Why Can't Movies Be Like Books?

[Sauron the White]

from Folwren

My dear fellow...your are exagerating quite a bit. Davem's opinion is not the only one like that out there.

You are 100% right. Davem is not alone. And it seems the lions share of his compatriots are right here. I have frequented many Tolkien sites which share both book and film fans. I must say, with all due respect, that this particular site seems to have a gross imbalance of those who have the strongest negative opinions about the films and the most "bowing before the altar" attitudes toward the books. That is simply my observation after being here several months and several years on other sites.

When we compare the opinion against the film that is voiced here and among Tolkien literary circles, and compare it with the hundreds of millions who purchased tickets to see the film, the numbers speak for themselves.

Fowren, I do think you have an excellent point about the complexity of Boromir in the book. I respect that. I do honestly feel that there are some here who have an almost religious attitude towards the writings of JRRT and can find no fault, or at least publicly to finding no fault with his creations. They defend nearly everything with the zeal of a True Believer. It seems to have become far less a contest of reason than it does a test of ones faith.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

I have frequented many Tolkien sites which share both book and film fans. I must say, with all due respect, that this particular site seems to have a gross imbalance of those who have the strongest negative opinions about the films and the most "bowing before the altar" attitudes toward the books. That is simply my observation after being here several months and several years on other sites.

Most people on this site have a greater interest in the literature Tolkien produced over the course of his long life, & a desire to understand it, than they have in three movies - however many trillions of dollars they may have made (I think in an earlier post you gave it as $1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000 per second since their release) or however many Oscars, Golden Globes, Baftas, Palm d'Or's Golden Oscars, Palm Globes, Boscars, Globetas, Palm Pilots, PDA's, Golden Deliciouses or I-pods they may have won..... This has nothing to do with 'bowing before the altar' of the books. Personally, I thought bits of the movies were fine but in the main they were grossly simplified & over stuffed with SFX which may have worked fine on a first viewing but increasingly dull thereafter.

When we compare the opinion against the film that is voiced here and among Tolkien literary circles, and compare it with the hundreds of millions who purchased tickets to see the film, the numbers speak for themselves.

I don't think anyone here has argued that the movies weren't popular. I've only ever argued that I think they're dull &, unlike the book, which I've read about 15 times & regularly return to with joy, I simply can't face another viewing of the movies.

I do honestly feel that there are some here who have an almost religious attitude towards the writings of JRRT and can find no fault, or at least publicly to finding no fault with his creations. They defend nearly everything with the zeal of a True Believer. It seems to have become far less a contest of reason than it does a test of ones faith.

No, sorry, some of us love the books but just don't care for the movies - its that simple, & I really don't know why you've decided to embark on this assault against those who don't share your opinion of the movies. The books came first for most of us, & we prefer them. Where the movies fail to come up to the standard of the books, or where they alter the story, we get either irritated or bored. It seems to me that if anyone is 'worshipping at an altar' here its yourself at the altar of three popular, but (in my opinion quite average) movies.

[Sauron the White]

No assault on you or anyone else is intended. I do not mean to attack anyone personally or claim they are bad people.

My comments are spurred by simple observation. To be brutally honest here, I was knocked over more by one thing I read here than anything else. I noticed that many people whose opinions on the JRRT books I respect, adopted a nearly subservient position regarding the publishing fraud that is THE CHILDREN OF HURIN. When I saw the tag line offered by the publishers - that it was the first new Tolkien novel in thirty years - I said to myself "self - people who know are going to rip that slogan to shreds because it is a lie. They have had that story on their shelves in other volumes for some time now."

Boy was I wrong. Nearly everyone was willing to look the other way as the Emperor paraded down the avenue with no clothes at all. In fact, some even winked and smiled about it. What I found out was that since it was authorized by the Tolkien Estate, it had the impramatur of Holy Writ and thus would never be challenged by those who I thought had some scruples and integrity. And as I have said many times in many posts on many subjects, I see the same people try to destroy the movies over and over and over again but they not dare raise so much as a whimper about anything associated with the source material, its author, the Estate or its doings.

That totally altered my thinking. I really do see some people bowing before that altar of Tolkien. Call it some weird type of JRRT political correctness for the literary crowd, but it is alive and well.

Maybe its my own personality that is at fault. I am by nature a contrarian who sits when asked to stand. If I were in a crowd of JRRT haters I would defend his writings to the death. So here its natural for me to be the bad guy. Sorry but thats just my natural inclination.

