Sticking the Landing: Falling Action and Resolution

For years I’ve been obsessed with exactly how Peter Jackson ended his adaptation of The Return of the King and why it worked so well. Running close to 20 minutes, rather than feeling long or drawn out, it felt like an appropriately paced ending to an epic saga. Nearly every stray thread was pulled back together and tied off in such a way that makes the falling action and resolution of Return of the King my favorite part of the whole trilogy, and it’s a sensation I’ve been trying to emulate in my own writing for years now.

For those unfamiliar or with hazy memories, let me give you a brief rundown. But first, a bit of literary dictionary diving.

The falling action of a story takes place immediately after the climax (big battle/emotional turning point) and sort of wraps everything up, setting everything up for the resolution. In film particularly, where we’re often concerned about running-time, the two are often blurred together and even take place in the same scene. To borrow an example, the falling action of Star Wars (1977) is the throne room scene where Han and Luke (Wedge should be there too by the way) are rewarded for their valor in the Death Star fight. The resolution is that final shot of them facing the crowd assembled and receiving applause.

Now, as we know that’s not the end of the story. Vader’s still out there, the Empire’s still around, there’s plenty of loose ends. The true resolution comes in Return of the Jedi. And in this instance, the falling action and resolution are spread out over multiple scenes. Starting just after the Rebels destroy the Death Star (again), Luke returns to burn his father’s armor and then joins the party on Endor, already in progress. You could argue that the falling action launches while Luke’s still on the Death Star and he’s dragging a dying Vader to a shuttle to escape. But the climax can’t really said to be done in my opinion until we get that explosion. The resolution is that final shot where Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin are all standing as ghosts next to each other, having all found peace and balance in the Force.

But what about Jackson’s Return of the King? A great deal of the falling action from the book is abandoned here because it would feel almost out of place when compared with the fight that just occurred in Mordor. Without lingering here to long, we normally think of the arc of Exposition-Rising Action-Climax-Falling Action-Conclusion as a hill or mountain: it goes up (more or less) until it reaches the top and then comes back down. As we should all suspect, that’s a much neater and middle-school level simplification than reality. But Tolkien’s Return of the King features a spike in the falling action that could almost be confused as a second climax. But that’s not what I’m trying to talk about here!

Spoilers for the movie incoming!

So Frodo and Sam have destroyed the ring (and stayed in one piece, more or less), Gollum’s dead, the armies of Sauron have scattered, and the war is finally over. Time to party right? Save one problem: Frodo and Sam are still trapped in Mordor. Time to start the falling action.

Scene 1: Frodo and Sam are lying out on a rock as lava from Mount Doom flows all around them. There’s no probability of escape, but at least they did what they came here to do. Frodo’s mind is clear of the ring and for the first time in months, they’re able to talk about home and reminisce without one of them having to worry about the ring or the loyalty of their guide. But they’re both beaten to the point of exhaustion and the screen fades to black.

Scene 2: Fade in to the same shot we were left with: Frodo and Sam lying unconscious on that rock. Gandalf flies in on the Eagles and rescues them a la Thorin and the Dwarves after their tussle with the Goblin King in The Hobbit. Fade to white.

Scene 3: Fade in to Frodo waking up in bed after being out who knows how long. Gandalf is there (keeping in mind that while the audience has seen Gandalf doing his thing since the early moments of The Two Towers, this is the first Frodo’s seeing of Gandalf since watching him get pulled down by the Balrog in Moria). One by one, everyone else files in to pay Frodo their respects and it’s a big party and everyone’s relieved. Enter Sam, who hangs back. And while Merry and Pippin are recounting the tales of gallantry and heroism, Frodo shares a glance and a nod with Sam.

Scene 4: Cut to Aragorn receiving the crown of Gondor and in his procession through the crowd, being stopped by Elrond and an Elvish party. Enter Arwen and after three books/movies of seeing their relationship from far away, they can finally be together. At the end of the procession, Aragorn comes to the hobbits, who like everyone else, bow to him. He stops them and tells them they bow to no one, before kneeling to them. Everyone else does the same. Pan out, and fade into a map of Middle Earth.

