Thread: Dumbing it down
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Old 02-09-2005, 12:27 PM   #57
Ainaserkewen
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Quote:
Originally posted by Davem
I'd still defend the 'moral obligation' point. Certainly they don't have any legal obligation to respect an author's views/moral position, but I think there should be respect among artists for each other's work. They've put Tolkien's name on these movies & made numerous references to him in interviews & thanked him when they've recieved their awards, etc, so as far as I'm concerned they taken that moral responsibility onto themselves.
I think one needs to be more specific about what "respect the author" means. This thread was created to discuss the possible "dumbing down" of the movie for fans, and in a sense also being watered down as someone said earlier. This this that is a better explanation of what has happened to our beloved movies. I think I took your point too literally when I spoke of respect, I believe that the Director has no obligation to respect (and follow through with) the direction and decisions that lay in the books. I mean that the Director doesn't have to do everything in the book simply because it is respect for the author. Oh course however, Mr. Jackson respects Prof. Tolkien, he wouldn't have had these movies if he didn't. Everyone working on the films had a passionate love affair with the Lord of the Rings books, that was clear in the making of the movies. I think that's nice. However, because the movies are a wholly different and new way of expressing the general story, changes had to be made. That is evident in other examples too.

The follow, though it may not seem so but is a relevant example:
I saw "Queen of the Damned" recently without reading the books first. I though the plot was obviously cut short and, as some say, stripped of the moral and spiritual undertones of the original print. I didn't like the plot, I thought it was kind of dumbed down so that more people would understand Madam Rice's complex world. But I loved the movie. Why? Because though it faulted big time in the story department, it was pure art and can I say "Eye Candy" everywhere else. It was a wonderfully made movie with all the components of good entertainment. That's the point, isn't it? For the record, I did go on to read the books because I liked the movie so much, similar to how I came to read Lord of the Rings.

Now, how was that relevant? I just found out yesterday that Stuart Townsend, The Vampire Lestat, was the original Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings. I didn't know that I thought that was kind of neat, though after Lestat, I don't think I would have liked seeing him as Aragorn.

Quote:
The Downs, all the other Tolkien sites, & even the movies themselves, exist because Tolkien spent time & effort producing a profound, complex, moving & beautiful tale. His motivation was not 'popularity' or cash, but art.
Oh I agree, but how many blockbuster movies, my dear Davem, have you seen that would also measure up to the art that books can be? When I went into the theatre for LOTR the first time, I did not expect art, and not many people did, I expected to be entertained, and I was...that's why I'm here.

So what's my overall point to this? The movies were "dumbed down" or watered down for various reasons: Money, popularity, pride, Director's understanding and style and stuff that just didn't work. But why do we need exact version of the books we already love? I think we can all agree that when we left the theatre, we were entertained, not because of the exactness of the movie, but because it was well made with differences of style and opinion. That's what makes things interesting in the first place.
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Last edited by Ainaserkewen; 02-09-2005 at 12:33 PM.
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