Davem, no attack on you or others is intended. Just observations and commentary on opinions.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Do you really think people go to the movies to see half an hour of people talking? No, they go to see drama, action and emotion.

I take it you've never seen The Wannsee Conference? An hour and a half or more of absolutely gripping (and horrifying) drama- and it's nothing more than the verbatim recitation of the minutes of a real-life committee meeting.

One could also throw in My Dinner With Andre and many more which belie the video-game mentality that you gotta put 'action' on screen or else bore the audience.

**********

Who said Gothmog was an Orc? In fact he was explicitly *not* an Orc: "It was no brigand nor Orc-chieftain who commanded...."

Still, objections on this sort of geek-level are trivial compared to the fact that PJ Just Doesn't Get Tolkien: not his themes, his style, his moral vision, his sense of language, none of it. Just monsters and fights. This is a guy who calls the Eorlingas the "Rohans," after all, and thinks "Rohirrim" applies only to the king's cavalry. (If you want to get truly geekish, then PJ should be taken to task for having Theoden et al refer to their country as "Rohan", which in the book they never do- it is, after all, a Sindarin name coined in Gondor. How could anyone so deaf to language think they were qualified to adapt Tolkien? Misologists, Tolkien would call them. Hiring David Salo to concoct some snatches of pseudo-Elvish (while omitting all of Tolkien's own) doesn't cut it).


**********

In Annatar's long regurgitation of the excuses and self-justifications PJ and his accomplices offered up on the DVD's, he claims it was 'necessary' to rewrite Faramir (actually to create a new character with the same name) because the real Farmair's was "flat" and had to become an "obstacle" for Frodo- which goes back to the repeated reference by JBW to "story arcs." - If you buy this tripe, I suggest you read Shippey's Road to Middle-earth in its 2004 edition, where good Prof. Tom takes to task these paint-by-numbers approaches to screenwriting.

*******************


Shelob/Helm's Deep and the relative calendars- Only because PJ was dwetermined to make Helm's Deep the Bam! Zowie! climax of his movie, puffing it up beyond its proper place in the narrative; and, at any rate, Shelob's Lair took place *before* the Pelennor Fields, not simultaneously.


Would it not perhaps have been a great exercise in 'experimental cinema' (in the hands of a much more innovative director than Jackson) to present the narrative just as Tolkien did, without intercutting Books III & IV, V & VI?

[Annatar]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Who said Gothmog was an Orc? In fact he was explicitly *not* an Orc: "It was no brigand nor Orc-chieftain who commanded...."

That quote refers to the Witch-King. Nowhere in the books is anything other than Gothmog's name stated.

Still, objections on this sort of geek-level are trivial compared to the fact that PJ Just Doesn't Get Tolkien: not his themes, his style, his moral vision, his sense of language, none of it. Just monsters and fights. This is a guy who calls the Eorlingas the "Rohans," after all, and thinks "Rohirrim" applies only to the king's cavalry. (If you want to get truly geekish, then PJ should be taken to task for having Theoden et al refer to their country as "Rohan", which in the book they never do- it is, after all, a Sindarin name coined in Gondor. How could anyone so deaf to language think they were qualified to adapt Tolkien? Misologists, Tolkien would call them. Hiring David Salo to concoct some snatches of pseudo-Elvish (while omitting all of Tolkien's own) doesn't cut it).

The movies aren't just meant for those purists who bow before the Altar of Tolkien. Its meant for the general audience as well. The movies are not the books. Get over it.


**********

In Annatar's long regurgitation of the excuses and self-justifications PJ and his accomplices offered up on the DVD's, he claims it was 'necessary' to rewrite Faramir (actually to create a new character with the same name) because the real Farmair's was "flat" and had to become an "obstacle" for Frodo- which goes back to the repeated reference by JBW to "story arcs." - If you buy this tripe, I suggest you read Shippey's Road to Middle-earth in its 2004 edition, where good Prof. Tom takes to task these paint-by-numbers approaches to screenwriting.

You've got me stumped here.

Helm's Deep and the relative calendars- Only because PJ was dwetermined to make Helm's Deep the Bam! Zowie! climax of his movie, puffing it up beyond its proper place in the narrative; and, at any rate, Shelob's Lair took place *before* the Pelennor Fields, not simultaneously.

