Vox Popoli

I would love to hear your official review of “Return of the King”. I am headed to the theaters this evening and though I’ve heard some hype,… I would love to hear the opinion of an avid Tolkien reader. Insights? Favorite parts? True to the story?

First, it bears repeating again that no one but Peter Jackson could/would have made these films properly. It is tremendously difficult to successfully port a story from one medium to another, and even JRR Tolkien considered his books to be unfilmable. In the hands of a less-skilled or less-devoted director – such as the joker who infamously declared that he didn’t need to bother reading Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers before directing the lousy film version – these movies could have been terrible. But they weren’t, instead they are without a doubt the greatest movie trilogy ever made.

SERIOUSLY, IF YOU WANT TO DISCOVER THESE THINGS FOR YOURSELF, SKIP THE REST OF THIS POST

The Return of the King is absolutely faithful to the spirit of the story. It is reasonably close to the letter, although even 3 hours and 20 minutes did not allow for many details, most small, some large. I found it interesting to learn that Peter Jackson disliked the anticlimactic Scouring of the Shire; I always hated that myself and believed that it should have been a separate, more detailed book. So, the fact that it is left out does not bother me in the least. Nor does the much-discussed omission of Saruman bother me, as subsequent to his defeat at Helms Deep and Isengard, he is largely extraneous to the story. But Jackson does not forget him; he’s not ignored and it’s quite clear why we’re not seeing him in this edit.

There are fewer moments that jar one out of the movie in this third episode. The too-modern bits of dialogue are more restrained, Gimli is less laughable – although he has a mordant line that is quite amusing – and Aragorn rightly assumes his royal persona with believable angst and reluctance. He is strangely weaker in this third film, and yet it is somehow fitting that he is not so much the Man on the White Horse as the man who humbly, but with determination, does what his duty requires of him. Only a true king can comport himself as he does in one of the film’s most beautiful scenes, when like an angel who knows his authority comes from God, he refuses the adulation of the hobbits and honors the Ringbearer and his companions by kneeling to them instead.

As a movie, the great triumph of The Return of the King is that it is a better action movie than most action movies, and yet has more emotional depth and power than any drama or chick flick. Even its horror, though less frightening than a good horror movie, is palpable. This list of likes and dislikes is trivial in comparison with the success of The Return of the King as a fully satisfying conclusion to the epic three-part movie.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE

1. Faramir was one of my favorite characters in the books. He is markedly less noble here, although most of the damage was already done in The Two Towers. His heroism, as well as his admiration for his older brother, does not come across well.

2. Denethor was an epic tragic figure in the books. Here, he comes off as petty and vindictive; a crazy man, not a great man crazed by the loss of his beloved son. The handling of the Denethor-Faramir relationship was probably the biggest disappointment to me, aside from Liv Tyler’s unaccountably tepid Arwen. She’s beautiful, but bland, bland, bland.

3. Horses don’t charge for over a mile. They also don’t charge walled positions. Silly. This happened several times.

4. The Great Sleepless Eye as spotlight. Sauron can see across Middle Earth, but not through a rock right in front of it? What was that? Minor, but very weird.

5. The tiny size of the Army of the West, and the way it gets surrounded. Ever heard of a defensive square, gentlemen? Or better yet, a fighting withdrawal using the seven hills of the book? It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t dramatic. Again, minor, but a strangely inept touch. The same sort of thing happened when Eomer’s riders surrounded Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. If you crowd too much, no one can do anything. What was the point? Yes, they’re surrounded. We get it. Oh, they’re really, really, really surrounded? Come on.

6. Elrond’s reduction in stature. I’d prefer to have seen him remain aloof, even bitter.

7. The siege of Gondor seemed rushed. I thought the siege of Helms Deep came off more powerfully.

8. Aragorn seemed rather lacking in authority when he confronted the dead. He was such a stud taking on the Nazgul and the orcs; I found this a little surprising and disappointing.

THINGS I REALLY, REALLY LIKED

1. The Riders of Rohan were perfect. Theoden’s transformation from deceived victim to triumphant victor was great. His line about being able to enter the Hall of his Fathers without sorrow or shame brought tears to my eyes. I loved Theoden in the books, loved him even more in the movies.

2. I had my doubts about Eowyn. While the actress didn’t quite fit my mental picture of her, she gradually grew on me. In The Return of the King, she comes into her own. I hope we’ll see more of her and Faramir in the extended DVD.

