[The Saucepan Man]

For me, the visual imagery of the films matches with that formed in my imagination in most cases, although where the two do diverge I have no difficulty in sticking with my own image when reading the book.

To some extent, it is not a novel issue. Artists have beeen depicting Tolkien's world ever since his works were first published, and many of their images have become well-known, almost part of the common Tolkien-fan consciousness. It is because Jackson drew on the talents of Alan Lee and John Howe that the film matches up so well to people's own imagined picture of Middle-earth. And the production team was no doubt inspired by other artists too.

I think that we form our own images when we read the book and adopt those that we see which match up with (or perhaps, sometimes, improve upon) those images. I recall having rejected images which did not click with me many times (the Brothers Hildebrandt spring to mind [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ), and I still do this with aspects of the films (the depiction of Elves, for example) when reading the books.

But then again, I read the book first, before seeing any of these images. The difficulty, I suppose, arises when it is the externally produced image which comes first. I would be interested to hear on this issue from those who saw the films first and read the book second. I suspect that, in those circumstances, it maybe difficult to dislodge the imagery from the films.

So I don't have this concern for myself, more for my children. Will they ever go through the process of imagining it all for themselves, or will they just stick with the film images?

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 9:22 AM January 28, 2004: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]