I’ve been thinking over my mental images of some more persons of the Fellowship/book.
The first is Boromir. Seeing the movie made me realize how one-dimensional my mental image of him was from just reading the book – dark and sinister, more bad guy than hero, the Judas of the Fellowship. I certainly could not have imagined him smiling, laughing, playing with the hobbits as he taught them sword-fighting, tousling Frodo’s hair… PJ’s movie interpretation added a new, positive dimension to Boromir for me. I can quite happily reconcile the two sides and can easily accept Sean Bean’s face as my personal Boromir “canon”!
Aragorn is the second character I’ve been thinking about. At first viewing, though I liked Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, I could not fit his doubts and uncertainty into the book image I had. But seeing his more human, less heroic side made me appreciate him more, made him feel less distant. To me, the movie’s Aragorn is a prequel to the book, showing the younger man with the issues he had already resolved before Tolkien’s narrative begins. I guess that’s my way of combining the two differing images I have there.
Both wizards, Gandalf and Saruman, fit in with my mental images perfectly, so I have no problems with discrepancies there, at least as far as the characters are concerned.
In contrast, I find the movie Gimli very one-dimensional. None of the charm he shows in the book is visible behind that beard, unfortunately… [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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