Jackson's Dwarves are smarter Dwarves
Steuard Jensen
videos for the new /Hobbit/ movie. One topic mentioned was that they
have gone to a lot of trouble to give the various Dwarves distinct
fighting styles. That seems sensible to me: one of the biggest
challenges in filming /The Hobbit/ is that the 13 Dwarves can seem
pretty redundant at times.[1] (They've also given them all very
distinct looks, perhaps most notably in beard styles.)
But to illustrate the different fighting styles, they showed the
filming of a big green-screen battle sequence labeled "Trollshaws". A
whole bunch of Dwarves charged in at once and started attacking big
punching bag things that I assume were standing in for the Trolls. My
immediate reaction was, "Hey, wait, that's not right! Awwww, as
usual, Jackson has warped the book to create yet another big battle
scene." I rolled my eyes, and started to worry about just how many
other unnecessary fight scenes he was going to cram in.
But then I paused and thought about it for a minute. In the book, the
scene with the Dwarves getting bagged by the Trolls is utterly
ridiculous. I mean, sure, if Bilbo disappears they could send a single
Dwarf to look for him. But the thought that the whole troop of them
would walk up one at a time is quite simply impossible to believe.
Thorin and Co. weren't always brilliant, but they weren't suicidal!
After Bilbo and one Dwarf failed to report back, they should have
known something was wrong and taken advantage of their numbers. (I
could imagine sending one, then two or three, but after that the rest
shouldn't have split up for any reason.)
Reading the book, I suspect that it's possible to overlook the
insanity of what's being described just because it's brushed over
fairly quickly in the text. But I don't think it would work on film at
all. So despite the fact that it plays right into some of my biggest
complaints about Jackson's style, I think I support what this change
appears to be. (In fact, if I were a historian in Middle-earth, I'd
probably hypothesize that something of the sort was what really
happened, and chalk up the story in the book to Bilbo trying to write
a better story.)
What do the rest of you think?
Steuard Jensen
P.S. Just under three weeks ago, my wife and I had a wonderful little
daughter. I'm not sharing too many details in fully public places like
this one, but we're delighted (if sleep deprived).
[1] Having just reread /The Hobbit/ recently, I might suggest the
following "distinct Dwarves":
{Thorin}: leader,
{Bombur}: fat,
{Balin}: lookout,
{Fili, Kili}: young,
{Oin, Gloin}: tinderboxes,
{Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Dori, Nori, Ori}: filler??
It's quite possible that I've neglected another notable distinction,
but I doubt that I've missed two. (I'm not counting "different musical
instruments" as significant, for the record, nor am I considering
differences that aren't mentioned until LotR.)
Glenn Holliday
> (In fact, if I were a historian in Middle-earth, I'd
> probably hypothesize that something of the sort was what really
> happened, and chalk up the story in the book to Bilbo trying to write
> a better story.)
Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
to Beorn. It comes across as trying to use the same gag a
second time, and lessens the ability of the sequence with Beorn
to work or to be funny. It's probably a good choice to approach
the trolls more realistically, and keep the gag for Beorn.
--
Glenn Holliday holl...@acm.org
Glenn Holliday
> P.S. Just under three weeks ago, my wife and I had a wonderful little
> daughter. I'm not sharing too many details in fully public places like
> this one, but we're delighted (if sleep deprived).
Congratulations. May the Jensenlings live long and prosper.
--
Glenn Holliday holl...@acm.org
Paul S. Person
<ste...@slimy.com> wrote:
>A few days ago, I watched one of the behind the scenes production
>videos for the new /Hobbit/ movie. One topic mentioned was that they
>have gone to a lot of trouble to give the various Dwarves distinct
>fighting styles. That seems sensible to me: one of the biggest
>challenges in filming /The Hobbit/ is that the 13 Dwarves can seem
>pretty redundant at times.[1] (They've also given them all very
>distinct looks, perhaps most notably in beard styles.)
I'm beginning to wonder if this is really on topic.
Yes, JRRT's works are on topic. All of them.
Yes, adaptations of JRRT's works are on topic.
But is this an adaptation? Or more of a deliberate attempt to
completely rewrite the story?
>But to illustrate the different fighting styles, they showed the
>filming of a big green-screen battle sequence labeled "Trollshaws". A
>whole bunch of Dwarves charged in at once and started attacking big
>punching bag things that I assume were standing in for the Trolls. My
>immediate reaction was, "Hey, wait, that's not right! Awwww, as
>usual, Jackson has warped the book to create yet another big battle
>scene." I rolled my eyes, and started to worry about just how many
>other unnecessary fight scenes he was going to cram in.