Shelob's Lair takes place too close to Pelennor Fields. If the Voice of Saruman and the chapters after are moved to Return of the King (which was a good idea - with Helm's Deep the movie would have been too long), Shelob's Lair has to go to RoTK. For Helm's Deep, if done as the book it would have been not good. PJ needed action to keep the film going, and as Helm's Deep is so fleeting it would have bored the audience. Its "proper place" in the movie narrative is as the climax.

Would it not perhaps have been a great exercise in 'experimental cinema' (in the hands of a much more innovative director than Jackson) to present the narrative just as Tolkien did, without intercutting Books III & IV, V & VI?

Putting it the way Tolkien did it would simply not have worked in a movie. It would have been boring ("when are we going to get to Frodo and Sam?") and a bit annoying. Intercutting the storylines was the only way to get it done successfully.

[Sir Kohran]

I take it you've never seen The Wannsee Conference? An hour and a half or more of absolutely gripping (and horrifying) drama- and it's nothing more than the verbatim recitation of the minutes of a real-life committee meeting.

Assuming I've got the one you're talking about...it's a made for TV film that lasts an hour and fifteen minutes. Did it appeal to millions across the world, and win multiple Oscars? And that meeting is the entire story. However, the Council is just one segment of a much bigger story. Sorry, but there's just no way you can compare the two. They are on completely different levels.

One could also throw in My Dinner With Andre

Another film where the meeting is the majority of what is a fairly small film. However the Council is meant to be just one part of a much larger story. They aren't comparable.

video-game mentality that you gotta put 'action' on screen or else bore the audience.

You've got to keep them interested. How many people in the audience care whether the Dwarves will accept Sauron's bribe? No, they care about Frodo and his quest.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sir Kohran

You've got to keep them interested. How many people in the audience care whether the Dwarves will accept Sauron's bribe? No, they care about Frodo and his quest.

Honestly, I think it depends on the approach you take. If you're making LotR as an action adventure movie like Star Wars then you're correct. The point, though, is that LotR doesn't have to be made into that kind of movie. Jackson made a decision about the kind of movie he wanted to make. The moral/philosophical dimension of Tolkien's story was ignored in favour of producing a SFX heavy saga. Jackson did not simply put Tolkien's story on the screen as it is in the book, he chose to focus on the battles & action, to the extent that they overwhelm the subtleties of Tolkien's creation.

Another director could have chosen a different approach to the material. Hence, one can criticise Jackson's approach - what he chose to focus on & what he chose to ignore. A different director with a different approach to the material could have made Bombadil & the Council work. In other words, they may not have worked in Jackson's movie, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have worked full stop.

And that's the point. Jackson's 'simplisitic' 'action-adventure' approach to the material forced him to exclude material/events which are central to the story Tolkien wrote. Those defending Jackson here seem to believe that either his approach to the story is the only possible one, or at least the best one. Now, I'm not sure that Jackson could have made a different kind of LotR movie, given his track record, but this is the issue (& the reason I'd rather he didn't direct a Hobbit movie).

Originally Posted by Sir Kohran

You've got to keep them interested. How many people in the audience care whether the Dwarves will accept Sauron's bribe? No, they care about Frodo and his quest.

If the focus was to be on Frodo & his quest then there should have been less screen time given to Helm's Deep/Pelennor Fields & more on his journey through Mordor, & the Scouring of the Shire should have been included & given the emphasis it deserved - as should the events in the Barrow, which is his first real test against the Ring. Now, I think a better approach to the story would have been to focus on Frodo's journey all through, including the Old Forest/Barrow Downs & including the Scouring, with Helm's Deep/Pelennor Fields given the kind of minor (in terms of narrative time) treatment they receive in the book.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Assuming I've got the one you're talking about...it's a made for TV film that lasts an hour and fifteen minutes. Did it appeal to millions across the world, and win multiple Oscars?

One is tempted to respond, "who cares? The issue is whether it is good, not whether it appeals to the massed millions."
Instead I'll just observe that it would of course stop the narrative drive cold *if* the entire bloody Council were repeated verbatim (as well as using up way too much of the available screentime). Of course it had to be pared to essentials. But concedig that is in no way a justification for abandoning the essential dignity of Tolkien's scene for a boorish shouting match.

