[Sauron the White]

from the link privided by Estelyn

This view was succinctly expressed by the commentator Mark Lawson in his column for The Guardian newspaper. Writing of negative responses to The Fellowship of the Ring, he expressed the view that 'This hostility to interpretation is anti-cinematic. The point of movies is to rip up the words and reassemble them as pictures which may - which should - differ in key details.' It has to be said that - at least in a general sense - he is absolutely right about this.

I agree with the statement from Mr. Lawson. That should surprise nobody here. Many here will attempt to take the air out of such a charge claiming that they love movies and are not anti-cinematic but at the same time they then take the approach often expressed here - and most lately by WCHicklin as follows

I realize you are one of those who want to detach film adaptations from the originals, to stand completely on their own (although there are elements where the films fail by themselves without external reference); but for me they always were and are a derivative extension of the books, and cannot be (in my mind) separated from them any more than a finger from a hand.

I am afraid that this is like being a little bit pregnant or partly dead. It either is or it is not. Either you can separate the two and treat them differently or you cannot. To attempt to apply the rules, characteristics, and qualities of a book to the cinema - something that is clearly not a book - is indeed anti-cinematic because it denies the essence of what that medium is. I am not saying this is a prejudice or bias or something evil, merely a state of mind that dominates the persons opinions.

Consider for a moment how, say, Kurosawa would have done it! Or John Ford. Or even Coppola Or or or.

Regarding Kurosawa - I have seen maybe eight or ten films of his and am not an expert so I cannot specualte upon this. As for John Ford, I think I have seen nearly all of his talkies, some of his silents, and have read at least four books on his career. Perhaps you know more about John Ford and film than I do but I have absolutely no idea under the stars how he would have handled LOTR. None at all. Do you? And what would you base it on.

Same with Coppola.

And what about William Wyler? D.W. Griffith? Fritz Lang? Frank Capra? Victor Fleming? David Lean? Charles Chaplin? George Cukor? Sidney Lumet? Mike Nichols? Walter Hill? Clint Eastwood?

You might as well print the directory to the Directors Guild and start speculating.

Such a statement might provoke a far different interesting discussion but is meaningless as far as shedding any light on the discussion at hand.

The most important line in the article from the Encyclopedia of Arda is the following

From viewers who have never read the original books, the response seems to be almost universally positive.

If JRRT sold 40 to 45 million books before the films came out, that represents one of ten who bought tickets to the films. Thats a ratio of nine out of ten who probably saw the films cold without reading the books. "Almost universally positive" for 9 out of 10 viewers is about as good as it is ever gets.