So we’re done right? Everything has been set right, Aragorn is king, he’s got the girl. We can go home. While Aragorn is set up as the primary protagonist of the film, we forget the main hero of the series is Frodo. While the former was busy trying to unite the fractured kingdoms of men and stave off annihilation, the latter was just trying to return a piece of jewelry he was unhappy with. No matter how much power we try and give the ring, Aragorn’s story is much more up and down, much more epic in scale. Perhaps this is why Aragorn needs to remind us who the real heroes are at the end of that last scene.

Scene 5: In rapid fire succession we get the scene of the four hobbits riding back into the Shire on ponies, wearing the finery of the south, and immediately being out of place. They settle into a table at the Green Dragon and share a few pints. No one says anything, they just lift their drinks in a silent toast and maybe, just maybe, come to realize that what they were fighting for this whole time (home) is just a little bit too small for them now. Sam takes a swig and goes to speak with one Rosie Cotton, who we’ve heard from twice before in the wholes series (once at Bilbo’s birthday in Fellowship and once on the broken slopes of Mount Doom four scenes ago). We can only assume he asked her to marry him because…

Scene 6: The wedding! Pippin I believe is the one to catch the bouquet and maybe, just maybe, everyone is settling back in.

Scene 7: Sam speaks to Frodo in Bag-End after what we can assume has been a significant period of time (months, maybe a year even). Frodo has nearly finished writing his account of the journey, but implies there’s still more to write.

Scene 8: Everyone’s gathered for a trip to the harbor. Bilbo’s been afforded the right to travel with the Elves to the Undying Lands in the west and everyone’s gone to see him off. Even with the ring destroyed, and it’s spell supposedly lifted, Bilbo asks after it and maybe, Frodo realizes that he can never be the same for having carried the weight of his burden.

Scene 9: The Grey Havens. Bilbo and Gandalf bid farewell and join Elrond and the other Elves on their ship. Right before boarding, Gandalf turns to Frodo who explains to the others that they set out to save what needed to be saved (home, The Shire, the world), but not for him. Several tearful goodbyes later, Frodo hands Sam the book and tells him the final pages are up to him. Smiling sad smiles, he departs and the others return home.

Scene 10/resolution: Sam arrives at his house to be greeted by his family (his wife, a daughter, and a newborn) and says simply “I’m home.” He goes inside, shuts the door. Fade out.

Why is this so effective? Why was it even necessary? In an age where it feels like we’ve become accustomed to character arcs and story plots reaching their pinnacle and then resolving either in death or in a single snapshot of them going on to live the rest of their lives in peace, this conclusion feels both wrong and incredibly right at the same time. The Lord of the Rings cast a wide net in terms of the characters and events that needed to find resolution. Gondor needed a king, Aragorn had to win the right to marry Arwen, everyone had to survive varying ordeals, I didn’t even mention Eowyn and Faramir getting together (implied). And through all of that, four individuals just wanted to get home and return to the life of peace they had known their whole lives. The thing about throwing such a wide net is that unless you want to cut it, it takes a lot of work to gather it all back together neatly.

So does every movie need 20 minutes and every book require 2 chapters of falling action? Certainly not. But the resolution of the climax should not be mistaken for the resolution of the character arcs. After their journeys, characters should not be the same. Nor should their changes be simple enough to sum up in a single paragraph or a single shot. And their changes are often things that ought to be conveyed subtly. Their views of the world have likely changed and that means how they see things now, cannot be the same way they saw them before. The way they smile here, the way they look at a prize winning pumpkin there. A single shot is not enough for us to determine how the rest of this character’s life will go (except when it is).

Problem: How do you pace it out? I can’t really say and I don’t think there’s a singular correct solution (thus the reason I’ve been pondering this for years in my own writing). All I can offer is to make it feel right. Don’t cut me off from your world and characters prematurely, but leave me wanting just that little bit more. It’s said a great ending can make a mediocre book good and a sub-par ending will tarnish even the most well-written story. A resolution is not an easy thing to write. It’s the first thing someone will think of when someone else asks them “So you finished that book, how was it?” You have to feel it out, twist the words just so, and stick it.

I think Peter Jackson managed to stick his landing. The pacing, the subtlety of the expressions, the moments that were included. But at the end of the day, a singular message was adhered to: whatever is happening in the big, wide world, it all has to come back home and carry on.

On Hobbiton

We. Are. Back.

