Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

by Wright, John C.

  I loved the first Hobbit movie and hated, hated, hated the second. It was stupid on every level of stupidity. It should rightly be called The Desolation of Tolkien.

  Before swan-diving into the sewer of total stupidity that is the Desolation movie, my intractable Southern courtesy requires that I say something good about this movie. Well, as it happens, there was not just one thing good about this movie, there were three: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, and Richard Armitage. They played their parts so well that I feel I have met the real Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin.

  Sylvester McCoy did his best with what he was given, but the movie maker put bird poop in his hair. Which is not, come to think of it, so very different from what the movie maker did to us, his audience. This was to make Radagast the Brown, one of the divine and august Istari who journeyed from the Blessed Lands beyond the Uttermost West to aid Middle Earth in its dark hour, to be as silly-looking a human whoopee cushion as possible.

  On to what I hated with a nerdrageous passion that knows no sense of proportion: let us start at the beginning.

  No, let us start before the beginning. While still in the lobby, I saw a poster for the movie which had handsome pictures in full Middle Earth make-up of Gandalf the Gray, Thorin Oakenshield, Radagast the Brown, Legolas Greenleaf, and Tauriel the Who the Hell is She. Quick quiz: what person after whom this movie is named does not appear on his poster? Hint: Not the dragon. Second question: how many of these characters are not in this story at all?

  Upon seeing that odd poster, a spasm like biting with a tooth whose filing has worked loose onto a chip of ice wrapped in tinfoil and hot mustard jolted through my unwarned brain. Had I only taken it as an omen and fled shrieking into the night at that moment, I would have been spared much woeful nerdgrief.

  One of my favorite scenes in The Hobbit is the meeting between Gandalf and Beorn. Gandalf, being a wise old man, does not bring in thirteen dwarves and a hobbit all at once and beg hospitality from the fearsome and proud freeholder whose homestead dares the eaves of Mirkwood itself, nor does he use any charm other than his charming demeanor. Instead he toys with Beorn’s curiosity as he tells the story of their adventures so far, introducing each pair of additional dwarves, as if by a slip of the tongue, so that the fierce freeholder is won over. Had this scene been in the film, it would also have brought the audience up to speed.

  You see, the scene is charming because it is a children’s story, and in children’s stories, tricks like this work, and they do not need to be magic tricks. Gandalf comes over as a wise man, a counselor, not a magic-powered superhero.

  The drama here is that the dwarves are stranded without any gear or provision or provender, and if the lonely and stubborn Beorn, a man distrustful of travelers and beggars who has no love for dwarves, does not help them, they starve and the quest fails.

  Gandalf also drops a hint that Beorn is not as he appears. Some dark secret, redolent of the supernatural, clings to this figure somehow able to survive in the eave-shadows of a cursed and haunted wood.

  No, instead Beorn’s dark secret is revealed from the get-go, and he complains about having been enslaved and his people exterminated, and it is as about as hamfisted and heavy-handed a characterization as can be crammed into a five minute clip of film. Nothing comes of it and it comes from nowhere, since the dramatic tension of having to win his alliance lest the quest fail does not exist in this version.

  His makeup is stupid, as if he is the Middle Earth version of Samson, who, instead of having his power hidden in his hair, has it hidden in his eyebrows. He looked like Freddie Jones in his Mentat get-up in the 1984 film version of Dune. I was expecting him at any moment to chant: “It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning….”

  There is a scene where the dwarves want to keep the ponies loaned by Beorn but their overlooked last member, Bilbo, reminds them to keep their promises—at which moment the looming shadow of a bear-like shape is seen on a ridge nearby, watching them, silent as an angel of vengeance. Or at least that scene is in the book.

  I do not remember that scene, which is the first step of Bilbo’s character arc to becoming the hero of the company, as being in the film. Maybe I had to get up to get popcorn. I do remember the eerie hints of Beorn’s true nature not being present in the film, but instead a garish special effect, maybe tossed in for a pointless reason.

