Sfdebris.net

So, I've been rereading the Lord of the Rings lately, and I've come to a conclusion.

The character design for Gollum was wrong.

He's too humanoid, too obviously a mammal. He doesn't look like a corrupted creature, he looks like, well, a hobbit who's been homeless and deranged.

But that isn't how he's described in the book. His species is ambiguous enough that, to a casual observer, he looks less like a Who and more like a What. "Too big to be a squirrel." "A log with eyes." If he had looked like that when Bilbo first met him, it would have been obvious that he was a hobbit.

Remember, this is somebody who strangled and ate orcs. He's not going to have dull little hobbit teeth. The descriptions early in Fellowship of the Ring make him, well, more clearly monstrous. A thing that climbed into birds nests to get eggs, into burrows to grab the young, and through windows to reach at cradles. It's worth remembering that he's not just somebody who murdered Deagle. He's somebody who has barely lived up to the standards one associates with sapient life. He is feral.

Him being more visibly monstrous wouldn't have justified the harsh treatment he received from hobbits and humans, but it would have explained it better, given it context. If he looked more like the amphibious monster from the animated feature, you wouldn't be wondering why the men of Gondor are beating him up like he owes them money.

The audience should have been moved to sympathize with Gollum by the plight of his inner torment and his alienation, not by his appearance. He should have been portrayed as something that looks utterly inhuman, but still has a glimmer of something good in him, which shows up in his actions and attitudes.

One thing I appreciate about Jackson's adaptation is that they relied on established Tolkien artists (and Tolkien fans) John Howe and Alan Lee as the film's conceptual designers. Isengard looks exactly as it does in Alan Lee's earlier illustrations, for example. It helps that Tolkien tends to be very descriptive, of course, and that he draws from established historical and mythological sources. The attention to detail with the design, art, and music is one of the big factors that lifted up TLotR films and made them a great trilogy. Frankly, some of the stuff we see in The Hobbit is comparatively lazy and derivative, which is a big factor in those films not living up to expectations.

With all that said, Tolkien artists aren't necessarily going to get things right all the time either. It looks to me like the design of Gollum draws heavily upon Alan Lee's earlier drawings, but Gollum does look less frog-like than those. He looks more amphibious in The Fellowship of the Ring, but apparently his look was changed a bit to suit Andy Serkis' face. I'm not sure to what degree Gollum's look was determined by the technological limitations of early CGI. A more human Gollum could allow for more expression. Maybe "anthropomorphizing" Gollum is a shallow way to garner audience sympathy, but I don't have too much of a problem with that.

The change in movie Faramir is one of the more egregious deviations from the book, I think, and the treatment of Gollum is a small part of that. Gollum is captured because of the threat he poses, not out of any malice on Faramir's part, and he's quickly released into Frodo's custody. The tension when Faramir drags Gollum and the two hobbits to Osgiliath feels pretty artificial to me.

Worked for me regardless.

They talk about the Faramir change at length in the commentaries, and that was mostly a result of pacing, so that Frodo and Sam would have *something* to do at the end of the second film. Otherwise they spend pretty much literally the entire movie just walking while the rest of the cast is getting involved in epic battles. So they needed *some* conflict. Them just walking along and finding a nice happy Faramir that gave them a nice respite for an evening like in the books just doesn't work... for much the same reason Tom Bombadill doesn't. It kills tensions nad leaves them with nothing to do and no character arc the entire film.

They also felt that the ring having no real effect at Faramir lessened the drama of its influence; thus the route of Faramir being tempted like Boromir, but ultimately demonstrating his strength by overcoming it.