There is no point to worrying about an atrocity that cannot be
prevented by anything short of a total economic meltdown. And who
would want that just to stop production of a movie?
>But then I paused and thought about it for a minute. In the book, the
>scene with the Dwarves getting bagged by the Trolls is utterly
>ridiculous. I mean, sure, if Bilbo disappears they could send a single
>Dwarf to look for him. But the thought that the whole troop of them
>would walk up one at a time is quite simply impossible to believe.
>Thorin and Co. weren't always brilliant, but they weren't suicidal!
>After Bilbo and one Dwarf failed to report back, they should have
>known something was wrong and taken advantage of their numbers. (I
>could imagine sending one, then two or three, but after that the rest
>shouldn't have split up for any reason.)
I think the Dwarves behaved /exactly/ as JRRT wanted them to.
If they behaved like idiots, it is because they /were/ idiots. At
least at that point in the book.
Perhaps they underwent significant character development while
imprisoned by the Wood Elves. Or something.
>Reading the book, I suspect that it's possible to overlook the
>insanity of what's being described just because it's brushed over
>fairly quickly in the text. But I don't think it would work on film at
>all. So despite the fact that it plays right into some of my biggest
>complaints about Jackson's style, I think I support what this change
>appears to be. (In fact, if I were a historian in Middle-earth, I'd
>probably hypothesize that something of the sort was what really
>happened, and chalk up the story in the book to Bilbo trying to write
>a better story.)
Or perhaps he couldn't see what was happening very well -- wasn't he
in a sack by that time himself?
<snippo, and congratulations>
>[1] Having just reread /The Hobbit/ recently, I might suggest the
>following "distinct Dwarves":
>
>{Thorin}: leader,
>{Bombur}: fat,
>{Balin}: lookout,
>{Fili, Kili}: young,
>{Oin, Gloin}: tinderboxes,
>{Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Dori, Nori, Ori}: filler??
>
>It's quite possible that I've neglected another notable distinction,
>but I doubt that I've missed two. (I'm not counting "different musical
>instruments" as significant, for the record, nor am I considering
>differences that aren't mentioned until LotR.)
The Rankin-Bass (I hope I got that right) version also used garment
and (IIRC) beard colors. The sets of brothers tended to look more like
each other than like the other Dwarves, to the point where some looked
like twins (which they may have been, in the book, I don't recall).
The good news here is that we will actually /see/ 12 Dwarves. Since
"12 Dwarves" isn't an Action Sequence, it is, of course, of secondary
importance to PJ.
--
"'If God foreknew that this would happen,
it will happen.'"
Noel Q. von Schneiffel
wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:25:19 +0000 (UTC), Steuard Jensen
>
>
> >But to illustrate the different fighting styles, they showed the
> >filming of a big green-screen battle sequence labeled "Trollshaws". A
> >whole bunch of Dwarves charged in at once and started attacking big
> >punching bag things that I assume were standing in for the Trolls. My
> >immediate reaction was, "Hey, wait, that's not right! Awwww, as
> >usual, Jackson has warped the book to create yet another big battle
> >scene." I rolled my eyes, and started to worry about just how many
> >other unnecessary fight scenes he was going to cram in.
>
> There is no point to worrying about an atrocity that cannot be
> prevented by anything short of a total economic meltdown. And who
> would want that just to stop production of a movie?
(raises a finger)
Me!
Would that not be a small price to pay for preventing such a horrible
sin? What are "economy" and worldly possessions good for anyway? What
counts in the end is how much you respected Tolkien and lived
according to his teachings.
I *am* working on that meltdown, by the way. John Boehner is an actor
whom I hired to sabotage the US debt talks. He was on PJ's wish list
to play Denethor, but got dumped in the last possible moment for
looking too sane, which is why he burns with such a hate against
Jackson that he will do anything to scuttle the economy and hence the
film's completion. I find him useful.
Noel
tenworld
wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:25:19 +0000 (UTC), Steuard Jensen
>
> >A few days ago, I watched one of the behind the scenes production
> >videos for the new /Hobbit/ movie. One topic mentioned was that they
> >have gone to a lot of trouble to give the various Dwarves distinct
> >fighting styles. That seems sensible to me: one of the biggest
> >challenges in filming /The Hobbit/ is that the 13 Dwarves can seem
> >pretty redundant at times.[1] (They've also given them all very
> >distinct looks, perhaps most notably in beard styles.)
>
> I'm beginning to wonder if this is really on topic.
>
> Yes, JRRT's works are on topic. All of them.
>
> Yes, adaptations of JRRT's works are on topic.
>
> But is this an adaptation? Or more of a deliberate attempt to
> completely rewrite the story?
