XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
On 2012-08-06 05:31, Lewis wrote:
>
> In message
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>> In message
>> Lewis spoke these staves:
>>
> At a certain level I understand many people's frustrations with the
> movies, they are not the book translated to film. But mostly, I don't
> get it, the movies are very good in and of themselves and if you follow
> *their* story it all seems to work very well.
I shan't attempt to analyse other people's frustrations, so I can only
speak for my own :)
For my own part, I am actually torn in my view on the films even if that
doesn't come across very well in our discussions here -- this is, after
all, alt.fan./Tolkien/ and rec.arts./books/./Tolkien/ and so it is, at
least in my opinion, not relevant to discuss here how the films stand on
their own merits: the only relevant discussion here, in my eyes, is how
they stand as adaptations of Tolkien's story and Tolkien's intentions.
Overall I can lean back and enjoy the films -- Arwen at the ford,
Aragorn falling off a cliff during an attack of warg-riders, Moria being
visually completely wrong (Moria was not huge caverns, but mined
tunnels), Elves in the Battle of the Hornburg (or rather, since it
doesn't happen in the book, in the Battle of Helm's Deep) -- all of
these things I can take in stride and simply enjoy the films.
There's a few places where my ability to separate the two stories fail
me -- mostly when I feel that some important aspect of Tolkien's
underlying intentions with the story are being tampered dramatically
with. This also affects me when discussing the films because much of the
'tampering' cannot be put down to specific scenes, but like the
portrayal of the Master Ring is something that permeates the whole trilogy.
And then there's that single scene at the Stairs of Cirith Ungol that I
am still unable to watch and which made me absolutely furious when I saw
it . . . I really don't know why I react so strongly to it (I've tried
to rationalise it, but while I can come some way I cannot wholly explain
it and must accept that it is at least partly an irrational and
emotional reaction).
But when all is said and done, I still very much enjoy at least three
quarters of the total run-time of the films.
> And a movie that satisfied the hard-core fans of the books would have
> been *terrible*.
That seems rather a convenient excuse -- it is unlikely that it will
ever be proven (and frankly I haven't seen anyone come with a convincing
argument why such would necessarily be the case).
On the other hand, I think such a film is impossible -- if nothing else
then because people tend to disagree about what would satisfy them, and
so it would be impossible to satisfy everybody no matter what they did ;-)
> There is no way to put Tom into a movie without him coming off as
> a dope-addled hippie.
There is certainly no way that Peter Jackson could have pulled it off,
but I am not sure that it is inherently impossible (though I'd certainly
agree to 'very difficult') :)
> On the other hand, we both agree that it was Merry who killed the Witch
> King, with a little help, so he can't be completely wrong! :)
:-D
There's a footnote in the appendices that pertain to this question.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
(Thus speaks the quantum physicist)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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