[William Cloud Hicklin]

Saruman:

The coincidence of three indicators, two of which are entirely arbitrary, carries no more weight than a single indicator. Remember Titanic? Boxoffice success is useless as a barometer of quality, and the Oscars hardly better.

That leaves the professional critics. However, of that body of critics, some have never read Tolkien, most read him years ago and barely remember the book, and none are students or scholars of his work. Now it's not to be denied that Jackson's movies are fairly decent by big, splashy Hollywood standards- but it's no good appealing to film critics as to their legitimacy as renditions of Tolkien. You can't deny that with one or two exceptions the Tolkien-scholar community has been unremittingly hostile to these films- do not their opinions count?

Ah, you call this 'snobbery.' No, it isn't. It is perhaps slightly defensive. For half a century we've been assailed by sneering Literati (the real snobs) who dismiss the Lord of the Rings as merely an exciting adventure story- likened to Boys' Own or even Biggles. What is maddening is this lot's utter lack of perception, a failure or refusal to see beneath the surface, to get beyond mere chases and fights and monsters. But nearly as maddening is the indisputable fact that many Tolkien 'fans' are similarly blinkered, failing to see that JRRT differs not only in degree but in kind from hacks like Brooks and Eddings.

Alas, PJ is one of the latter, and with a zillion-dollar budget he has now reinforced, perhaps indelibly, the 'ripping yarn' view of the LR. His 'incapacity' (CRT's word) to see beyond mere plot, indeed beyond mere genre convention, led him into some of his most ghastly mistakes (from the TS viewpoint)- if Tolkien defied typical action-adventure tropes, he was 'wrong' and needed to be 'improved' by inserting an established cliche. The result was to take an extraordinary and unique work, made with no more than ink and paper, and turn it into something lavish, expensive, spectacular, exciting, and hackneyed. Indiana Jones and the Ring of Doom.

Far better PJ had spent New Line's millions on Sword of Shannara.