>
NY Teacher
"Glenn Holliday" wrote in message news:j0l9pb$8k4$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
--
Glenn Holliday holl...@acm.org
Considering that Gandalf introduced the dwarves one or two at a time to
Bilbo at the start of the book, the gag is a bit overdone by the end.
NYT
Stan Brown
> Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
> Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
> to Beorn. It comes across as trying to use the same gag a
> second time, and lessens the ability of the sequence with Beorn
> to work or to be funny. It's probably a good choice to approach
> the trolls more realistically, and keep the gag for Beorn.
Just another data point: I never connected the two till you mentioned
it.
I'm pretty sure there's some classic work of literature or mythology
that depends on he same procedure Gandalf used to introduce the
dwarves to Bjorn, but I can't remember it. Does anyone know?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://mysite.verizon.net/aznirb/mtr/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
Paul S. Person
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:11:32 -0400, NY Teacher wrote:
>> Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
>> Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
>> to Beorn. It comes across as trying to use the same gag a
>> second time, and lessens the ability of the sequence with Beorn
>> to work or to be funny. It's probably a good choice to approach
>> the trolls more realistically, and keep the gag for Beorn.
>
>Just another data point: I never connected the two till you mentioned
>it.
>
>I'm pretty sure there's some classic work of literature or mythology
>that depends on he same procedure Gandalf used to introduce the
>dwarves to Bjorn, but I can't remember it. Does anyone know?
A brief search of /The History of The Hobbit/ didn't turn up anything
relevant, although consideration of Beorn himself produces a
discussion of Bothvar Bjarki, just as Beorn's Hall produces a
reference to the hall in /Beowulf/.
This doesn't mean it isn't in there, somewhere; just that I didn't
find anything.
Glenn Holliday
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:11:32 -0400, NY Teacher wrote:
>> Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
>> Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
>> to Beorn.
>
> it.
>
> I'm pretty sure there's some classic work of literature or mythology
> that depends on he same procedure Gandalf used to introduce the
> dwarves to Bjorn, but I can't remember it. Does anyone know?
I'd have to spend some time looking for an example, but thinking
about it again, it seems like the sort of structure you'd see in
a fairy tale. As NYT points out, Tolkien actually uses the technique
three times. I suspect he is intentionally using it as he does
other techniques that make The Hobbit more fairy-tale-ish than
Tolkien's more mythic-styled works.
--
Glenn Holliday holl...@acm.org
Ronald O. Christian
>What do the rest of you think?
Well, I think the purists will be out for your blood. Fortunately,
cuddling the original novels doesn't lead to any great grappling
strength, so you're probably going to be ok.
Ron
-
2003 FLHTCUI "Noisy Glide"
http://www.christianfamilywebsite.com
http://www.ronaldchristian.com
Clams Canino
"Ronald O. Christian" <ro...@europa.com> wrote in message news:mh9737l3mn6hait1p...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:25:19 +0000 (UTC), Steuard Jensen
> <ste...@slimy.com> wrote:
> >What do the rest of you think?
>
> Well, I think the purists will be out for your blood. Fortunately,
> cuddling the original novels doesn't lead to any great grappling
> strength, so you're probably going to be ok.
Try bench lifting the Red Book of Westmarch before you make such a broad statement!
But seriously, it will come down to a discussion of "changes".
ie what changes were "tolerable" and what was "unforgivable".
I plan to read the hobbit directly before attending the film.
This, to insure that my overall enjoyment of the film is diminished by my keen awareness of the alterations. :)
-W
Steve Hayes
When Gandalf used it, it worked.
When the dwarves tried it on their own, it didn't.
Gandalf used used it:
1. to soften up Bilbo
2. to soften up Beorn
to get them to do something they might otherwise have resisted.
The dwarves were not trying to soften up the trolls.
It wasn't a matter of smarter dwarves, it was a smarter hobbit.
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
Steve Morrison
> I'm pretty sure there's some classic work of literature or mythology
> that depends on he same procedure Gandalf used to introduce the
> dwarves to Bjorn, but I can't remember it. Does anyone know?
The closest thing I can think of is "The Three Billy Goats Gruff";
but that's not very close at all. Neither /The Annotated Hobbit/
nor /The History of The Hobbit/ offers any suggestions, either.
Still, I can't quite shake the feeling that these scenes must have
had some kind of antecedent somewhere.
Troels Forchhammer
"NY Teacher" <nyte...@upstate.ny> spoke these staves:
>
> "Glenn Holliday" wrote in message
> news:j0l9pb$8k4$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>>
>> On 7/25/2011 9:25 PM, Steuard Jensen wrote:
>>>
>>> insanity of what's being described just because it's brushed
>>> over fairly quickly in the text.
