detail was incredible. I wasn’t worried that the movie bore only passing resemblance to the book, either. Movies are different media – they require different handling, especially this time. Jackson has taken Tolkien’s low-key story of a quest for treasure – explicitly, Bilbo’s hero journey – and turned it into a nine hour epic. That meant it had to be significantly deepened.

Weta’s 10-metre high Gandalf above the Embassy theatre, Courtenay Place, Wellington.

There was just one small problem.  Nothing happened other than a relentless bang-bang-bang succession of chases and (literally) pit-falls.  The movie was about half over when my wife whispered in my ear. ‘Are we there yet?’ We weren’t. Eventually the end credits rolled. ‘Well,’ my wife said. ‘That was awful.’  I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s three hours of our lives we won’t get back.’

What happened? To me, the main problem was that it hadn’t been deepened enough – or properly structured. The existing Hobbit plot was stretched, thinly, across a three-hour movie-scape in which other material seemed to intrude, sometimes for no obvious reason. It opened with a loving, nostalgic reprise of The Fellowship of The Ring, which didn’t seem to do anything for the plot other than add fan-fic style ’completeness’. It took over an hour for the story to actually get going, and then, as my wife put it, the thing felt at times like a succession of out-takes from The Fellowship of the Ring, slung into a bucket. I got the impression, at times, that I had been watching The Hobbit re-written as rather mediocre fan fiction.

That diorama from another angle.

Structure is everything with fiction – novels and movies alike. In the specific, to me the main over-arching plot, leading to the ‘big boss’ battle at the very end – was Azog’s quest for revenge. This was a new element, not envisaged by Tolkien. Unfortunately, Azog kept turning up to intensify danger or push chases along, without real build-up or tension – more melodrama than drama. But in any case, the whole thing needed a more epic plot to match the scale of movie, the scale of effects, and the scale of the settings; and Tolkien’s legendarium has many gigantic elements that could have been brought in – from the origin of dragons as corrupted Maiar and servants of Morgoth, to the full back-story of Sauron deceiving the elves into forging rings.

The other problem was tone. It came across to me as an awkward juxtaposition between Jackson-style slapstick – not much related to Tolkien’s gentle brand of intellectual humour – and deep, dark seriousness, which the plot elements didn’t quite match.

To me the strength of the 1937 Hobbit novel was tightness and the fact that the magic and wonder of Bilbo’s world unfolded for us as it did for Bilbo. Along the way we watched Bilbo grow as a person.  All was presented with Tolkien’s gentle humour and pitched for its reading audience, initially his children. Tolkien’s characters were also discomfited by ordinary problems, such as rain and storms, which we can all identify with. It led them into adventure with trolls and goblins. The ordinary became the extraordinary – but one we could share because we had been led gently into it. I got none of that feel with the movie.

I am a huge fan of Tolkien. I am a huge fan of my fellow Wellingtonian, Sir Peter Jackson. But this movie didn’t do it for me.  The Gollum riddle game, which was truly masterful, went some way towards redeeming the whole. But not far enough.

What did this movie do for you?

In post-scriptum, we found succour on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrKXH1CeXck

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this week: Write It Now, Part 2; more on kindness; and picture inspirations from earthquake-hit Christchurch.

How J R R Tolkien changed the world

I never stop marvelling at how the mind and work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien has flowed into everyday life around the western world. Even the lives of those who haven’t read his books or seen the Peter Jackson movie adaptations.

Probably Bert and Tom, I think. Two of the three ‘life size’ trolls at The Hobbit premiere. Cool.

Take the word dwarf, for instance. In 1930, when Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, the plural was dwarfs. But Tolkien didn’t like it, and not just because the plural of ‘elf’ was ‘elves’. As a philologist and English scholar he knew that in Old English the word for dwarf was dweorh, pluralised as dwarrows. In old German it was twerg or dwergaz, and in Norse it was dvergr. ‘Dwarf’? Boring.

So Tolkien decided to make a more interesting plural of the English word – dwarves. He was the only one who did it. Just him. It wasn’t an easy one to get through his editors at Allen and Unwin, who kept correcting it back to ‘dwarfs’. But he managed it in the end.

And guess what – that’s how dwarf is pluralised now, always, right down to the point where my edition of Word 2010 doesn’t recognise it as a typo.

I even saw a title of a novel with the word spelt that way.

