Think about it. Please.

[Sauron the White]

from the link privided by Estelyn

This view was succinctly expressed by the commentator Mark Lawson in his column for The Guardian newspaper. Writing of negative responses to The Fellowship of the Ring, he expressed the view that 'This hostility to interpretation is anti-cinematic. The point of movies is to rip up the words and reassemble them as pictures which may - which should - differ in key details.' It has to be said that - at least in a general sense - he is absolutely right about this.

I agree with the statement from Mr. Lawson. That should surprise nobody here. Many here will attempt to take the air out of such a charge claiming that they love movies and are not anti-cinematic but at the same time they then take the approach often expressed here - and most lately by WCHicklin as follows

I realize you are one of those who want to detach film adaptations from the originals, to stand completely on their own (although there are elements where the films fail by themselves without external reference); but for me they always were and are a derivative extension of the books, and cannot be (in my mind) separated from them any more than a finger from a hand.

I am afraid that this is like being a little bit pregnant or partly dead. It either is or it is not. Either you can separate the two and treat them differently or you cannot. To attempt to apply the rules, characteristics, and qualities of a book to the cinema - something that is clearly not a book - is indeed anti-cinematic because it denies the essence of what that medium is. I am not saying this is a prejudice or bias or something evil, merely a state of mind that dominates the persons opinions.

Consider for a moment how, say, Kurosawa would have done it! Or John Ford. Or even Coppola Or or or.

Regarding Kurosawa - I have seen maybe eight or ten films of his and am not an expert so I cannot specualte upon this. As for John Ford, I think I have seen nearly all of his talkies, some of his silents, and have read at least four books on his career. Perhaps you know more about John Ford and film than I do but I have absolutely no idea under the stars how he would have handled LOTR. None at all. Do you? And what would you base it on.

Same with Coppola.

And what about William Wyler? D.W. Griffith? Fritz Lang? Frank Capra? Victor Fleming? David Lean? Charles Chaplin? George Cukor? Sidney Lumet? Mike Nichols? Walter Hill? Clint Eastwood?

You might as well print the directory to the Directors Guild and start speculating.

Such a statement might provoke a far different interesting discussion but is meaningless as far as shedding any light on the discussion at hand.

The most important line in the article from the Encyclopedia of Arda is the following

From viewers who have never read the original books, the response seems to be almost universally positive.

If JRRT sold 40 to 45 million books before the films came out, that represents one of ten who bought tickets to the films. Thats a ratio of nine out of ten who probably saw the films cold without reading the books. "Almost universally positive" for 9 out of 10 viewers is about as good as it is ever gets.

[Child of the 7th Age]

If JRRT sold 40 to 45 million books before the films came out, that represents one of ten who bought tickets to the films. Thats a ratio of nine out of ten who probably saw the films cold without reading the books. "Almost universally positive" for 9 out of 10 viewers is about as good as it is ever gets.

Interesting statistics, but another question concerning numbers intrigues me even more. Of those 9 viewers who were not previously familiar with the books, how many then went on to purchase and read Lord of the Rings and/or others of Tolkien's works? How many of those filmgoers just read the work, perhaps not even finishing it, and tossed it to the side? How many, in contrast, gave the book a serious read and then went on to study other works by Tolkien, perhaps joining Mythopoeia, soberly posting on message boards like these, even deciding to go back to the "sources" that inspired Tolkien, in effect becoming what even Davem and Mister Hickli would call a "serious" reader of the books.

I really don't care how much money the movies made. Sometimes I get tired of hearing all the pros and cons of books versus films and the hot air it engenders, especially since I am somewhere in the middle of that divide. But I would love to understand the impact the films had (and will have) in terms of leading people back to the books. Whether we like the films or detest them, how do we judge that influence in terms of the future? Could tomorrow's Flieger or Shippey or even the next medievalist who comes out with an amazing idea be someone who first got hooked on Tolkien because they sat in a theater and watched PJ's films? Perhaps such questions are totally irrelevant in judging the ultimate impact of the movies. But as someone who's been a Tolkien "bookie" for over forty years, and has seen a lot of ups and downs in the group of people who read the books, I think what has happened these past few years needs to be taken into account when judging exactly what PJ's "legacy" might be in terms of the Tolkien community.

[Sauron the White]

7th Age ..... You bring up an excellent point about the films bringing in new readers. Based on the sales figures for the four year period when the films were hot, it look like the number of copies of LOTR that were sold were four to five fold over the previous four years when there were no films around. That is indeed a whole slew of new readers.

I have a six year old grandson who watches these films with me whenever he comes over for weekends. He loves them and now asks more questions about them and the characters than can just be answered in the films. He is learning how to read and his main goal in that is to read the LOTR. He has already told me "Papa, the books are always better". Where he got that I have no idea. So maybe he will be in the next wave of JRRT academics twenty or thirty years from now.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I am afraid that this is like being a little bit pregnant or partly dead. It either is or it is not. Either you can separate the two and treat them differently or you cannot.

A false dichotomy. Palpably false in this case since there is enormous commonality between the two: to wit, the story. To the extent there is commonality, they can be compared.

To attempt to apply the rules, characteristics, and qualities of a book to the cinema - something that is clearly not a book - is indeed anti-cinematic because it denies the essence of what that medium is.

Not so. Your rule applies only to those qualities of film which are different from prose. But so long as both are narrative media there is considerable overlap. The distinction is this: film uses different techiniques, for example, to establish a character than prose fiction does. But nothing about the cinematic art mandates that the character so established be a different character! Similarly, nothing about the different means of telling a story necessitates telling a different story.

[Sauron the White]

WCH - its been a long time since I took afreshman course in Logic and learned all those names like Appeal to Authority, and False Dichotomy and all the other stuff that nobody in the real world uses outside of professors and attorneys. Thank you for reminding me that such arcane knowledge still exists.

Yeah and oranges and orange juice have a lot of overlap also. But they are not the same thing. They do not have the same qualities. The norms that you apply to judge one do not apply to the other. And there are hundreds of more examples just like that.

It is what it is. And it is not what it is not.

You simply do not want to stop comparing the books to the movies and use the criteria of what makes the books great in doing it.

Your complaint about the films should be directed to the afterlife in care of JRRT himself. None of this would come up and be discussed had he not sold those rights of his own free will and completely and totally gave up any involvement, input or control of any kind. If Peter Jackson desecrated the book LOTR then it was JRRT that gave him all the ungodly weapons to perform that unholy function.

Different scenes - different characters - a change of ones character - change in plot - changes in narrative - changes in anything you want to mention.... it was all given to New Line by JRRT himself.

Reminds me of what my father used to tell me when I blamed others for my troubles. "When you point the finger of blame at sombody else, there are three of your own fingers pointing right back at you. "

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Yeah and oranges and orange juice have a lot of overlap also. But they are not the same thing.

I still expect my orange juice to taste like it came from an orange, not from a grapefruit.

[Sauron the White]

If you buy an award winning orange juice that is #1 in the marketplace but you do not like the taste .... I wonder where the problem really lies?