Monsters & Mullets: Fellowship pt 2

And we’re back! Last time we tackled the first hour and a half of the Fellowship of the Ring, and today we’re going to fight a balrog. Let’s get to it.

Arwen and Aragorn have a moment in a moonlit forest, standing on a bridge, that seriously looks like a cheesecake painting from the 1930s. We have the ‘pleasure’ of listening in as they have the first of their endless conversations about whether or not they should be together. Bilbo, meanwhile, outfits Frodo for his adventure: he gives him Sting, and his mithril vest - and catches sight of the ring Frodo’s wearing around his neck as Frodo puts the vest on. And finally we see why Ian Holm was cast - he goes from charming old fuddy-duddy to terrifying monster when Frodo denies him a chance to wear the ring. It’s possibly the scariest moment in the entire movie. Bilbo then apologises ‘for everything’ while weeping, which is profoundly sad. He’s one of the sweetest, most generous characters in fantasy literature, and one who has only just learned that his adventure sixty years before unintentionally set off a chain of events that might conclude with the literal end of the world. It’s a hell of a thing.

And so our heroes go marching off to Mordor. Why they’re walking instead of riding I’ve never understood, but so it goes. Also Bill the pony appears and disappears in these scenes - by which I mean, he only appears briefly at the Moria door. We have a charming moment where Boromir teaches the hobbits to fight, interrupted by Saruman and his janky crows (the crebain); in yet another effective scene, we see the crows flap over the encampment and then head to Isengard, where the camera follows them as they swoop through the mines there. It’s one of my favourite scenes in the whole film, and no matter how many times I see it, it never loses its power. 

The crew have a number of routes into Moria; they begin by trying to go over the Misty Mountains, and it behooves me to point out that they are aggressively underdressed for crossing snow-covered mountains, no matter how brief the trip. Early in their hike, Frodo falls over and the ring slips from his neck, to be picked up by Boromir. The entire party turns to give Boromir the stink-eye as he utterly fails to maintain his chill. Boromir returns the ring and laughs it off, but Aragorn ain’t fooled.  Saruman sends an avalanche to break their path through the Misty Mountains, which, again, they are laughably unprepared for the Donner Party-esque weather conditions they were already confronted with, so really, Saruman was doing them a favor. They argue about whether to go through the Mines of Moria or the Rohan gap; even though the argument is strongly in favor of Moria, Gandalf is being really weird about it, and finally makes Frodo decide. They go mines.

Legolas is probably all like ‘I sense a chill wind blowing’ while the others basically freeze to death, because LEGOLAS.But getting into the mines takes a bit of time (not to mention how much time it must take them to backtrack?). There’s a lake and a secret door, and Gandalf puzzles over the door while Merry and Pip skip stones across the lake. Given the purpose Merry and Pip serve in this series, we know nothing awful will come of their innocent decision to try to have a moment of fun. Anyway, Frodo solves the riddle of the door and they head in… whereupon Gandalf lights his staff and reveals the scale of the massacre perpetuated upon Moria. How did Gimli not know that the entire civilisation was annihilated?! And Saruman’s voice-over basically says that Gandalf knew, so why didn’t he tell Gimli?! It occurs to everyone that the mines are not a good idea, so they turn around to leave… and Frodo is instantly attacked by a tentacle monster (the Watcher in the Water) that Merry and Pip accidentally awoke by skipping stones across that extremely suspect lake. Tooks and Brandywines, am I right. Well, the Watcher blocks the exit from the mine, leaving the party stuck inside, and that’s that. The only way forward is through. Gandalf suggests they hurry.  Everything’s more or less fine at first. Frodo notices that they’re being followed, (hello, Gollum!), prompting a gentle lecture from Gandalf about the nature of mercy. And then… they find Balin’s tomb, and a book that some really dedicated scribe kept while being murdered and just when it seems things couldn’t really get grimmer, Pip knocks a skeleton into a well and brings every goblin in Middle Earth crawling out of the bowels of the mine to attack them. And the goblins bring their cave troll. Fighty fight fight; Frodo gets it in the stomach but, of course, is fine; he’s got his mithril shirt, which Gimli is rightfully a little weird about. If Gimli knows it was a gift, he’d understand that it betokens great respect from the dwarves. But we don’t actually know how much Gimli knows about the events of the Hobbit. Maybe he thinks… Bilbo stole it? The elves gave it to Frodo?   They bring the troll down but there are still approximately ten bazillion goblins left, so they flee... only to have the goblins suddenly vanish. Because dwarves seem to attract monsters, and the Moria dwarves dug up a balrog. Our heroes flee across a series of insane bridges (seriously, wtf, dwarven architects) and ultimately Gandalf sacrifices himself to save the party, and that is really the moment things start to go to hell for the team. Boromir begs Aragorn to let the hobbits mourn for Gandalf but Aragorn points out that they’ve got to keep moving. Frodo cries a single perfect tear.  An aside about how I can never watch the cave troll scene without feeling sorry for it. The troll’s not a villain with individual will to do evil, but more like a pit bull the goblins have trained to attack, judging from the chain around its neck. And the confused, even sad noises it makes as it dies get me every time. Basically, there’s more pathos in the death of this one side quest monster than there is in the entire Hobbit film trilogy. But we’ll get there eventually. 