Technically it’s a neologism coined by Tolkien, but you wouldn’t think so at this juncture. And isn’t that just fantastic. This one spelling alone – now ‘correct’ and universal – shows the power writers have to work their ideas into wider society. The way writers can influence. The way imagination and creativity can spread from a single author’s ideas. And it’s all happened in the two generations since The Lord Of The Rings was published.

And that’s without considering the way his ideas have flowed into our lives in other ways – through music inspired by his motifs, through his influence on literature and fantasy writing, through the ubiquity of his work. Even, dare I say it, through the way the movies have been commercialised, opening up the vistas of Middle Earth to new generations and new audiences, mainstreaming the whole mythos in ways literature alone could not.

I am fairly sure Tolkien never intended it. People who truly change the world never do.

How has Tolkien influenced your world?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

A visit to some old Tolkien filming sites in New Zealand

The Hobbit has been breaking box office records both here in New Zealand and in the US, and showcasing our scenery (blush).

Hutt River or Anduin? Well, maybe the houses are the give-away. I took this picture a while back.

Quite a lot of it, though, wasn’t shot “on location” exactly – a fair chunk was made in Wellington, partly in Jackson’s studios, partly on an outdoor lot on the hill adjacent to the studio complex, well hidden by trees from prying eyes. And that marked one of the big differences between the shooting of The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord Of The Rings a decade or so ago.

The Hobbit was secret – filmed behind closed doors to the point where security guards accosted people entering the park above the studio lot. But a dozen years ago, Jackson filmed a large chunk of The Lord of The Rings in public less than 10 km from my house. Starting with the Saruman death-by-fall-from-Orthanc scene which was filmed in a small park adjacent to suburban houses, against a green screen. Right out in the open, and boy did it puzzle fans who knew that no such scene occurred in the book.

The other day I went out to have a look at the Dry Creek Quarry, where Jackson’s crews once built the walls of Helm’s Deep and – then – Minas Tirith. The set was enormous, and directly visible from the road. Here it is today. That grassy ridge is where the fortifications were built. Back in 2000, my wife and I drove past the set in its Minas Tirith configuration. ‘Wish we could get a look at that,’ I said wistfully. Neither of us knew it was open day, right then. Sigh.

I took this photo the other week, 12 years after the Helm’s Minas Tirith Deep set was demolished. You’d never know today. But hey – it’s a working quarry.

Here’s Queen Elizabeth II Park – er – the Pelennor Fields. They filmed the dead Mumakil scene here.

Either the Pelennor Fields or a public park…

It’s near Paekakariki, and the site of a US military base during the Second World War. And here’s Shed 21 on Aotea Quay, in central Wellington. Back in 2000 it was a warehouse. Jackson had the interior set for the Minas Tirith throne room built into it. Later the set was demolished and the building refurbished – today it’s apartments and a small office park.

Shed 21 – was Minas Tirith throne room set. Now apartments.

All this underscores just how much of the movies, these days, seems to be made inside the blade server with Autodesk, Terragen and Massive. But the magic’s still there in the original locations, if we let our imaginations work.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Soaking up the down-town party buzz on Hobbit premiere day

It’s been Hobbit party time today in Wellington, and I took a walk to party central – Courtenay Place – early afternoon to check it out.

Probably Bert and Tom, I think. Two of the three ‘life size’ trolls. Cool.

Yes, THIS is the red carpet laid out for the stars…later…

Don’t do anything orc-ward,’ my wife told me when I left the house. We have lame conversations like that quite often.

Courtenay Place is the main café district. It’s our equivalent of the Rue de Lafayette in Paris - only on fast-forward and micro-sized.

It’s often crowded – but the crowds this time were thicker than I’ve ever seen, the mood electric, happy, excited. People have been camping out since last night to get good places for the red carpet walk by the stars before the evening world premiere showing of The Hobbit -  An Unexpected Journey.

Hobbit food?

Crowds are expected to top 120,000 – 2.6 percent of New Zealand’s entire population, all jammed into a half-kilometre stretch of inner city street. That’s also a fair chunk of the population of greater Wellington. Special trains were laid on for everybody coming in.

Put another way, a proportionate crowd in the US would top 8.08 MILLION people, all going to this one event.

Blowing the dirt off the red carpet.

Now, which star do these people like?

But even 120,000 is a fair crowd, especially when they’re rammed into a linear kilometre (and where the public toilets at the southern end just got turned into a cafe).