Yes. The first two, perhaps -- after all it was that useless Hobbit
they had sent out at first, and he probably just got stuck with his
foot in a rabbit-hole and fainted, but after the first couple of
/Dwarves/ didn't return, they should have been aware that something was
amiss and have come up as a group.
However, this scene fits well with the narrative style of Tolkien's
children's story: there is a sense of nonsensical lightheartedness to
the story (Dwarven beard-colours, the instruments the Dwarves
apparently carried with them to Bag End, the speaking troll-purse, the
frolicsome Elves etc. etc.) that is, to me, a part of the book's charm,
even if it is also part of what makes the book so difficult to really
reconcile with /LotR/ and /Silm/.
>>> But I don't think it would work on film at all.
Well, I'm not sure it would worse than in the book, but then I am
probably not the right person to say -- I am no good at visual story-
telling: for me the enchantment is in the words themselves, not in any
images that they may conjure in the minds of others.
>>> So despite the fact that it plays right into some of my biggest
>>> complaints about Jackson's style, I think I support what this
>>> change appears to be.
I think -- also based on what little I have seen of the pictures that
have been released -- that Jackson is going to make at least one
fundamental change: his film is /not/ going to be a children's story,
much less a children's story with the kind of light-hearted and
frolicsome frivolity that characterizes Tolkien's story. This, I think,
is unavoidable, since the film is inevitably going to be marketed as a
prequel to his Rings trilogy, and so will (according to conventional
market wisdom) have to be in the same narrative style.
>>> (In fact, if I were a historian in Middle-earth, I'd probably
>>> hypothesize that something of the sort was what really
>>> happened, and chalk up the story in the book to Bilbo trying
>>> to write a better story.)
>>
>> Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
>> Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
>> to Beorn. It comes across as trying to use the same gag a
>> second time, and lessens the ability of the sequence with Beorn
>> to work or to be funny. It's probably a good choice to approach
>> the trolls more realistically, and keep the gag for Beorn.
>
> Considering that Gandalf introduced the dwarves one or two at a
> time to Bilbo at the start of the book, the gag is a bit overdone
> by the end.
Which of course makes it a kind of running joke ;-)
Why not go the other way, and introduce a couple of additional scenes
of this type -- make this the (rather ludicrous) standard tactics of
the Dwarves or something. Imagine the Dwarves being introduced to
Elrond in this way -- and make it the way they get caught by the wood-
elves :-D
. . . or perhaps not ;-)
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
- Piet Hein, /Wide Road/
Stan Brown
Me to. I remember reading the Beorn chapter and thinking of a
specific myth that it was echoing, but now I can't remember what that
myth was.
I still don't see that as the same sort of story as the trolls
episode. In the myth I'm thinking of, a key element was just as it
was in the Beorn chapter: to ensure a welcome for pairs of guests
where a whole troop arriving at once would have been most unwelcome.
Ronald O. Christian
<cc-m...@earthdink.net> wrote:
>
>"Ronald O. Christian" <ro...@europa.com> wrote in message news:mh9737l3mn6hait1p...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:25:19 +0000 (UTC), Steuard Jensen
>> <ste...@slimy.com> wrote:
>> >What do the rest of you think?
>>
>> Well, I think the purists will be out for your blood. Fortunately,
>> cuddling the original novels doesn't lead to any great grappling
>> strength, so you're probably going to be ok.
>
>Try bench lifting the Red Book of Westmarch before you make such a broad statement!
Well, yes, assuming it actually existed, it might have been fairly
heavy. As a mental exercise, that probably doesn't build up the
triceps overmuch.
>But seriously, it will come down to a discussion of "changes".
>ie what changes were "tolerable" and what was "unforgivable".
But see, you used "tolerable" and "changes" in the same sentence,
which means you could actually consider the concept, (no matter how
unlikely) which makes you not a purist.
>I plan to read the hobbit directly before attending the film.
>This, to insure that my overall enjoyment of the film is diminished by my keen awareness of the alterations. :)
Everyone ... um ... enjoys movies in their own way. I guess.
I have a copy of The Hobbit in the bookcase by my bed. Although I
re-read the trilogy before the movies came out, I will not re-read the
hobbit. The reason is, the book, -c'mon, let's face it- is written in
a light and fluffy ...dare I say silly... manner that detracts from a
decent and sometimes melancholy and sometimes frightening story, and I
don't want that narrative fresh in my head when I see the film.
