Dumbing it down

[davem]

This new piece on TORN seems quite relevant:

http://greenbooks.theonering.net/anw...es/030105.html

PJ and crew had it even tougher than directors who put on Hamlet, however, insofar as Shakespeare was writing a text that was meant for performance, when Tolkien most emphatically was not.

Perhaps this is the root of the problem - Tolkien wasn't writing a 'first draft screenplay' but Jackson & the writers seem to be under the impression that he was. LotR was never intended to be dramatised, so it wasn't written with that in mind. It seems most novels are now written with movies in mind & the film rights are negotiated along with the publication rights in many cases. Its seen as inevitable now that any successful novel will be filmed. Tolkien waswriting in a period when this wasn't the case.

I do wonder what LotR would be like if Tolkien had written it recently - would he have taken for granted that his book would be optioned & so have written it with that in mind & done some things differently? Its interesting how many pro movie contributors have argued that novels & films work differently & that a book cannot be translated to the screen exactly as it is. It strikes me that many current novels are written so as to be as easy as possible to adapt to other mediums.

I think this is perhaps what CT means by LotR being inherently unsuitable for dramatisation in visual form. It was never intended by the author that the story would have any other form. Hence the language (I don't just mean the dialogue)is central. Perhaps that's why I much prefer the radio series, because it not only retains most of the original dialogue but also place the narrator centre stage, & he uses Tolkien's original words. This means that the 'mood' of the tale, so much of which depends on the language & turns of phrase Tolkien used, is retained. In short, listening to the radio series feels like reading LotR, whereas watching the movies doesn't. The radio series is much more like a dramatised reading than a dramatiastion per se. Perhaps that's the only way it can work in terms of dramatisation..