3. The charge of the Rohirrim. Yes, they didn’t fight the Oliphaunts in the books. No, it made little tactical sense considering their superior speed. But holy cats, it was so freaking cool!

4. Legolas rules, again.

5. The devotion to the close relationships of the hobbits. Some may have felt that the ending(s) was too drawn out, but I say no. These four had been through Hell and back, been irreparably changed – even maimed – and a quick Hollywood wave-and-ride-into-the-sunset would have been wrong, wrong, wrong. I never found Frodo terribly interesting in the books, but Elijah Woods did an outstanding job of bringing him to life. By the end, I wanted to weep with Sam.

6. The last fight with Gollum was much better than I imagined it could be.

7. The horrors of war and its effects on the women and children was tremendously powerful in each movie. The grief of the women and children as their men rode out on Faramir’s hopeless charge on Osgiliath was overpowering. Also great was the constant reminders that the men were fighting to protect those they loved. They rode willingly to die, that their loved ones might live.

8. The power of the Nazgul ripping apart the retreating cavalry of Gondor.

9. Grond. It WAS Grond, nightmarish and terrifying.

10. The crotchety old hobbit glaring at the returning heroes, as he did at Gandalf before. There is the unconquerable strength of The Shire. He who refuses to be impressed by the glamour of the great will never lick the boots of a tyrant.

11. The final scene. Sheer perfection. In a hole in the ground….

I hope Peter Jackson does make the Hobbit. For that matter, I hope he tackles Silmarillion one day, that chaotic concoction of invented history. If my books were ever to be made into movies, I wouldn’t want anyone else directing them. He has set the platinum standard for turning literature into cinema. What a tremendous accomplishment. More than anything, I feel a deep and personal gratitude for his tremendous, unprecedented commitment to the epic vision of JRR Tolkien.

I think John Rhys Davies said it best, a dwarf speaking with the wisdom of the Valar. “I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization.”

The Lord of the Rings is truly a saga for its time. 11 out of 10.

Responding to an exclusive yearender DRUDGE dispatch, which presented NIELSEN’s Top 20 BOOKSCAN list of 2003 sales, O’Reilly called the DRUDGE REPORT a “threat to democracy.”

“I mean you can’t believe a word Matt Drudge says,” O’Reilly told the cameras. “Now you’ve got the Matt Drudges of the world and these other people, Michael Moore and all of these crazies, all right, no responsibility… that is a threat to democracy, I think.” O’Reilly warned: “They’ll just spin it and twist it and take it out of proportion every which way.”

So Matt Drudge is now magically manipulating Bookscan numbers? O’Reilly has been seriously losing it for some time now, but he’s going off the deep end here. People may call him a conservative, but if you’ve read what passes for his first book, you know he’s nothing of the kind, except perhaps this new model “big government conservative” of which Fred Barnes writes. Or, as I see it, weak sister moderate bootlicker.

You want extreme? (I’ll give you extreme. You can’t handle extreme.) Ditch the dying dollar and adopt the gold standard. Do it now, before China or the EU does and steals world economic leadership. We rode the dollar hegemony pony as far as it would go, and it was a good run – even a record-setting run in historical terms. But it’s ending.

Also, my Internet service was down for 48 hours. And yes, CONCEPTION. It’s been corrected.

Now, why are you still reading this? Go see Return of the King!

“If I drink water I will have to urinate, and how can I urinate when my people are in bondage?”

– Saddam Hussein

Truth is funnier than fiction.

TE writes: You’re right about the classrooms. When my daughter was in kindergarten she could read, write, add, subtract and do some simple multiplication. I asked the school system about her level when she was going to enter the 1st grade. I was told not to worry, she would sit in the class until the rest of the kids caught up!

Space Bunny points out the telling dichotomy between what public school teachers and educrats say publicly and what they tell parents in private. When they are attempting to cadge more money from an unsuspecting state legislature, they lament that their burden is overwhelming because they lack support from parents. How can they possibly be expected to teach these children anything in eight hours a day when the children aren’t being helped by parents at home? Parental support is vital for learning!

However, when a parent actually does help his child and teaches them reading, writing and arithmetic by daily spending one/eighth the time demanded by the educationists, they tell the parent to butt out and leave the kid to them. How very mysterious!