Because, you see, I didn't enjoy The Hobbit anything like I enjoyed
Lord of the Rings, but I could see that there was a good story in
there. I'm hoping that in the movie, the silliness is kept to a dead
minimum. For example, we don't need a twentieth repetition of the
overly alliterative list of dwarf names. It wasn't funny the first
time.
...and for writing that, the purists who have been exercising their
mental image of themselves by bench pressing a fictional tome will no
doubt be planning evisceration.
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>I have a copy of The Hobbit in the bookcase by my bed. Although I
>re-read the trilogy before the movies came out, I will not re-read the
>hobbit. The reason is, the book, -c'mon, let's face it- is written in
>a light and fluffy ...dare I say silly... manner that detracts from a
>decent and sometimes melancholy and sometimes frightening story, and I
>don't want that narrative fresh in my head when I see the film.
>Because, you see, I didn't enjoy The Hobbit anything like I enjoyed
>Lord of the Rings, but I could see that there was a good story in
>there. I'm hoping that in the movie, the silliness is kept to a dead
>minimum. For example, we don't need a twentieth repetition of the
>overly alliterative list of dwarf names. It wasn't funny the first
>time.
I don't plan to read /TH/ before seeing the movies either.
I made that mistake with /FOTR/. It took three viewings before I was
actually watching the movie instead of noticing divergences.
OTOH, by all reports, the film is going to be so totally different
from the book that it might not matter -- the film may be so different
that there is nothing to compare.
In which case it would be off-topic here, like any other film clearly
unrelated to any work by JRRT.
Ronald O. Christian
<pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>I don't plan to read /TH/ before seeing the movies either.
>
>I made that mistake with /FOTR/. It took three viewings before I was
>actually watching the movie instead of noticing divergences.
>
>OTOH, by all reports, the film is going to be so totally different
>from the book that it might not matter -- the film may be so different
>that there is nothing to compare.
>
>In which case it would be off-topic here, like any other film clearly
>unrelated to any work by JRRT.
Oh c'mon, we both know that's hyperbole. Knowing nothing (so far)
except the (a) name of the film(s), (b) the names of the characters,
(c) the creative team involved and what they've done before, (d)
photos of costume tests (the dwarves are currently my PC background)
and (efg) several other things, it's abundantly clear that Jackson and
company are making a film based on Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Note I'm
not saying it will be good or bad, just that there is adequate proof
that a film of the novel is being made.
Now, unless one's measure of "any other film clearly unrelated to any
work by JRRT" is "Gandalf didn't bump his head in the book!!!!!!!!"
(and if so, we don't have a lot to talk about), most reasonable people
would consider the film, no matter how flawed it might end up being,
to be a film based on the book.
Now again, The Hobbit was not my personal favorite of Tolkien's works,
and I think it would benefit from a more grim take, closer to the feel
of Lord of the Rings (the book). But that's just my opinion. I don't
want to see another Rankin-Bass-type film again as long as I live. My
teeth still ache from the last one.
tenworld
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:11:32 -0400, NY Teacher wrote:
> > Also, sending reinforcements out singly is too much like
> > Gandalf's business of introducing them one or two at a time
> > to Beorn. It comes across as trying to use the same gag a
> > second time, and lessens the ability of the sequence with Beorn
> > to work or to be funny. It's probably a good choice to approach
> > the trolls more realistically, and keep the gag for Beorn.
>
> Just another data point: I never connected the two till you mentioned
> it.
>
> I'm pretty sure there's some classic work of literature or mythology
> that depends on he same procedure Gandalf used to introduce the
> dwarves to Bjorn, but I can't remember it. Does anyone know?
>
> --
> Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
> http://OakRoadSystems.com
> Tolkien letters FAQ:
> http://mysite.verizon.net/aznirb/mtr/lettersfaq.html
> FAQ of the Rings:http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
> Encyclopedia of Arda:http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
> more FAQs:http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
I think its from Little Big Man, only its sisters of his wife:)
Ronald O. Christian
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>Now again, The Hobbit was not my personal favorite of Tolkien's works,
>and I think it would benefit from a more grim take, closer to the feel
>of Lord of the Rings (the book). But that's just my opinion. I don't
>want to see another Rankin-Bass-type film again as long as I live. My
>teeth still ache from the last one.
Before this comment gets leapt-upon, I should say that I'm quite aware
that the R-B version had many of the songs verbatim from the text and
made an effort to faithfully reproduce things like the Elvish runes. I
maintain that this doesn't in and of itself make it a good movie. It
also had a stellar voice cast, and that didn't seem to help either.
Except Richard Boone as Smaug. His scenes were a brilliant gem stuck
in a lump of too-sweet frosting. But anyway.
