[The Saucepan Man]

Thank you littlemanpoet for posting your brother's thought provoking comments. As a long-standing Tolkien fan, I agree with a lot of what he says.<P>But, unfortunately, we all have to face the commercial realities. Making a film for the mass movie going public is a commercial endeavour and will inevitably involve a degree of "selling out". <P>And the mass movie going public (myself included) want their fantasy/sci-fi films to fast-paced and full of action. I dislike "dumbing down", but a certain amount of this is required when making a film like this. It is still an infinately more intelligent "action" film than many that I could mention.<P>To get the kind of big budget treatment that I think the images conveyed by JRRT's words deserved, the films has to be blockbuster successes. As Tar-Palantir points out, the films are visually stunning - the locations, the costumes, the "creatures" (except, of course, the Wargs ), the SFX and the battle scenes. We just wouldn't have had these without the big budget.<P>I was irritated by some of the gratuitous scenes, particularly where they did not make sense (Wormtongue being rendered obsolescent by Saruman's possession of Saruman, for example). But I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed both films and I am extremely grateful for the visual presentation of a world that looks so much like the one that I had imagined.<P>I don't think that I can really put it better than Bill F:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> Mr. Jackson may get a C in regards to a comparison to the books, but he gets an A for effort, and an A for making the best action/adventure movie of all time. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>These are film <B>adaptations</B> of the books. They are not the books themselves. They do not take the books away from us - we still have them and can still enjoy them for what they truly are - literary masterpieces.<P>And finally, I would certainly not underestimate the value of both films in bringing JRRT's works to those who had not the fortune of knowing them before - my wife included.