The Hobbit in July 2007?

[Sir Kohran]

The LotR movies by Peter Jackson were made to bump up studio profits & flog popcorn to teenagers.

No, that's Eragon. The LOTR trilogy was ground breaking because it was capable of making profit and being deep, thoughtful and powerful in a way most movies don't bother to be.

but they can't be classed alongside the work of a literary artist like JRR Tolkien.

Of course not. They're not books. They're not supposed to.

PJ's movies are for 3 hours with a pizza & a couple of beers.

Again, more generalisations. If this was all the movies were made for then they could have made Independence Day or Pirates Of The Caribbean or some other mindless flick. The LOTR films are much more than that.

[Sauron the White]

from davem

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien is a literary masterpiece which will outlast us all & will live alongside the works of Homer, Virgil, Malory & the Icelandic Sagas.

Speaking for myself, I want to outlive everything. But lets hope you are correct. That would make me happy.

While you are making predictions as statements of fact would you be good enough to provide some winning lottery numbers for me?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sir Kohran

No, that's Eragon. The LOTR trilogy was ground breaking because it was capable of making profit and being deep, thoughtful and powerful in a way most movies don't bother to be.

Not to me. But perhaps our definitions of what constitutes depth, thoughtfulness & power are different. I found them overall shallow, thoughtless & weak. Any depth thought & power they contained - which was precious little - was lifted straight from the book. What they film-makers added was the nonsense, triviality & action movie idiocy. Whatever is in them that makes them at all bearable came from the books - & most of that was so messed up by the movie makers that if I hadn't already known the books I would have missed it.

[Sauron the White]

Lets be very frank here. There was stuff in the books that thank God did not make it into the films because it could have potentially stunk up the theater. Tom the Hippie Spiritgod leads the list. But the idea of Sam forever pawing and petting Frodo would have produced a good deal more than nervous titters and laughter had they kept that sort of thing in. Being faithful to the book could have been a disaster. If they had kept to the timeline and the hobbits took as long to leave the Shire as they did in the books, the theaters would have half emptied in boredom. Just a few examples.

The oft repeated litany by the True Believers is that "if it was good it came from the book - it it was original it was bad" echoes here yet again. What about the death scene of Boromir? Lines of dialogue were added that were sheer poetry and very touching emotionally to much of the audience. In the book the death scene is sparse and simple - in the film its and emotional touchstone which was one of the highlights of the films.

This is an example of starting with the source material of JRRT and adding to it and tweaking it for film. That is the way it is suppose to work.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Lets be very frank here.

I do agree with this...

So some of us like action movies with overdramatisation and overheroisation that nears ridiculousness. And that's fine.

Some of us like more thoughtful movies that build the characters and express the emotions and the twists of the storyline in a more elaborate and delicate, in more nuanced way.

That wasn't a neutral formulation but let's follow the trend here.


I must say that I myself would have loved to see an original and "deep" interpretation of the books - even if it would have departed from the books a fair deal. To me it's more that they would be good as movies. For Tolkien's LotR I can always refer to the books on my shelf and a straight sentence by sentence rendering surely would be painful to look at. As I said earlier, movies and books are different things.

But I can't say PJ's filmatisation was anything near original or deep or having any other possible high qualities - except looking very beautiful indeed and the musical score was great as well. But just thinking about the directing (both the storyline and directing the actors), the added things (thence PJ's personal ideas) or the style with which he narrated the script (remember he didn't narrate the LotR but a script they had made from the books)... well not so far from Eragon or Kingdom of Heaven... or what say you?

Though you're right in saying that fex. Boromir's death was pretty well done... like indeed the cutback scene were Boromir and Faramir celebrated Osgiliath won back and then their father came... and there are some others. So yes, there were good moments. But having 10+ hours of film in our hands it would have been more than a disaster if they hadn't manage to make even a single decent scene...