When novels are adapted into movies, something is always lost in translation. Some interpretations are so poor that they seem to me an insult to the source material, like a horrible cover of John Coltrane by people who have no idea what a saxophone is, or that jazz exists. Some loved Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, and some hated them, and some had mixed feelings. The other day I was visiting a friend in the hospital, and in the background, the most recent version of The Great Gatsby played on the TV and it seemed to me, without even hearing it, that it was a lightweight spectacle, a parody of the novel.

When amazon announced their new Tolkien show, I admit I was immediately skeptical. Last year I was excited when I heard they were adapting Jordan’s Wheel of Time, but the result was underwhelming at best, for a variety of reasons. Jordan was no Tolkien, but the territory is very similar, so it makes me suspicious. Even Roger Corman did a better job with Poe; at least he had Vincent Price and knew how to be scary. I just hope amazon shows more care with Tolkien’s material.

The racism on display when the cast for the Tolkien show was announced is abhorrent and revolting. It’s depressing that trolls came out of the woodwork to say vile things, and they must be denounced. I just want to make it clear that my unease with amazon has nothing to do with casting–it seems they did a great job with a diverse group of actors. I just seriously doubt Amazon’s production has a handle on the material, based on what I saw with Wheel of Time. I guess time will tell what they’ll do. No doubt many who’ve never read Tolkien may enjoy a new fantasy show with lots of effects and glitz, no matter the substance. Amazon’s Man in the High Castle was watchable and pretty good, mostly, so maybe there is hope The Rings of Power will be ok.

On the other hand, none of us should trust amazon with anything, ever. The company is terrible in so many ways you couldn’t list them all, and if they accidentally get this right, it won’t be because they love literature, or Tolkien, so much.

Streaming services are hungry for content, and books like Tolkien’s offer a built in audience with well known and beloved source material. No doubt myriad film versions of literary works will continue to be made. Companies need advertising dollars and subscribers, and people glued to their devices. But do we need such adaptations? Is the ultimate goal of a novelist to get a gigantic motion picture out of the deal? Maybe for some of them, that’s the idea.

This gets into a separate philosophical issue of art and media. We’ll never have a shortage of viewers, but the way things are headed, we may soon have a shortage of good readers. Novels demand something of the reader that movies and television shows never do. Reading requires deep attention and thinking that will reward you in a way that even the best television never will.

Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. We might also say that films about novels are like paintings about sculpture.

I just saw a nice review of The Osprey Man on goodreads: “Chris Tuthill crafts a really touching story with very relatable themes here. It’s a vivid coming of age tale of loss and endurance.”

That made my evening!

There is something I have always enjoyed about this day, the winter solstice for us in the Northern Hemisphere. I just love the idea that ancient peoples came up with this celebration of life and sunlight in the face of the darkest day of the year, to look ahead to brighter days and know that better things were ahead. In times when winter could mean a struggle for survival, they were optimistic enough to celebrate the shortest day of the year. That speaks to the resilience of the human spirit. So Happy Solstice to everyone! I’m celebrating with a bonfire outside and some mulled wine. 🙂

I wish everyone joyous holidays and a better 2022. I will be hard at work on my book, preparing it for release next month, and working on an audio version. Stay tuned next year for the release of the book and the audio version sometime in winter or early spring. Best wishes to all!

Below is a sample of me reading from Chapter fifteen, as Jacob arrives at the library, that most wonderful of destinations.

I enjoyed The Wheel of Time books so much back in the 90s, when I was in high school and college. It was just the kind of series I’d been looking for after reading Tolkien, and between Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, and others like them I was reading lots of fantasy during that decade. So the new series is something of a fun nostalgia trip for me, and I decided to re-read the start of the series, Eye of the World. I’m enjoying it tremendously after nearly thirty years. You might even say an age has passed and the wheel has turned since 1990!

The show is so well done, with a wonderful cast and amazing scenery and effects. They have of course made some changes from the novels, but they seem to be capturing the spirit of the books and hitting many of the right notes with our favorite characters. Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Daniel Henney as Lan are particularly well cast, and have a great chemistry between them. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series, and can’t wait for the new installments.

I have also been working on my own fantasy stories for some time now. Once I have published the Osprey Man, (which you can pre-order here) I plan to start readying those stories for publication as well. Fantasy has been my favorite genre since I was a young boy, and I couldn’t help but want to write my own version of the myths and stories I’ve been reading for so many years.

