Updated LOTR Nitpicker's Guide 223
The LOTR Nitpicker writes "A list of deviations to be found when comparing the text of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the translation of those texts to film as undertaken by Peter Jackson, et.al. updated to include deviations from the recently released extended edition DVD of The Return of the King. This story originally appeared on Slashdot back in January."
Nitpicking indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats wrong with just watching the film, and enjoying it...?
(Post not intentionally flame-bait and yes, I DO count myself as a fan).
Re:Nitpicking indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would like to make the following statement (Score:5, Insightful)
However...characterisations, plot development and pacing, and dialogue to a large extent are typical hollywood fare, losing alot of the subtley and nuance of the novels.
I couldn't understand why my parents and sister didn't enjoy the movies...they felt it was all noise and action, and a 'typical fantasy hackneyed plot'. I was incredulous, until I rewatched the movies while conciously ignoring what I knew from the novels...and then I realised they were right -- it WAS just another noisy, loud, action-packed, paper-thin plot turned into big-budget spectacle. All the subtley of the novels were not translated to screen. This is particularly apparent in ROTK which moves from action sequence to action sequence for 3+ hours...
I don't blame Jackson too much. At 12+ hours it already is perhaps the longest trilogy filmed by Hollywood. And yet there's so much lost in the film translation... I suspect only an extended 30-60 episode TV series, not worrying about ratings or demographics, could give the novels justice. And the chances of that happening are negligible.
Appreciate the movies for what Jackson contributed to LOTR lore, but recongise its still a minor effort in comparison to the brilliance of the source material.
I hate nitpicking (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just not new, the nature of the game (Score:3, Insightful)
The very process of encoding a story into words alters it. The job of the writer is to try and tell you what happened. Good writers bring you closer to all the truths of the story(as there are many).
Movies and books function differently. They have different constraints, and rules about pacing. You can far more easily lay a book down, and continue it later, than you can a movie. Thus, movies generally have to be watched in one shot, but you can only sit in one place for so long -- no matter how good the movie may seem, or how comfy the seats your ass will begin to hurt after a while. Most people can comfortably sit through an hour and a half, and most of them can make it to three hours.
Most people can't read any of the LotR books in three hours. Even condensing the more static descriptions to pictures, as the movies have the advantage of doing, three hours going to cut it. Certain parts must be taken out, in favor of capturing the overall essence of the story as told by the book. With only one change in the LotR series do I feel the essence was missed, but not it is not enough for me to throw a fit over it.
*honk*
Re:Nitpicking indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyways, its an _adaptation_, i.e. someone else's interpretation of the work. No one said they were making LotR: The Book: The Movie. Just like how the Superman movies and new books are retellings of a common story. This is not J.R.R. Tolkien's LotR. This is Peter Jackson's LotR. Its not WRONG because that's how he decided to tell it. With a story as powerful and as epic as the trilogy, it can stand to have multiple points of view.
Did you really want to see 50 characters that have two lines and never come back? Did you really want a musical? Did you really want them to chill out for a whole movie at the council of Rivendell?
Also, as a final point, you should think about how many people were exposed to the work through the movies, and then decided to read the books afterwards. If anything, the books delve into a much richer setting, and the reader gets a lot more out of the books after seeing the movie. If they were the exact same, there would be no reason to read the books, and THAT would be a true tradgedy.
I did see it... (Score:4, Insightful)
The multitude of endings would have worked great on DVD, but it was pure torture in the theater, at least for me and several of my friends.
Re:Nitpicking indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
STOP BELIEVING HOLLYWOOD'S BULLSHIT! (Score:5, Insightful)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really not!
He rewrote the screen adaptation many times, never finding a balance between his genius and the hollywood lowest-common-denominator dogma, and wrote one last draft that he believed was the best compromise.
He then died, and the studio REWROTE the script, AGAIN, probably to re-insert the stupid changes he fought against.
Do NOT let yourself be fooled when the vultures say he would have liked it. It is their contractual obligation to bullshit us and hype the project as much as they can. When they say it's going to be good, ask yourself: Is it in their financial best interest to lie to us about the quality of the product? Does this person stand to make MILLIONS from those lil' white lies?
Look at the EarthSea thing that happened recently, the producers made a comment that the author really wanted to say what their bastard monstrosity says, forgetting that she's alive and able to tell the world otherwise. She was able to defend herself and her original works from the slander it was subjected to, but Asimov can't, Adams can't, Roddenberry can't...
Look at the hype for Will Smith'S I, Robot! The fresh prince was actually saying in interviews that is was very faithfull to the spirit of Asimov's robot stories, and then he explains "everyone on earth trusts the robots, but my character is the only one that suspects the truth: they are up to no good", followed by rampaging hordes of killbots. That is the OPPOSITE of Asimov's stories! Only the USRobots people trusted their creation, the mundane people of earth didn't trust 'em one bit! They had laws forcing them to be manually operated, and to not be within a certain distance of schools, etc! And not only that, but the whole "robots are not to be trusted and will turn on their masters" is exactly the precise sort of stories that Asimov did NOT write. He made up the 3 laws to get away from that frankenstein crap, dammit!
Enjoying a movie for what it is is fine, really. But you can do it without the delusion that they are faithfull to the spirit of the original when they are virtually raping the author's corpse.
Here's a tip: If you hear of a movie being made that is based on a book, and you haven't yet read that book, wait until you've seen the movie, then read the book. The book is always better, so this way you get to like the movie, then love the book. If you read the book first, you like the book, then hate the movie.
Movie, like. Then: Book, love.
The other way only leads to disapointment.
Re:Nitpicking indeed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What is the purpose of this list? (Score:1, Insightful)
There was no way to make these movies without introducting many, many deviations, simplifications, deletions, and other changes.
We understood this going in, and all we asked was a movie which respected Tolkien's work and managed to convey his story and its message in an intelligent and lucid fashion.
Peter Jackson managed to pull off this difficult feat admirably. The overly obsessed geeks who don't grok this yet need to grow up. In twenty or thirty years they will look back on what they were and be astonished at how stupid and shallow and clueless they were.
Re:Do you really believe Adapation started there? (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, Hollywood does rip the heart out off good stories in order to fit within formulae all the time. I'm getting a good look at this first-hand, as I see my friend's first screenplay change under pressure from the studio he's working with; much that was interesting, challenging, and thought-provoking being replaced with formulaic tropes and reassuringly familiar elements.
The thing is, the public - the market - doesn't really want work that is challenging or thought-provoking. It wants to be told that its prejudices and beliefs and values are good and true, that the enemies are bad, that you are on the side of virtue, that history is made by A Few Good Folks Just Like You, and that the world is pretty much like you think it is, only fast-paced and exciting.
And the screenwriter friend in this case half recognizes that his original vision is being castrated, while at the same time being swept away in the excitement of actually breaking into Hollywood. The mainstream movie industry is often filled with clever people who spend much of their time trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance of creating entertainment for people who, frankly, are not as smart or sophisticated as they are. That's part of the SoCal ethic, really: act dumb, even if you're smart. It's an adaptation that comes of serving a market of people that you, secretly, have little but contempt for.