Dr. Richard Purtill is a former professor of philosophy at Western Washington University and an accomplished author of fantasy as well as textbooks on philosophy. His books include
Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,
Reason To Believe: Why Faith Makes Sense, J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (e-book) and
C.S. Lewis's Case for the Christian Faith, as well as several works of fiction. He recently was interviewed by a former student, Gord Wilson (
www.alivingdog.com), who has an M.A. in English from Western Washington University and who has written for for
Campus Life, His, CCM, New Oxford Review, HM, and various animation magazines
and local publications.
Dr. Purtill shared his thoughts on the several recent movies based on the works of Tolkien and Lewis.
Q:
Steve Jackson’s
The Lord of the Rings movies proved very
popular, as has the first of the three Hobbit films. But aren’t
they being released backwards? Wasn’t the
Hobbit written
first?
Purtill:
There’s nothing wrong with writing a prequel to an existing book,
or in this case, a movie. That’s the back story to something. There
are various reasons for writing a prequel. Sometimes you write
something interesting and you say, how did this situation evolve? Or
it may be that your first book wasn’t successful, but your second
was, so it’s released first. There’s nothing wrong with it in
principle. It may be that you encounter the
Hobbit first, as
many of us did. Or, you may read
The Lord of the Rings first,
and then you want to read something about Bilbo Baggins, and read his
story in
The Hobbit.
Q:
Do you think seeing the movies will make people want to read the
books. Do they have the same audience?
Purtill: Not necessarily. There are a lot of things in the movies that are
expansions of things that aren’t all that important in the books.
It’s hard to say. It’s probably an individual judgement. Some
people might like the movies. Other people may say, oh this isn’t
like the book, I don’t like it.
Q:
If someone were new to reading Tolkien, would you suggest starting
with
The Hobbit?
Purtill:
I would think so. If you say, this is an example of the work of
Tolkien, I think it would be a good idea. It’s a very good book and
very interesting.
Q:
How can
The Hobbit be stretched out over three movies?
Purtill: That is a problem. I can see it doing two movies. You have the scene
at the end of the first movie with the eye of the dragon.
The Hobbit
isn’t really a small book. It’s 317 pages in the old hardback
edition I have. It’s quite an interesting book, with lots of things
to discover.
Q:
So we have two more Hobbit films over two more years. Is there any
more of Tolkien that could be filmed?
Purtill: Actually, I think you could make a rather interesting story, which
would be very unlike than
The Lord of the Rings, out of “Leaf
By Niggle”. That’s a story that I talk about in my book,
Lord
of the Elves and Eldils. It’s a story about a man who has to go
on a journey, and could be interpreted in three different ways. It
was published separately in a book called
Tree and Leaf, but
the most convenient way of getting it is in
The Tolkien Reader,
which contains that story and other works by Tolkien.
Q:
What about C.S. Lewis‘ Narnian films?
Purtill:
I think the first Narnian movie,
The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe, was rather unsuccessful. They tried to add too much of
their own interpretation. The second one,
Prince Caspian, was
better, and the third one, despite my initial negative reaction to
it, I’ve come to decide is a pretty good movie —
The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader. They’re going to find it very difficult to do
the next one,
The Horse and His Boy, because it takes place
completely in Narnia. Except for the kings and queens, who are
lightly mentioned, it’s really not a story about our world at all.
But the BBC also filmed the first three Narnian books some time back.
They did so on a somewhat lower budget. They’re sort of like filmed
plays. But they stick close to the books, and are very good.
Q:
Are there any other Lewis books one could film?
Purtill: I’d be interested in seeing somebody do
Out of the Silent
Planet, which has a lot of good scenes in it. You could make a
very interesting movie out of it. The thing is, there are too many
scientific facts we know now about Mars, which are wrong in the book.
But you could get around that by saying that the eldils who rule Mars
(Malacandra) have decided they don’t want any truck with human
beings so they alter the instruments of our Mars probes to make Mars
look like a desert planet. You had the same situation with Edgar Rice
Burroughs‘
John Carter of Mars, which Disney just made into
a successful movie.
Q:
Out of the Silent Planet is the first book of a trilogy,
isn’t it?
Purtill: Yes.
Perelandra is the second book, and they’d have to do
the same thing with that, because we know too much about Venus.
That
Hideous Strength, the third book, I think would make a very good
movie. In fact, it might make two or three movies, as it’s a long
and complex work.
Q:
What do you think Tolkien would have thought of the films?
Purtill:
I think he would be against filming his books. I think he would say,
“What I’ve written I’ve written”. He didn’t like any
vulgarizations, as he called them. But he would probably also be
delighted to see how popular his books have become, and surprised to
see us analyzing them. I’m not sure what he’d think about my
books.
• Visit the Ignatius Insight author page for Richard Purtill.
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Lisa Becerra, a native to Wisconsin,
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