“You want stories?” Thom Merrilin declaimed. “I have stories, and I will give them to you. I will make them come alive before your eyes.”–The Eye of the World

           Kris pulled a sketchbook out of his knapsack and opened it up.

           “I thought Osprey Man needed some jazzing up, you know?” Kris said. “He’s too much of a wuss. So I did some work on him, see?”

           Kris pushed the sketchpad over to Jacob. Kris’ vision of the character was not what Jacob had in mind. Osprey man had been transformed into something that looked like a flying version of the Incredible Hulk. He bulged with muscles. He had a massive chest, huge legs, and his wings were pointed and barbed to look like weapons. Osprey Man now had a square jaw and an angry sneer on his face.

           Worse, he had a rocket launcher attached to his back. The rocket was shooting fire out the back, and out of the front an enormous missile burst forth into the sky.

           The colors seemed too bright, almost neon. Osprey Man had golden wings, lime green tights, and his beak was a lurid pink.

           After a long, awkward pause, Jacob said, “He looks like a demon.”

           “I know, right?” Kris said. “He’s awesome now.”

           “But Jon’s version was realistic,” Jacob protested. “This guy looked like he just flew out of hell. And what’s with the missiles and rockets?”

           “I thought you’d like those,” Kris said. “He has guns too, check it out.” Kris flipped to another panel that featured Osprey man holding what appeared to be an M-16 assault rifle. Some hunters were on the receiving end of a burst of gunfire.

           “This isn’t right at all,” Jacob said. “I mean, did you even look at Jon’s sketches? Did you see the bird at Indian Island?”

           Kris leaned back in his chair and put in hands behind his head. He shrugged and smiled. “I saw his drawings, yeah. And I saw that dumb shitbird, OK? It was boring.”

           Now Jacob was angry. “Don’t talk about Jon that way.”

           “Don’t get all sore at me. I’m talking about that bird, not about Jon. He was my friend too, you know. Jon could draw, I’ll give him that. He was way better than me. But he can’t draw no more, and I can. So if I’m gonna draw these comics, they gotta be how I say.”

           Jacob shook his head. “That isn’t how it works, Kris.”

           “I can just make my own comics then. You ain’t the boss of me.”  

           They looked at each other across the table. Kris was adamant, Jacob knew. Without Kris, Jacob didn’t know how he would get the comic done. But he was just as sure that it would be a mistake to make the comic how Kris wanted it. It would violate everything Jacob and Jon had worked on.

           “Look, hear me out,” Kris said. He sounded to Jacob like he was a seasoned car salesman. “I dig what you’re saying about Jon. He was a better artist than me, no doubt. Thing is, no one wants to watch that NOVA or Wild America shit. They want to see stuff blow up. Have you been reading any new comics lately?”

           Kris rummaged into his backpack and came out with the latest issue of The Incredible Hulk, which featured the hero holding an army tank over his head. He was about to hurl it at a group of soldiers who were firing on him.

           “This is what I’m talkin’ about man!” Kris said, pointing at the cover. “If we’re gonna sell this thing, it can’t be all realistic like that bird at the park. No one would read it! It’s gotta be a butt-stomping, know what I mean?”

           Jacob looked at him. “You sound like your big brother.”

           Kris’ face grew redder than it already was, til it seemed to Jacob that it was a plum about to burst.

           “No way man!” Kris yelled. “No way! I ain’t nothin’ like him!”

This passage is from chapter twelve, as Jacob is trying to convince his friend Kris of the majesty of the Osprey.

They had hung out beneath the big Osprey nest, at the little peninsula the kids called “The Point,” for hours. They always went on different days of the week and at different times, in hopes of seeing something new from the bird. At dawn, at sunset, at noon. On weekends and weekdays, always for a glimpse of the majestic bird. To Jacob, it felt like they were on safari, like the guys on Wild America or those other nature shows. 

            Mostly, the Osprey just stayed there in the nest, almost mocking them. Perched in its nest, it looked out over the bay, waiting.

But every so often, if Jacob and Jon were very, very patient, the bird would stand up, spread its enormous wings, and fly from its perch out over the bay. If they were truly lucky, they would watch as it dove down to the water, stabbed out with its talons, and in an instant returned to flight with a living fish writhing in its claws. No matter how many times Jacob saw that, he was always amazed by it. The ruthless beauty of it gave him goosebumps.

