[The Saucepan Man]

Nice to see an upbeat thread about the films, for once.

Although:

Originally Posted by Turin

... how it is a dangerous road to take to adapt Tolkien.

In what way dangerous, and to whom?

What do I like about the films? Well, like Essex, pretty much everything. If I was being picky, there are one or two things that I would change. But I would prefer to dwell on the positive (as that is how the films make me feel). So, almost without exception, I would commend the acting, the settings, the costumes, the music and the special effects - all way above average for this kind of film, in my opinion. How many other fantasy action films come anywhere near it in these areas? I cannot think of one off-hand.

For me, almost every character and location were exactly as I had imagined them. As I have said before, this may be because I have seen a lot of Tolkien art in my time and much of it has been produced, or influenced, by Alan Lee and John Howe, who were central to the films' design team. But I was nevertheless not in the least disappointed in these aspects.

And, as anyone who has been to the WETA exhibition will appreciate, the amount of detail that went into the costumes and props (the armour and weapons particularly) was astounding. I haven't seen the documentaries on the RotK EE, but it is clear from those on the other EEs that an incredible amount of work went into these films. The dedication and committment of all those involved in their production (many of whom are Tolkien fans themselves), and the bonds of fellow-feeling that this appears to have generated, shine through for me in the quality of the films.

I cannot think of a bad acting performance, and there were many exceptional ones: Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Sean Bean, Bernard Hill and Miranda Otto all deserve special mention. And although Elijah Wood did irritate me at times with his constant eye-rolling and falling over, I did think that his performance in the Mount Doom/Sammath Naur scenes was superb.

The story-line was, of course, marvellous - although I would attribute that largely to Tolkien, as I would agree that the film story is at its weakest where it strays furthest from his story. But I think that, on the whole, the changes that were made worked. Everyone will have their own opinion as to which particular scenes and characters should have been included and which should have been omitted, but the choices that were made (with a few exceptions) worked for me in terms of a screen adaptation.

I must admit that there were moments in the dialogue when I winced (let's hunt some orc, for example), but again, on balance, I think that the script team did a very good job. Remember that we are judging their lines against one of the greatest story-tellers of modern times. I am sure that there are those who could have done better in recreating Tolkien's style and perhaps would have had the courage to go with some of his more "archaic" (for want of a better word) phraseology. But how many would have had the necessary level of time, committment and enthusiasm to dedicate to this project? (Incidentally, in this regard, I learned with sadness that Tom Stoppard is no longer working on the script for the film version of His Dark Materials - a great shame.) And I was impressed with the way that, given the need to cut and rearrange scenes and dialogue, they reallocated the lines between the characters.

So, am I going overboard in my praise of the films? I don't think so, primarily because there are few films that I have enjoyed as much as these and that have moved me as much. I am not often moved to tears, either by books or by films, but these films achieved this feat on a number of occasions, just as the books did. I certainly don't expect everyone to share my opinion of the films, and I would agree with some of the criticisms that are often made, but, given how much I have got out of these films, I do find myself disappointed at times by the general atmosphere of negativity over them that sometimes pervades these boards.

Perhaps it is easier to list the films' bad points (this would undoubtedly be a quicker exercise for me than to list their good points), but it does make a refreshing change to have an opportunity to celebrate them.