10 years ago I got to see The Fellowship of the Ring. I was mildly annoyed not to have seen it the day it came out, but since I'd had a nasty bike accident the day the tickets went on sale I was lucky to only have to wait 24 hours longer. At the time, largely because of expectation, I wasn't entirely impressed. And though I came to love it, I've always enjoyed its flaws, as can be seen from this retelling of the film that I wrote shortly after a second viewing.
Just to blow my own trumpet, quite a lot of these gags ended up in the 2005 Melbourne Comedy festival as part of Folk-comedian Martin Pearson's hilarious musical one-man show "The Unfinished Spelling Errors of Bolkien".
The Fellowship of the
Ring:
A Plot Précis
Frodo Baggins is a shy Hobbit from the shire. He lives in
Bag End, which is technically under "The Hill", but for some reason
is actual under "A Hill", since the Shire has turned into the Barrow
Downs. His Uncle Bilbo, who hasn’t aged a day since he found a mysterious magic
ring (despite in fact now being greyer and more wrinkly) is planning a party of
special magnificence for his birthday (Bilbo has concealed from Frodo the fact
that it is also the young Baggins' birthday as a mean trick).
Frodo meets Gandalf, who can be recognised by his inability
to carry a tune. Frodo and Gandalf smirk at each other for half an hour, then
the plot continues. Frodo guesses that Bilbo is trying to hide the fact it is
his birthday too, but Gandalf will not tell him.
Bilbo makes some tea. This will obviously become very
important later in the film, as great attention is paid to it.
Bilbo has his party, and vanishes before he can wish Frodo
happy birthday. Gandalf, perhaps alarmed by the tea making, urges Bilbo to
abandon his magical ring, which he does after demonstrating how far he can make
his eyeballs bulge.
Frodo comes home, to find that Bilbo has finally sprung the
joke by giving him a wraith attracting ghoulish article of hideous power for a
present. Happy Birthday Frodo! Hurrah!
Movie Gandalf then proves himself far clever than Book
Gandalf by realising immediately that this must be a ring of power, and a
pretty nasty one at that. He dashes off, congratulating himself on saving
seventeen years that will inevitably lead to the whole story being very much
shorter, thereby appeasing all the critics that thought it was too long.
Unfortunately for the free peoples of middle-earth, Movie
Sauron is also a lot brighter than Book Sauron, and decides to torture Gollum
with something scarier than a stapler. Gollum, vocalised by a man straining his
voice so hard he can only squeak one word at a time, shrieks something that
Sauron's minions, being creatures of darkness and used to having conversations
with whistling kettles, somehow understand as being vital clues.
Gandalf, walking into a library of ancient, tinder dry
scrolls with a flaming torch, discovers a scroll written by Isildurrr that
explains how to identify a one ring.
1. Take ring you suspect of being harbinger of doom.
2. Prepare one-hundred ounces of cooking chocolate.
3. Throw ring on nearest fire
4. Control room!*
5. Remove ring from fire.
6. Read horrible writing proclaiming ring as harbinger of
doom.
7. Eat chocolate.
Meanwhile, Movie Nazgul have proved themselves more evil
than book Nazgul by a) getting to the Shire quicker and b) actually killing
someone, instead of letting small old gardeners slam doors on them and merely
going 'sssssssss'. Unfortunately they are less scary than Book Nazgul, since
where ever they go St Wallonstone's Church Male Voice Choir and seven children
with trumpets start playing Mozart's little known "Symphony for Loud
Unsubtle Bastards." Gandalf then proves himself far more careless than
book Gandalf and again leaves Frodo to walk despite going pretty much in the
same direction on a horse. Perhaps he thinks Frodo needs the exercise.
Sam, meanwhile, has joined the quest as a special reward for
delivering the funniest line in the film.
Unfortunately the Hobbits are so unfit that their only
chance of making he long journey is to slice huge swathes of film out with a
penknife. This leads to fairly incomprehensible cutting, but does save on
bunions. On the way, they meet Merry and Pippin who decide to join their
perilous quest to avoid watching re-runs of "Keeping Up Appearances"
on UK Gold.
