I tried to send you a PM but evidently your inbox was full. Now you will bear the ignominy of having your unscrupulous laundry aired in front of prying eyes!
I saw in a recent thread you said you couldn’t forgive Peter Jackson, the man who brought the vision of Tolkien to near perfection on the silver screen, because he screwed up on The Lovely Bones, a flash-in-the-pan bestseller that will be remembered as long as it takes to write the next random flavor-of-the-month bestseller.
How could you?! I thought you were a huge LOTR fan! Those movies cement Jackson forever in my Favorable column. Unless he starts tampering with his movies like George Lucas, I don’t care if he screws up a dozen more movies. He made Lord of the freaking Rings. He is the best director in the world in my eyes. I demand you explain yourself, knave!
I know a little about JRRT & his fantasy writings, and I admire PJ’s guts and drive to bring his vision of what LOTR seemed like to him onto the silver screen and indelibly into my memory.
I can and have disagreed with a LOT of what PJ did to the story, but what he got right is so great that for me it outshines the flaws.
Eh. I can’t speak for Skald, but I can certainly understand why someone would be less than overjoyed at Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the LotR. Yes, it is probably the best version that is likely to exist in my lifetime. Doesn’t mean Jackson didn’t make some (imho) horrific errors in its adaptation. His treatment of Denethor, for example, stripped the final movie of some great drama. Jackson really dumbed down a lot of the material and turned a lot of well rounded characters with a lot of depth into 2 dimensional caricatures of their book counterparts. He was hardly perfect as an adapter. He doesn’t need to pull a Lucas to be deeply flawed as a director. He already is.
So if he screwed up The Lovely Bones, I can see that as a deal breaker if I cared about The Lovely Bones. Evidently Skald does.
Now, granted that even I didn’t like some of the changes he made, but I still think 95% of the movies were essentially perfect in capturing the feel and events of the book. Even the changes that were made, with a few exceptions, weren’t too bad. But to spit on Jackson for that? Blasphemy! The man should have a bust in every LOTR fan’s homes!
Even more than that . . . I was really looking forward to seeing Gandalf confront Saruman at Orthanc and cause his staff to break. How could a film adaptation have left out something so dramatically awesome?!
Yeah. OK I’m a fair purist, and even I breathed a sigh or relief when Tom was left out. I’m quite fond of the old fellow. And I love the interlude he provides as well as the call back in tone to the Hobbit. But I can’t think of any way to adapt him into a movie that would work. Jackson earned a point from me for leaving him out.
I thought most people were upset about the lack of the scouring. Is that not a big deal? I find it kinda interesting that even the Shire was not immune, and seeing Saruman’s actual defeat by a strengthened Frodo is really nice.
That too. Just imagine Christopher Lee mouthing those delicious lines in that scene! “Cut his throat in the night, I believe . . . Buried him, I hope, though Worm has been very hungry lately . . .”
I thank god every day he chose to leave out the scouring. Didn’t Saruman go by the name Sharky McToothingface or something?
As much as I adore the books (and the films) I think that was an even better call to kill Saruman at Orthanc then leave him and Wormy into an anticlimactic ending. Fine for the books, but like Tom B. – out of place for the film adaptation. The homage in the pool at Lothlorian was enough for me to foreshadow the outcome if Frodo failed.
My biggest beef was the elves showing up at Helms Deep, and the change in personality of Farimir.
Still, the movies are instant classics. Love, love, love 'em.
I think you’ve crossed the line from appreciation into fanboyism here. There are issues with the films which ruin them for some fans of the books.
I don’t have a problem with many of the changes Jackson made in order to get the trilogy filmed. For example, giving Glorfindel’s role to Arwen was a sensible decision, there are already too many characters to flesh them out fully. However, some of the character changes are detrimental. Aragorn is not a reluctant king in the book, Denethor is not a pantomime villain and Treebeard is not an idiot (I rolled my eyes when Merry tricked the ents into attacking Isengard). But for me, the biggest problem is the style, it’s LOTR done as a modern action film. I quite enjoyed them when they came out, but find them unwatchable now, especially ROTK. Instead of experiencing the story, I find myself mentally cataloging all the changes. This isn’t a big deal, I can always re-read the books instead. Jackson gets some slack from me, any adaptation was always going to be a huge challenge.
One thing I can guarantee, Tolkien himself would have absolutely hated the films. He would not have been happy to see his characters messed with. He was by nature extremely pedantic and obsessive, necessary attributes which helped him create such a rich imaginary world over several decades. He once wrote three pages of criticism on a publisher’s dust jacket bio of himself.
