[Formendacil]

I think that SpM is arguing a slightly lopsided case in saying that it is possible to enjoy the movie as separate from the book, when you know the book with a strong degree of familiarity. Those who have not read the book MIGHT not be troubled by inconsistencies in the movies, but then again, maybe they are. My mom, for example, has not yet read the books, and had to ask for some considerable explanation at times. In those situations, I found it necessary to return to the BOOKS to answer them.

I'm going to make something a comparisom with another big movie of the past year, The Passion. Like the LotR, it is a major work based on a very well-known story (in this case, the real-life passion and death of Jesus, as depicted in the four Gospels). Like the LotR, how is received and how popular it is depends on how faithfully it adheres to the original work. The proportion of pre-existing "fans" (people who knew the original work) is perhaps somewhat disparate, but the parallels are certainly there.

The Passion is considered to be a great piece of cinematic achievement. It is visually compelling, well-acted, and tells its story concisely. Nonetheless, do you think that it would have achieved the same sort of media hype, controversy, and number of viewers had it not been based on a pre-existing work? Of course not! It wouldn't even have existed.

In the same way that practising Christians, and others familiar with the story of Christ's passion, attended the movie expecting to see the story depicted as accurately as possible, so too did all those generations of Tolkien fans attend the movie, knowing that their judgement would be based on how well it adhered to the original story.

Now, The Passion tells a story much shorter, and less complicated, and so easier to translate to film. I am not suggesting that PJ and Co didn't have a more difficult task when adapting the story. What I AM saying is that the job they did was NOT as good as it should have been, and because we already knew and cared for the story, it was inevitable that our judgements on it would be based on our reading knowledge.

While I was watching the movies for example (RotK in particular), I was, like SpM, carried away with the movie-presented storyline. At the same time, however, I was groaning over every unnecessary change, and LITERALLY smacking myself on the forehead in the case of some, to the extreme annoyance of my friends sitting around me. Nor would I say that this was limited to crazy, multi-book-reading fans like myself. While they didn't go to the extremes of head-smacking, some of my one-or-two-time reading friends came out of the theatre with questions beginning or ending with "I don't think they did it that way in the book..."