Tumblr crosspost (16 July 2020)

[anghraine]

Pet peeve of the day (/week/month/lifetime): people responding to any and all objections to film!Aragorn’s characterization as “well, film is a different medium and he needed an arc and”

Yes, we know.

That does not mean that the specific arc they chose for him, which hinges on being entitled to the throne but personally unwilling to claim it, and downplays Gondor and its people, is the only way it could have been done.

(And yes, the ins and outs of book!Aragorn's claim are complicated. But there is one pretty simple fact about it: his family's claim has been rejected by Gondor for a really long time. This is important (often overlooked even in terms of book!Aragorn but important) because it means he has to win over the people to become king rather than relying purely on birthright, which makes the kingship arc a looooot more palatable. You could even keep the ~lo I am unworthy~ thing w/ that! 'In any case Gondor rejected my family long ago' is a perfectly valid point for him to make in that context!

I mean. It would require Jackson et al to give a fuck about Gondor's people. But like... we know it's a different medium. We know it helps viewers to have a clear arc for a main characters. Just because they needed to do something doesn't mean the way they did it was beyond criticism (*cough*Faramir*cough*Denethor*cough*). Anywayyyyy.)

Comments

[sathari]

The fact that book!Aragorn basically had to get a mandate from the people is... wow, now I'm wandering off into possible Doyleist/real-world-context reasons about why they didn't go that route at the time the films were made and I'm not sure they're germane, but they will not leave me. (I once attempted a LOTR satire about the then-current US presidential administration around the time the movies came out. I regret nothing.)

[anghraine]

Yeah, I've always thought it really interesting that the movies don't downplay the elements of chosen birthright blahblah with Aragorn, but rather amp it up very substantially—that leaning hard into the royalist birthright stuff that was so appealing to audiences of the time. The movies were definitely a very international thing, but in terms of the general zeitgeist, I'm just ... hmmm.