That is why my wife and I decided not to go to the premiere street party. Jostling through packed people while failing to get a view isn’t our thing.

Besides, it’s being shown on national TV, live. A way better view, up front.

But I still wanted to soak up the buzz and feel of the event. So I went down early afternoon anyway to see what was happening.

For me it was just as important to get a feel for the emotion of it – for the excitement as it built – as it was to attend the moment itself. This movie has captured Kiwi imaginations in a fantastic way. More so than The Lord Of The Rings. It bas become OUR movie, OUR national triumph.

And I found the mood electric. There were people with Gandalf hats, people with themed shirts. People with signs. People waiting out the day in the sun – all of them happy, having fun, laughing, just having a great time.

It’s a lot more, for us, than just a movie of a great fantasy story made into a movie by a local boy-done-good. Why? I’ll blog about that in the next and – for the moment – final post on this very exciting local engagement with John Tolkien and his fantastic creation. And I have to wonder. What would Tolkien have thought of this? Of a whole nation taking to the streets in joy and celebration, because their imaginations had been captured by something he’d written? Food for thought.

Meanwhile – here are the pictures. Enjoy.

Even early afternoon there were lots of people. Some had been camping overnight.

Says it all, really.

Readying for the VIP’s and dignitaries.

A stage had been set on Kent Terrace – cleverly positioned to give the illusion of continuity with the Bag End door on the fascia of the theatre about 30 metres behind. Double cool.

Courtenay Place is also a main bus route – but not today.

Sneaking around behind Bert. Well, it was daylight…

I’m going to wait for the rush to settle down a bit before heading off to see the movie. I’m not sure whether with all the whistles and bells yet either. Kind of tossing up which cinema to go to. The Embassy – where the premiere is showing –  is set up for full 48 fps, the sound system, and 3D. But the seats are pretty uncomfortable. Um.

Are you going to the movie when it opens worldwide in a fortnight? I’d love to hear from you!

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Some penultimate Hobbit excitement before the premier

I thought I’d share a final link-list of what’s been happening in Wellington today for The Hobbit premiere. The stars are in town, and so is a large media contingent from the US and Europe.

Hobbit stars Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis and others visited the ‘Zealandia’ wildlife reserve:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/8002657/Hobbit-stars-visit-Zealandia

The Hobbit stars and J R R Tolkien’s great grandson came into Wellington this morning on Air New Zealand’s Hobbit-painted Boeing 777-300:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/8003418/Actors-arrive-aboard-Hobbit-plane

Peter Jackson reveals that The Hobbit was nearly filmed in Britain after an industrial dispute here in 2010:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/8002222/Hobbit-was-nearly-filmed-in-Britain

Here’s an interview with Andy Serkis on being Gollum:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/7999763/Andy-Serkis-Getting-under-Gollums-skin

On Wednesday, 28 November, there’s a parade through central Wellington leading down to the premier at the Embassy cinema on Courtenay Place. And then it’s going to be all over. I’ll be back to my usual blogging topics after that. Oh, and hanging out to watch the movie… obviously…

Are you planning to go see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey? And when? How do you figure Jackson, Walsh and Boyens have adapted it?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

The spy and ‘The Hobbit’

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien fielded a few letters from readers about The Hobbit, after it was published in 1937.

One of them was from fellow author Arthur Ransome, whose Swallows and Amazons series was in full swing that decade – charming camping and sailing stories set mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. They are still wonderful reading today, classic inter-war period pieces that put Enid’s Blighters in their place.

Ransome’s books sold like hotcakes – he was the 1930s equivalent of J K Rowling. Those stories also carry an innocent charm that belies Ransome’s darker secret.

He was a journalist, sent to Moscow in 1917 as correspondent for the Guardian. Here he ended up hob-nobbing in the highest circles of the Soviet administration. He played chess with Lenin and then romanced – and married – Leon Trotsky’s secretary Evegnia.

Arthur Ransome wearing his press corps uniform, public domain from http://www.guardian.co.uk/

When he got back to Britain in 1919, MI5 arrested him for being a Soviet spy. ‘What are your politics?’ Special Branch head Sir Basil Thomson demanded. ‘Fishing,’ Ransome allegedly replied.

But Ransome was actually a double agent, passing Soviet details back to MI6, who had recruited him in Stockholm in 1918. Alas, it seems MI6 failed to tell MI5 of the deal. Oops.

