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Originally Posted by Mister Underhill
I still say this doesn't have to turn into a shouting match between critics and Jackson defenders.
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You'll hear no shouting from me, but I will not hesitate to stick my oar in if I feel that criticisms are unjust or where I think that there are reasonable grounds to support decisions that Jackson made. When I do so, my intention is not to shout anyone down or divert the thread into camps of mutually opposed views, but rather to put an alternative view across and encourage people to look at things from a slightly different perspective, and thereby (I hope) provoke creative discussion.
As I said, there are many areas of the films which I consider ripe for discussion and, yes, criticism too. I agree, for example, that the Frodo of the film is a very different character from the Frodo of the book and, in many ways, a weaker one. However, rather than simply saying "Pah! that's not the Frodo I know. Curse Jackson!"*, I would encourage everyone to consider how Jackson develops the character of Frodo, why he chose to portray Frodo in this way, how it works (or doesn't work) in the context of the film, what is gained and lost by this portrayal, how it ties in with Jackson's themes and his development of the other characters etc etc.
My aim is to encourage everyone to consider whether they dislike a particular aspect simply because it is different from the book, and therefore different from their established understanding of the story, or whether there are good reasons why a particular change doesn't work in the context of the film story or does not work as well as the book story. And also to consider why Jackson made particular changes and whether there are reasonable grounds to support his decisions.
Hence my post above, which questions whether some of the points raised really impair the films, whether they would really matter to the majority of the viewers, or whether they just rankle with afficionados of the book because they present the story in a slightly different way.
That said, I acknowledge,
Mister U, that the seeds of subsequent difficulties may well be sown in such seemingly trivial matters and I look forward to considering, as the discussion develops, whether choices made by Jackson in these opening scenes inevitably drove him down a road littered with pitfalls.
*Exaggerated for effect - I appreciate that no one here is really saying that.