            Jacob’s sketch showed the bird standing on a shore, its head turned toward the viewer, its huge eye looking out from the page defiantly. It was fierce, wild, angry. It had a small head, and enormous wings that spread out across two pages. It had a white body with dark wings and flecks of grey through the sides of its head. Its huge talons gripped a large fish struggling and failing to break free. There were fish guts dripping from the bird’s pointed beak. The Osprey was daring you to mess with it.

            It looked like a badass bird, and Jacob and Kris both knew it.

            “You said they have these things down at Indian Island?” Kris said, incredulous. “I never seen no bird that looked like that.”

            Jacob said, “That’s because you haven’t looked in the right places. C’mon and I’ll show you.”

This is from Chapter Two:

“There will never be another day like this, he thought. Tears sprang into the corners of his eyes at the idea of it. There would never be another last day of fourth grade/first day of summer when the finches land upon your hands as you hold out seed for them, when Suzie Vail asked you to her beach house, and Chaz Mancuso wanted to be your pal and offered you a job, when the streets were lined with shoppers eager beyond belief for the warm days ahead and the freedom those days promised. When those shoppers browsed the stores for beach chairs at Swezey’s and fishing line at Edward’s sporting goods and new tennis shoes at Stride Rite. When the sun blinded your eyes and the big cauliflower truck rumbled by, spewing diesel exhaust, bringing its bounty west to the big city, when the lunch counter at the Star Confectionary across the street was filled with kids getting ice cream floats, when he knew there were fifteen dates marked on his calendar for the little league season (and maybe this year his team, the Moose Lodge, would finally finish in the first division), when the Boston Terrier passing by at the end of an old man’s leash paused to consider him and then licked his hand free of pizza grease. It was an overabundance of goodness, and he wanted to savor it all, but he couldn’t.”

I finally saw this last night. The cinematography was amazing, and the team who worked on the ship design and various other props, sets and images that brought this film to life should be commended. The cast were very good, especially Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. I felt the movie really captured the look of Herbert’s world, much like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings captured Middle-earth.

Like Jackson’s trilogy, this movie felt really rushed to me. Frank Herbert was so meticulous in planning all his ‘wheels within wheels’ that the film can’t help but gloss over certain details, and spend less time on things than the book did. The heart of Herbert’s novel lies in the political machinations, the backstabbing and double dealing between the different houses and characters, and we get very little of this in the movie. Nor do we hear much about mentats, or a lot of the other rich detail for which Herbert is so well known. I’m not knocking the movie here–it was a great achievement–but Herbert’s vision was so groundbreaking at the time, and has had such an enormous impact on science fiction, that I think it is almost impossible to do it justice, especially for fans who grew up with this book and have likely read it multiple times. As with Jackson’s movies, I enjoyed this interpretation for what it was, an amazing attempt at retelling a classic, beloved story. But I wanted more screen time for characters like Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck; alas, in a two and a half hour movie, there is a lot of ground to cover and it made me feel as if they didn’t quite get their due.

Certain events in the novel, like the threat of violence or the deaths of characters, are easier to read than they are to see. I think the book was more elegant in presenting some of this material, and there is something to be said for leaving it to the reader’s imagination. It is extremely disturbing to watch some of these scenes, (for example, the abduction of Jessica and Paul, and the death of Leto) and felt at times almost like a horror film. The hopelessness of what happens to House Atreides in the book, and the brutality of it, are bad enough to read about, and I felt myself cringing at some of these moments in the movie. Again, I am not really criticizing the film–this material is all in the book, and I guess I prefer the novel.

One thing I didn’t enjoy so much was the soundtrack. No doubt there is plenty of menace in Dune, but the entirety of the score for this sounded to my ears like a one note, jarring, explosive kind of thrumming bass that kept up in scene after scene. Yes, we know the material is dark. I don’t know that we needed that thunderous void of anti-music to remind us again and again. Where was Duncan Idaho’s baliset? Some of that would have been a nice break from the noise.

The ornithopters were awesome, as were all of the ships! The stillsuits, the costumes, the fight choreography, all of it was so well done. Kudos to the artists and teams of effects experts that brought this to life. I rate this movie four out of five stars, and probably five stars if you haven’t read Dune, which you really should. It may be old fashioned, but I prefer the novel as a medium. A novel requires more from an audience than a film, but the novel’s rewards are far greater. Although this movie was true to the book, its shortcomings highlight what an amazing world Frank Herbert created.