You, my brown-eyed Frodo

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by morwen edhelwen

Well- since I only got into the book after I saw a bit of the movie it's a bit hard to get rid of the imagery of the movie. I think the thing is, a movie image can become 'the' version of characters even for people who read or watched its source before. Unless this isn't really related..
-Morwen

It's exactly what the original post was about.

But some people can get rid of movie imagery, especially for characters (e.g. Faramir) whose physical appearance and inner character differed largely from book to film.

The problem with the whole issue is that even focusing on one physical appearance inherently delimits a character who, at least on the physical level, is only 'sketched' by the author (as most of Tolkien's characters are). And since the characters in the film often differ in other ways as well, it's easy to associate that single physical interpretation with a single personality interpretation--which is something I run into all the time with book fan fiction that relies on movie interpretations for the physical imagery. I love being introduced to different interpretations, but when everyone is giving me the same one then they aren't really exploring the characters in a creative fashion anymore.

That's why recovery or reconstruction of characters that are not 'the' version that Jackson gave us is so important to me, and why I was curious if and how people on the much more bookishly-minded Barrow-downs viewed the characters' physical appearance differently.