And how about James Galway? How did he fit into the mix?
I had this idea that because the hobbits evolve, that when they go back to the Shire, the Shire is the same, but they have changed. Because they have been through this incredible journey, the folk aspect and the tin whistle evolves into a flute, which is a more grown up sound, a more evolved sound. So I asked James Galway if he would play both, and he agreed. So you hear the penny whistle and towards the end of the film the whistle evolves into the flute.
I heartily agree. While I loved the movie and sicerely hope both it and Jackson win the oscars, I am nevertheless at least a little put off by Jackson letting his screenwriters and “conceptualizers” play so loose with the plot line - not the omissions which I guess were unavoidable, but the superfluous additions (e.g. having Elrond make a special trip to the Rohirrim encampment to deliver a sword which, in the book, was reforged before the Fellowship even left Rivendell, the elvisf foreign legion in TTT, etc.).
Anyone recall the Neil Simon play/movie “The Goodbye Girl”? Letting screenwriters add to Tolkien’s masterpiece was almost as egregious as the director within the play changing Richard III into “a double-sized helping of California fruit salad”. Not as disastrous, I grant, but just as unnecessary.
I was put off initially by these types of departures and I still prefer the books’ plotline but this is another book v. movie issue. Aragorn’s reluctance to assume his right as King of Gondor and Arnor is backstory in the books but it is a big part of his character. It shows his wisdom and nobility. That needed to be prolonged in the movie because if they dealt that out too soon all of the Heir of Isildur stuff could come off as overbearing and may sour the viewer on his character.
By showing that he’s reluctant to assume royalty but still devoted to saving Middle-Earth from Sauron we better see Aragorn’s noble character. So waiting until Aragorn has to face a task which demands his assuming his right to the crown (taking the Paths of the Dead) is a more oppurtune time for the character to do this. He’s doing it not because he’s the heir but because he has to in order to defeat Sauron. It’s also a good time for Elrond to quit being such a wet blanket and show his compassion.
This and other plot deviations were not out of disrespect for Tolkien’s text but were needed in order to highlight the crucial elements of these characters and themes without bogging down the flow of the film. Books have the luxury of stretching out and really making full use of narrative. Movies do not. Have you seen Barry Lyndon? Perfect example of how a movie can ignore the flow of a movie.
Yah, well the departures in plot don’t bother me because LOTR includes the characters themselves collecting and telling the story. This naturally made me wonder, as I read it, if the book itself was meant to be just another version, rather than “ground truth” passed along by an omnisicient narrator.
Excellent point, Caj. The editing process of the books was very arduous and even before a manuscript was ready Tolkien had several drafts. If you’ve read any of the posthumous stuff Christopher Tolkien collected and published you’ll know that there are a lot of variations in the stories. Because of his constant noodling with story and details it took a lot of effort for Tolkien to even submit a manscript of LotR. So what was published is only part of what the author envisioned. In that way the deviations from the text are in part in keeping with Tolkiens work since the text is only one version… made to look perhaps like Bilbo and Frodo’s collection of events. Gandalfs, Aragorn’s or any other characters’ collection may be entirely different.
To return to the topic… I can sort of see Howard Shore’s point of view and the idea makes sense. But it would have been cooler if it was Jean-Michel Veillon simple-system flute instead of James Galway on Boehm flute. Or any traditonal player really.
Well, it’s been said before, but if you are looking for a great movie with a traditional music score, including some very fine fluting, you need to see The Secret of Roan Inish.
I think the LOTR movies are fine as long as you remember what they are: they are not the Lord of the Rings. They are a derivative work based on the Lord of the Rings. The real Lord of the Rings exists only in book form.
I hope that having seen the movies–which, in my opinion, are excellent for what they are–will entice many people to read the novels and experience the genuine Lord of the Rings for the first time.
I could envy someone who is just reading them for that magical first time: it’s quite an experience. I have read them probably thirty times throughout my life, and coming back to those books always feels like coming home.
The Secret of Roan Inish rocks. Just finally repurchased it on CD (had it on cassette for like, 10 years), and am still enjoying it as much, if not more, than I did 10 years ago. In fact, the “Over the Moor To Maggie/The Bucks of Oranmore” set is still one of my favorite recordings of all time.
Don’t forget Waking Ned Devine. SUPERB score - I think perhaps even better than Roan Inish (I own them both). And what movie is complete without the obligatory nekkid old coot on his motorbike?! (see avatar)
I had read the books a couple of times before I saw the movies - and to me, the books were good, but not this magical experience many speak of. The first two movies I felt that way too - but ROTK was truly a magical experience for me, more so than the books, more so than the other movies. No other movie I’ve ever seen, and not very many books I have read, have had such an effect on me as that movie. Don’t know why, can’t give a reason, but there it is.
Don’t take it as an insult: the characters are “more grown up” and “more evolved” in the sense that they are scarred for life.
So I guess they thought a flute sounded more traumatized.
Now here’s what I want to know: if this is how the conductor was thinking, why didn’t they play some concertina music in when Treebeard first appeared? I mean, a concertina definitely sounds a bit like an orc being stepped on.
An orchestra of concertinas would have been funny during the Ents’ attack on Isengard or when the Huorns gobble up the orcs fleeing Helm’s Deep… Okay, that sentence just broke my dorky post budget. Gotta go.
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