New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Elemmakil]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I think that it would not work this way either. I have not seen GOT, but I'd imagine it works well, because there is so much detail on everyday details, if you know what I mean. Like, in LOTR, you'd hardly expect to read about a trip to the privy because of an indigestion from last night's feast. And there is less detail in general - whereas GOT would describe a fight with all the moves and details and gore, LOTR would read "they fought and X won". The scope of LOTR makes it difficult to fit into x amount of hours, but its lack of details in the writing style makes it difficult to make a series without making it profane and ruined.

So I think that LOTR is, indeed, "on principle unsuited to transform into a visual form" as a whole. Parts have been done well in the movies, and there are many beautiful drawings, but I think you just can't reenact it from cover to cover and get it right. It's just like that. For lack of a better description - on principle.

Good point, though it is often PJ's thoughtless additions that create the bulk of the problems. I have oft times felt that if I could simply take PJs movies, edit out the bad additions (which, I think could actually be done in some cases without necessarily doing harm to the overall narrative) the whole could be significantly improved. Some things would need to be refilmed to fix, however, so that couldn't be done. For example, one could probably delete the whole bit about Aragorn falling off the cliff and "dying" in TT and it would hardly be missed, though the movie would then cleave that much more closely to the books. Ditto for some elements in Moria, like the whole bit about collapsing staircases over vast chasms. Even muting bits of annoying dialogue (such as the Ringwraith's use of "she-elf", as though they were descended from Tarzan) would help some scenes.

Mostly just an interesting thought experiment, but something I wish I could at least try and see what happens.

Another, related, thought experiment of mine would be to take Bakshi's animated and add or reshoot elements of that, along with dialogue, and make it truer to the books. Curiously, that probably *could* be done (from a technical perspective - I'm not going to touch the legal aspects, of course) using modern computer graphic software. One could even give Aragorn trousers, and get rid of Boromir's annoying horned helmet! Perhaps even have Gandalf say "Saruman!" instead of "Aruman!" By the by, I am semi serious about this; if anyone knows how one could accomplish the above (software required, rotoscoping, etc.) I would appreciate the insight.