Dumbing it down

[davem]

Originally Posted by Essex

Wow, who did the Tom Bombadil bit, and where can I get it?

PS radio medium totally different to film medium.

Brian Sibley, who co-authored/adapted the radio series wrote another series 'Tales from the Perilous Realm', which adapted the Bombadil/Barrow Downs, Leaf by Niggle, Smith & Farmer Giles. Its available under that title on CD from the BBC (you can get it on Amazon. Smith isn't very successful (imo) but the others (with Brian Blessed as Giles & Alfred Molina as Niggle & Michael Horden as the series Narrator) work very well.

As to divorcing the book from the movies, well, I can't. They're adaptations of the book & stand or fall by whether they tell Tolkien's story well or not. Again, in my opinion, they don't. Neither do they work as movies, for smoe of the reasons I've given. The writers/director's obsession with what looks impressive on screen works against telling the actual [I]. I'm not sure I'd go as far as Tolkien's judgement of the fifties radio version & call them a 'sillification' but in parts they come close to being just that.

Again, I'd say that the real problem is their obsession with size & spectacle worked against them. Bigger isn't always best & whatever Jackson might say CGI still isn't up to the job Jackson wants it to do. Basically, he's putting too much weight on the technology & it isn't convincing enough. For instance, Gollum domminates the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline because PJ clearly believes that the CGI is good enough to convince & as a result he loses control of the character - who, as in the books, should only be seen through the eyes of the other characters, & never given screentime on his own. Same with the Mumakil & the Army of the Dead.

Now, am I glad they were made? Did I get anything from them at all? Something, certainly. But was it worth all the 'annoyances'? Probably not in the end. If others enjoyed them I'm happy for them, but I can't say they've added anything to my appreciation of Tolkien's work. I suspect they'll fade from public attention very quickly. The ones who onlylike them as movies will move on to other movies, the ones for whom they have served as an introduction to Tolkien's work will tuen to the books & the movies will fade into the background for them.

As movies I don't think they're as good as the first two Star Wars films (episodes IV & V), & as adaptations of the books they leave too much to be desired. If they were original works perhaps I'd have been more impressed by them. but I don't think its possible to divorce them from the source - if you know the source that is.

The question that inspired this thread is whether they are a 'dumbing down' of the original & I can't see that anyone who knows the original can argue that they aren't. Are they 'dumb' movies? Certainly not. They ask questions which most maistream Hollywood movies wouldn't & confront issues of morality & power which Hollywood tends to either avoid or offer at best dubious & at worst immoral answers to. Bur in comparison to the books they offer dumbed down versions of those answers...