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Originally Posted by SpM
From where I am standing, it looks like Jackson and co suceeded greatly in making the films relevant and accessible to modern audiences. Perhaps they would have suceeded in equal measure had they not used the techniques described above, but we cannot know that for sure unless and until a more faithful film adaptation of the book is made.
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I think that's why they fail for me - this desire to be 'relevant & accessible'. I don't think this played much of a part in Tolkien's thinking. He told the story in the way that felt 'right' &
hoped readers would respond, though we know at first he held out little hope for that. I've just finished reading 'The Lord of the Rings:The Films. the Books, The Radio Series' by Jim Smith & J Clive Matthews (Virgin Books) & their opinion is that the movies improved on the books immeasurably. They criticise Tolkien on virtually every page while praising Jackson & the writers for putting right all his numerous 'faults'.
I know movies have to appeal to a mass audience & studios are averse (to say the least) to any kind of risk taking, but my feeling has always been that if they didn't want to be as faithful as possible to Tolkien's work they should have written their own story & filmed that. Once you choose to adapt an author's work you have a
moral obligation to be as faithful as possible. One can argue whether the writers/director did that as far as the
story is concerned, but I do question whether they had sufficient respect for Tolkien's
language (or for the English language itself - 'Our
list of allies is growing
thin'! 'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' etc.). What irritated me most was characters jumping, often in the course of a sentence, from an archaic to a modern idiom. I have to agree with
tar-ancalime in this regard. If we take the line given to Galadriel which I just quoted, it sounds wrong & out of character for her to say something like that because up to that point she has been using a very archaic style of speech. To suddenly change her speech pattern & phraseology causes serious problems for some of us, because one of those idioms must be 'false' - in the sense of not being her 'natural' way of speaking. Either the archaic style was false & the modern 'true' or vice versa. If the archaic is her natural 'style' then she is being condescending in suddenly adopting a modern idiom - which turns what she says into an insulting platitude - or if the modern idiom is her natural one then her earlier use of the archaic just comes across as pretentious. The language & speech patterns a character uses reflect the way that character
thinks. Galadriel simply would not say 'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' because she wouldn't find that form of expression natural. She
might say something like 'Oft has it been seen that the deeds of those deemed insignificant by the Wise have shaken the Towers of the Mighty' or some such (with abject apologies to Tolkien!!!) but she wouldn't talk about 'small persons changing the course of the future'.
(And I just know someone is going to pounce on all my grammatical
fox paws in that post
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