7Child, I thank you for opening up an excellent thread, or most probably re-opening. First of all I'd have to say that by making the statement:
Quote:
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a movie, which must necessarily simplify?
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You've already decided the argument, at least from your point of view. If your original assumption is flawed, then there is little hope for anything which comes afterwards. Why must a movie necessarily simplify? I believe that the perfect LOTR movie can be made, but not in the current stagnant climate where filmmakers are so strictly bound. Even by making his films three hours long, PJ is pushing at the boundaries of film company practice. To do justice to Tolkien's work would take three very long movies.
I am also a great believer in the imagination of everyone here. If you didn't have an active imagination, you wouldn't be so drawn to Tolkien. And if the world did not have people with imagination, Arts and Science wouldn't have gotten very far. But not many of you seem to be able to imagine a perect LOTR film, and I can't understand why not! Tolkien's writing was very descriptive, in a style that would lend itself well to visual format. In fact, in this respect a film would be greatly superior to a book, able to show the background, details such as carved buildings, and the characters themselves all at once as they should be, and not treated piecemeal in separate paragraphs. True, there are a lot of cases in LOTR where we have to read characters' thoughts, but there are many devices to overcome this. Shakespeare used a lot of monologues. A lot of modern movies don't, but if you don't choose to conform to this then LOTR can definitely translate flawlessly to the screen. A narrator could be used. And actors themselves bring to life the emotions that their characters are described as feeling.
Even a tricky line such as the one where Gollum is compared to an old Hobbit in Cirith Ungol is easily dealt with. He can visually be shown to look similar, maybe even by showing a similar shot of Bilbo earlier on in the movie, at Rivendell. Movies also have the advantage of flashbacks, for example when Strider is telling the tale of Beren and Luthien.
I think the appeal for books is in the words themselves, in pleasing structure and rhythm of sentences. Tolkien was a master of this in my opinion. It's not just what he's writing about that is enjoyable, but the way he is writing about it, the exact words and sentences he is using.
The major difficulty that PJ has encountered has been ruining peoples' misconceptions. While many things are described in detail and careful research can find the objective truth about them, a lot are open to interpretation. Look at the armour of the Easterlings, for example, I'm sure we all had different ideas of what that would be like. This problem only exists because JRRT is no longer among us. If he were alive today, he could simply be consulted at every point. As the creator of the books, anything he said would go, and any differing misconceptions people had would simply be wrong.
So, apart from the aesthetic qualities of the written words themselves, I don't think there's a book written that is too "rich and complex" to be translated faithfully into film. The
ONLY two things stopping the perfect LOTR film are:
- 1. Having to conform to current movie standards.
- 2. The author is not alive to provide guidance.