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Old 05-11-2015, 04:20 PM   #15
mhagain
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Join Date: Dec 2006
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mhagain has just left Hobbiton.
Likewise relieved.

I watched all three movies with grim fascination as they gradually got worse and worse, continually astonished at how on earth PJ was going to top each moment of slapstick in the next one, then groaning at how he actually did.

CJRT was right: the story was gutted, eviscerated, what came out at the end was something that bore a superficial resemblance to the books in that a group of Dwarves and a Hobbit went on a quest and some of the same stuff happened, but mostly seemed designed to set up special moves and set-pieces in tie-in computer games.

PJ's biggest failing was to not trust his source material and not trust his viewers. A good movie (or even extend it to two) could have been made out of the book, and could have remained relatively faithful, but still raked in the $$$$. If I wanted to watch Avengers on speed I'd go watch Avengers on speed, but not everything has to be that.

I had bad feelings when the development team first discussed the character of Tauriel and said that they weren't going to do anything that wasn't true to Tolkien. Of course that's exactly what they then went and did.

I have no idea how this happened. I said Avengers on speed above, but maybe the Star Wars Holiday Special on crack is another appropriate comparison. Take a much-loved work, camp it up in a totally inappropriate way that shows lack of understanding, even disrespect, for the original, then foist it on an unsuspecting public. At least George Lucas showed some decency.

Maybe it was the lack of trust I mentioned, maybe it was the rumoured executive meddling, maybe it was just totally misunderstanding the source material, or maybe it was plain old-fashioned hubris on the part of PJ & co. Maybe it was all four.

Either way, thank the Valar it's almost over. All that remains is to see how badly they mess things up even more in the EE, then we can hopefully shut the door on these movies and wait for them to be resoundingly trounced in the inevitable 5/10 year retrospectives.
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Last edited by mhagain; 05-11-2015 at 04:29 PM.
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