Ransome put all that behind him in the 1920s, retiring to the Lake District where he shortly began writing his childrens stories.

While Ransome was convalescing in Norwich hospital from surgery in 1938, he read an early edition of The Hobbit, and felt moved to write to Tolkien. His gripe? He disliked Tolkien’s use of the words ‘man’ and ‘men’ as the generic term to describe hobbits, dwarves and wizards. Tolkien protested; in Old English usage it was correct.

But it seems Tolkien did make Ransome’s recommended change in the second edition.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

A mashup o’links for Hobbit fans

Amidst a growing Hobbit frenzy I thought I’d list a few news stories that have been making headlines here in New Zealand. I don’t know how far these have got worldwide:

1. The Tolkien estate are suing Warner Bros
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/movies/news/article.cfm?c_id=200&objectid=10848954

2. Sir Ian McKellen’s thoughts on being Gandalf the Grey
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/7985801/Sir-Ian-on-Gandalfs-return

3. A story about Tolkien’s grandson and the price of fame
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/7973207/Downside-of-fame-for-Tolkien-family

4. Waikato university researchers will be using Google to study the impact of The Hobbit movie worldwide
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/7969342/Researchers-study-The-Hobbit

 5. Matamata is preparing for a tourist boom. Hobbiton is nearby. A while back I saw Graeme Norton ridiculing  Elijah Wood on TV for saying Hobbiton was ‘real’. But Wood had been there. The town was made by Jackson’s production company out of proper concrete, 4 x 2 timbers and durable materials, complete with the mill and the Green Dragon inn. Now shooting’s over, it will be a tourist attraction.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/movies/news/article.cfm?c_id=200&objectid=10848911

6. Meet the dwarves
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10848833

7. A Radio NZ Journalist was dis-accredited, but since re-accredited, to cover the premiere
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10849177

 Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Underwhelmed by the middle of Middle Earth

As readers of this blog will perhaps have noticed from a few subtle hints, I’m a bit of a Tolkien fan.

Wellington has been in The Hobbit buzz for a while. It’s been dubbed the ‘middle of Middle Earth’. Visitors arriving at the airport walk underneath Gollum diving for fish; and the baggage conveyor door looks like Bag End. There’s a Nazgul rampant on horse in a bookshop down Lambton Quay. And a lot of other stuff.

Yesterday I hastened with She Who Must Be Obeyed to check out the Hobbit Artisan Market in downtown Wellington.

I had to go prone to take this picture. ‘Get up,’ She Who Must Be Obeyed insisted. ‘People will think you’re dead.’

Yes, like a geeky Tolkien fan I had to pose in the entrance, such as it was – you could circle it, just like the door Aslan made to get rid of the Telmarines in .Prince Caspian’.

We were looking forward to this market. Well, She Who Must Be Obeyed was, I’m not entirely into ‘crafts’, evidenced by my idea of looking for an Elven cloak that could render the wearer invisible against green grass, green sky, green rocks, green water and green desert, etc. But there was promise of other stuff and I’m a bit of a sucker for Tolkien’s world. Not that I might have revealed this before.

We found the market in the shadow of one of Wellington’s best streamline moderne buildings – the 1940 Post Office headquarters, now converted to apartments.

The giant ring marking the entrance to the market was on its lonesome in the corner of the park, attracting people wanting to be photographed. Ahem…including me…cough cough, I am not a fan geek, cough…

Possibly Smaug. Possibly not.

Apropos the foreshadowed glories within? Not so much. Even as a craft market, the place lacked wow factor for us. There were stalls selling food, with long queues. There were tents with people selling jewellery, figurines, wool and nicknacks.

There was a Weta Cave tent, selling Hobbit-themed 3D glasses, Dr Grordbort’s books, and a few odds and sods.

There was entertainment-for-kids with remote speakers blasting inane commentary across the park. A big screen was displaying The Hobbit trailers which we’ve had around on YouTube for the last millennium. And – uh – that was about it.

This was the best aisle of craft stalls. That’s also because it was the only aisle…

These people are all talented artists, no question – but something had come adrift in the way it was set up. We left after about half an hour and went to see the latest exhibition in Tracy Island Te Papa, the national museum.

Roll on the movie.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

My regular ‘Inspirations’ series returns next Sunday.