Some of you may be wondering what that 2 week content gap was about and the rest of you may not care. To both of you I’m saying: it was a trip to New Zealand. And as a fantasy writer, it was a bit less of a vacation and a bit more of a pilgrimage to Middle Earth. It’s actually amazing how much the country accepts itself as a place that exists on the map for most outsiders BECAUSE of a few movies. To be fair, that’s not all New Zealand is, there’s way more cool stuff than just Peter Jackson and his creations, but there’s still plenty of those.

And today I want to tackle perhaps the biggest piece of Jackson’s legacy in New Zealand: the movie set at Hobbiton. This really was an experience more akin to spiritual pilgrimage than sightseeing, and I figure such a statement might need explanation. Hobbiton is much more than just a movie set, at least to someone trying to write fantasy.

First off, as we all know, fantasy is about building worlds that don’t exist and relating them to our world through characters, events, and themes. Hobbiton represents a place where a fantasy world is physically manifest in our world. And in some senses, other places in New Zealand are like this, but in no other place are you immersed like Hobbiton. And perhaps no place in Tolkien’s narratives is as far removed from our modern world as The Shire.

For those out of the know, the set for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy was only a temporary set and was deconstructed after filming. When the time came to film The Hobbit trilogy, the set was rebuilt with the intention of being a more permanent site so that tourists could visit after filming had concluded. The cost of this more permanent set was financed only in part by the film studio, the rest of which was covered by the family who owns the sheep farm upon which the set is built.

And while the set is massive, it’s only a part of what we see in the film. What we see in the background is the actual landscape of the surrounding farm so that when you enter the set, it feels like you’ve stepped into Middle Earth. It’s crazy. The drive to the place feels like you’re driving through the Shire. It’s very immersive.

So… it’s a movie set. So what? It’s a combination of a lot of things.

As popular as fantasy and science-fiction are as pieces of entertainment, we have remained a culture that likes to stay grounded in reality. Our fiction tends to be ‘realistic fiction’ and even our popular fantasies tend to be based in our world, whether in an imagined past or a speculative future. The mainstream popular fantasy that places us in a world totally alien to our own is a rare thing. As a writer, the presence and popularity of this set, the success of the films, gives me hope that more traditional fantasies (like the ones I want to write and love to experience) can continue to not only survive in the literary world, they can thrive.

For as popular as Lord of the Rings was as a film franchise, it remains the exception rather than the rule. And that’s why the ability to step into the world it created is so important. It’s like stepping into someone else’s imagination, seeing what they saw when they experienced Tolkien’s writing. It’s the making of something completely fictional a reality. And there’s just something magical about that, especially for someone who went to the lengths Jackson did to recreate every detail from Tolkien’s works.

One particular anecdote that amused me was that for the construction of the more permanent set, the tree overlooking Bag-End had to be constructed including some 20,000 leaves. Before filming could begin, the rainy season hit and the color of those leaves became washed out. So before filming could begin, Jackson had the crew repaint the leaves BY HAND. It just seemed fitting to me that Jackson channeled a bit of Lewis Carroll throughout his direction of the films. It’s that sort of obsessive attention to detail that allows worlds of pure imagination to be made real.

Second off, I feel the sort of spiritual attachment to Hobbiton I experienced would not have been equaled at any other set for me (save maybe for The Grey Havens, but there’s no site for that). This is because the Shire represents a place of peace, and it’s a fantasy on multiple levels. The Lord of the Rings is a story of war and relates very much to the Second World War. The Shire is a place where wars are distant and the inhabitants care more for gardening, feasting, and partying than for the toils we may be more familiar with.

As impressive as places like Helm’s Deep or Minas Tirith would have been to see, they are fortresses, familiar locations that can be found all over our world. Locations such as The Shire are places that actually being there, actually being immersed there takes you away from worldly troubles. It’s a strange feeling to articulate. It’s a combination of seeing what fantasy writing can create and actually feeling completely at peace.

Because of the work Jackson and his crew did in recreating the aesthetic of The Shire, it’s easy for visitors to put in a little bit of work the recreate the feel and attitude of the place. It helps when you’re able to lounge on the front porch of a hobbit hole or have a drink in the Green Dragon.

