XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: mr@sandman.net   
      
   In article ,   
    Paul S. Person  wrote:   
      
   > >This presupposes that a given story can only be told in one way, and   
   > >that the existing TH is a template for that way. Obviously, I don't   
   > >agree with that.   
   >   
   > First, using "presuppose" is not a very nice thing to be doing. To   
   > illustrate:   
   >   
   > What meaning of "presuppose" are you presupposing?   
      
   I'm not sure what you're getting at here.   
      
   > Second, I am not saying that a given story can only be told in one   
   > way, merely that, since an adequate job can be done in 80 (actually,   
   > 78) minutes, any film taking an /enormously longer time/ is subject to   
   > doubt as to whether it is an adaptation of (in this case) JRRT's /TH/   
   > or of some other story actually written by PJ.   
      
   As an example. In The Hobbit, the dwarves are captured by the Elf King   
   and Bilbo wanders their palace for up to two weeks before finding all   
   the dwarves. This consumes one paragraph in the book. One.   
      
   Right before, they fought the spiders over the course of maybe fifteen   
   paragraphs and a time span of maybe an hour.   
      
   How stories are written and how they are shown is never a straight   
   cut. While Bilbo lingering in the Elf Kings home isn't very   
   interesting on screen, some passages may. Like with the wolves - only   
   a few paragraphs long, but surely an intense series of events that   
   took quite some time to unravel, as with the flight with the eagles   
   afterwards.   
      
   I won't argue the word "adaptation" with you again. If they're making   
   an adaptation, they're making an adaptation. There is nothing you can   
   do about it but comment on the quality of that adaptation.   
      
      
      
      
      
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