Adapting to the Adaptation

"The Lord of the Rings" is powerful art — particularly if you happen to be a boy, aged 10-17. Some might argue "exclusively if you're a boy, aged 10-17." It's up for debate. And while you don't have to be British to appreciate the scope, depth and sprawling drama of England's most renowned fantasy novels, the act of appreciating them has changed many a young reader.

J.R.R. Tolkien's writing is somber, detailed and portentous. He's equally besotted with the warmth and comfort of a well-appointed home and with dark images of ancient evil dancing across a grand landscape steeped in equal parts history and mystery. It's enough to make a young Midwestern kid into a little Anglophile, powerless to resist other British mainstays like "Monty Python," "Dr. Who," "The Prisoner" and the whole BBC sci/fi fantasy oeuvre, to say nothing of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. It's a gateway to another world.

But the film incarnation of Tolkien's epic — along with the whole busload of Potter-related claptrap — is far less likely to make our young ones dream of the comforts and whimsy of Britain, a mythical place as stern and orderly as it is whimsical and weird.

Certain aspects of "The Lord of the Rings" are likely to play well on the screen. They include the Balrog, Gandalf's magical pyrotechnics, swords and arrows, massive orc armies and the dark intricacies of dwarvish architecture.

Look for lots of this stuff in the films.

Other aspects of the epic are less glamorous: the linguistic splendor of Elven and Dwarvish, elaborate rituals of hospitality and tea, the importance of ponies and the critical nature of Hobbit family history come to mind.

Look for this stuff — which conveyed the soul-penetrating Englishness of the saga to Tolkien's readers — to be subsumed by the flash of swordplay and drowned out by the whistle of black arrows.

But does a cinematic interpretation of "Lord of the Rings" misrepresent or betray the original by spotlighting action and spectacle, while relegating more subtle bits of the books to deep background status? Of course not. Lawrence of Arabia took the juiciest, most violent, most geographically gorgeous moments from the life of T.E. Lawrence and turned them into a cinematic epic. Some subtle touches were lost while others were preserved by first-rate writing and direction.

And it was bloody brilliant.

The Lord of the Rings has exactly the same potential. But the universality of images lacks the more subtle, transformative depth of the written word. The movie cycle will run for about nine hours when it's completed. But "The Lord of the Rings" books are something a young reader inhabits, absorbs and conquers over a period of weeks, or even months. Or do the books conquer him? Much like the life-altering power held by Frodo's magic ring, it's unclear whether the owner possesses the object or the object possesses the owner.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)