No, not really. You cannot possibly understand the public school system or the fundamental purpose of the classroom environment if you are still operating under the mistaken assumption that either are designed to teach children a basic foundation of knowledge or to maximize their potential. Both are conceived to hold them back and cripple them, and the latter has been that way since it was first conceived by an elite caste to suppress the more numerous children of the lower castes.

Free your children from intellectual maiming. Keep them out of the public schools.

The annual death count has been released and it stands at 227,385. That’s the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood during its 2002-2003 fiscal year, according to its newly released annual report

Do you believe in Progress? Do you believe that the world is headed in the right direction? Then compare the ongoing American holocaust with some of the other great tragedies of history. Once the consensus is reached that human life does indeed begin at conception, how do you think our society will be viewed by our descendants? As one of the most morally disgusting of all time.

American abortion: 227,385 murders per year (Planned Parenthood alone)

Spanish Inquisition: 17 executions per year

Global witch burnings: 260 burnings per year

French Reign of Terror: 53,200 executions per year

“”We are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, a war without death. Yes, they are very hard, the Americans, they are voracious, they want undivided power over the world.”

Osama? The soon-to-be-late Mr. Hussein? No, try Francois Mitterand, former President of France and an architect of the European Union. That’s what the EU is about.

Wilfox sends the following poem:

The dragon that hid the moon is gone,

The bloodsucker has vanished into the abyss.

Let me taste this day like the ripest of dates,

And come tomorrow to talk about the days to come.

– Jahiz

Saddam Hussein is by no means the last dragon. But it is a joy to see one bite the dust even so. Let us hope that the Iraqi people are more fortunate with their next government.

RK writes: What a wonderful gift, your article How to teach your child to read at WND. I am working with my soon-to-be three year old granddaughter to teach her to read using phonics. I was kind of winging it. Now I have something concrete to work with. Here’s wishing a Merry Christmas to you and yours from my granddaughters A, 2 years, S, 2 months and from their “Pappa”. Thanks again.

Actually, this is precisely why I wrote the article. It’s not hard, truly! Even a grandparent probably has enough time to do it, and it’s a nice excuse to spend time with your grandkids. And what a great gift, to give them such a useful head start in life.

By the way, the two sigmas mentioned in the column refers to how a different character is used when a Greek word ends in sigma. This second sigma looks rather like our letter s, as opposed to a circle with a horizontal stem. The proper way to read it is to say “sigma?” while expressing some disbelief, then shout “two sigmas!” and allow a certain amount of time for the ensuing hilarity. It’s always a party at the Digital Ghetto.

DC, who is my kanji superior, writes: Your experience with Japanese is interesting, but incomplete, and reading Japanese is not precisely analogous to reading English. Like you, I studied Japanese as an adult (beginning when I was 43). Also like you, I found that the kana were easy to learn, and that the kanji are difficult. I presently know 500-1000 kanji. This is not sufficient to read a Japanese newspaper, but it is sufficient to read a Japanese patent, and my intent in studying Japanese was to be able to read Japanese patents.

Initially, I thought that Japanese would be much easier to read if the kanji were replaced with kana (or even romaji). I now know, after reading hundreds of Japanese patents, that reading Japanese is infinitely easier using kanji than it would be using only a phonetic system. The reason for this unexpected conclusion is that Japanese is a phonetically poor language. There are only about 110 syllables in Japanese, depending on who is counting. This results in a large number of homophones which are difficult to understand outside of the context of a sentence. Use of kanji for reading eliminates the ambiguity associated with these homophones, and improves reading comprehension.

English is much different. A large number of syllables are used, and there are relatively few homophones or homonyms. Consequently, there is no need for ideographic characters to provide meaning to written text. Teaching phonetics for English is the best way to learn to read. My wife is a reading specialist, and the primary methodology she uses in teaching is phonetics and phonemic awareness.

I quit with kanji before reaching DC’s conclusion, but I have little doubt that he’s correct. I do remember thinking that it was just insane to cling to what wasn’t even a Japanese system – it’s Chinese – instead of switching to kana, but now that I don’t have to learn 3,000 ideographs myself, I’m kind of glad they do. The world is already far too homogenized. Engrish is great, though. “The ribbon that becomes you, cookie girl… favorite ribbon time!” You tell ’em, coffee boy.