Well, I tried to watch LOTR.

It finally made it to tvland. I got through almost 5 minutes of it but then had to turn it off. What a total let down. Any resemblence between the movie and the books appears to be totally accidental. Were the next two as bad as the first?I did feel guilty about not liking it and so tuned back in to check. I showed up at about the time of the conference in Rivendale. Still just drivel and mimicry.Bummer.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I am a Tolkien fanatic and have been since I was twelve years old. I can quote passages not only from The Lord of the Rings, but also from The Silmarillion.Yes, the movies got farther away from the books as they went. I refer to them as movies using many characters and place names from Tolkien.The one that pissed me off the most was Galadriel's speech denying the ring. It is one of my favorite moments in the books. If you know the characters and their histories, you probably agree it should have been done first with pride and anger and then with quiet lamentation. They had an actress who might have been able to pull it off, but they didn't even try. In the movie, it was a big special effect with a booming voice and Galadriel taking on this semi-ghostly look.

Well,it's on again tomorrow night and Sunday night. I may try one more time, but I gotta admit, my heart really isn't in it.Very, very disappointed.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, I liked it. I have to say it did stray a fair bit from the books, but in my opinion that was necessary simply to make it into movie format. I mean, the extended versions were pushing the 4 hour mark and there's only so much a person can be expected to watch in one sitting. There were lots of bits that would have explained the store more, but that were dropped just to make it shorter.Aside from that, Gandalf was pretty much how I'd imagined him reading the books. I thought Sir Ian Mckallen did a really good job with him.

WTF? The movies were almost exactly like the way I imagined events in my mind, and where they differed, I found that it was an improvement. Tolkein may have invented the fantasy genre but a number of improvements have occured since his time. In particular it's way, way better that Aragorn doesn't recieve the re-forged Narsil until the third movie. Tolkein kind of blows his load too early by having that happen in the first novel.If you think these movies were somehow not good, then you need to see the other LOTR dramatizations, which suck hardcore simply because they cleave too closely to the original.

I agree that the movies are, which is unusual, are better than the books.The books needed a good editor to trim them.

Jar,I never went to see the movie, won't watch the cartoon, etc. I loved the books and I know how all the characters look to me, how the world looks.Don't feel guilty!! Just avoid it. Really, don't watch it. I don't care if it's good or bad I don't want to mess with my wonderful experience of the book. Books are just better than movies. Now when Ingmar Bergman makes a movie it's original and there is no book. Those are good. But if I love a book, I'll probably not watch anyone elses version.lfen

I'm also a Tolkein fanatic. I found the first movie not all that bad. Although some of my favorite parts were edited out (i.e., the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil), and there were some substitutions/changes that I didn't think made much sense in the context of the books (from minor things like Arwen vice Glorfindel rescuing Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen to Elrond coming across as a weinie), my only real complaint was relationship between Isengard and Mordor (Saruman was NOT allied with Sauron - he was a puppet). Galadriel's speech wasn't bad - almost the way I imagined it - and the passage through and battle in Moria was excellent, IMO.The second movie, OTOH, really pissed me off. WTF elves showing up at Helm's Deep? How did a bunch of Aragorn's kin turn into elves? Theoden as a wimp??? Faramir taking the Ring to Osgiliath?????? Puh-leeese. Finally, the entire way the movie dealt with the Ents was pitiable. Still, the battle at Helm's Deep was nicely staged. And Frodo's passage of the Emyn Muil and the Dead Marshes was just as I had pictured it.The third movie does redeem some of the ground lost in the second. It appeared to follow closely the Return of the King. My only deep complaint was they cut one of the truly dramatic scenes from the book: where the Nazgul steps through the shattered gateway of Minas Tirith confronted only by Gandalf just as the cock crows and the horns of Rohan sound across the Pelannor. Now THAT should have been kept...Overall, the movies were okay - excellent special effects, very good characterization of the main characters, awesome battle scenes. Aside from the "True Believer" ( ) quibbles, the movies are probably the best possible rendition of the books that you're ever likely to see.On the upside, it was the movies that convinced my youngest daughter to decide to read the books - so that was a good thing, IMO.

Editorial changes in the interest of length or those sorts of things are fine. For instance, the substitution of Glorfindel with Arwen is fine. There were others that were also fine.The problem for me and others is when the themes of the story are tampered with. For instance, a recurring theme in the movies is one of a reluctance to fight. Aragorn was, in the films, a reluctant hero who had to come around to the idea of becoming ruler of Gondor. As we know, that was Aragorn's goal from the beggining in the books. A reluctance to do what needed doing. Treebeard and the Ents had to be goaded into fighting after the Entmoot by seeing a field of felled trees. Not so in the book. Again, a reluctance to fight.
The Rohirrim and Theodan were another example. In the book, once Theodan was cured of Saruman's influence, he pretty much set out to stomp a mudhole in some wizards ass. The Rohirrim did not withdraw to Helm's Deep as a last act a desperation in hopes of outlasting the enemy and no more. They pulled back there as a last act of desperation in hopes of holding out until the men under Eomer that had followed him in exile could return and the men of the westfold could be rallied. Then, when the summons came from Gondor there was no reluctance to go to their aid. There are other examples I could cite. Why add a recurring idea or theme to the story when it does not provide brevity or story sense and in fact detracts from the ideas of the original?Not to be too picky, but was the arrival of the Elves at Helm's Deep the way you envisioned it? How about the army of the dead at Minas Tirith? Or the dramatic confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf, or between Gandalf and the lord of the Nazgul at the gates of Minas Tirith?Those movies were good whiz-bang summer entertainments. They failed simply in that they did not communicate the central theme of Tolkien, which is that desire for power over others is the root of all evil and that all people of good will must be prepared to stand against such evil.

