Smell this, I think it's expired...

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mormegil

Davem if I may interject here it seems that you apply different standards of what art is to different mediums. The movies failed in your mind because of obvious primary world ideas you had of them, however you are very vocal against doing that when reading a book. You further say that if anybody is pulled out of the book enchantment than it is his own fault. You suggest that PJ failed--while the film appealed to many--and yet the book didn't because you weren't pulled out and those who were "well there just not reading it correctly". .

Maybe you're right, but....

I can't see the films as things in their own right, only as attempts at telling a pre-existing story, so what I'm referring to here is where & how (for me) the films fail to communicate the story, where they stop making sense in terms of Middle earth. The films are not an equal but different ways of telling the same story - what I mean by that is that we're not dealing with a pre existing myth or legend that Tolkien wrote a version of & PJ filmed a version of. LotR is Tolkien's story, as Tolkien told it. Any adaptation should be judged on whether it communicates the spirit & essence of the story well or badly. It doesn't have to put everything on screen exactly as it is in the book, but it must remain true to the source. If you're not going to do that, why adapt at all - why not write & tell your own story?

In essence this is my chief quibble. They didn't have to make these movies.

You are absolutely right as regards anyone watching the movies as movies - either because they don't know the books or because they are able to leave that 'baggage at the door. So, as I say, I am probably guilty of double standards in my criticism. I can only say though, that what the movie makers have done is to tell their own story not Tolkien's but by using so many of Tolkien's names & his basic storyline they make it inevitable that anyone who knows the original will be forced, whether they want to or not, to make comparisons between the book & the films. This is the risk all adaptors take.

Originally Posted by SPM

For someone who dislikes, or at least is ambivalent towards the films, you seem to have watched them (FotR at least) many more times than me.

Well, as I said, I wanted to love them. I also wanted to give them a chance to grow on me - which is why I spent that whole Sunday watching them. I've had to accept now, with some regret, that they do nothing much for me

Davem, I disagree with you profoundly when you seek to devalue your early reading experience (or so it seems to me), but that is to be expected given our differing views on the reader v author debate.

I don't so much 'devalue' it as recognise that while it was the starting point I've moved on in my capacity to appreciate & understand the work. In some ways that saddens me, because there is a loss of innocent 'wonder' which I struggle to recapture when re-reading. But that's been replaced with something else, which in this context I suppose would be have to be called 'informed' wonder - just as deep, if not deeper, but at the same time more 'profound', or so I like to think.