Ian Holm (1931-2020)

I’ve been rewatching bits & bobs of Fellowship and the scenes I keep getting pulled back to are the early ones with Holm. He’s really excellent in the scene after the party with Gandalf as he struggles with the prospect of letting the Ring go.

He also gets the biggest jump-scare in the trilogy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fzzkZdU-8

I hated that scene. It just felt too much like Peter Jackson putting his own stamp on Tolkien, didn’t fit in at all for me. Same with the Galadriel bit.

It definitely wasn’t Tolkien (like a great deal of the movie, btw), but it still scares me, and Holm beautifully pivots to pathos IMO.

The Galadriel bit is canonical, isn’t it?

IIRC Tolkien describes her as transforming in some way when she makes that speech, but of course Jackson’s interpretation of said transformation is… Jacksonian.

I enjoy the movies overall, and at times (e.g. the Bilbo/Gandalf scene I mentioned above) I think they come close in tone to the books. But they are very much their own thing and many of my favorite parts of the books aren’t in there at all. Two different mediums, yada yada.

For sure every now and then the movies remind you that this dude also directed Dead Alive.

Let me clarify: I take issue with the physical transformation bit that happens with both Bilbo and Galadriel’s moment of temptation. Not the fact that they were tempted. It just seems over the top to me.

I guess the text is always open to imagination, but:

‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. ‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.’

The apparent transformation is in the text.

I think Jackson got the “feel” right a lot of the time. But the films are compressed, both in time and space. Things happen too fast, and the scenes are too crowded. I didn’t get to really enjoy the films.

Having just re-watched Fellowship, I think you’re right. It’s odd to say of a 3-hour movie. But for example, they’re climbing Caradhras, and Gimli says “we should go through Moria” (which is the first time the word Moria has been said in the movie). Gandalf gives an ominous look and says “that is only a last resort”. And two minutes later, they’re at the gates of Moria.

I also think the films were “framed” for standard definition TV. Nothing really important happens outside the 4:3 box in the middle of the screen.

Every time an RIP thread is bumped, even this slight two week bumpage, I think, OMG [insert name] died! Even if I already knew. Such as the Harlan Ellison thread and this one.

Same here, and specifically I keep thinking “oh no, Ian McKellen!” in this case.

Yup. Every time.

Guess he had many lives!

The funny thing about this is…in the book it was Gandalf’s idea to go through Moria from the beginning and Gimli, along with the rest of the fellowship are ‘hesitant.’ Especially Aragorn, who foreshadows Gandalf’s fate in a bit of foresight. Also they are attacked by wargs/wolves/werewolves? en-route through Eregion/Hollin which is not in the film.