I am enjoying a series of essays from John C Wright, which are published by Castilia House. Each essay is fairly thought provoking. And yes, I am using a Kindle app to read them.
Another convert to Papism from Atheism, God bless him. For he understands why Tolkien is important, and how badly Sir Peter got the movies wrong. It makes this Kiwi ashamed of weta workshops. It is the best evisceration of what went so horribly wrong with the books. One can add little more. A sample, because Jim Baen did this to get me hooked on authors.
Well, who cares? Neither character was in the book anyway. I think I lost consciousness at that moment, overcome by the fumes of the butter-substitute substance coating the theater floor between the seats. I woke a little later, and elfboy still had not shot Urgslug the Irkisonic, or whatever his name is. My wife had to stuff a wide handful of popcorn flavored food substitute into my face, in order to smother the broken, wretched burbling — shoot him … with … an elf arrow.
Of course, the wife was shouting SHOOT HIM at the screen during this event, so the point of her behavior was not clear. Maybe she remembered that I invited her to this turkey, and we paid for many children and my mother-in-law.
I was semi-conscious for a long and dreary and utterly pointless scene where the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was looking for the one last remaining black harpoon thing what was the only McGuffin that could kill the dragon, and then only when fired from a standing catapult that looked like it had been designed by the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. Why there were not a hundred of these, and scores of giant harpoon shooters, I do not know. But I am glad that Ishmael and Queequeg will appear in the sequel.
As it turns out, it did not matter that I, or for that matter the script writer, were only semi-conscious because, as with everything else in this movie, nothing comes from the scene and nothing led up to it.
Please, let no purists tell me that Bard and his Black Arrow were indeed in the book. You are mistaken. You are confusing them with Kirk Douglas’s character Ned Land in Disney’s TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. He is the one who harpoons the evil dragon with his dragon harpoon. In Tolkien, Bard the Archer shoots an arrow. Got it? Arrow. Pointy thing. Flies. Like what the superelves use.
The next time I regained consciousness, it was in time to view one of my most favorite scenes not merely from Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT, but indeed from all literature whatsoever. You know what scene I mean!
Bilbo, donning his ring of invisibility, is pressured by the justifiably frightened dwarves to sneak into the lair of the loathsome wereworm, Smaug the Great, who is found asleep on the heaps of hoarded gold.
Bilbo steals a single cup, the smallest trifle, and this wakes the dragon to wrath, who emerges from the mountain on wings of flame, and finds and destroys the dwarvish camp, and eats their ponies. The dwarves flee into a secret door, hiding in an upper corridor, unwilling to go down and see what Smaug is about when he returns, shivering with rage, to his unclean burrow.
Those of you who are keen on literary references will see the parallel. In BEOWULF we recall the nameless escaped slave, who, happening upon the grave of dead kings, enters it seeking shelter, and instead finds the wereworm aslumber on the heaped horde.
He steals a cup to bribe his lord to receive him again and forgive his escape attempt. But the sequel is horrific:[…]
When the dragon awoke, new woe was kindled.
… The guardian waited
ill-enduring till evening came;
boiling with wrath was the barrow’s keeper,
and fain with flame the foe to pay
for the dear cup’s loss.— Now day was fled
as the worm had wished. By its wall no more
was it glad to bide, but burning flew
folded in flame….The whole point of the scene is the difference between a good and kindly lord, one who open-handedly rewards his brave earls for their faithful service in battle, and the insane greed of the dragon, who cannot bear to part even with the smallest trifle, and who knows every article and implement and coin to the smallest detail.
As in BEOWULF, so here. This second time Bilbo enters the stifling lair, the canny dragon wakes, and sweeps the dark around with his hypnotic, penetrating eyes, but Bilbo is invisible. Bilbo is clever enough to amuse the dragon with flattery and riddles, putting the noisome monster off his guard.
I am pleased to say that my favorite line—or at least part of it—appeared in the midst of this mockery and wreckage of one of my favorite books.
“The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong. Thief in the Shadows!” he gloated. “My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”
And then, as by now we should have suspected, the steam-powered Stupidity Hammer caved into the front of my skull with the force of a pile driver. Because Bilbo took the ring off.
Wright is is fortunate he does not live in the Antipodes, for otherwise he would have had to deal with all the cast appearing in safety broadcasts. Complete with Radagast. And the Orcs and Dwarves having a beer after the battle.
Anyway, read the other essays. His discussion of the symbolism of the virgin in Snow White that includes Aristotle is worth the price of the book alone. And he added another Chluthu aphorism; Chluthu does not care. He may swim to the left, but he neither understands gender, nor cares for humans. Wright does understand monsters, and sees the current post modern world as monstrous.
Which is the short version of the problem with Peter Jackson. He is a post modernist. He sees the pictures, but denies the substance beneath, for that may lead to Middle Earth or Narnia, or, far worse, the faith that underlies both of these.
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The administration stuff this week is fairly simple. Basically the counter for statistics is being zeroed now at the end of June, and should be correct next month. This is because I am changing tracking systems.
- I have moved the statistics counter for the site to Statcounter. This is public, and that should allow open parachute so see what is happening for the Kiwi sites. The code for sitemeter was getting more and more flakey, and this allows me to have stats at Shattered light as well.
- I will be travelling and that generally means that the lectionary posts will be put up when I have both sufficient alertness through the jet lag and internet access. Which does not exist during 12 to 15 hour flights.