Re: Gandalf falling scene, pro/con

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Calvin Rice) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steve Fine) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > JRRT was hardly a master at writing. All scholars agree that many
> > "rules" of storytelling were broken by Tolkien and that the books have
> > major flaws. 
> 
> ALL scholars?  You mean the ones you heard on the DVD supplements for
> The Two Towers EE.  Hardly an objective group.  Tolkien's breaking of 
> 'rules' in most cases made his stories greater, and at least one of the
> people you heard on the DVDs, Tom Shippey, did not mean that the unusual
> things Tolkien did were unsuccessful.  He was marveling at how effective
> Tolkien's strange methods were.  Shippey's current book is 'J.R.R. Tolkien, 
> Author of the Century', by the way.
> 
> Possibly the very best chapter in The Lord of the Rings is The Council of
> Elrond.  One of Jackson's minions on the DVDs said she would have taken
> a 'blue pencil' to that chapter if she was publishing the books.  That's
> the most evil and self-serving thing I've ever heard from the PJ crew.
> They can rationalize changing the story for the movie all they like, but
> when they start bad-mouthing the best things about the books, as books,
> they show they are not fit to be adapting them for the screen. 
> 
> > ... Many of the changes to the source material have been great
> > movie making decisions (i.e., the elimination of Tom Bombadil, the
> > addition of complexity to Faramir) 
> 
> Both highly debatable, but valid to discuss.
> 
> > and improvements of certain weaknesses within Tolkien.
> 
> No way, José.
> 
> > ...
> > We should all thank our lucky stars that a Tolkien lover was the
> > center of this production. 
> 
> Not a Tolkien lover, going by the evidence of what he has done.  Maybe
> a Tolkien liker.
> 

How can you measure that?

> > This could have been much worse.
> 
> At least we can agree on that.  

Yeah imagine George Lucas making the Trilogy.  I'm sure he wouldn't
have watered down the story at all.  Or perhaps the great Stanley
Kubrick.  I'm sure his ego wouldn't have interfered with the story
either.   Pretty much any motion picture director that would take on a
project of that immensity is going to have a large ego, don't you
think?   So far the only comparision we really have is Ralph Bakshi's
version.  I'm not sure how well most book to movie adaptation go in
general.

> The movies are pretty good in themselves,
> though they fail to do as well by Tolkien as they could have and should have.
> But they could have been much worse.  They could have done things like
> leave out Tom Bombadil, trivialize the Council of Elrond, give Saruman
> power over the weather, take away the impact of the Palantir, leave out
> Radagast, leave out 'The Scouring of the Shire', leave out Frodo's vision
> of Middle-earth on Amon Hen, add a non-existent Warg attack, make it
> appear that Aragorn dies, until he returns alive, make the Ents foolish 
> instead of wise, make Gimli an object of ridicule, make Faramir unsure of
> himself, ...  Oh, I forgot, the movies do all those things.
> 

It's a glass half-full/half-empty argument.  Let's make a list of all
that he did well moving the story from print to film.  This is a 9-11
hour movie after all.   So?  Anything?   Your criticism's are only
your views based on what you felt was important based on your reading
experience.  For everyone who would agree with you about Gimli being a
butt of jokes, there were just as many who didn't miss Tom Bombadil.  
If Jackson's changes are too much for you to enjoy the film (and you
certainly aren't alone there), then in some ways that's unfortunate
for you.  It is a done deal at this point.

> -cr
> 
> (What are you going to do now, start yet another new thread?)