Stan Brown
> it's abundantly clear that Jackson and
> company are making a film based on Tolkien's "The Hobbit".
>
We must mean very different things by "based on". It's obvious that
he's throwing out much of the plot and, again, intruding his own
discordant elements.
I think it wold be more accurate to say that his is a Peter Jackson
story that includes some characters inspired by /The Hobbit/.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Ronald O. Christian
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>We must mean very different things by "based on". It's obvious that
>he's throwing out much of the plot and, again, intruding his own
>discordant elements.
I would like to see your proof that he's throwing out much of the
plot. I guess, for completeness, I should ask what you mean by
"much". The reason for this request is that for some, the fact that
it's a movie of any kind, is enough in and of itself to claim that
it's some kind of abomination that should be prevented from existing
at all costs. (See articles earlier in this thread.) This, (not
knowing where one stands on whether a movie should exist at all) makes
it difficult to have a conversation.
So you know where I'm coming from, I have no problem with a movie
existing, (including that abomination from 1977) even in the unlikely
event that I choose not to see it. Addressing plot points
specifically, I would not be ok with leaving out Beorn or the trolls.
On the other hand, I'd be thankful for each song they left out,
starting with the "breaking plates" song. But that's just me.
>I think it wold be more accurate to say that his is a Peter Jackson
>story that includes some characters inspired by /The Hobbit/.
I don't think we have enough information at this stage to state that
with authority, besides "it's a movie called The Hobbit". (eek!)
Troels Forchhammer
Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
>
> On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:09:21 -0700, Ronald O. Christian wrote:
>>
>> it's abundantly clear that Jackson and company are making a film
>> based on Tolkien's "The Hobbit".
>
> We must mean very different things by "based on".
I would take it to mean (actually to both of you) pretty much the
same as it does in the sentence, 'Peter Jackson and company made
three films based on Tolkien's /The Lord of the Rings/' . . . ;-)
> It's obvious that he's throwing out much of the plot and, again,
> intruding his own discordant elements.
That is more or less an integral part of the process of adaptation,
it seems. I think that Corey Olsen (also known by his /kilmessi/,
'the Tolkien Professor') is entirely correct when he praises
Jackson's films while pointing out that they tell a different story
from Tolkien's books that happen to different characters from
Tolkien's. That is pretty much the situation, and that is at it
should be. It is, I think, a tribute to how close Jackson's films are
to Tolkien's book that I often find myself unable to regard the films
as such -- my knowledge of Tolkien's story interferes and
occasionally destroys my enjoyment of the film (to my regret!).
> I think it wold be more accurate to say that his is a Peter Jackson
> story that includes some characters inspired by /The Hobbit/.
It is certainly a Peter Jackson et Al. story that is happening to
Peter Jackson et Al. characters. The story and the characters will,
of course, have a large surface similarity to Tolkien's story and
Tolkien's characters (such as names and visual appearance), but since
this is Jackson's art, it is only right that he tells his own story
and create his own characters for it. Those of us who are then unable
to separate the two stories because of their surface similarities may
then lament this inability since it will, for us, seriously detract
from our enjoyment of Jackson's story, but I would stress that this
is no fault of Jackson's.
The only thing that I can really fault Jackson for with respect to
the three films based on /The Lord of the Rings/ is that he tried to
lure us into the cinema with a lie when he made claims about being
true to Tolkien's themes and stating that it should be _Tolkien's_
films, not the film makers'. I really ought to have known better, and
I feel a bit stupid for actually believing him, but there you are --
I did.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
"He deserves death."
"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve
death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to
them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in
judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
- Frodo and Gandalf, /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Steuard Jensen
Christian <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:06:23 -0700, Paul S. Person
><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>>In which case it would be off-topic here, like any other film clearly
>>unrelated to any work by JRRT.
> Oh c'mon, we both know that's hyperbole. Knowing nothing (so far)
> except [snip]
(Pssst! You don't need to actually spend time justifying the claim
that Paul's statement is hyperbole. It's a ridiculous statement from
the get-go.) (Note that I'm only comfortable calling it ridiculous
because I'm pretty sure Paul knows it is, too.)
Steuard Jensen
Geza Giedke
> It is certainly a Peter Jackson et Al. story that is happening to
> Peter Jackson et Al. characters. The story and the characters will,
> of course, have a large surface similarity to Tolkien's story and
> Tolkien's characters (such as names and visual appearance), but since
> this is Jackson's art, it is only right that he tells his own story
> and create his own characters for it. Those of us who are then unable
> to separate the two stories because of their surface similarities may
> then lament this inability since it will, for us, seriously detract
> from our enjoyment of Jackson's story, but I would stress that this
> is no fault of Jackson's.
