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Old 04-12-2008, 10:23 AM   #199
davem
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Sibley View Post
If, of course, you accept it as a 'shortcoming' at all. In defence of radio - the closest of all dramatic forms to the oral tradition of storytelling - it might be argued that the absence of visual imagery heightens the listener's ability to create his or her own visuals within the theatre of the mind.
I think this is another reason this adaptation feels so close to the book - not simply because it uses so much of Tolkien's text/dialogue, but also because it doesn't impose someone else's images on you. That's the unavoidable problem with any visual presentation of any story, & it doesn't matter how much love & effort the designers put into it - it will always fail to match with the mental images of anyone who knows the story & worse to my mind it will fix their vision in the mind of any one who comes to the book later.

Of course, we live in a time when there is an assumption that every popular book will automatically be adapted for the screen, & there is an expectation that a movie or tv series will follow quickly on publication. In short, I agree absolutely with Brian's point about the oral tradition. LotR comes out of the oral tradition in a very real sense, & is a work that works best when 'heard' - either when read by a skilled storyteller or in your own head as you read. JRRT can tell you that Arwen was the most beautiful of the Children of Illuvatar after Luthien, but how many of us think Liv Tyler fits that bill? Not to say she isn't attractive, but is she beautiful enough to be a convincing Arwen? Or more simply - is she your Arwen? And that could be applied to any of the characters of course - my overwhelming feeling while watching the movies was that so much of what I was seeing was just 'off', it was (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Middle-earth....
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