Will The Hobbit do damage to the books?

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Ulvenok

Yes movies inspired by books that one can easily compare to religious books, there is at least to me no difference between religion and mythology. Politics, religion and mythology are interwoven today.

You mean politics, religion, mythology and fantasy novels, surely?

You're crazy, but that is ok. People like you however make me not want to step out of the closet so to speak, I'm not like that at all. I don't have glasses or is fat either btw.

Me neither! Let us both rejoice! Down with the overweight and bespectacled!

It's ok, I don't judge or really care but there are others who do...

Interesting. I'd have thought being ashamed to let anyone even know you visit a forum some members of which collect "toys and stuff" counts as "really caring", alright.

[Zigûr]

While I believe that the films would be far more dramatically effective if they hewed closer to the original texts I don't think that they're especially damaging in and of themselves. I think the main danger they pose is the potential to trivialise discourse on the subject of Professor Tolkien's work by having this Hollywood filter layered over the top. I don't mean to say that's a fact, just something I think might be a risk. The films are, in my view at least, rather shallow (thematically) compared to the source material and I am occasionally concerned about their presence in culture getting in the way of a deeper appreciation of Professor Tolkien's work, not in isolation necessarily but at least in terms of its own merits.
That being said I believe Professor Tolkien might possibly have been more agreeable to a film adaptation if in his time there had been the kind of modern techniques and technology which can bring Faerie to life on the screen today. His main objection seems to me to have been this attitude of changing things for no particular reason.
I suppose that's why I find An Unexpected Journey to be a good deal more disingenuous as an adaptation than the films of The Lord of the Rings: I can just imagine someone watching that film, deciding to read the book and being bewildered by how brief and utterly different in tone it is to the adaptation. The films of the LR make major changes in terms of plot and characterisation but the atmosphere and pacing are more comparable (in The Fellowship of the Ring at least). Actually maybe Fellowship is the only good example...

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Ulvenok

It's ok, I don't judge or really care but there are others who do...

I don't quite know how to break this to you, but calling people or the activities they engage in 'pathetic' is pretty much the definition of judging them.

Originally Posted by Rhod the Red

Film making in his time was very crude. Translating The Lord of the Rings was long a taboo because of the sheer scale and technical incapacity.

He dismissed even cartoon attempts because not everything could be done.

I've got to disagree with you on two counts here. First, I wouldn't say that film making in Tolkien's time was crude. 'In Tolkien's time' would be up to 1973, so already you've got brilliant special effects pictures like 2001. But since the discussion is about the Zimmerman script, let's limit ourselves to pre-1958; still we're in a period where many cinematic masterpieces had been, or were being, made. Even before The Hobbit was written, you have pictures like King Kong that used special effects to depict monsters and fantastical creatures. Film-making was far from a primitive thing when Tolkien wrote his critique of the script; it was already a highly developed art form and a huge industry.

Second, I don't think it's correct to say that Tolkien dismissed attempts to film his work because he thought they could not be achieved technically. It wasn't that he didn't think the visual effects would be convincing; it was that he objected to the proposed changes to plot and character. None of the concerns that he mentioned, as far as I can recall, had anything to do with the technical aspects of film-making. So I can't imagine that the superior technology available today would have had any effect whatsoever on his opinions regarding cinematic adaptation.

[Morsul the Dark]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Second, I don't think it's correct to say that Tolkien dismissed attempts to film his work because he thought they could not be achieved technically. It wasn't that he didn't think the visual effects would be convincing; it was that he objected to the proposed changes to plot and character. None of the concerns that he mentioned, as far as I can recall, had anything to do with the technical aspects of film-making. So I can't imagine that the superior technology available today would have had any effect whatsoever on his opinions regarding cinematic adaptation.

Agreed in fact it could be argued with available technology used as a crutch the writing would be even further off(I don't know what the zimmerman script looked like so I'm not positive on this.