The Good and The Bad - a Quick Look at the Movies

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

People do not like it when I say this, but its true just the same - the reason you do not see Book Boromir in the movies is because its the movie and not the book. I do not mean that in a wiseguy sort of way - its just the simple reality that a book and a movie are two different things with two different masters to serve.

Lets face it - the Dorothy Gale in the book WIZARD OF OZ was clearly not the same character in the movie. The character of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA was not the one his own brother knew from real life. They were not meant to be. They were characters which worked on the screen within the world they inhabited on the silver screen. The characters in the book- regardless if real or imaginary - do not have to have all the same qualities, characteristics, and components of what works in a book.

I think many Downers recognise that a comparison of apples and oranges has its problems, StW, and many of us here grant that a different medium will necessitate changes. However, surely there is more going on than merely this.

Why would Tolkien not make Boromir as glamorous as Aragorn? Why did PJ sex Boromir up? One hypothesis is that the two men had different visions of hero, adventure, moral failing.

Tolkien had a particular aesthetic about beauty. I think there's a letter where he even discusses the nature of beauty and evil and that in certain aesthetics, the two are never mixed. (I could be wrong about this, been awhile.) His beautiful characters (in LotR) are those who are not perfect but who are morally correct. Book Boromir is a character who has a clear moral failing--his pride, his ambition (for Gondor as well as for himself), his hubris. This is not to deny that he wins redemption. He clearly does. Nor is this to say he is a villain. Tolkien is too subtle for that.

Yet the subtly of Tolkien's vision is such that he does not want his readers to find those who clearly do have a moral failing too attractive. This is in sharp contrast to modern tastes, where beauty can be very twisted and where moral culpability tends to glamorised and treated with great compassion.

PJ glamorised Movie Boromir because that is the way of blockbusters and Hollywood. But I doubt Tolkien would have wanted Boromir to be glamorised. He would want readers to feel pity for Boromir, but not to be infatuated with him. he would have found Boro fangirls midguided if not ludicrous.

This is a question of the ethos of Middle-earth. PJ accomplished many things in translating LotR to the silver screen, but as he mixed Middle-earth with Star Wars he lost certain aspects of Tolkien's ethos. The question is, did he need to do that? And it is more than just the difference between apples and oranges.

So, would this hypothesis account for the differences between Book Boro and Movie Boro, more than simply the book/movie dichotomy?