The fellowship are escorted into Lothlorien, which is more hippy commune in the Northern California redwood forest than Rivendell was. Legolas wanders around in slow motion, telling everyone that the inescapable singing they hear is the elves mourning Gandalf, which makes our party feel even worse. Frodo, meanwhile, meets up with Galadriel, sees the scouring of the Shire, realises the ring will destroy all his friends, falls over, and then offers Galadriel the ring. He’s given yet another glimpse of the ring’s terrible power when she goes stone-cold terrifying at the idea of wearing it. Anyway, Frodo’s emotional burden now increased, the party is given gifts - most of this bit is cut from the theatrical release, so we only see her hand Frodo a phial (which, let’s be honest; she should have given it straight to Sam). The elves set them into boats and shove them off into the river. But they’re not alone... the Uruk-hai are running through the forest in search of them, at Saruman’s behest, and ready for violence.  The fellowship pull their boats up on the shore at Amon Hen in preparation for the next stage of their hike into Mordor. But Boromir’s spent too long stewing about the ring; he runs into Frodo as the latter’s off wandering about, Feeling the Burden of his Mission, and tries to get the ring off him. Frodo slips the ring on and runs; Boromir comes to his senses and weeps at his folly. Frodo is forced to realise that the vision he had in Lothlorien, that the ring will tempt all his companions, is already coming to pass, and that he’s got to finish the quest on his own. He tells Aragorn, who understands perfectly, and cries a single perfect tear (Elijah Wood is so good at that) and tries to ghost but Sam nearly kills himself trying to get to Frodo, and so the two set off together.   Boromir, meanwhile, redeems himself by sacrificing himself to try to save Merry and Pippin; his death is awful and powerful, arguably more so even than Gandalf’s (especially if you know that Gandalf will come back). And thus our team is split: Sam and Frodo are heading into Mordor on foot, Merry and Pip have been kidnapped by orcs, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are off to save them. The end! 

