Is all the "magic" gone?

[Bombadil]

Peter Jackson said something along the lines of: I wasn't going for fantasy, I was going for history. I understand what he is talking about, but I think it was rather bold of him to say so. After all, LOTR is a fantasy.

The latter two films seemed to rely too much on misplaced pranks and out of place humour and special effects for them to suggest Middle-earth. They remained movies rather than a special place. imho

Very correct Bethberry. I was extremely upset that almost every line of Gimli's in TTT was for comic relief. A specially irritating line was something like:

He twitched because I have my axe embedded in his nervous system!

This line form TTT EE sickened me. NERVOUS SYSTEM!? COME ON! A huge part of taking away from the magic, i believe, was the lack of sinign. Except for a few songs by the hobbits, and Aragorn at the end, and Eowyn in TTT EE,( and possibly a few others that may have slipped my mind) the whole trilogy was missing the merry singing and folky spirit that was embodied in LOTR.

Hey dol, thats all i have to say
now i shall be on my way!

[Vanya]

Bombadil said:
"A huge part of taking away from the magic, i believe, was the lack of sinign. Except for a few songs by the hobbits, and Aragorn at the end, and Eowyn in TTT EE,( and possibly a few others that may have slipped my mind) the whole trilogy was missing the merry singing and folky spirit that was embodied in LOTR."


I agree with that. I missed party in ihe Hall of Fire, in Rivendel, and more elvish singing. It gives magic to ME, but in movies it's put far aside.

[Lhunardawen]

Originally posted by The Saucepan Man
So here, I think, is one area, where the film does have an added ability to convey the "magic" over the books. Although I still feel that the books win out because, even though we might not have our own score running in our head while we read, the sense conveyed by the score is still there, I think, while we read. For me, it was Shore's genius which actualised that sense in musical form.

I have agreed to this statement all along, but it is only until lately that I have realized how much the LotR soundtrack has affected me. I felt as if my standards of a good movie now include the music behind it, which normally I ignore. Because of the magic conveyed by the LotR soundtrack, I feel that every good movie's music should be as captivating as it is.

[Lalaith]

Regarding the singing: it's a tricky business to portray as I don't think we today are used to communicating through song the way our ancestors did.
Actually I thought Miranda Otto's singing in TTT EE *was* quite a magical moment, and one of the few times she seemed to be Tolkien's Eowyn. I wish they'd kept that in the movie edition.

[Kath]

But if they'd kept it in they would have had to put subtitles up and as there were already subtitles for the elvish conversations it would have been a little odd. If they had put it in without them it would have been good, though Eowyn never really seems upset by Theodreds death apart from when he actually dies.

[Laitoste]

For me, the magic simply did not ever exsist in the movies. After all, how can any movie ever hope to compare with what I saw the first time I read a book, any book? Even though I have a hard time imagining faces.

I think that they could have included some singing. Even nowadays, people still like to sing. I mean, lots of people sing around campfires when they're camping. The least they could've done was to NOT twist a hobbit walking song into something sad. I wouldn't like to walk to that, I can tell you!

The first movie really did come the closest to the books, as has been said before. The Two Towers was WAY off the mark, and I really did enjoy the Return of the King, and wept through the entire thing (when I wasn't telling my brother to stop whining about Irmahil~and he doesn't even LIKE LOTR!), but it didn't come anywhere near to the magic of the books.

In conclusion, I really do enjoy the movies, but they're just that: a movie. They are constructed so that everyone can understand in the shortest amount of time. The books can be more "confusing"~it's easier to go back and reread a few sentences than to rewind a movie. No one can reproduce what I have in my head, not even me.

[Lathriel]

For me the movies had magic, it was just different from the books. But I never tried to see the movies and books as one. I keep them seperate. I will be talking about just the movies or just about the books other than when I am comparing them of course.

I don't think the magic was gone in the movies, it justr felt different but usually that is what happens when a book is made into a movie. For me the feeling usually changes anyway.