From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   On Sat, 24 May 2014 21:30:46 in article  No   
   One In Particular  wrote:   
   >   
   > Fair enough.  Aragorn was the example I used, but you are correct, he is   
   > not the primary protagonist.  But I maintain that the changes in his   
   > character, as well as many of the others, were still made as an attempt   
   > to make those characters more accessible to the average moviegoer.   
      
   As I've said before, I don't want Aragorn to think and act like us so   
   we can understand him.  I want him to be presented in a way that forces   
   us to learn to think like him so that he becomes comprehensible to us.   
   In the books Aragorn and many of the other characters (like Elrond and   
   Galadriel) are wiser, nobler, and just plain *superior* to the average   
   person today and when watching them on-screen we should feel their   
   superiority and realize that we need to be better people ourselves in   
   order to truly understand them.  If they remind us very much of ourselves   
   then they're not worth watching.   
      
   That's why I am always disappointed in film adaptations of Beowulf.   
   I haven't seen one yet that had me leaving the theater thinking, "So   
   *that's* what it felt like to be a 5th-century Geatish warrior, or at   
   least an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon peasant listening to a scop reciting   
   the story!"   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
   Þæs ofereode, ðisses swa mæg.  ("That passed away, this also can.")   
      from "Deor," in the Exeter Book (folios 100r-100v)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)