XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies   
      
   In message    
     Troels Forchhammer  wrote:   
   > On 2012-08-02 11:38, Lewis wrote:   
   >> In message    
   >>    Troels Forchhammer  wrote:   
   > >>   
   >>> From the on-line translation of the recent /Le Monde/ interview with   
   >>> Christopher Tolkien, 'The Ring of Discord':   
   >>   
   >>>       This policy, however, has not protected the family from the   
   >>>       reality that the work now belongs to a gigantic audience,   
   >>>       culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it.   
   >>>       Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred   
   >>>       not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an   
   >>>       action movie for young people 15 to 25," Christopher says   
   >>>       regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the   
   >>>       same kind of film."   
   >>   
   >> So, he's annoyed that the movies are aimed at precisisley the same   
   > > audience as embraced the books in the first place?   
      
   > Hardly. /The Lord of the Rings/ was at first embraced by mature adults   
   > (think 30+). Some ten years after the initial publication the books   
   > became available to a wider audience and became embraced at the   
   > universities (mainly) by students at 20 - 30. The younger audience   
   > wasn't involved (in any significant way) until much later, and even   
   > today I doubt (albeit I do not know) if that the majority of those   
   > 'embracing' the book are below 20.   
      
   As I said, I don't know anyone who has read the books who did not first   
   read them at 15 +/- 3 years.   
      
   > I do, however, think that CJRT is being overly generous to the films at   
   > this point -- the target audience appears to me to be rather the 12 - 18   
   > crowd, and while you can certainly read /LotR/ at 10 or younger   
      
   No, you really can't. It would be the exceedingly rare 10yo who could   
   read LotR. The sort of 10yo who is enrolling at university in the next   
   year or two and having words like 'prodigy' attached. The vocabulary   
   needed alone is far out of the reach of nearly all 10yos.   
      
   >> LOTR *is* an action adventure tale filled with battles and swords and   
   >> magic and bad guys and risk and peril and *that* is what gets people to   
   >> read it. Anyone who ignores that is ignoring a key facet of the work.   
      
   > That is utter nonsense. It is a far richer book than that, even though   
   > it does contain elements of action and adventure, that is certainly   
   > /not/ what the book /is/.   
      
   It is not at all nonsense. A book can be many things. One of the things   
   that LOTR is, is an action adventure. In fact, for most readers that is   
   *all* it is.   
      
      
   --   
   IT WOULD BE A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE, said Death. EXACTLY A MILLION TO   
   ONE CHANCE.  'Oh,' said the Bursar, intensely relieved. 'Oh dear. What a   
   shame.' --Eric   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)