Tolkien was not writng for "Tolkienites," of course, since they didn't exist. He wrote a unique book owing in very large part to his stubborn refusal to compromise either with popular taste or with the fashions of twentieth-century Litteraturgedenken. He disdained stooping to irony: he wrote heroic characters like Faramir and Aragorn along the lines of ancient saga and didn't give a damn about "character arcs" or whether a contemporary audience could "identify" with them. And plainly it worked, given the books' overwhelming success: success *without* compromise.

There's a word for compromise of this sort, of altering the artistic vision and mode of expression to please a targeted audience: it's called pandering.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

I noticed that many people whose opinions on the JRRT books I respect, adopted a nearly subservient position regarding the publishing fraud that is THE CHILDREN OF HURIN. When I saw the tag line offered by the publishers - that it was the first new Tolkien novel in thirty years - I said to myself "self - people who know are going to rip that slogan to shreds because it is a lie. They have had that story on their shelves in other volumes for some time now."

CoH. I bought The Sil in '77 & UT in '81 on the day it was published. Right from the moment I finished the Narn in UT I felt that it should have been published as a stand alone work, rather than as CT had chosen to do - the bulk of the tale in UT but with chunk missed out (the reader is referred back to The Sil to read the missing section.

I, & most other Tolkien fans, knew exactly what we would be getting with CoH, not least because many of us have both The Sil, UT & HoM-e. So, I've read the story before (ok, there are a few very slight differences), but that's not the point. We now have one of Tolkien's greatest tales available in a single volume so that if we want to read it we don't have to pile up 3 or 4 volumes & jump back & forth between them, & without the distraction of constant footnotes & cross references. In other words, we can read it as Tolkien intended - a single coherent narrative. Its also available now to a general readership who simply would never (even many of those who love LotR & TH) have read UT - or even The Sil.

So, CoH is not a rip off in any way - anyone who is enough of a fan of Tolkien to own The Sil & UT (hence, those who already own the Turin Saga) would have known what CoH would contain. For anyone who didn't own those books, CoH has made the Turin saga easily available (& more cheaply than having to buy The Sil, UT & the relevant volumes of HoM-e).

I really do see some people bowing before that altar of Tolkien. Call it some weird type of JRRT political correctness for the literary crowd, but it is alive and well.

I still don't see this - I love Tolkien's work, but I don't 'worship at his altar'. I don't think everything Tolkien wrote was perfect (the 'linguistic' writings go over my head completely & to be honest I find whole chunks of The Sil virtually unreadable - Ainulindale I wade through (for all the beauty of its language) & Valaquenta is a good contender for on the dullest thing I've ever read. My response to the early parts of The Sil has always been the same - a desire to scream at Tolkien 'For ***** sake get on with it!!' Most of HoM-e I skip because its made up of multiple versions of the same story. However, I love LotR, TH, Smith, & most of The Sil writings with an abiding love, & I'd now add CoH to that list.

[Sauron the White]

Davem, I find no fault with much of what you say about COH. I also purchased the same books exactly as you did and share many of your feelings about it.

My big complaint was with the intentionally false claim that was posted on the various websties that this was THE FIRST NEW TOLKIEN NOVEL IN THIRTY YEARS. That is simply not true. This was not NEW. It was material that had been around for some time in other formats.

How many times can you sell something again and again and advertise it as NEW? Is this not a question of ethics?

Like many things, this probably comes down to definition of terms and semantics. I do know what the word NEW means. And it is not something I have had on the shelf for a long period of time. I was greatly disappointed to see both the false claim and the willingness of many people including you who should know better just go along with the false claim. That kind of opened my eyes to see that there is more going on here that just what is on the surface.

from Willaim CH

I take it you've never seen The Wannsee Conference? An hour and a half or more of absolutely gripping (and horrifying) drama- and it's nothing more than the verbatim recitation of the minutes of a real-life committee meeting.

One could also throw in My Dinner With Andre and many more which belie the video-game mentality that you gotta put 'action' on screen or else bore the audience.

I have seen ANDRE and found it mildly amusing and witty. Perhaps you could look up the world wide box office grosses for it to see how how the public responded to it. I realize it was an arthouse hit - but that was about it. I have not seen WANNSEE so cannot speak about it. I did see the recent HBO remake. I have attended far too many real life committee meetings and cannot imagine any minutes of those meetings being good screen material. But then we were not discussing the Final Solution which may be more interesting.