Finally, it comes down to a matter of empathy. The Return of the King remains one of the few movies that consistently garners a bit of emotion out of me, and naturally it comes in the film’s final 20 minutes. You know the part where the film ends about 6 times before actually ending? I love every bit of it, and honestly wouldn’t have minded it carrying on for a few endings more. Almost every part of those endings that take place in The Shire is visit-able. Have a drink in the Green Dragon, stand on the party field where Sam gets married, stand outside the Green Dragon where the wagon comes to take everyone to the Grey Havens, and you can even walk up the road like Sam in the final scene to his house.

So on a personal level, I could experience everything I wanted to in my favorite 20 minutes in cinema. On a writing level, I could physically step into the imagination of both a great fantasy writer and a film director trying to bring a fantasy to life. And on a spiritual level, I could step into a place that half exists on our plane of existence and half exists in a world distant from our own both literally and thematically. And not just any place, but a realm of absolute peace.

And that’s all from visiting visiting a movie set for 2 hours.

In Defense of the Golden Rule: “The Hobbit” Book VS. Peter Jackson Films

For those who may have been expecting this on Friday: hear me out. Thursday night I was rundown by either a bearcat in a fire truck or the flu. Given the restless nights and cold sweats, I’m beginning to think it may have been the first one…

Anyway, before we dive in today to my own personal Thermopylae I strongly recommend taking a look at my posts for the plot summary of the book and changes to said plot the movies make. I also recommend viewing my opening thoughts on adaptations so that none of my takes on the subject come flying out of left field on you.

As always, the Golden Rule of storytelling remains that your characters must be more interesting than the world they inhabit. Characters are what lead to an invested audience. The world, not so much.

This “In Defense” will be a bit different. I don’t feel the need to cover the plots of either the book or the movies because I’ve covered both over the last two posts. This will be more looking at the changes and evaluating whether or not they’re any good.

So let’s sound that Horn of Helm Hammerhand through the Deep of 2014 one last time. Now for wrath. Now for ruin. And the red dawn.

Beginning with changes to our characters. Namely, the added characters. Throughout the narrative of the book, there are about seven characters most of the audience will care enough about to remember their names. The character traits that make them memorable are as follows: Bilbo (main character), Gandalf (wizard who drags Bilbo into everything), Thorin (the leader), Balin (dwarf who most befriends Bilbo) Fili and Kili (interchangeable young brothers), and Bombur (he’s fat). Other memorable characters include Gollum (featured in one chapter), Smaug (a giant lizard), The Goblin King (unnamed) The Woodland King (unnamed in the book), and The Master of Lake-town (unnamed). The story focuses on 15 characters traveling together meeting a handful of colorful characters along the road that drive the story. Of these 15 only seven are memorable. One of those seven (Gandalf) disappears for most of the book. Two of the seven (Fili and Kili) are essentially one person. They even share the same fate at the end of the book! So five mostly-one dimensional characters drive an entire narrative. Not the best for film…

Let’s look at what was added on this front. Namely: Azog, Tauriel, and the Necromancer. Azog and the Necromancer add to the plot named antagonists who exist throughout the entirety of the story. From the moment the Dwarves leave Hobbiton they are tracked by Azog and his orcs and harassed to no end. And given the changes to the backstory between Azog and Thorin, the films do an excellent job of building to their inevitable clashes (even if the buildup to their final fight is a little over-the-top).

The second film introduces the Necromancer who gives cause for Gandalf to leave the party. In the book, he leaves for unknown reasons other than ‘plot device’ (until the very end where it’s given a single paragraph’s worth of mention). In the book, the reason Gandalf leaves is so the dwarves can get lost in Mirkwood. Why does he leave in the films? The return of Sauron, the Nine, and ultimate evil to Middle Earth. No big deal.

The second film also introduces Tauriel who serves the main role of adding to Kili’s character and differentiating him from Fili. Is she a strong character on her own? Kind of, but it’s hard to see her as anything other than an addendum to Kili because she is a non-canonical figure. Adding the Necromancer makes sense because it explains Gandalf’s actions. Adding Azog makes sense because it creates building tension throughout the entirety of the films. Adding Tauriel provides audience investment in a character that didn’t really have any before. And even though that doesn’t sound like much, it kind of is. Adding a non-canonical figure also provides intrigue because it’s unknown to the audience (whatever their knowledge of Tolkien’s works) her ultimate fate. On a personal note, I was fairly disappointed by the end of her arc plot, but that’s neither here nor there.

