Aw, Rimbaud, you must not take the evil nature of corporations so seriosuly. Every age has its villians; but they must not prevent our enjoyment of things, in this case, the good looks of the assembled cast! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] You will always manage to have fun if you put your priorities in order, like I do! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

There is no such thing as a pure adaptation to film. Its impossible. Especially when trying to condense 1000 pages into 9 or 10 hours of film.

I think these movies have done a very good job at trying to tackle it. They are intersting, fun and evoke emotions. I feel like Ive been on this journy.

In a perfect world yes these films would be 6 hours long each and go into every detail but we live nowhere near perfect.

I think that a film adaptation more faithful to the text and philosophy of the book is possible. Whether it would be a commercial success is another question. I appreciated the wonderful cinematography and special effects that PJ has brought into play with his representation of LOTR. It is a visual feast. The emphasis on battle and war I'm sure has more to do with general public appeal than giving the balance to the story that Tolkien did. I do feel however, that it has cost some integrity in the process - character representation and development, plot changes etc. to name a couple.
Is Christopher Tolkien right? I think so. It isnt' commercially viable to make a movie which will totally cover all of the ground that Tolkien did.

I want to know why they couldn't do LotR like they did Mitchner's Centennial. That book is a little shorter than LotR, or maybe about the same size, I can't remember, and the boxed set of the whole movie contains about 10 or 12 videos. From what I've heard it's really good, and Centennial isn't exactly the easiest book to adapt to tape, like LotR: length especially, and number of characters. I think it would be awesome if we could get our hands on production of LotR as long as that!