[Sauron the White]

from wch

Do you have any idea what really goes into Academy voting? A mixture of well-financed PR campaigns, politics, logrolling, backscratching, outright bribery...and that's just when the AMPAS members (who may or may not have actually seen the films nominated) don't delegate someone in their entourage to fill out the ballot

Two words - so what? Unless your point is that only Jackson and the LOTR film crew engaged in these practices to garner their 17 Academy Awards and countless other awards, then its an meaningless point. Every studio does a PR campaign to push their films. Just like every candidate seriously running for office spends big bucks in a campaign. In the end its still the value of the films after all the ads are printed and forgotten. Campaigning and PR is part of the process. By itself it means nothing either good or ill. If you have proof that voters were bribed to vote for the LOTR then I would like to see the evidence of that charge.

Aside from Shippey's (qualified) approval, and Salo who's hardly disinterested, you'll find that Hammond, Scull, Hostetter, Drout, Garth, Flieger, Croft, Rateliff etc etc etc are all *strongly* condemnatory.

There are plenty of sites which have many posts of longtime readers which praised the movie. Restricting your argument to a small handful of academics who wrote books which very few have ever actually read is an extremely narrow definition. Perhaps some of this comes down to (as do many of these internet debates) a definition of terms. I would have considered people like Alan Lee and John Howe to be members of the Tolkien community. Does their participation in the films disbar them or cast them out? Or is there a new membership requirement now being applied - namely public loathing of the Jackson films?

Anyone who saw PJ's movies without having read the book would be entirely justified in believing Wilson and Toynbee and Greer et al were right all along- because, ultimately, PJ found no more in the book than they did.

Quite possibly true .... BUT only if they saw the three films through the very same limited scope that you yourself viewed them through. You seem to have watched them with a predetermined bias or huge chip on your shoulder. You saw a glass only half filled or empty and condemned it. You missed the beauty, subtelty, and all that was good about it. There is far more to these films than "monsters and fights" and I find it sad that you fail to both see it and admit it.

Hilde Bracegirdle has a valid point in saying

Though I believe that particular debate hinges on which definition of success you are using

When I cited the criteria of
1- box office revenue
2- acclaim by professional critics
3- awards from those within the film industry

I was using the three areas that those who make up the film industry, those who follow film as an art form, and those who follow film as a form of popular culture hold dear to themselves. They are the three most commonly accepted measurements by which a films success is judged.

By all three rubrics, the LOTR films were a huge success and have joined the pantheon of films considered as great. I notice that recently the AFI included FOTR as one of the 100 best films ever made over the past 100+ years. In fact, its ranking at #50, was the highest of any film released over the past nine years. Of course, your small group of academic writers were most likely NOT part of the AFI panel. The people that made up the AFI panel were are film experts or make their living in film. That is what they were judging - a film.