  Wow. I am already weary under the heavy load of stupid things, and we have not even reached Mirkwood yet. How about a mini-vacation, dear reader? There were two other thing that were not just done right, they were done brilliantly: the gateway to Mirkwood looked like a gate should look if long lost elves had carved it; and there is a scene, taken straight from the book, where Bilbo climbs a tree and for a moment sees the winds of the world above the leaf-gloom, and beholds the black butterflies of Mirkwood in the sunlight. Peter Jackson did that scene, and did it perfectly.

  Now let us descend back down into the abyss of poor filmsmanship, like Bilbo reluctantly shimmying down the tree away from the sunlight, smiling clouds, and fluttering butterflies. Farewell, one good moment! Hail, boring inanity!

  The quest enters Mirkwood, and Gandalf leaves them with the warning that they are not to depart from the path. Leaving the path is bad.

  In the book, as in any number of old myths, fairy tales or medieval legends, they are indeed lured off the path due to weakness of character. In the book, the dwarves see what seems to be the campfires of a gay company dancing and feasting with music and rich ale and savory meats, and when they blunder off the path toward the vision, it turns out not to be men but rather forest elves, who vanish in a twinkling, as by magic, and the dwarves are left dazed and asleep amid the mossy forest roots.

  In the movie, they try not to leave the path, but then they get stoned at Woodstock, because maybe they dropped some bad acid, man. The vibes turn bad, man, it’s a bad trip! And Bilbo turns and sees himself. WHOA, this is so heavy, dude!

  Okay. Does anyone who has ever told a story to a child actually need lessons in how it is done? The rule is very simple. Adults will allow you to cheat the story. Children won’t. If the story says that only Love’s First Kiss will wake the sleeping princess, an adult might allow you to pull an ironic trick such as having the prince be the villain and the sister’s love save the princess. But no kid will allow it. It is cheating. There is an unspoken contract, as binding as any enforced by an unsmiling and clear-eyed king who rules with a rod of iron, between the teller of the tale and those who enter the tale. The rule in children's stories is that you don’t say things you don’t mean.

  Gandalf tells them not to leave the path. He does not mean it. If he meant it, the dwarves would be tempted to leave the path due to a weakness of character, or fear, or hunger, and the hobbit would remind them to stay on the straight and narrow. Get it? It is the first rule of storytelling. Maybe it is the only rule. Storytelling is serious and telling a children’s story is even more serious, because children are more severe critics than adults, and their sense of justice is more finely honed.

  Other complaints? I have a Cotillion, which is a number larger than Vermilion.

  There was not enough Mirkwood in the film. It was supposed to be murky, and seem endless, and gloomy and forbidding, and you were supposed to feel lost. Instead the dwarves zipped through the endless miles of gloom in, what, like an afternoon? Did they even camp overnight?

  Time for another vacation from Stupidityland. There was something that was not in the book but that was so damned cool that it almost makes up for the disappointment of Beorn.

  When Bilbo puts on the ring which he got from Gollum, he can hear the spiders talking and understand their evil speech, for he is partway into the shadow realm.

  Ah, I loved that idea.

  Then there was a fight scene where the filmmaker threw gallons of glop in 3D toward my eyes. Vacation over.

  In the book, Bilbo
lures the spiders away from their prey, the helpless dwarves, by calling them names, such as Lazy Lob, Crazy Cob, and Old Tomnoddy and, of course, Attercop. It is a classic Jack-taunting-the-Giant fairy tale gimmick, as fresh and ancient as Eastertide, where the little guy lures the big guy with eight legs, clustered eyes, and a pincer mouth away from the prisoners.

  Vocabulary trivia time! Attercop –n. 1. a spider. 2. an ill-natured person. [Old English attorcoppa, from ātor poison and cop head]

  In the movie, no such luck. No such attercop. Instead we get a World of Warcraft-style CGI fight with giant spiders. Now with extra glop.

