XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: steuard@slimy.com   
      
   In message , Troels Forchhammer   
    wrote:   
   > In message    
   > Steuard Jensen  spoke these staves:   
   >> Morgoth's Curse  wrote:   
   >>> We would hate to count you among the ranks of those who have   
   >>> rejected the light that Tolkien revealed and embraced the darkness   
   >>> that Jackson has unleashed upon the world!   
      
   >> :P   
      
   > As I recall it, your reviews at the time of the LotR films were,   
   > overall, fairly positive, though not uncritically so.   
      
   You recall correctly. :)  Though to be fair, my comfort with them   
   decreased from film to film: the deviations from my beloved story in   
   Jackson's RotK finally pushed me to a less enthusiastic enjoyment.   
   (Incidentally, if you're ever in the mood to see what I wrote, my   
   reviews are on the Essays page of my FAQ site.)   
      
   >> When did the population here become so strongly and uniformly   
   >> purist-leaning, anyway?   
      
   > Surely it is possible to criticize the films for deviating from   
   > Tolkien's book in some specific way without such a criticism being   
   > necessarily 'purist', isn't it? Some people do seem to use the word   
   > in a very derogatory manner [...]   
      
   Oh, it certainly is possible, and I don't mean to imply otherwise. I   
   just feel like back when they were coming out, it wasn't uncommon to   
   see even long-term regulars say the occasional nice thing about the   
   films, while it feels quite rare to see that today. I've used "purist"   
   mostly as a shorthand for the broad "mostly negative impression of   
   Jackson's work" range of opinions, but perhaps it's not really   
   accurate in that usage. (But then, I think the term could apply quite   
   well to the exaggerated tone that Morgoth's Curse used in the quote   
   above. And again, I know that's intended as a bit of self-parody, but   
   I never see exaggerations in the other direction these days, either.)   
      
   >> But at least for me, the landscapes and locations they live in   
   >> really are Middle-earth, or at least closer to it in most cases   
   >> than I'd dared to hope.   
      
   > /Visually/ I don't think they could have done better (Moria being the   
   > only location that I think they got partly wrong) -- certainly it   
   > would be foolish to have expected better.  This, however, does not,   
   > for me, make it Middle-earth   
      
   I think we're very much in agreement on all of this. :)   
      
   Steuard Jensen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)