Why Can't Movies Be Like Books?

[Sauron the White]

Folwren may have nothing else to say but allow me to say a few things.

from Kath

As for Tom Bombadil, the main reason people seem to come up with for cutting him out is that viewers would not understand the point of him. How can we know that if they're not given the opportunity? In the books he is a mystery and opinion is completely divided on him amongst readers, why shouldn't film-goers get the opportunity to have the same argument over and over again? It could be done.

Perhaps you can speak for "people" who have opinions you do not agree with, I on the other hand, can only speak for myself. Here is why I was overjoyed to see him cut out of the film and it has nothing to do with the reason you gave.

1- The way he is described by JRRT, he simply looks goofy, stupid, dumb, foolish, silly, cartoonish, childish, and just plain funny looking. I cut back on the adjectives because I do not want to come off as mean spirited. Of all the characters JRRT created TB is the absolute worst visually. Films are foremost a visaul medium. What good would it have been to hire people like John Howe and Alan Lee and a host of other artists, illustrators, designers, model makers, and other creative visual talents only to have the absurd figure of TB appear on the same screen? It would be like serving a fabulous six course dinner in a five star restaurant only to have one of the dishes smell of vomit.

Are we clear on my feelings about that? It has not a darn thing to do with my not understanding TB.

2- Tolkien bases his story on the idea of the Ring. What it is, how powerful it is, how it can control everyone who comes in contact with it, how it can tip the fate of the peoples of Middle-earth, and its history. Just when we have bought into the idea that this ring is the be all and end all of the everything, we then get introduced to a character who does not care about the ring, can wear it without being impacted by it in the least, cares nothing for it, and will not do anything to help with the central problem of the ring. Then the story moves on, leaving TB in his version of Disneyland, and nothing more happens with him. It is absolutely pointless.

Others here, defending TB, have said he is a colorful character who adds to the rich tapestry of Middle-earth and shows the wide variety of beings that inhabited it. Any being would fill that role. It does not have to be something which is so visually hideous or so meaningless to the story or plot or its advance or its resolution.

3- If Bombadil would have been hard on the eyes he would have been equally grating on the ears spouting doggerel such as:

"Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo.
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow"

I can hear every comedian on late night TV doing a bit about dongs and dillos from the LOTR films. That would have had the audience either in embarassed titters or outright stitches.

So much for Bombadil.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sauron the White
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.

the reply from Kath

Er, why? The people who dislike the films have generally been to see them, otherwise they are unlikely to have formed quite such a strong opinion against them. Say 10 people went to see the films, half having read the books and half having not read them. If the half that have read the books then dislike the films you can't simply remove them from the statistics. Those who now know they don't like the films still saw them, and so make up those numbers you speak of.

For every film ever made to which tickets are sold to there are some people who do not like the film. That is true of LOTR also. However, that could well explain inflated box office for the first one, but only a complete idiot would come back again and again and eat a similar meal at a restaurant which made him sick the first time.

Besides, box office returns were higher for TTT and then higher again for ROTK. It is in fact the second highest grossing film of all time.

The figures you use of half an audience reading the books and seeing the movies is way way off.
Tolkiens publishers estimated that - before the films came out - there were between 40 and 50 million copies of his book sold over the previous nearly fifty years. Do you know how many tickets were sold to the movies? They did just over 3 billion US dollars in box office. Figuring an average of $7 per ticket, that comes out to an astounding figure approaching 430 million tickets sold. And I would guess that in some of the worlds poorer nations that per ticket price was significantly lower. There is no way that half of those people read the books.

Even if we assume that the same person bought three tickets - one for each film - we still get a figure of some 143 million people. That is at least four fold times the people who bought and read the books.

Yes, before anyone says it, people also read copies in libraries and borrow their friends copies so some copies are read twice or more. And some copies are never even read once cover to cover. Some who do read it do not like it and would be candidates for the films regardless. And some of those were long dead by time the films came out. So it all balances out.

Even if we say, that 10% of those who saw FOTR were hardcore Tolkien purists who love the books and hated the films, that still leaves many many many times more people who bought tickets and did not share their feelings against the films.

Do you know what the most effective advertising for a film is? Word of mouth. Obviously, it must have been pretty positive to sustain all that business, not once, not twice but three times.

Look what happened to the MATRIX trilogy. The revenues went down with each film as word of mouth was worse each time. The opposite was true with the RINGS films.

Regarding the point raised by many, inclding myself, that the expansion of Arwen helped the film especially with a female audience...

Which isn't even really necessary when you have Eowyn, who was at least pretty well done in the films. She provides the conflict and power you need in a female character, all Arwen is in the films is some kind of comfort blanket for Aragorn. She is his driving force, but that doesn't need to be shoved down the audience's throat. Show the exchange of the necklace by all means, and keep the shots that focus on it. That's enough.

There were at least 22 major characters in LOTR films. Eowyn is one female. That would be one out of 22. So that "is enough" for you? Sounds like the absolute worst type of tokenism. Half of the people in this world are female. Over half of the people who bought tickets were female. Is it too much to ask for 2 females out of the 22? All Jackson did was to take what JRRT already wrote in the appendices and include it in the story. JRRT gave him that right according to the terms of sale of the film rights.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sauron the White
I

noticed the events on day 8 upon the river where the company is attacked by orcs. Although I remember reading that Jackson filmed something like that it was not in the film in any edition. There is an example of Jackson playing down the violence and action in favor of creating a mood. Then there is the scene of Legolas firing his arrow high into the sky and downing a Nazgul on his steed. Jackson cut that bit of action and violence also.

reply from Kath

Or, he cut out the attack by the orcs to save time and because in terms of film time there was going to be another attack by orcs only moments later. And he failed to take advantage of the chance to show Legolas' superior skills (archery rather than drinking) as well as not deepening the mood he was aiming for even more by showing that now they had left Lorien they were in mortal peril again.

The point was a simple one. Davem - and others - accuse Jackson of including too much violence and action at the point of sacrificing other parts of the story. My inclusion of the above information was to show that indeed Jackson saw fit to cut some of violent action that JRRT wrote in the books. In this case you are partially correct - it would have been too close to another scene of violence - also written by JRRT in the books.

By the films end I do not think anyone was not unaware of the superior archery talents of Legolas. Jackson included several examples of that.

from myself

The book is not the movies.
The movies are not the book.

reply from Kath

The books are not the films, that is true, but you can't say that they films are not the books because they are based on them. If the film was to be considered completely separate from the books then not a scene, not a word, not an idea could have been taken from the books to aid in the making of the film.

A book and a film are two different things. That is a simple fact of reality. An orange may be the foundation for orange juice but a glass of juice and an orange off the tree are two different things.

Why does this point seem to aggravate Tolkien purists so much? Cannot you accept reality? Or would the concession of admitting they are two individual things then take away so many thousands of objections that you constantly and continually voice against the films?

I saw the LOTR play in Toronto. I did not like it in the least. Everything I did not like about was based on its existence as a play. Not because it did not follow the book enough or it failed to capture what the films had captured. it simply failed as a play ..............

in my humble opinion.

I would be wrong to castigate the LOTR play because of what it was not. Namely the books or the films.

But people here see absolutely nothing wrong with castigating the films and the man who made them because they are not something else.