  This film was like being hit in the head over and over with a hammer, and with each blow, the IQ of the audience dropped another few digits. At this point a particularly fierce blow of the Stupidity Hammer struck home. Yes, fans, it was time for Legolas to come onstage!

  I do not know if you have ever played Dungeons & Dragons or any of the various role-playing games that occupied my youth, but if you had, you would be familiar with the phenomenon called ‘the moderator’s pet NPC.’ This is when a moderator introduces a character into the adventure who does everything better than any player character, and the entire universe (the moderator’s invented universe, that is) showers him with blessings and love. You might see a similar phenomenon among writers of fan fiction, when they intrude themselves into their favorite scene as ‘Mary Sue’ the ensign who saves the Enterprise.

  Well, watching Legolas, a character not in this book in any way, shape, or form, I felt I was watching the moderator’s pet NPC in action.

  It was like seeing Legosue, not Legolas.

  And then came another blow of the Stupidity Hammer: the interspecies romance between the cute elf-girl and Kili, who for some reason did not look at all like a dwarf.

  Look here, I am a married man, so I have been forced by the wife under the threat of domestic displeasure to go see my fair share of romances. Cowering and uxorious, I went. These included The Bridges of Madison County not to mention the remake of Pride and Prejudice, which I simply adored. Romance, like children's fables, has a simple rule. The couple needs two things: (1) some strong reason for them to be together and (2) some strong obstacle which keeps them apart. The drama of romance consists of item (1) against all odds and beyond all hope overcoming item (2).

  But in the movie now and hereafter to be called The Desolation of Two Hours of My Life That I Will Never Get Back Again, there was item (2), namely that the two creatures were not of the same order of being, not to mention the Son of Earth was in the dungeon of the elf-king; but there was no item (1). What did they have in common, again, exactly? What did she see in him? What was the basis of their mutual attraction?

  Time for another mini-vacation from the endless blows of the Stupidity Hammer! We get to see a scene set in the underground halls of Thranduil the Elf-king. Whatever else Jackson does wrong, he does his set direction right, does his art direction right, and every prop and weapon and artifact and smallest thing looks simply perfect. I loved the set of the throne room.

  AN-NNN-ND then, for a small but very painful smack of the Stupidity Hammer, we get to see Thranduil’s face melt for a second, as if he is hiding by enchantment (an enchantment that slips when he is angry) some old scar from where the dragon burned a huge hole in his cheek so that all the teeth of his skull are visible. Or maybe his face was burned by acid only on one side, and he hates the Batman so much that he will flip a coin to see whether he will spare his captives or kill them. And he only steals things related to the number Two. Yes, that is it: Thranduil is Two-Face. But whatever he was, he was not like a Tolkien character.

  Ergo the scene where Thranduil kills an orc after the helpless prisoner cooperates is not because the director forgot that no Tolkien elf would ever break his word of honor in such a sadistic and low and nasty way, not even to an enemy; no, the orc just lost the coin toss! (That noise you just heard was the sound of my brain sloshing against the scuppers of my skull under the impact of the Stupidity Hammer.)

  Of course nothing comes of Two-Thranduil’s melted face, except to show that he hates dragons. Because otherwise there is no reason to hate a dragon, because we all love them, right?

  Then the Stupidity Hammer lashes out again, this time as a blow to the groin of every man in the audience, because, SURPRISE! The lovely and eternally young elf-maiden, instead of doing elf-maidenly things like dancing in the moonlight on the surface of enchanted lakes or singing magical songs to beguile the watchful terrors of Thangorodrim, turns out to be Xena the Warrior Elf Princess. Yes, she is the roughest, toughest, most kick-ass Spartan Marine Navy SEAL Special Forces Ninja Battlebabe in the entire warrior-harem of the elf-lord’s politically correct gender-neutral and gender-accommodating fashion-model army. She makes as much sense as a platoon of bathing beauty Cataphracts or the dread and dreaded Playboy Bunny Brute Squad.

  All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves.

  Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks.

  Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create.

  So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry?

  At that point, another blow of the Stupidity Hammer descended, when we see Gandalf, all by his lonesome self, wandering into the stronghold of Dol Guldur.

  In the book the stronghold of Dol Guldur was, you know, a stronghold. Hence the name. That means it was a fortress, filled with soldiers of the dread sorcerer known only as the Necromancer. In the book, while the scene is not onstage, the hints dropped imply that Gandalf and his brother wizards of the White Council put forth their strength and assailed Dol Guldur and drove Sauron forth. “Assailed” means they besieged the place, which means they parked an army in a circle around the tower, battered the walls, used catapults and trebuchets and battering rams to crack the gates: you get the picture.

  Instead, in the movie, Gandalf waltzes in, tells Radagast not to waltz in, gets mugged by orcs, and then Sauron shows up as a huge black special effect and telekinetically pins the old man up against a wall — and does not kill him.

  Okay. Time for another lesson in storytelling: This is a lesson, which, unlike the others, only modern fantasy writers know, and which not all children or all women fans of romance know. This is because in the old days wizards were never the main characters; they were either wise councilors and prophets like Merlin, or they were antagonists whose curse or enchantment was the main obstacle to be overcome.

  But when the wizard is onstage as the main character, you have to adopt what I call the Jack Vance Rule. I call it this because Jack Vance is the first author successfully and adroitly to have applied this rule in his The Dying Earth. The Jack Vance Rule is: (1) The wizard has to be able to do something unusual, or else he is not a wizard, (2) he cannot do everything, or else there is no drama; therefore (3) the story teller has to communicate to the reader whatever the dividing line is that separates what the wizard can do from what he cannot do, so that the reader can have a reasonable expectation of knowing what the wizard can and cannot do.

  In The Dying Earth, the rule established that wizards could only force into their three-dimensional brains the ultradimensional and reality-warping syllables of at most three to seven spells a day, which, once they were spoken, eva
porated from the wizard’s brain like a dream at waking, their force expended, unable to be spoken again. Sound familiar? It is such a simple and clear and elegant rule for how to limit magic that Gary Gygax used it in his Dungeons and Dragons game, which then outstripped Vance in fame, so that modern readers often find Vance disappointingly similar to a D&D game.

  Any rule will do. In Green Lantern comics, the magic ring can do anything as long as it is green, and it is helpless against the color yellow.

  In the book, Gandalf does not need his rules defined because he is not a main character. He is a wise councilor and a wonder worker in the fashion of Merlin. He never does anything more magical than throw a pinecone full of napalm at a warg, lock a door, break a bridge, or hold up his staff to forbid an unclean spirit entrance into a gateway. He is roughly as magical as your average Army chaplain who carries a flamethrower.

  In the movie, however, the wizard is a main character who faces another main character, also a wizard, in a duel of magic. The results are lame and stupid because the audience sees a bunch of meaningless lightshow effects, with no idea of what allows either side to win or lose. I felt like astronaut Bowman entering the spacewarp of the monolith in Kubrick's 2001 A Space Oddysey. Wow. Pretty lights.

  My only consolation is that this lame duel of magic was nowhere near as lameriffic as the wizard duel between Gandalf and Saruman in Fellowship, which consisted of old men flying about on wires slamming each other into walls with their Green Lantern-style telekinesis.

  This also was the main drawback of the Harry Potter movies, by the way. In the final duel between Harry and his Dark Lord, (same job, different guy), they point their wands at each other. Then they grimace. Then they point their wands at each other even harder.

  Bilbo is not onstage during all this. Where is the Hobbit in this film, allegedly called The Hobbit, again?

  Ah, but then we see Bilbo. After his friends are captured by wood elves, using his ring of invisibility, he sneaks into the buried palace of the elf lord. Unseen, his wily eyes spy out that the elves drink wine imported from Laketown, and float the empty barrels downstream as part of their trade and traffic with the human settlement.