Of course it is! He should have made any movie he liked (about warriors,
warrior-wizards, and warrior princesses with as much comic relief as he
saw necessary), called his characters, for all I care, Bingo, Trotter,
Moxie, Gandolt, Pipsqueak or Peter and not abused the Books to fill the
void in his head with pieces of half-understood story and background and
Tolkien's name to lure unsuspecting people into his sad excuses of
fantasy films.
> The only thing that I can really fault Jackson for with respect to
> the three films based on /The Lord of the Rings/ is that he tried to
> lure us into the cinema with a lie when he made claims about being
> true to Tolkien's themes and stating that it should be _Tolkien's_
> films, not the film makers'.
right on! Fact is that PJ had to leech on Tolkien genius to make people
pay big bucks for his mediocre ideas and poor storytelling. In the
process he confused and bewildered a whole generation of potential
lovers of the Books planting outrageous plot-twists and mutilated quotes
in their minds.
As has been stated here before, PJ's works are an abomination, but
unfortunately the evil cannot be wholly cured or made as if it had not
been. This has ever been the fate of Arda Marred:
"`Always after a defeat and a respite the Movie takes another shape and
rises again.' -- 'I wish it need not have happened in my time! I wish
it had never been made, and that I had not seen it.'"
regards
Geza
--
Now come ye all,
who have courage and hope! My call harken
to flight, to freedom in far places!
Lays of Beleriand
Paul S. Person
This is true.
It may turn out that the characters in the movie and the characters in
the book have only one thing in common -- their names.
It may turn out that the characters in the movie were not inspired by
or related to the characters in the book at all.
Paul S. Person
Ridiculous or not, the topic ("is PJs /TH/ on-topic just because it
has the same name as the book by JRRT") itself is certainly on-topic,
whether the film turns out to be or not.
And, of course, until both films are seen, it will not be possible to
say for sure whether they are on-topic, or only their on-topic-ness is
on-topic.
I mean, suppose they turn out to be based on /Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs/, with six of the 13 Dwarves being the wives of 6 of the 7
Dwarves and Bilbo replacing Snow White, Smaug the Evil Queen, and
Gandalf showing up at the end like Prince Charming? Would such a film
be on-topic in r.a.b.t?
Ronald O. Christian
Perhaps, but realistically, I'm pretty sure you will be able to
identify many plot elements, character traits and dialog (hopefully
not songs) from the book.
Unless you don't want to.
Ronald O. Christian
<pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>Ridiculous or not, the topic ("is PJs /TH/ on-topic just because it
>has the same name as the book by JRRT") itself is certainly on-topic,
>whether the film turns out to be or not.
The thing is, "just because it has the same name as the book" is so
patently unlikely for most values of intellectual honesty that the
topic qualifies as a work of fiction in and of itself, requiring a new
group in which to reside. Lessee, what shall we call it?
tenworld
both peevish and naive. Whether you like Peter Jackson's interpretion
or not, the characters, the venue and much of the story line is
directly from the books. If you rated all the movies produced by
Hollywood on a scale of 1-10 where 1=no connection other than the
title, then PJ is closer to 8 than 1.
Look at Tom Clancy novels. The first movie THfRO was probably a 9,
but the Sum of all Fears kept the main character name and the title
and was both a horrible movie and a poor adaptation (1 or even 0).
Disney's version of Davy Crockett (much as I love it) is not an
accurate interpretation of the real person (who preferred to be called
David) or many of the events, but that doesnt mean its not really
based on the historical person.
I get it that many readers here did not like PJ's version (I have
issues with some of what he did myself, but I enjoy the movies) but be
honest - you could not have visualized many of the scenes in movies
better than what he did (the Riders of Rohan cavalry charge is my
favorite).
Sandman
Steuard Jensen <ste...@slimy.com> wrote:
> A few days ago, I watched one of the behind the scenes production
> videos for the new /Hobbit/ movie. One topic mentioned was that they
> have gone to a lot of trouble to give the various Dwarves distinct
> fighting styles. That seems sensible to me: one of the biggest
> challenges in filming /The Hobbit/ is that the 13 Dwarves can seem
> pretty redundant at times.[1] (They've also given them all very
> distinct looks, perhaps most notably in beard styles.)
>
> But to illustrate the different fighting styles, they showed the
> filming of a big green-screen battle sequence labeled "Trollshaws". A
> whole bunch of Dwarves charged in at once and started attacking big
> punching bag things that I assume were standing in for the Trolls. My
> immediate reaction was, "Hey, wait, that's not right! Awwww, as
> usual, Jackson has warped the book to create yet another big battle
> scene." I rolled my eyes, and started to worry about just how many
> other unnecessary fight scenes he was going to cram in.
