LotR1-FotR-Seq02

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by alatar

What will become apparent as the trilogy progresses is that these gems become more rare. Is that because PJ felt that he had to get this movie right, for both fans and non-fans, in order to acquire more capital that would buy him a freer hand in the following movies?

I am not sure that I fully agree, given that the detail is pretty consistent all the way through. But I see what you are getting at. I wonder if it's because, when adapting a novel to film, the beginning and ending pretty much have to follow the original plot (because both stories, although different, are coming from and going to the same place), whereas the adapter has more of a free hand with the detail of what occurs in between.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

... does anyone else just think "Tellytubby land" during the beginning of this sequence? Maybe they wer trying too hard or maybe they wanted it to seem "story book" English countryside. Yes the Shire is a pleasant land but it seemed excessively idyllic ...

Yes. That's one of the points that I was trying to get at in my earlier post. Did Jackson perhaps feel the need to "over-idealise" the Shire in order to make it a desirable place for modern audiences? Tolkien presents us with something of an idealised place, but one which is nevertheless practical and feels "real". I agree that Jackson's Shire feels rather less real, and more like a fairytale setting. In some ways, Jackson's Hobbits travel from a fairytale world into a more real world (where the Men are less idealised and more "human"), whereas Tolkien's Hobbits travel from a real world, via Faerie (the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs), into an epic, heroic world.