Why all the anger?

[The Saucepan Man]

Interesting. Thanks for your comments.

It was inevitable that, to adapt the book to film, there would be changes, including changes in the characters, plotline etc. But I can understand that, when people who know and love the books see such changes as unnecessary, it can put them off. Personally, I think that most (although not all) of the changes can be justified on a film adaptation rationale. In particular, as far as character changes are concerned, they felt that they had to make changes in order to tie in with the themes that they wanted to emphasise and/or enhance the appeal of the characters for modern (non-book reading) film audiences. On the latter point, I have some sympathy for the view that perhaps they were under-estimating audiences and should have taken a punt with the characters as Tolkien wrote them. Although I can also understand why they didn't want to take a risk on such a big budget film.

It does seem to me that, to really enjoy the films (or at least not to feel anger, frustration etc at them), one has to either accept that they tell a slightly different story with slightly (or, in some cases quite markedly) different characters, like I do, or look for the book characters in the film characters, like Essex does. Even then, of course, there are minor points of irritation - for me these occur where the films are internally inconsistent or where a scene seems to me to be gratuitous. But then, few films, if any, can match the expectations of their audiences perfectly.

Originally Posted by alatar

i mean that as I had all of the dialogue from the books up in my head that when I saw the movies, I would either be (1) expecting specific dialogue or (2) expecting specific dialogue from a specific character. Constantly I would be thinking, "But he said that, not him..."

Yes but, like you, I gave up on this with TTT. I did feel uncomfortable with the changes when I first viewed it, but then it occurred to me that I should not view it as telling the book story, but as telling a slightly different story.

And PJ said time and again that he might change the story (just a little?!?), but the Tolkien world would look right.

But to my mind, the films did capture the look of the world (almost) perfectly.