 I mentioned at the beginning of the essay that Fellowship is, for my money, the strongest of the three films - and a great deal of that strength lies in Sean Bean’s performance as Boromir. Not only does he have a proper character arc, but Bean plays his character with humour and compassion. He demonstrates real affection for the hobbits when Aragorn’s busy Reluctantly Leading, and sacrifices himself in an act of true nobility and heroism, proving that he’s not merely the rich son of a powerful man, but a good man in and of himself. You really feel those arrows hitting him. And his death does more to make Aragorn embrace his duty as Once and Future King than anything else in the series, so Middle Earth owes him. Also, Bean’s delivery of ‘and they have a cave troll’ is a series highlight. Beyond that, however, Boromir is also the most (if you’ll pardon the expression) human character in the film. Frodo and Aragorn are reluctant heroes, Merry and Pippin are comic relief, Sam is frustratingly servile, and Legolas and Gimli spend most of their time taking pot-shots at each other. Where the rest of the fellowship is unequivocally good, Boromir is conflicted and complex, and his doubts and his fears betray him in a way they don’t the others.   Of the fellowship, Aragorn has his journey over the course of the three films but he’s pretty humourless, all Uneasy Lies the Head (and he’s not even wearing the crown yet). Gimli is a delight, but Legolas...  Orlando Bloom is a stunningly beautiful man, but my god, Legolas is such a pill. Everything out of his mouth is utterly meaningless high fantasy wank, all ‘the stars are dark tonight’ and ‘I feel the presence of darkness here,’ that sort of thing. If I may be so bold... he’s the Deanna Troi of the series. Everyone sort of turns to him for reassurance that their feeling are valid, but he doesn’t actually have much to offer besides empty phrases and some impressive archery skills.   And while Gandalf comes back and has multiple wonderful, heroic moments through the series, I always spend the rest of the series wishing to have Gandalf the Grey back: Gandalf the White is a more serious character, and McKellen plays him majestically, but I miss the warmth of Gandalf’s previous incarnation.  Is Fellowship the perfect fantasy film? Of course not. It’s absolutely superb in terms of storytelling, worldbuilding, acting, cinematography, ambition and execution… but that doesn’t mean it’s without its problems. Jackson did his best but the relationship between Sam and Frodo - while not as cringe-inducing as in the novels - has never failed to bug me. Sam may have his heroic moment in Return, (and even that is not unproblematic), and Jackson may have done his best to make their relationship as equal as he could... but that relationship is still essentially defined by Sam’s position as Frodo’s gardener, and the film never really lets you forget it. They rarely walk abreast; Sam is always positioned behind Frodo or to the side, with Frodo taking the central position in front of the camera. When they prepare food, Sam does the cooking; he carries the bulk of their belongings. And Sam regularly refers to him as Mr Frodo, while Frodo just calls Sam... Sam.   It goes without saying that there are basically no women in this series: Arwen and Galadriel appear in Fellowship, and Eowyn shows up in 2 and 3... but that’s it, Rosie Cotton aside. And Arwen’s role - so cool in Fellowship - is reduced to arguing with her father about whether or not she can marry Aragorn, and then, like, dying? Her whole thing in Return is very confusing and annoying.  And then there are the Uruk-hai. The Uruk-hai have dark skin and many are played by actors of colour; they’re the creation of a white man who’s literally defined by his whiteness (‘Saruman the White’), and bear the mark of a white hand; they’re vicious monsters unnaturally born of mud and violence. The symbolism is both very high fantasy and very uncomfortable to parse, and given the utter lack of actors of colour in any other part of this film... deeply problematic. The Fellowship of the Ring is nearly 20 years old, and it’s in its representation of women and people of colour that it truly shows its age. In the years Jackson spent in pre-production, the representation of women and people of colour on film, while a significant issue, had not yet become a mainstream conversation to the extent that it is today. I suspect that Jackson couldn’t stray too far from the source material in his adaptations, both at the behest of his producers and from concern about how the fans would react to changes to Tolkien’s books. LotR is a very, very faithful adaptation, and yet the purists still get up in arms about changes – many for the better - that he wrought, like leaving out Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the Shire. Fans couldn’t try to hold a film hostage by tanking its ratings in 2001 the way they can (try) now, but it’s not unreasonable to guess that Jackson worried about alienating potential audiences by changing the material too much... by doing things like adding a female character, changing a male character to a female, or casting actors of colour in lead roles.   But he had all the good will in the world to work with when he took on The Hobbit... and the world had changed radically in the 15 years between Return and The Hobbit. So both his fidelity to the racial and gender makeup of the 13 companions and his willingness to instead invent a female character out of whole cloth rather than just make some of the dwarves women - and add completely meaningless scenes with Galadriel - to get female characters into the film is a real issue.  The Hobbit is a failure - I’d go so far as to call it a tragic one, given the excitement and good will audiences brought to the project - and we’ll be looking at it next time.  Monsters: Depending on your definition, basically everyone except a few humans is a monster: hobbits, dwarves, elves, wizards, goblins, orcs, one cave troll, one balrog, a kraken-thingie, a giant eagle, the nazgul and their red-eyed steeds... it’s monsters all the way down. 

Monster side-note: I love the balrog, but holy cow do I hate the representation of Sauron in these films. I laughed aloud in the theatre when I first saw the movie, back in December 2001, because Sauron’s eye just... kinda looks like a flaming vagina. Your mileage may vary.  Mullets: All the humans have the late 90s version of a mullet (aka ‘fantasy’ hair): fringe along the forehead and long and greasy in the back. While there are no proper mullets, there are plenty of wigs.  Hookers, Victims and Doormats: Arwen is awesome (in this film), and Galadriel serves her purpose (as exposition central, post-Gandalf) well. Obviously I’d like to see a lot more representation but I can’t really complain about the female characters in this film. Arwen in 2 and 3 is a different story, and Eowyn’s mooning over Aragorn is deeply boring, no matter how brilliant her ‘I’m no man’ reveal is.  Remake watch: While not strictly remaking LotR, Amazon has bought the rights to the rest of the Tolkien estate and we’re going to be seeing a lot of Middle Earth in the near future.   Until we meet again in the Shire,

Anne

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