I would certainly agree with that, but I disagree that the themes experienced significant "tampering". If anything I think that the changes, or to look at it another way, corrections, actually succeed in bringing out themes that Tolkein had undercut in the original books. Not quite the beginning; we are after all introduced to Aragorn under an assumed name, in a kind of self-imposed exile. Reluctance to fight is a theme in Tolkein's conception of Aragorn; a theme that he catastrophically undercuts by having Aragorn adopt the mantle of king (symbolically, through his acceptance of Narsil) almost immediately in the first book. Which makes the title of the thrid book kind of stupid: "Return of the King"? The King returned in the first book, not the third. I dunno. Honestly, the books are so damn boring that I've never made it past the middle of the second one. (The bit between Gandalf and Saruman was better than I had imagined it, though.) Like I said, I think the changes in the movies made Tolkien's work better, because they fixed mistakes he never would have made had be been writing the novels now, with 50 years of fantasy genre development behind us, rather than when he did. If you want to see LOTR movies that cleave to the books, those are out there. And they're terrible. The movies succeed as well as they do because they depart from the source material, which just isn't that great. It's treasured, but it's not that great.

I have to agree with this statement. I tried to read the books many time when I was younger and could never make it through the second one... Though I could read the Hobbit with no problem.I thought it was going to be a failure, but in the end I gave it a chance and it excited me. Many of the characters were dead on to how I had pictured them. And the atmosphere was genuine, even if not identical in specific facts.It was so good that I got excited enough to finally read through the whole series! Thus it was a benefit for Tolkein. And while I was disappointed with a couple of the choices they made, especially the ending though I hear the extended dvds fix some of that, I would be lying to say I still didn't like it as is. It was really good entertainment.If it had not been an adaptation I wonder if it would be catching this much flack? I mean I thought it was a good movie in and of itself. I think it's too bad that people won't see it on some philosophical concern, rather than to just take it as entertainment.I ended up attending a LOTR concert in Amsterdam, starring Christopher Lee. It went through the music of the movies... including the cartoon version... and then went through the whole story... a concert adaptation of the novel. If you thought the movies were edited, imagine it all cut down to an hour and a half!Christopher Lee played all the parts... he did a damn good Gollum... and he sang. Yes he sang, and he did a damn good job at it.Now if I had been a "purist" the evening would have been miserable and I guess I would have walked out yelling obscenities at mr Lee. But instead I took it as a piece of entertainment which was "based on" the novel. I had a really good time.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

The title refers to the return of the king to Gondor (specifically his claiming of the crown and throne from the care of the Steward) - which doesn't happen until towards the end of the third book. Although as you commented later you didn't make it past the middle of the second book, so I can see why you wouldn't spot this.I've enjoyed the movies so far (only seen the first two so far). I made a conscious decision to try and approach the films as a completely separate experience from having read and loved the books. I think this allowed me to enjoy the films more than I would have done if I had tried to compare them to the books. Even an attempt at a faithful transfer of any book to a film is going to be of limited success because reading and watching are such different experiences.

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Confused ? You will be...

Exactly.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Is what I'm about to engage in. Aragorn was never reluctant to claim the throne of Gondor, in the books. In the "Tale of Arwen and ARagorn" (an appendix in most editions of TLOTR), Aragorn and Arwen fell in love and Elrond said he would join his daughter to no one less then the King of the Dunedain, so Aragorn set out on his decades long quest to become the king and get the girl.There are two cartoon versions of TLOTR, one the Rankin & Bass animated "Return of The King" (not nearly as succesful as their "The Hobbit") and Ralph Bakshi's late seventies rotoscope (a method recently updated and used in that Christmas Train movie) feature. Bakshi's version ended before the battle of Helm's Deep and the intended second part was never made. You're right, it did suck, but it didn't follow the book much closer then the new films did.Also, as a hardcore Tolkien guy, I feel the need to point out that the genre advancement you refer to has been due to TLOTR, where most aspects of the modern fantasy were codified. If you want to get real technical, "The Worm Ouroborous(sp?" and the short stories of Lord Dunsany predate Tolkien and had many of what are now fantasy conventions, but all that those two bodies of work had done was brought together and popularized by Tolkien. Of course, the transformation of modern fantasy must be attributed to the great writers of the sixties, your Moorcock, Zelazney, Le Guin and the like, but the dean of modern fantasy is and sahll always be that Oxford linguist.So, Crash, you're a good poster, I like what I read from you, and we agree on just about everything (I think), but say Tolkien ain't great again and I'm a-getting out my whuppin' stick.

Yes, and to that alone.In the movie, however, the title carries a double meaning - both the return of the king to his rightful throne, and the return of the "king" within Aragorn, from the self-imposed inner exile he had been in. That's a brilliant symbolism, but one that Tolkein didn't think of. No fault of his; it's simply an invention, now de rigeur, in the fantasy genre since he wrote the novels. I was aware of it. Tolkein missed an opportunity in his plot pacing to set up a brilliant double meaning. Peter Jackson did not, and the movies are an improvement on the books as a result, at least in that regard.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 12-11-2004 06:59 PM