COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[Lalaith]

I'm not a Tolkien fundamentalist, and as far as I'm concerned, there are certain things that work brilliantly in the films.
For example, Eowyn and Aragorn exchanging looks, with a fluttering banner of the white horse on the green field falling to the ground, combined with Shore's haunting Rohan theme.
That moment tells you a very great deal about Eowyn's concerns about the fate of the house of Eorl, about why she developed her "soldier's crush" on Aragorn, etc.
All *without* corny dialogue.

Then, there's scenes using Tolkien's language - Gandalf on the bridge, "Flame of Udun", for example, so memorably.

And moments that were not in the book at all but also worked, for me - Eowyn's lament over Theodred, for example. And, hell, yes, Arwen at the ford. It looked fabulous.


But I don't like film-makers assuming I'm stupid. I got that feeling a lot in the LotR trilogy....LOOK THIS IS HOW X IS FEELING RIGHT NOW all-spelt-out-in-your-face-dialogue. And, to get this thread back on topic, ahem. I also got it a lot in Compass. There, I felt the film-makers weren't even trying to talk to me, just show me a whole bunch of stuff, really fast so I wouldn't get bored. What with me being so stupid and having such a short attention span and all.

I didn't get that feeling in Stardust, in that movie it felt like the film-makers were treating you like an adult, and taking you into a private joke. But maybe I would have felt differently if I'd read the original Gaiman novel. I don't know.