This book misses the point almost as much as Peter Jackson did.

That statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We cannot be absolutely certain why J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. (Note that his reasons were not the same as the motivations for The Silmarillion, which was intended to be the backdrop for his invented languages and is an anthology of tales. The Lord of the Rings is a single romance, and romances have, or should have, something to teach us.) We think the story was partly a commentary on power corrupting. On the hopelessness of a world without a divine redeemer -- the history of Middle-earth is a "long defeat." We know that Tolkien wanted to create a "mythology for England." So any of those might be "the explanation" for The Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien's most important point, I think (following Tom Shippey and other scholars greater than I) is to stress the "Theory of Courage" -- the need to do the right thing even when there is no hope, no clear way forward, and no sign of a reward. Frodo Baggins goes on an dangerous, brutal quest -- and fails, and is rescued by providence (a providence that only acts because of his earlier good deeds). He tries to go home again, and he can't. He no longer belongs at home, or anywhere in the world. But the world was saved because of him. His hope to escape his burden has echoes elsewhere: "Let this cup pass from me. But not as I will, but as you will."

So any adaption of The Lord of the Rings, to be true to the point, must show the Theory of Courage. Peter Jackson was true to the Theory of Appealing to Whoever Buys the Most Movie Tickets. The result does not impress me. But I was never the movie's target market anyway. (I probably am Tolkien's personal target: a student of medieval romance, like Tolkien himself; a folklorist; deeply interested in language.) This book, in a way, is an attempt to start a conversation between the two sides -- to let the book-readers understand the movie-goers, and vice versa.

Editor Croft was perhaps not the best to take on this task -- like me, she doesn't think much of the movies. There are essays that approve of the movie adaption, but more that don't. The most typical complaints are (1) That, in the movie, the role of Arwen has been completely rewritten, (2) that Aragorn's personality is different, (3) that the hobbits are infantile, (4) that Gimli isn't taken seriously, and (5) that most of the changes are not needed. (The absence of the Tom Bombadil sequence, while repeatedly mentioned, isn't as roundly condemned, probably because it isn't really integral to the plot. If something had to go, that was a logical thing.) (1) through (3) are patently true, and I'd say the others are, too. But you can't just say, "Bad, bad, bad!" and ask someone to believe you. You need to say what would be better. And we know that what Tolkien was trying to offer was the Theory of Courage. But that nowhere comes up in this book. Instead, we get constant shrieks of irritation. A typical example is David Bratman's "Summa Jacksonica: A Reply to Defenses of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, after St. Thomas Aquinas." This is three dozen pages that really boils down to little more than an endless refrain of "I don't like it." I don't like it, either. I don't think the Tolkien estate should have licensed the story to Jackson -- not without a veto on the script, anyway. It's not as if the family were short of money! But this book, although it tries to discuss both what Jackson did right and what he did wrong, really doesn't have much to offer. If you want to change something, you need to offer something to change it to!

[Update 5/27/2018: This review was one of those affected by the Great 2018 Data Glitch. All the paragraph returns were lost. I've put some back in, but this may not be quite the same as it was before. The text is unchanged.] ( )