[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

To touch upon Doctor Who for a moment, there are places not unlike this forum where those who do not adhere to the majority consensus can discuss without fear of getting the flaming pitchforks treatment that, say, critics of the films get on certain major sites for enthusiasts of Professor Tolkien's work.

I left the Doctor Who forums some time ago when the one I visited mostly was overrun with Doctor Who haters and a search elsewhere revealed that other forums had undergone the same fate. There was too much mindless hatred from both sides and it had ceased to be fun.

Concerning the matter of adaptation and changes, I believe there is an element of delusion in this belief that we, as Tolkien enthusiasts, ought to be 'grateful' that the films were made, regardless of alterations.

Indeed. I recall reading an old commentary on Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King which greatly blamed Tennyson for his poems which differed from Malory and praised those which followed Malory or the Mabinogion closely. The writer seemed to be entirely ignorant that there were also versions of some tales which were earlier than Malory and disagreed with them. Yet the influence of Tennyson can be seen in the most unexpected places, for example in Mists of Avalon and in the recently-released The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Yet considering the enormous gulf of time alone between the culture of the period in which the books were published and that in which the films were produced surely it's far from unreasonable to find the films to not necessarily be to one's taste. If I like a heroic romance from the 1950s, why should I be expected to inevitably enjoy a Hollywood film from the 2000s, even if the latter is adapted from the former? The sensibilities and cultures in which they exist are still entirely different.

Well, lots of people still enjoy Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, the original Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, The Seven Samurai, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sergeant York, High Noon, Shane, Django, the original King Kong, The Westerner, Gunfight at the O.K. Coral, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Duck Soup, Some Like It Hot, Psycho, Dracula (1931), The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Carnival of Souls, Peeping Tom, Dead of Night, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dr. Strangelove, and many others. Most large cities have art-houses where older films are often shown.

You should not inevitably be expected to like any film, whether it is an older film or a modern one, or to like any book regardless. Taste is really quite inexplicable, at least to the outsider.