To all who tell us complainers to "stick with the book": <P>First off, I have the utmost respect for the medium of film, and yes, I do "know the difference". I probably know more about the difficulties of bringing a story to screen then a lot of people here, having worked in the business in a small capacity in the past. I love good film making. And I appreciate that we are talking about a visual medium here, things have to be shown, not described, as they are in a book.<P>But a film has to have a heart and soul, and that does not come from special effects and pretty scenery. It comes from exceptional writing and stong characters that the audience can embrace and care about. P.J. got it right in the first movie. He didn't in the second. To me, it is as simple as that. <P>I've thought about my reaction to the movie today, and surprisingly, I could find no real objections to most of the scenes, (except the Frodo/Faramir story, but that's another post.) But the movie as a whole just left me cold. It's as if you had all these wonderful ingredients for a cake, but when you put it all together, instead of a cake, you got a mess. OK, "mess" is kind of harsh, maybe a cake that is just a little bland and heavy. <P>I do think P.J. is overly in love with the world of special effects, and I have a feeling he sacrificed a lot of dialog and interaction between characters in order to insert more "cool stuff". He couldn't do that as much in the first film, much more had to be explained then, but when you see how much he put back into the extended version, and how much better the film was because of it, it just gives me a sinking feeling that the film I would have enjoyed is sitting on the shelf somewhere, sacrificed so we could see more cool critters and skewered orcs.<P>Oh, and B-W Ron, you are the first person to try and explain and justify the changes to F/F scenes, but I think you're overreaching. The average movie-goeer would not have picked up those nuances from watching the film. And I doubt that most "readers" would have made that leap as well. What I saw was Faramir having second thoughts about trying to deal with the Ring after watching Frodo basically have a fit. "OK, I've changed my mind. You, and your weird friends just take the Ring and get out of here. I don't want to deal with you anymore!" I would not have objected to changes in the character of Faramir, (though he is my favorite character), but P.J. and Fran Walsh didn't give us <I>anyone</I>. Frankly, my dear, the Faramir I saw on the screen was a freakin' bore.
|