[Erulasto]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>And keeping Tolkien in mind... there seems to be a problem with the image-creating team. Alan Lee as the conceptual designer?! Of course, his work looks "nice and all", but it is completely inconsistent with whatever is described in the books. (Just one quick example to illustrate this: in "The Hobbit", Rivendell is described as the Last Homely House - and although, being "the fair house of Elrond", it must have an exceptional aura to it, none of the texts imply that it should look like a crazed artist's dream of an art nouveau water park...)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I hardly think the Hobbit is a good source for imagery pertaining to Lord of the Rings. The Elrond of the Hobbit is not the Elrond of the Lord of the Rings.<P>Bilbo getting two loutish elves drunk in Thranduil's warehouses is rahter conflicting with the nobility of the Elvish race, and Imladris should definitely be a grandiose place of great beauty.<P>I love the Hobbit, but it's a children's book, and the world portrayed in it is not the Middle-Earth of LOTR and the Silmarillion. I'm pretty sure Tolkien did not know that Gandalf was an Istari and that elves sailed to Valinor when he was writing it.