Why Can't Movies Be Like Books?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Could you please provide some evidence of this "former greatness". As someone who has studied and even taught some history courses, I am unaware of such Golden Ages that make them markedly different than our own times. And please give me actual evidence of the real world and not some literary platitudes found in fiction books which idealize and romanticize a life which did not exist except for a very small number of lucky people.

And I do not have the slightest idea what that has to do with JRRT, Middle-earth, the Jackson adaptions of LOTR or anything else on topic. But perhaps you could relate it all for me.

What does this have to do with Tolkien? Everything! Whatever you or I believe, *Tolkien* was firmly convinced that human history is the 'long defeat.' He was defiantly heretical toward the Church of Progress, and was convinced that Man was in his own day becoming smaller and meaner, concerned with nothing beyond material comfort and convenience, and a fixation on 'democracy' as a surrogate for freedom. Although he was of course aware of the downside of the Middle Ages, he nonetheless believed that people of that day aspired to loftier things than their decadent descendants.

He was also aware, being something of an expert, that the average man in medieval England was a far cry from the filthy, famished, oppressed serf beloved of Victorian and then Marx-influenced historians, both of whom had a vested interest in creating a "look how far we've come" narrative. From Tolkien's viewpoint, 'progress' meant Birmingham's Satanic mills and the industrialised carnage of the Western Front and mushroom clouds over Japan. Accordingly, he tried (with indifferent success) to revive something of the old Northern Spirit he loved, and hoped would revive his dying England. I'm sure he wished he could blow Merry's Horn of Rohan and sweep Sarumanism away.

You may disagree with his opinions. But if one is to adapt *Tolkien*, whether in film or any other medium, then one should be attuned to what he was all about. The idea of ameliorating his message to appeal to 'modern' prejudice would be anathema to him.