Trilogies, Artist Intent, and Why You’re Wrong

There are few things worth starting a fight over.  Attacks on my family or my person, the unjustified and non-consensual forcing of one’s will over another, and moral wrongs are the prime examples.  To that list, I now add another.  I will fight anyone that says you can watch the movies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy—and it pains me to even write this—solo without the accompanying films in proper order.  I am willing to throw blows over this.

Why do I care about this?  What possible reason could a grown adult have for hyperbolic gesturing on the internet about instigating violence over movie watching preferences?  Simple.  It’s the principle, you see.  The story told in The Lord of the Rings may be broken into three movies, but that’s only because the average movie goer lacks the commitment and vision to sit in a theater for twelve hours straight.  One cannot simply hop into LotR halfway through the journey.  To do so is to destroy the greatest power of Tolkien’s work—character development.

As with most spanning epics, LotR covers its story through a wide range of characters.  Each of them receives some sort of arc that spans across all three movies, not just one.  Jumping straight to The Return of the King means you see Pippin accepting responsibility with open eyes and displaying admirable amounts of courage, but without the framework provided in the first two movies showing just how big those steps are for him.  Likewise, you cannot understand the depths of Gollum’s madness and betrayals without seeing his internal conflict displayed in The Two Towers.  And most importantly, you don’t see the depth of Sam’s friendship to Frodo unless you watch—as Sam watches—the agonizing breakdown of all that Frodo is as he bears the burden of the One Ring alone.  Watching only one or two of the movies disrupts the tapestry each character weaves for themselves and amongst each other.  With a story as good as Tolkien’s, that is a crime.

This ties to the real reason for this Wandering: artist intent.  Tolkien originally intended LotR to be one novel, but his publisher made him break it into three for easier digestion.  Thus, in the mind of the creator of Middle Earth, there is no distinction between each novel aside from a rough page count.  So, too, follows the movie.  Each one is self-contained only to the extent that it satisfies movie executives.  That intent translates to needing to have all three movies seen in concurrent order to experience the full story as Peter Jackson envisioned it.  So what is the issue with a viewer choosing to go out of order?  Violation of artist intent. 

Tangent time.  I listened to a podcast with Brandon Sanderson recently that touched on this subject.  He and his friend discussed whether Sanderson would watch a show with a prodigious amount of obscene material.  Sanderson leaned towards no, but was also not willing to consider watching an edited version that removed the offensive material.  He thought doing so violated the artist’s vision for the show, and as an artist himself chose to defend the show creators’ intent.

There is a middle ground here.  Consumers of media have every right to enjoy that media in the way they see fit.  However, doing so in a manner separate from what the artist or creator intends means the consumer forgoes the right to critique the media in its entirety.  If someone chooses to cut out a quarter of a show’s material because it’s inappropriate, how can they give an accurate assessment of that show compared the full version?  It doesn’t seem like a stretch to make that logical leap, just like someone who reads the Wiki plot summary of a book isn’t taken seriously as a reviewer of the piece as a whole.

My opinion is that the vast majority of inappropriate portions to shows are only there because of weird Hollywood perception that show needs sex to be “edgy” and “modern”, but I acknowledge that they occasionally have plot points involved.  Rarely.  When I cut that stuff out, I recognize that I am watching a version of the media the creator did not envision, one they may not necessarily agree with.  Others who want to watch the whole thing, therefore, should take my thoughts on a show with a large grain of salt. 

So if someone wants to argue about the right way to watch the LotR trilogy, I will keep my clenched fists at my side.  You are entitled to your own opinion on how to watch the movies.  You’re wrong if it isn’t all three extended versions back-to-back-to-back in a single session, but you can still think it.