Adaptations as Commentary

I got into a conversation with the kids about the changes the made to Lord of the Rings from the books to the movies, and it struck me, kind of for the first time, how much those changes reflect the world of the late ‘90s.

To turn into Caption Obvious for a moment: All art is inexorably linked the cultural and social context of the time of its creation, and adaptations get it two ways, both the context from the original work, and then its own context. In the best case, you can use the one to comment on the other. As the adaptations slip away, and the context drifts, it gets easier to see which parts really were “better storytelling technology” and which were, oh, that’s just what the 90s were like.

I chewed over the changes in their own right around this time last year, but what I’m saying is, I don’t think anyone would consider “we went left home to fight evil, and then when we came back discovered it had taken root at home” boring and anticlimactic now. Cutting the Scouring of the Shire says a lot more about “the west” circa 2000 than it does about the book’s pacing. That they thought that wasn’t interesting enough to keep kinda feels like one of the skeleton keys that unlocks everything that happened in real life over the last quarter-century.

My point is I think a LotR movie made today would handle that whole end very differently. Very differently.

On the one hand, there are two many remakes and reboots and unasked-for sequels, and on the other hand I genuinely want to see what LotR would look like made by people who lived through the various catastrophes of the 21st century, instead of by people who grew up in a world where “bad things” only happen “over there.”