Because people love the books. I mean, really love them. Think about the most obsessive cult phenomenon, and then expand its audience tenfold, and you’ve got LOTR.
Then, they make a movie that does not suck.
Hence, people love the movies.
Of course, LOTR is really not great by movie standard. Neither of them were at all the best movies released in either year. They aren’t stunning examples of the power of cinema. They were just things that didn’t suck, and because they were much loved to begin with, found a very appreciative audience.
As for the books, I made it through FOTR and half way through the TTT, but gave up in despair. Tolkein really needed an editor. He rambles, he loses focus, he is overly verbose.
Then again, I came to this conclusion many years ago. To be fair. I should give them another go now that I’m a bit older. But I’m not hopeful.
(Interistingly, I thought the Hobbit was quite a reasonable read, though far from a favourite. And, it too dragged toward the end. LOTR had a great opening but soon seemed to mire itself in meaningless description.)
What’s so great about the LOTR movies? Legolas! Good Lord does his sword-skateboarding, horse-flipping, arrowshooting badassness make my dark places all moist.
The books were great and the movies do justice to the epic sweep of the books. But it’s all a matter of taste. If the books bored you then the movies will probably do the same.
The novel (not novels) of The Lord of the Rings is justly famous. The author created an entire universe with history, languages, races, heroes, ordinary people, gods, all of which are fascinating both in detail and in bredth. That it has been ripped off by incompetent hacks is irrelevant. It has justly been called The novel of the twentieth century. (Note that I am NOT claiming that it IS in fact The novel of the twentieth century, just that it is not ridiculous to make that claim.)
The movies could so easily have sucked from beginning to end, as have several earlier efforts. Perhaps they aren’t Citizen Kane, but they are definitely worth seeing in their own right.
On a side note: I am one of the few people who was GLAD that Tom Bombadil was left out of the movie! I’ve never cared for the characterization of Bombadil (derived from a doll belonging to one of Tolkien’s children, and visualized as a sort of proto-hippy – no wonder the novel was so big in the '60s), and aside from providing the source of the sword that killed the Witch-King, the whole sequence adds little but atmosphere to the story.
I am not, in fact, a huge fantasy fan or LOTR fan. But the movies are a huge treat to see because I get to witness the loving attention to detail lavished on these films by Jackson and his crew and cast. You can tell they cared about making a movies that were both faithful to the spirit of the books and were also just damn good fun to see. I think the stories about how the movies were made are as interesting as the movies themselves.
I also tend to like big sprawling movies that cover lots of ground (literally and figuratively). I loved “Giant” for this same reason. LOTR was loaded with this stuff, location after location, each really interesting and beautiful.
The hype and the raptures from big fans? That was the icing on the cake. It’s fun being a part of that. I have never made it a point to wait in line to go on opening night before, but I did for “The Two Towers.” It was just a kick to be among all those salivating fans.
I think you’ll find a lot of disagreement on this score, gex gex. My wife hasn’t even read the books, and she loves the films. “Not stunning examples of the power of cinema?” I’d say they’re more than stunning examples… the LOTR movies so far have set a new standard for the power of cinema, particularly in the genre of fantasy. They have, quite simply, done things that nobody’s ever tried to do before, both in terms of how they were made and in what the audience sees onscreen.
What was great about them? Nothing, really. They were an improvement over the books just by eliminating all the songs and poems and by dropping the whole stupid Tom Bombadill sequence. I’ve read the books abnd they are important for having spawned the whole genre. Better things have been written since.
Once the extended versions of all three films come out, we will have about 12 hours of the grandest epic film ever made.
And it is easy to prove.
Even with millions and millions of loyal, avid readers around the world, in all age groups, there has been very little, and only minor, criticism of Jackson’s filmed version of their beloved book.
I think even the most hard boiled cynic would have to consider that quite an accomplishment.
I can understand if you are not a fantasy/sci fi/grand epic fan. The films won’t do it for you. (I am not a fan of baseball - but I was still able to appreciate Field Of Dreams for what it was.)
Up until now, Gone With The Wind has always epitomized the successful, grand, epic filming of a beloved book.
Don’t forget that the Lord of the Rings was started back in the 1930s; even when Tolkien finished the book and published it, we were still in the 1950s.
And he was English. And he was a medievalist.
What I’m trying to say here is that his style is often incredibly hard for modern readers to come to grips with. It is not exciting, it does not, really, lend itself terribly well to being filmed except that it is largely external – that is, the characterization and conflict and everything that makes the book good doesn’t take place inside the characters’ heads.
Does this mean his writing is ‘bad’? Depends on your definition. He’s hard to read, but so’s Shakespeare. Don’t like me comparing Tolkien to Shakespeare? Okay…then so is Chaucer, so is Milton, so are a lot of authors who write in, well, archaic styles. And Tolkien wrote in an archaic style for a reason – he wasn’t writing a fantasy story, he wasn’t writing an adventure story, he was writing a true epic, complete with ten thousand years of backstory. It’s not a novel so much as a mythology, and the attraction of the story itself is less important than the world it takes place in.
The movies are good in my opinion because PJ took a leaf from Tolkien when he made them. Specifically – he took a lot of time to make sure that every detail was perfect and exact. The care with which Tolkien crafted entire languages with workable grammar sets is reflected in the care with which Jackson built the Shire in the hills of New Zealand. You can tell that Jackson loves the books…his love is written all over every frame of the movie.
Find me another fantasy movie. Show me why it’s better than either of the Lord of the Rings movies. There’s a lot of fantasy movies I love, and a lot of modern fantasy writers whose works I cherish, but I can’t think of any who can manage to rival Tolkien.
Except for Terry Pratchett, possibly. But he’s not a fantasy writer.
For a lot of readers that I have talked to, PJ has created a world that most closely resembled the one we had been imagining for years in our heads. To have it seen on the big screen, in a way that made us all say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I thought the Balrog would look like!” or “That’s what Rivendell looked like to me!” was exciting. Despite the liberties that were taken (with TTT for the most part) it still told an exciting story and true to Tolkien and very story book feeling. It takes you away from it all.
A lot of the actors were Tolkien fans and really put their hearts into it and it shows on the big screen.
The special effects, especially the CGI, are spectacular. Gollum is the most realistic CGI character ever rendered. Gollum makes Jar-Jar binks look like something from Kookla, Fran and Ollie. (Even the new Yoda wasn’t this good.) ILM has some real competition.
It is your classic story of Good vs. Evil told in a spectacular way.
