Hellfire and bloody damnation

[jere7my]

I remembering having an argument about this with Chris C. at college. He said it would be impossible, since people wouldn't identify with Muppet giants. But now CGI and Peter Jackson have eliminated that objection. I wanted Harrison Ford to star, but I suppose he's too old now. Maybe not. But anyway.

They're making a movie of Thomas Covenant.

Hellfire.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever were very significant to me as a lad, more significant even than Lord of the Rings. I was drawn in by Covenant's unrelenting stubbornness, overwhelmed by the beauty of the Land. The prose is explosively purple, but the intensity of the emotion makes a fist in your belly and doesn't let it go. I wonder, will a movie capture any of that? Will the Land make me cry, the way Jackson's Middle Earth did? So much of Covenant is internal, very subtle. Can they make him as unsympathetic as he is in the books? Is there any chance they'll keep the rape? Will he even be a leper?

Mark Gordon is producing, according to the Hollywood Reporter. He was behind Saving Private Ryan—but also The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The blurb worries me, too:

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Revelstone Entertainment and the Mark Gordon Co. will join in the creation of a film version of Stephen Donaldson's fantasy book series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Revelstone picked up the rights for the first six books in the series, and have picked John Orloff to adapt, while Mark Gordon will produce. The literary story tells of the man (Covenant) transported to a place where he is recognized as a magical hero. Once there he must use his magic talisman to save the world from Saturn and his henchmen.

To which I respond, "Uh, Saturn?" But we can hope this was a misquote somewhere along the line.

There's a small bit of irony here, in that I am, once again, engaged in defending the good name of Peter Jackson on Usenet today, from bookwraiths who believe he utterly failed to understand Tolkien and ruined the books with his clumsy adaptation and should probably be roasted with some kind of tuber inserted somewhere or other. I understand people not liking the movies, that's fine—but the quasi-religious fervor some people display in defense of the ever-polite Professor's words, and the calumny that is heaped upon a guy who made some great movies from some books he obviously loves, turns me off. But I have to admit to myself that I might very well be the same way when and if the Covenant movies get made, unable to see the forest of quality for the trees of interpretation.

Or it might just be a train wreck.

Incidentally, a tip for my would-be stalkers: Since I've mentioned it now, I've been active on Usenet since 1990. Searching Google Groups for "jere7my" turns up thousands of things I've written over the years. (Yes, I used to be quite a prat.)

[N.B.: As of this icon, I'm running out of icon space for my Advent Calendar of Friends' Icons, so I'm deleting the old ones as the new ones are posted. If anybody wants a copy of theirs and missed it, let me know.]

Comments

[andele.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, a quick glance at IMDB reveals that John Orloff's only previous writing credits is episodes 2 and 9 of Band of Brothers, which was generally well-thought-of, though I did not see it. Everything is getting adapted now, it seems. A friend of a friend of mine is writing the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe screenplay. I suppose it was inevitable, after LotR.

As fate would have it, I was, once again, just engaged in bashing Jackson's interpretation in an e-mail not ten minutes ago. As I said there:

Starting with the second film, I have a general ideological problem with what I see as a consistent choice by Jackson and the writers: They rewrote several major characters (Faramir, obviously, but also Theoden, Treebeard, and to a certain extent Elrond) in order to put forward a really different world view from Tolkien's. Basically, in the novels, the world is chock full of heros as well as villains. In the film, only the Fellowship is wholly heroic. The others have to be forced, cajoled, or browbeaten into fighting The Good Fight. I can see narratively why this change might be appealing to a film-maker trying to tell a manageable tale in only (!) nine hours of screen time. But the *effect* of the decision is to put forward a worldview in which "we" are the only ones who understand how important it is to fight evil and the rest of the world has to have it explained to them...which is a screwed up message in the context of what's going on the the world at the moment.

Which is to say that I can see the forest of quality perfectly. This was a choice Jackson made, and a well-executed choice. It wasn't incompetence or even misunderstanding the books, necessarily. I just think the interpretation is evil and wrong and stuff.

[reldnahkram.livejournal.com]

Could you put together a gallery of all the icons somewhere - I think that'd be neat.

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

Although I didn't like the series as much as you do, I share your surprise and concern at the making it into a movie. I think Covenant will still be a leper (since he loses that when he's in the Land), but I predict the swift demise of his anti-hero-ness. No rape, no unwillingness to act, much less unbelief in general. Similar to what Andele said but in reverse--they'll make him more heroic, so they can have a protagonist you can root for in shorthand.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Harrison Ford ? Hmmm. I'd always seen Covenant as late-70s Anthony Hopkins, Ford doesn't do the right kind of bone-deep stubborn. Hopkins made enough bad films around then there's probably enough to digitally capture his image, too.

[elwenlinuiel.livejournal.com]

I love the Lord of the Rings movies, but I have to say, they did leave some of my favorite parts of the books out. Needless to say, I still love the books more. I think I've read them six times....

Movies from books

[(Anonymous)]

One problem with movies from books is the perception that the currently anticipated (or recently viewed) movie is the movie of the book, rather than a movie of the book. The recent LotR series is very much Peter Jackson's movie, and it showed. If the next person to make LotR series has a background in war movies rather than horror movies, or in adventure movies with lots of chase scenes, or in martial arts movies, or whatnot, then the movies will be very different, and possibly also very good. I fully expect another film of them will be made in twenty years or so, possibly at much greater length in a different broadcast model (more like tv).
Think about it like Hamlet: Tony Richardson's Hamlet is taken on its merits as Tony Richardson's, as is Kenneth Branagh's, as is Michael Almereyda's, as is Campbell Scott's. I'm not saying that there should be two LotRs a year, but the point is how we think of them. One you don't like is cause for scorn and derision, but that's about it.
Or, to quote Ursula K. Leguin in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, "Movies can't hurt books."

Thank you,
-Vardibidian (http://www.kith.org/vardibidian/journal/).