From: mike.scott.rohan@asgardpublishing.co.uk   
      
   On Friday, February 14, 2014 6:19:00 AM UTC, Wayne Brown wrote:   
       
   > This might explain why I like Tolkien's books so much more than Jackson's   
   >    
   > films.  As a child I often read the Encyclopædia Britannica for fun,   
   >    
   > whereas I'm rather lukewarm about action films in general.   
   >    
   Of course. Your imagination produces what's required, a lot more   
   satisfactorily than Peter Jackson's. I enjoy the odd action movie well enough,   
   but it's like candyfloss (=cotton candy) for the mind; if you've a bit more   
   brain, you naturally demand a bit    
   more, and for that you need the original book. And that, for me, sums up a lot   
   of the problem with Jackson's adaptations. He and Boyens do sincerely love the   
   books, they do catch something of the magic -- visually, in particular -- but   
   their response,    
   for all the detail they drag in, is on a fairly shallow level, and heavily   
   coloured -- you could almost say contaminated -- by the inbuilt cliches of   
   lesser fantasies, comics and video games. The way, for example, that Jackson   
   loves having combatants    
   stand around and square off, snarling macho fashion at one another. That   
   destroys the sweeping element of surprise in -- for example -- the   
   confrontation with the orcs in Moria, the ride of the Rohirrim, or Aragorn's   
   arrival at the siege of Minas Tirith.    
   It's childish and unlikely. Or, on another level, the way he completely   
   misunderstands Tolkien's subtle characterization of Denethor and Saruman. The   
   result is LOTR Lite.   
      
   When I first saw Fellowship, my reaction was that it was a bit like an   
   alternative version of an epic -- one of the less poetic Argonautica, for   
   example, or one of the retreads of the Volsunga Saga, Das Gehhornte Sigfrid   
   maybe. It worked, just not always    
   as well. But having got his audience in, Jackson then created much less   
   faithful, more action-y sequels. And he is doing much the same with the   
   Hobbit. which suggests it's to some degree deliberate.   
      
   But he does get a good performance out of Bloom, one of the better features.   
   However, to hear Bloom talk in everyday life, he's so laid back he almost   
   falls over. He can be charming enough, maybe he isn't stupid, but the   
   impression is that he lacks the    
   drive and perhaps the sensitivity that makes Bale and others such   
   multi-faceted actors. Bloom seems to be more of a filter feeder, browsing on   
   what drifts by.   
      
   Cheers,   
      
   Mike Scott Rohan   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)