[Lush]

I have to disagree with Chris Tolkien here, Child, because I believe that movies and books must use different means of impacting the viewer/reader, as well as to make a commercially viable venture.

Basically, what makes a book successful is not necessarily what makes a movie succesful.

And, Legalos is right, nobody will put in the money and effort to make the kind of version to satisfy the Tolkien estate, as well as the many demands of the many hard-nosed readers, because it would end up costing half a billion, lasting twenty hours, and flopping spectacularly at the box office-installments or no installments.

Does that necessarily mean that a book should be "left alone"? Nope, I still think that the pros outweigh the cons. There is still a great story in there that audiences across the world should be able to enjoy.

There were other great "un-filmable" books out there, whose cinematic interpreations have yielded some interesting (not necessarily good) results. "Lolita" comes to mind. Was Nabokov's literary genius translated on-screen by Kubrick? Uh, no. But we still ended up with a cool, cool movie. I think it was worth it.