I never pictured Gollum as green, though. He spent years and years in a cave, so he’s more likely to be albino, with smudges of coal dust.
(I know I should find the appropriate thread in which to say this, but I’m here already…anyone yet dig the Two Towers preview on the Fellowship DVD? Looks like they’re doing a brilliant job with Gollum! It’s cool that the same actor supplying his voice is also doing the action for the CGI!)
Number Six writes:
> Much of the plot and several of the characters in Star Wars
> were adapted from the Kurosawa film “The Hidden Fortress”.
Perhaps that’s why both SolGrundy and I have already mentioned that movie. But it’s not true that “much of the plot” was based on The Hidden Fortress. A little bit of it, yes, but not that much.
You’re misquoting Robert Heilein who thought the three plots were Boy Meets Girl, Brave Little Tailor, and Learns Better.
Endor was mentioned in the Bible long before either Tolkien or Lucas came along.
I have just watched the Criterion DVD of The Hidden Fortress, which includes an interview with George Lucas. He admits that the early drafts of Star Wars followed Kurosawa’s movie a bit more closely than the final version. However, aside from the idea of a princess that needed protecting (because that’s an original idea :rolleyes: ), just about the only elements left in the final draft was the way the story was told. In both movies, the POV was the two lowliest characters - two down-on-their-luck would-be-warrior peasants in Kurosawa’s case, and the two droids in Lucas’s case. In both movies, they provided the comic relief and larger events would unfold around them, pretty much out of their control.
Yeah, I know it. (Waitaminnit, what coal? :)) And while that sounds plausible enough, I’m a victim of Rankin and Bass. Until December of this year, I’m still gonna visualize Gollum as a little green/grey ring chasing booger, who kinda looks more like a frog than an old Hobbit. Well, not literally, but… you know.
On a related note, despite Sir Ian’s performance, I also still hear John Huston both as narrator and Gandalf when I read the books.