An Unexpected Journey, or the morning after

[William Cloud Hicklin]

This is what irks me about these films. They could do something a bit different by actually following what Professor Tolkien wrote but they insist on following Hollywood clichés which render the material stale and inconsequential. Some argue that these clichés are necessary for adapting the stories as mainstream cinema. If this is true, which I suppose it is, then I think that in many ways these films shouldn't really be made at all, because I really think that so many of the sensibilities of modern Hollywood are more or less entirely incompatible with so much of the thematic content (and especially a lot of the subtleties) which Professor Tolkien's work tries to express that the adaptation comes across as entirely shallow compared to its source material. I think this needn't be the case but when they're forced by commercial concerns then, from artistic grounds, what's the point? It's really adaptations like these which have caused me to doubt the artistic value of cinematic adaptation in general.

Hear, hear!