Okay, so what do you think NOW?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Meriadoc1961

It has been a few years now since the release of all of the LOTR movies by Peter Jackson. We have all had time to reflect. Whay is your opinion of them now? Has it changed?

By the way, I am BACK!!!

I think one of them is on Channel Four this evening?

Anyway...

I've not been near the films for a while and I'm quite happy with that. I had grown bored with them. I feel myself slowly slipping back into my old ways with regard to Lord of the Rings, my old images and mental pictures slowly reasserting themselves from the leaf mould of an old mind.

To me, there was always a slightly unfashionable, musty, eccentric, hippyish quality to Tolkien's stories, like they're an old early 70s Genesis album replete with songs about giant hogweed that you might find at the back of the cupboard or an amiable old schoolteacher with a bushy beard and leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. I am getting back to that and it's marvellous. The films are too....MTV. I like my comforts and Lord of the Rings is one of them.

Not that I do not like them, no, they're marvellous entertainment, but they don't have the Tolkien Essence I seek. The films don't allow my mind to go off on mad tangents, savouring the smells of the Old Forest and picturing Frodo as he ought to be. I think one of the reasons I've grown to dislike Elves so much lately is the image of them in the films - all skinny minnie models with bleached hair like they've come from some medieval dressing up party on a Floridian beach.

The films are in one corner and the books in another, invested with long, beloved memories of The Times Before...