At Bree, Frodo discovers new respect for his wicked Uncle
Bilbo when he finds out that the magic ring that makes you invisible, also
turns the visible world into a huge grey blancmange accompanied by the sound of
Concorde taking off from Heathrow (described in the book at 'improved hearing')
making him wonder how his uncle killed all those spiders and stole from a
dragon with all those bloody distractions. The Hobbits take up with a man who
likes to pick them up and throw them up stairs because they like his beard.
'Strider' increases his range of Hobbit taunting when he takes up throwing
apples at Pippin's head, perhaps as some kind of in-joke for fruiterers.
We cut to Saruman, who reveals that Sauron, the Dark Lord
and owner of the Ring, has returned to earth as an "I" rimmed with
fire. To emphasise this, we see several shots of a huge flaming letter I
surrounded with flame. Chilling. Saruman re-enacts several scenes from
"Break Dance: the Movie", before inventing the elevator and sending
Gandalf to the top floor as his prisoner.
Deciding to camp on the Watch Tower of Amon Sul (known in
the ancient tongue as 'weather top', but excised from the film for being too
archaic) because it's the most obvious place for miles around to camp and
therefore the Black Riders following them will never find them, the Black
Riders find them. The Male Voice Choir and the kids with the Trumpets set up
shop somewhere up the hill, then Strider sets fire to the Black Riders, who
then become Orange Flickery Riders and run away. But not before the Rotting
Zombie King of the Riders has very, very carefully missed Frodo's heart with
his knife.
Just in the nick of time, Arwen appears. Because Frodo is
fading into the spirit world he sees Arwen, an Elf, as a) a bright and shining
figure and b) as wearing a really out of place wedding dress, since everyone
wears wedding dresses in the spirit world. Arwen puts Frodo on her horse and
then rides the 200 miles to Rivendell in three minutes. Arwen cunningly uses a
Guinness advert to kill the Riders, but Frodo is being killed by his contact
lenses, which he forgot to bring the cleansing fluid for, so Arwen tries to cry
into his eyes to soothe him. Failing in this, she takes him to Rivendell to see
Elrond the Half-Opthalmist, who plucks them out in time to save the little
tyke. Awwwww.
Through a few shots of wooden garden furniture in black and
white which are perhaps supposed to represent a troubled subconscious, we see
Frodo awake. Gandalf is there. Frodo, whose eyes seemed to have recovered, asks
why Gandalf doesn’t join them. The wizard recalls being saved by a moth, but
doesn’t actually tell Frodo any of this, and says simply that he was
"delayed", so that the Hobbit probably thinks he lost his car keys or
something.
Elrond convenes his Council, by which he means that everyone
there behaves as if they lived on a Council estate. Several important
characters appear. Legolas the Blonde Elf (not described as such in the book),
Gimli the Ginger dwarf (not described so in the book) and Boromir the
fair-haired, bearded Man (not described so in the book). At this stage the
audience is advised to forget all the reviews praising Peter “Pyjama” Jackson
for sticking closely to the book.
The Council argue a lot about very little. No one explains
why they can't use the ring. They just say "we can't use it", and
almost everyone nods and agrees (the only time they do). Pyjama invokes
"The Ladybird Book of Racial Tension" and stages a race war at the
council, with Elf and Dwarf and Man all getting hot under their very well
designed collars. Frodo, representative of a race that no one has yet learned
to hate (give them time) therefore volunteers to carry the ring, purely to stop
the violence. Elrond smirks.
To save costs, Pyjama superimposes the characters on film
stolen from the closing reel of "The Sound of Music". Legolas shows
himself to an expert ornithologist by announcing that the approaching flock of
Saruman's spy birds are "Crebain out of Dunland" instead of the
erroneous but briefer and possibly more useful "duck".
The presence of large crows forces Gandalf to entirely
rethink his plan (Film Gandalf is rather less good at planning ahead than Book
Gandalf) and he decides that they should climb right over the top of the
highest mountain they can find, because Legolas informs them that Crebain out
of Dunland are a southern genus and cannot survive in the thin, cold air of
mountains, where their sub-species the Hooded Crebain exist instead. Needless
to say, this plan is shit too.
Scottish Ginger Gimli suggests that they go through Moria.
