Age change in Théoden

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

WCH - I asked you before, and asked davem also, but you failed to reply. So I ask again. Where can you cite an objective and authoritative source on film who will tell us that the standard to judge a films quality or success is its slavish adherence to the book from which it is adapted?

Honestly, I've yet to hear any pro-movie argument from you that didn't consist of 'They made a lot of money, a lot of people saw them & they won 3,759,3783,798,439 Oscars.'. The only criteria for 'success' you admit is numbers.

There is another (&, some of us would argue, far more important) criteria - & that is faithfulness to the source. These movies are not at all faithful to Tolkien's original work. They cannot be called 'adaptations' - & this is where your argument crashes & burns: the changes were not made out of necessity because of the difference between book & film. They were made purely & simply (whatever nonsense the screenwriters spout) because the writers thought they could improve on the original. What they did was take whatever bits they liked from Tolkien, changed whatever they didn't like - for no other reason than they didn't like it. Unfortunately, the main reason for this is that they didn't actually understand the book.

That is how they fail - as adaptations of Tolkien's work.