![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lord of the Rings
Jul. 26th, 2004 02:30 amOf course this is why I opened an LJ account - not really to post fic or even coherent thoughts, but idealets (as metalkatt likes to call them) and observations every so often. Somehow, that other stuff's kind of taken it over ... but I'm not complaining.
After many years and a couple of tries years ago, I'm finally reading the Lord of the Rings series. I started with The Hobbit and I can see why there's some people nursing the fantasy that Jackson is actually making a movie based on this - it would be spectacular to see, for the dragon and his piles of pilfered gold and riches, if nothing else. Also for Mirkwood and (dare I admit it?) the dark side of suspicious elves.
I am now a couple hundred pages into Fellowship of the Ring, and there are a lot of differences between it and the movie (of course, it's surprising to see how many similarities there are, too). I have a friend who read the books long ago before Jackson's movies were ever thought of, and she got up and walked out of the theater during the first one - that's how much she hated the movie adaptation. I've asked her why and she's always answered that if I don't know already, she can't explain it. I wonder if it's because the movie really does seem to depart quite a lot from the text; I wonder how many people who read the book long ago hate the movies for this reason. Movies do have to leave things out by necessity, or they'd be WAY too long, much too longer than these particular movies already are. The more I read, though, the more I realize how much work Jackson and the other screenwriters actually had to do to produce movies that captured the spirit of Tolkien's work, if not the exact letter - before, I admit I'd thought they simply adapted a lot and really didn't contribute anything original to the movies.
More later maybe, when I've read further.
After many years and a couple of tries years ago, I'm finally reading the Lord of the Rings series. I started with The Hobbit and I can see why there's some people nursing the fantasy that Jackson is actually making a movie based on this - it would be spectacular to see, for the dragon and his piles of pilfered gold and riches, if nothing else. Also for Mirkwood and (dare I admit it?) the dark side of suspicious elves.
I am now a couple hundred pages into Fellowship of the Ring, and there are a lot of differences between it and the movie (of course, it's surprising to see how many similarities there are, too). I have a friend who read the books long ago before Jackson's movies were ever thought of, and she got up and walked out of the theater during the first one - that's how much she hated the movie adaptation. I've asked her why and she's always answered that if I don't know already, she can't explain it. I wonder if it's because the movie really does seem to depart quite a lot from the text; I wonder how many people who read the book long ago hate the movies for this reason. Movies do have to leave things out by necessity, or they'd be WAY too long, much too longer than these particular movies already are. The more I read, though, the more I realize how much work Jackson and the other screenwriters actually had to do to produce movies that captured the spirit of Tolkien's work, if not the exact letter - before, I admit I'd thought they simply adapted a lot and really didn't contribute anything original to the movies.
More later maybe, when I've read further.