Film Moria is nearby, and to the knowledge of the whole company appears to be
comfortably settled by Dwarves, with no suggestion of contact having been lost
years ago. This worries Gandalf, if only because he can’t stand the thought of
all those unconvincing Scots accents. Fortunately, all the faux Scots have been
killed Cockney Orcs, and things go very well until Gandalf is apparently killed
by a giant, fire-breathing goat. And that's diplomatically skipping over the
well-endowed cave-troll…
Blonde Bearded Boromir, showing his sensitive side (not
described so in the book), asks for the Company to have a moment to mourn. But
Aragorn knows that they must complete the story within three hours, and hurries
them on to the Terrifying Realm of the Evil Elf Queen Galadriel, who tries to
drive Frodo mad by whispering things inside his head. She tries to take the
ring but, just in time, someone at Weta accidentally hits the "reverse
image" key, and she turns inside out for a moment. This so unnerves her,
she gives up her attempt on the Ring, and agrees to help the company.
The Company take to boats, and sail down "Anduin",
the 'Vaguely Sizeable' River. They pass by the Argonath, huge graven images of
Isildurrrr and Elendil, saluting Hitler. A cute tweeting bird wanders in from a
Disney film for no apparent reason.
The Company stop at Parth Galen. Frodo and Boromir argue.
Frodo realises the problem with the fair hair and beard when he announces to
Boromir "you are not yourself". Boromir mumbles several things, which
might well be "yeah, and like you're a fifty-one year old, hypocrite"
before falling over and getting covered with leaves. Frodo escapes into the
Giant Grey Meringue, and climbs an unnamed hill, sits in an unnamed seat and
mysteriously sees The Dark Tower and the giant, flaming "I" of
Sauron. Frodo is so weakened by his quest, that the simple act of taking off a
gold ring causes him to fall off the stone seat in exhaustion. He meets
Aragorn, who carefully ways up the dangers of the corrupting influence of the
ring and of journeying 250 miles through enemy territory on one’s own, and
bravely sends Frodo away. The audience are probably meant to realise how
serious this whole corrupting lark therefore is, but actually it just makes
Strider look like a bit of a git (Cruel Strider now joins Wicked Bilbo and
Smirking Elrond, not to mention Scary Galadriel, as being corrupted by the evil
power of the script writers).
Frodo runs away. Strider faces Orcs alone, but they do their
best to help by only attacking him one at a time.
Meanwhile, Merry sees Frodo and tries to get him to join him
and Pippin. But Frodo has had enough of Merry's misshapen face and runs away.
The Orcs see Merry & Pippin, but Blond, Bearded Boromir blows his bass
kazoo and fights the Orcs. They shoot him three times. Puzzlingly, the crippled
Boromir is then completely ignored by the fleeing Orcs, and then Lurtz
conveniently takes half an hour to draw back his bow (the first sign of the
crippling brain disease of delayed killing that the Orcs suffer from, perhaps
because of the bits of chopped up Orc in their feed) , just giving Cruel
Strider time to have a fight with him and chop his bits off. (much cheering)
Boromir dies, and his bass kazoo is cloven.
In a moment of panic, Sam realises that the film is running
slightly under its intended length, and he throws himself into the river to
fill up an extra minute. He and Frodo then leave.
The remainder of the company, Cruel Strider, Blond Legolas
and Ginger Scottish Gimli throw Boromir's body over a wet cliff and then run
after the bad guys with a needlessly macho five-syllable sign off. But it's a
moot point whether it's any worse than "forth the three hunters".
The film ends with Sam and Frodo looking at some spiky
rocks.
Cue soppy generic Enya mush.
THE END
* an injoke after someone posted a translation on-line of the scene where Gandalf reveals the ring to Frodo. As he throws the ring in the fire, rather than shouting "wait", Babelfish rendered it as "Control Room". Although this classic is lost to posterity, you can get a flavour from the surviving translation of the Ring Verse:
Three rings the Elbe kings highly in the light filters
The dwarf rulers in their halls from stone
The mortal one eternally death expire, to 9 The dark gentleman on dark throne
In the country Mordor where the shadows drone
A ring it to farmhands to find in the darkness drive it all and eternally bind
In the country Mordor where the shadows drone
