Monthly Archives: December 2012

An Unexpected Trilogy

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Or, there and there and there and oh good grief they’re still getting there and then finally, please, hopefully, back again (in 2014).

I enjoyed The Hobbit and it has some good moments. The saddest thing is the sneaking feeling that just will not go away to the effect that the whole thing is … well, unnecessary.

The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 was a movie whose time had come. It was ground breaking and deserves to be remembered as a great film just for what it accomplished – showing what could be done. (For story telling, null points.) And then of course there had to be the other two, because the first on its own would be pointless.

But The Hobbit did not need to be made. Not that need is a requirement for any piece of entertainment, almost by definition. But it didn’t. I will concede it needed to be split into at least two parts. Whether it needed to be a trilogy, I will hold fire on until I’ve seen all three. But, need? No. And what could have been achieved with a similar budget and more original imagination? We shall never know.

[It emphatically did not need to be 3D and I’m glad I didn’t bother. 3D would have given a little extra depth to some of the effects. It would have enhanced the story not at all. 2D rules.]

It gets off to a great start, just as the book requires, with Bilbo’s mounting frustration at his uninvited guests. I knew from the trailers that they would include the “Far over misty mountains” song, and a shiver went down my spine as they sung it. It sewed this group of disparate dwarves (dwarfs?) together and showed them for what they were – refugees and dispossessed inheritors of a shared culture. I hadn’t expected them to leave in the comedy “That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates” song number, let alone make it work, but they did, and it worked, and I was very pleased.

The back story was worked in well, for the benefit of the uninitiated, and it didn’t get in the way. The destruction of Dale and Smaug’s attack on the mountain had to be shown, of course, and they were all they should have been. (Dale in particular put in mind of Pompeii, an innocent city quietly going about its business until destroyed by fire; I wonder if that was deliberate, either on the part of Tolkien or Jackson?) Sylvester McCoy unexpectedly popped up as Radagast and was a little extra treat in his solo scenes. It’s with his later scenes, leading a bunch of orcs and wargs a goose chase over the mountains, that we begin to get the distinct feeling of padding. And then we meet Galadriel, who displays a cunning talent for rotating 180 degrees about her vertical axis without actually moving (that elf magic, eh?) and who doesn’t really need to be there, and after that … After that we really do sink into “enough, already” territory.

Beneath the Misty Mountains, the “riddles in the dark” scenes were precisely as they should be. The scenes with the dwar(ve)(f)s could have been slashed by at least 25%. I’d press for 50. There is only so much running around inside a video game that you can do before it all gets a little sameish, and it’s not playing fair with the audience when the lethality of a fall from a great height is a variable quantity depending on who is doing the falling and what the plot requires of them. And that … thing hanging from the goblin chief’s chin did not belong in a 12A movie. It wouldn’t really belong in an 18 movie. Maybe the type you can watch in hotels where you’re assured it won’t show up on your bill.

And then we’re out of the frying pan and oh Melkor please let it stop. Which it eventually did, with the eagles setting our heroes atop what I’m pretty certain was Lord Kevin’s Watch from the Thomas Covenant series. Making me wonder how they intend to get down. Maybe the next movie will fast forward through that bit. Or they can always call the eagles up again.

It’s entirely possible you could read this and assume I didn’t enjoy it, which would not be entirely correct. The goods outweigh the bads. But I am glad it was too dark to look at my watch. Still, roll on 2013 and let’s see what you have for us …

Mass Observation: my part in its triumph

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Today’s Today Programme guest editorship by Mass Observation brings back repressed memories of my own experiences with the organisation.

A family friend was M.O. Gauleiter for the Home Counties. I was still stuck in the blinkered rut that says indoors office-based 9-5 jobs are boring and what’s important is to be Outside and Doing stuff. And so during my gap year I dabbled with Mass Observation.

Meaning that during the months of October/November/December 1984 – great times to be outdoors – I stood in the doorway to Our Price in Guildford and asked random shoppers about their purposes and intended outcome for their visit to the shop. I trudged around Hounslow prior to the launch of Raffles cigarettes, ringing bells and praying for an obviously adult smoker within the right age parameters to answer, so that I could ask them how much they smoked and whether they had ever heard of Raffles. This being prior to the launch, unsurprisingly none had. (There would be further research drives during and after the launch, to rate its success and market penetration over time.) And I had to stand at strategic points around Guildford, at specific times of day, with a clicky counter in my hand and count passers-by, declining offers of cider from the town drunk who was following me around.

This outdoor, non-office thing, I was deciding, really is overrated. 9-5? Bring it on.

John Dickinson

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It is a crime against English fantasy, and a major indictment of the Random House marketing department, that John Dickinson isn’t more famous. He has written several books but in particular I’m talking about a fantasy trilogy – The Cup of the World, The Widow & the King, and The Fatal Child.

At first glance we have yer usual medieval fantasy – a world of kings and queens and lords and draughty castles. It’s the philosophy, the religion, the ethics of the series that make it such fun. The set-up is original and unusual, and it provides a backdrop for all kinds of thought and speculation on morality and duty and good and bad.

The official religion is vaguely Christian but with the four archangels taking the place of the Trinity, the saints and the BVM. Co-existing with this in the background is the local lore, which – this being a fantasy series – is also absolutely true. There is no necessary clash between the two, though the church says there is. The church provides political power and the lore provides the real power. That’s where the narrative tension arises and is what makes the series great.

The ancestors of the present inhabitants arrived from across the sea a few centuries ago, led by a group of brothers. The leader and eldest brother committed a grievous sin – the murder of a child whose mother happened to be the local goddess – when they arrived and this crime has become part of the lore. Now anyone who practices the magic that the lore makes available tends to be contaminated with the guilt of that sin. And the practitioners tend to be the aristocracy of the land – the descendants of those brothers.

Unfortunately it’s a very politically useful magic – the ability to see what’s happening elsewhere and even the ability to travel in hours through a kind of magical hyperspace between points in the realm that would take weeks or months to do on foot. (Said hyperspace is a barren, rocky bowl where, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the goddess weeping, still mourning her child.) The weaker rulers use it for fun but even the stronger, best-intentioned ones find it too hard to resist sometimes. If you want to put down a rebellion many leagues away and get there now then you do the putting down first and worry about the consequences for you, your loved ones and your royal house second. Thus you have a land where even the most well-intentioned efforts of the noblest rulers are contaminated by a kind of original sin and effectively doomed to failure in interesting and unpredictable ways. There is still free will and there are few out-and-out villains beyond any kind of redemption. Individuals can be saved – but can the land?

The three novels are sequential but can be read on their own too. So do yourself a favour and then tell me if I’m wrong.