Quote:
Originally Posted by Sauron the White
There are many people here who know ten times what I know about the books of JRRT. I marvel at the breadth of knowledge and scholarship that resides here. While I have read the books many times, I have just scratched the surface compared to many others here. And, all that knowledge, all that devotion, all that love of the source material - in this case the print work of JRRT - has proven to be a handicap which prevents some from truly enjoying the films. All the weight of that knowledge has simply denied some the ability to suspend disbelief and go with the flow of the movie. Inside, they wage a fight as an inner voice screams "thats not right".... "it did NOT happen that way" .... "that character did not say that" ..... and so on. The person who views the films without having read the book has no such weight to bear. The person who has read the book once or twice probably has no such weight to bear.
I would say that the JRRT expert on the Downs is in the same boat with the Civil War expert finding fault with Griffiths, or the Baum expert finding fault with MGM's film, or any other such example.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by davem
Perfectly true - & an important point. Personally I often wish I could go back to the pre-Sil days. LotR & TH are the books which touched our hearts & I doubt very much whether The Sil in its '77 form, let alone any other Middle-earth writings would have seen the light of day if Hobbits had not come forth. Some days I wish CT had left his father's unpublished stuff well alone. Some days....
|
Well now, I'm going to respectfully disagree with the both of you. Because I think that the power of a work of art will work its wonder on the viewer regardless of what he or she brings or does not bring to the dark screening room.
If--and that's a mighty big if--it is a well wrought work of art.
You see, I wasn't offended at Arwen at the Bruinen or the omission of Tom or the shift in timing of Boromir's death. I was not offended by anything because it changed the books. I was instead bored by things which failed to develop the movie trilogy as a consistently conceived, imagined and portrayed work of art. They weren't faithful to the tragic/mythic splendor of vision which they first promised/proclaimed (and which is coincidentally Tolkien's vision). So they offended me not because they violated the books per se but because they muddled the vision of the movies.
Some viewers, no doubt many, were happy simply with a rip-roaring fantasy adventure flick. Good for them. I'm glad they enjoyed watching two wizards break dancing. I'm glad they enjoyed seeing Galadriel effaced by special effects which turned her moment of supreme temptation and victory into a wow event. I'm glad they laughed at Gimli. But the tragic representation of a dwarven culture lost in Moria, well, for me, that figure cannot easily be made the butt of jokes.
Yes, I think Jackson failed to do justice to Tolkien's vision, something far larger and grander than can be encompassed by the omission of a few characters or the inclusion of some invented ones. It was an aesthetic failure because he couldn't or didn't want to hold that vision consistently throughout the movies. So, you see, it isn't simply a case of being unfaithful to the source but of being unable to create a consistent work of art. I suppose I would say that there are more than one cinematic hearts beating in Jackson's movies, and they ain't beating rhythmically or in sync. from my perspective of course.