Siberian, I'm going to repost for your benefit something that I wrote exactly six years ago today (!!
!!) at TORC, before ROTK was released. I don't expect you to agree with it (I'm not sure that I agree with it, at least fully), but you may at least find it interesting.
I know this is not new ground, but I felt inspired to try again to show why I think the filmmakers portrayal of Aragorn was appropriate.
In order to understand my position, one must first review where Aragorn, the archetypal King-in-waiting, came from. For much of the drafting of the LOTR, of course, there was no Aragorn. His role in the story was played by Trotter the Hobbit, a mysterious "ranger" whose origins Tolkien was never quite sure about (the most developed concept was that he was one Peregrine Boffin, a Hobbit befriended by Bilbo who disappeared from the Shire the day he came of age and eventually was tortured in Mordor). However, as the sequel to The Hobbit more and more became subsumed by the greater depth of Tolkien’s mythology, it became more and more apparent that this was not appropriate and that this character had a much more important role to play in the story.
Before embarking on the effort to create a sequel to The Hobbit, the major new component of Tolkien’s mythology was the story of the Fall of Númenor. This was a critically important conception for Tolkien, and in hindsight provided the perfect bridge between the older mythology of the Elder Days that would become the Silmarillion, and the more modern (but still ancient) story of the end of the Third Age that was the Lord of the Rings. For anyone not familiar with the story of the development of the Númenor legends, I highly recommend reading volume 5 of the HOME series - “The Lost Road and Other Writings.” It is a fascinating story and really shows how critical the conception of the Fall of Númenor was to Tolkien.
This is obviously not the place for a synopsis of that story (well known, I am sure, to most of you). Suffice it to say that it details how even the noblest of mankind (eventually conceived as the Children of Lúthien) can fall to the temptation of power unbridled. But included in this tragic tale is the idea that like the Phoenix, from the ashes will rise again a new hope, which became the Numenorian realms in exile. Yet we would later see in the story of Isildur the tragic flaw raise its ugly head again.
To make a very long story short, Tolkien eventually realized that this mysterious ranger character that he had created, but had such trouble identifying, actually was the culmination of this tale, which reached its tentacles back into the old tales and incorporated the conception of a touch of a ‘higher spirit’ elevating mankind, and that Trotter the Hobbit was actually Aragorn, son of Arathorn, descendent of the King of Men. Aragorn came to represent the redemption of mankind (the new New Hope) and ultimately, to quote Legolas “is he not of the children of Lúthien? Never shall that line fail, though the years may lengthen beyond count.”
In the book, enough of this backstory is captured (in the text and appendicies) so that Aragorn makes sense, even without the benefit of reading Tolkien’s other work (though Tolkien was absolutely right in believing that the Wars of the Jewels and the Ring should have been published together as they ultimately told one long connected story with Aragorn as in many ways the culmination of that story). However, in the context of the film, it is simply impossible to include enough of this back story to make such an archetypal portrayal make sense to anyone other than us Tolkien fanatics. This part of the story is largely told (a least so far) entirely through Isildur’s failure and Aragorn’s redemption of that failure, through his own journey of acceptance of his destiny.
I love the breadth and width of the tale that Tolkien weaved, and expect to find new patterns and seams in the fabric for the rest of my life. I don’t need to see the same exact story on the screen that I already have in the book(s); indeed, I believe an attempt to duplicate it would inevitably fail. It would have been futile for PJ to try to repeat with crochet what Tolkien created with fine needlepoint. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) he took the same themes and colors that Tolkien used and weaved them into a new pattern that is complementary of the original pattern. I for one am thrilled that he took this approach.
http://forums.theonering.com/viewtopic.php?t=67444"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
