Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel
True, true! Jackson and the others changed the story so dramatically that it wasn't Tolkien's masterpiece, but a mere Hollywood-ized version of it; in other words, completely different from the real thing. Frodo was too weak, Merry and Pippin were blithering idiots, Gimli and Legolas were hideously useless sidekicks, Arwen was the cliched warrior princess, Denethor seemed like a loon right from the start, Faramir turned quasi-corrupt, and ELROND...don't even get me started on how they ruined him. The beautiful, comely image of the real Elrond Half-elven was, for a few months, turned to vapour in my mind.
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I'd not like the movie trilogy to end up on the list of FILMS YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LIKE BY ORDER, THE INTERNET– we'd all do well to remember that people who have read a book–
any book– first are rarely satisfied by the film version, no matter what it's like. That said, I think we can dispose of the old claim that Jackson & Co really went out of their way to be faithful to the source material. They did in some respects (apparently resisting pressure to take out all references to smoking, for example), but overall you can see everything has indeed passed through a pretty strong "Hollywood" filter.
Myself, I'm in the camp of people who enjoyed the films a lot the first time, somewhat the second time, and after that have decided they're okay, but rather lacking in replay value. Why? Well, it's not because I've noticed more minor "errors"– as far as I'm concerned Denethor could eat whole crates of tomatoes; that kind of thing doesn't bother me. Perhaps it does come down to the characterisations and the handling of certain scenes– not because I object to changes in principle, but because I think these are internal flaws– that is, flaws in the movies as movies. You might say it's a tribute to how well they did many things that it wasn't until the second or third viewing that it
really started to bug me that I didn't care about any of the characters all that much.
It's only fair to say, though, that people who saw the films first quite often seem to have an exact mirror-image of this reaction, and don't like the characters and pacing and so on in the
book.