Point is, through the first two films the changes add to the story. Through the first 200 pages of the book, the story felt very episodic, almost eclectic in its scope. One chapter they’re dealing with trolls, then they’re in Rivendell, then they’re getting captured by Goblins, then Bilbo’s playing riddles with Gollum. The story feels all over the place, even though it’s not, because it’s told almost solely through Bilbo’s point of view. Tolkien gives us help here and there so we can keep track of everyone else, but Peter Jackson flushes out these edges of the story to make it feel cleaner and to make the other characters feel like genuine players in the story rather than just fulfilling plot-advancement roles. In the book they get captured by elves, rescued from the elves, and wash up in Lake-town. In one chapter. Jackson added political intrigue with Thorin and Thranduil, romance (cheesy though it was) between Tauriel and Kili, genuine danger in the escape with Bolg, and even MORE intrigue with Bard, The Master, and Thorin.

Thinking on it even more, I’d go so far as to say the first two films are masterful adaptations of the original source material.

The last film, I cannot lie, falls short of the first two in terms of our Golden Rule. The time for character development, intrigue, and politicking ended with Smaug destroying Lake-town. Thorin falls victim to Dragon Sickness, yes, but that’s less of character development and more of a, well, sickness. The political maneuvering between Bard and The Master is replaced by Bard and comic-relief Alfred (whose absence would honestly improve the film). The nuances of the Woodland King’s character (and for being such a minor character in the book, he does have nuances) are replaced by greed.

On the bright side, Dain is basically Sheogorath, one of the The Elder Scrolls’ best characters. Bethesda: When will you let me go back to the Shivering Isles by the way?

And if you think character development drags with the death of Smaug, you know it falls off the face of the Lonely Mountain when the Battle of the Five Armies starts. And this is probably where the final film meets one of its greatest failings. That the struggle between the dwarves and Smaug at the end of the second film (which I had no problem with) lasted longer than the canonical battle between Smaug and Lake-town. The battle for which the last film is named takes up about five pages in the book. I’m not saying the entirety of the third film could have been grafted onto the end of the second film, but it almost feels like it could have.

The battle itself borders on over the top, but it’s a Battle of Five Armies for Thorondor’s sake! What did you think you were going to get? What did you imagine in those five pages before Bilbo gets KO’d by a random boulder?

And oh, I almost forgot! What of Gandalf and the Necromancer you ask? There’s a reason I almost forgot. It gets wrapped up in a single 10 minute scene at the start of the film. We do get to see Saruman and Elrond fight Ringwraiths which is awesome, but it feels empty to have all the buildup for so sudden a resolution. Why couldn’t this single scene have been in the second movie?

But in my opinion, the true failing of the final film is its end. Spoilers ahead, in the form of things the film leaves out. No funeral for Thorin, no return march to Mirkwood with Gandalf, Bilbo, and Thranduil, no Bilbo getting named Elf-friend, no resting in Rivendell with Elrond, and no tea with Balin and Gandalf. The Return of the King had about 10 endings and it was AMAZING. Things were set up perfectly for it to happen again here. Look, for all my bashing of this final film, I genuinely wanted to spend more time in Middle Earth. Now that the fight is won, I want to see what happens to the characters when their quest is complete. To the film’s credit, it still has Bilbo return to the auction at his house. But an adaptation shouldn’t be credited by what it keeps. It should be credited by what it adds and criticized for what it takes away. And this film took away a strong ending to The Hobbit. The book is subtitled “There and Back Again.” The films all but deleted the “Back Again.”

But like I said above, the first two films are brilliant adaptations of the book. The addition of characters (canonical and otherwise) provides more depth and unity to the story. The links to The Lord of the Rings trilogy add to the story a historical context if you will. The first two films added to the story (for better and worse, but mostly better) without taking much anything away. The last film was a step back in this regard because while it added to the Battle, it subtracted from its aftermath. And given Peter Jackson’s blessed disregard for general advice on cinema film length, I’m stunned that I’ve had to level this criticism at him. For someone who felt he could add enough to stretch a 250 page book into 8 and 1/2 hours of film, to take anything away is criminal, especially when it jeopardizes the end we all came to the cinema to experience.

That said, battle elk, rams, and boars are all amazing.