New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Of course, this was before he saw the movie(s??) but its interesting nonetheless. Odd to state that he believes the work to be "peculiarly unsuitable to transformation into visual dramatic form" but then gets annoyed at the movies not being up to his requirements - if they are unsuitable for transformation into visual dramatic form then I assume that he would have been dissatisfied with them whatever. Which means his real issue is with the fact they were made at all rather than with what Jackson made of them.

Sometimes I suspect he's the oldest Hipster in town - "Tolkien films are so over."

But, he probably didn't think they would make good films even before they were made, either because (like a lot of us) he didn't realise just what modern SFX are capable of or he had an extremely fixed and strong vision in his own mind. Likely the latter. And thirteen years later, he is probably negatively affected by all of the hype surrounding them and the court case.

Anyone going through a court case like that is bound to hate those films, it's not a case of someone saying they hate them but secretly quite enjoying them. CT hates them, full stop. However, given all the hype and marketing, even if there had been no court case I think he would still hate the films.

Some of the hype I dislike, but overall, I think it's unfair to blame Alan Lee and John Howe for the visual images they created. It's as beautiful and thoughtful a vision that could have been created, seeing as they chose the two very best Tolkien visual artists to lead it, and they are two artists who took immense care over what they made. Blame Jackson for some bad script choices, yes, but not the artists.

I come back again to what the journalist said, and I think he/she is likely unaware of the work of these two men and the respect they did and still do show to Tolkien's work as fans themselves. It's really not fair to blame them if marketeers used their imagery afterwards for some of the cheesier products - better this than something lurid by the Hildebrant Brothers

Rather quickly, however, the film's vision, conceived in New Zealand by well-known illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe, threatened to engulf the literary work. Their iconography inspires most of the video games and merchandising.