|
When I first heard they were going to make a film of LOTR, I thought what a brave man PJ was, because no matter who was cast some would complain about the casting being wrong and others would complain that the way they had imagined the characters was now contaminated. This has certainly happened, including in this discussion forum. And fair enough, everyone has their own vision.
To tell the truth, if there's any "contamination" for me, it's with the radio play rather than the film.When reading the book, I still hear Robert Stephens' voice as Aragorn and Ian Holm as a more mature Frodo than Elijah Wood, who was really too young for the role, wonderful as he was. Ian Holm's Frodo was more like the one in the novel, but he had a script that allowed him to do that.
I think the film made visual some of the things we read about in the novel, and it humanised some of the characters - Aragorn may have been less wise, but he was more human, and ditto Faramir. It's kind of hard to love a character who has no flaws and is never afraid or doubting. When Aragorn knelt to the hobbits in that scene of the film, you could believe it, perhaps even more than in the field of Cormallen scene in the novel. Arwen was not so very different, just gutsier, but all this did was make it clearer that this was a woman Aragorn could love. Gimli and Legolas both acted as comic relief in a way they didn't in the book, yes, but at least you could see they were friends and why - in the novel, they entered Lothlorien still bickering and left it as dear friends, no explanation. You knew they would be - all the film did was show it happening. So, no, my interpretation didn't change, not really. Things were just clarified for me.
And for the record, I thought the casting perfect. The actors may not all have been the way I imagined them when reading the book, but while I watched the films, I believed. They convinced me they were Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, etc.
|