Interesting interview with Adam Tolkien here
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/..._Interview.php
His comments on the movies are worth considering:
Quote:
Q: But, if the novel was almost ready, why did it take thirty-five years after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien to publish it?
Adam Tolkien: Because my father initially worked on The Silmarillion, then on 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, according to the will of his father, who had named him as literary executor. Only in 1996 he started to work on The Children of Hurin. But he was not persuaded if he could turn it into a novel. Maybe, because he had become rather tired! Then the three films from Peter Jackson were released, which did not concern us directly.
Q: How that?
Adam Tolkien: My grandfather sold the rights in 1967 and we did not have any right to interfere. The simplest was thus not to worry about it. When the movies were released my father even stopped to work on any Tolkien related material for a long time.
Q: What did you think of films?
Adam Tolkien: My point of view is completely personal: I am not a big fan of these Hollywood adaptations. I very much like Peter Jackson’s early movies, but, considering the immense size of his Lord of the Rings project, I think that he lost the breath and the poetry of Tolkien. The decorations are very beautiful, because they are real, but the special effects were not there yet. You could really see them…
Me, I would have liked to see another thing, an environment like that of The Seventh Seal, of Bergman. It would have been interesting to make a series, which would have made it possible to develop a movie adaptation, without losing the breath.
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So, we learn that Adam actually liked PJ's early stuff, but that his LotR adaptations lost some of the essence of the books. I have to agree with him.
What's really interesting to me is his statement that CT stopped working on any Tolkien related material because of the films. It seems that if it hadn't been for the movies we'd have had CoH earlier, & perhaps other stuff as well.
If nothing else I think this puts paid to the idea that Adam is opposed in principle to movies - he just wishes they had been done differently - he even says he would have liked a series of films. For movie fans this may offer some hope - Adam doesn't seem to share his father's view that LotR is unsuitable for visual representation.