>
> But then I paused and thought about it for a minute. In the book, the
> scene with the Dwarves getting bagged by the Trolls is utterly
> ridiculous. I mean, sure, if Bilbo disappears they could send a single
> Dwarf to look for him. But the thought that the whole troop of them
> would walk up one at a time is quite simply impossible to believe.
> Thorin and Co. weren't always brilliant, but they weren't suicidal!
> After Bilbo and one Dwarf failed to report back, they should have
> known something was wrong and taken advantage of their numbers. (I
> could imagine sending one, then two or three, but after that the rest
> shouldn't have split up for any reason.)
>
> Reading the book, I suspect that it's possible to overlook the
> insanity of what's being described just because it's brushed over
> fairly quickly in the text. But I don't think it would work on film at
> all. So despite the fact that it plays right into some of my biggest
> complaints about Jackson's style, I think I support what this change
> appears to be. (In fact, if I were a historian in Middle-earth, I'd
> probably hypothesize that something of the sort was what really
> happened, and chalk up the story in the book to Bilbo trying to write
> a better story.)
>
> What do the rest of you think?
Well, they way it's written in the book is one of the many "fairy
tale" styles Tolkien used in this book. Since it's a children story,
the events takes place in a way where a child would be most intrigued
by it. That's not to say that it's simplistic or dumb, it's just
another way to render the same events as a more realistic approach
would.
The classic old stories do this all the time, talking about those big
ears, the big hands, the big mouth instead of the wolf just devouring
here there and then. If told as a parent to the kids, it get's a whole
lot more interesting (again, to the child).
Plus, the events that follow, with Gandalf doing his ventriloquist
party trick to delay the trolls for them to turn into stone - also
very accessible as a told story for younger children.
While I won't comment on whether the events you saw really depict this
scene in the book (I'm sure PJ can cram one or two troll fights
outside of this event if he wanted to), I sincerely hope the film
version won't follow the book version in this instance. :)
--
Sandman[.net]
Steve Hayes
>To deny that LOTR or TH cannot claim to be based on Tolkien's books is
>both peevish and naive. Whether you like Peter Jackson's interpretion
>or not, the characters, the venue and much of the story line is
>directly from the books.
Yer WHAT?
Taemon
> The thing is, "just because it has the same name as the book" is so
> patently unlikely for most values of intellectual honesty that the
> topic qualifies as a work of fiction in and of itself, requiring a new
> group in which to reside. Lessee, what shall we call it?
I like you :-) (That was not a suggestion for a name.)
T.
Paul S. Person
wrote:
>To deny that LOTR or TH cannot claim to be based on Tolkien's books is
>both peevish and naive. Whether you like Peter Jackson's interpretion
>or not, the characters, the venue and much of the story line is
>directly from the books. If you rated all the movies produced by
>Hollywood on a scale of 1-10 where 1=no connection other than the
>title, then PJ is closer to 8 than 1.
1) /LOTR/ is not the issue. I agree that PJ's /LOTR/ can be called an
adaptation of JRRT's /LOTR/ -- at least, it can if you forget as much
of JRRT's /LOTR/ as possible before watching it. And, on a scale of
1-10, as an adaptation, PJ's /LOTR/ is, overall, about a 5; the
physical setting (that is, Middle-Earth itself) is a 10 or very close
to it; the characters average about 3, although if a few are
considerably higher, many are much worse. As a story, it is about 1:
on an extremely abstract level it looks something like JRRT's story,
but at any level of detail is clearly is not. Overall, it simply is
not JRRT's story.
2) Since PJ's /TH/ is not out yet, it is premature to assert that it
is an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/. However, since JRRT's book is a
fairly short children's book, and PJ's /TH/ will, it appears, be
neither short nor a children's film, it seem unlikely that it will be
an adaptation, even by the very broad standard that allows PJ's /LOTR/
to claim that status with respect to JRRT's /LOTR/. And, if it is not
an adaptation, it may not be on-topic in r.a.b.t.
>Look at Tom Clancy novels. The first movie THfRO was probably a 9,
>but the Sum of all Fears kept the main character name and the title
>and was both a horrible movie and a poor adaptation (1 or even 0).
Actually, /The Sum of All Fears/ managed to tell the story of the book
pretty well, certainly much better than PJ managed it in /LOTR/.
Granted, using it to reboot the series when the book itself is much
further along was a bit startling, and the apparent point of the book
was lost, but, when I finally saw it on DVD, I was pleasantly
surprised by how well it was done. It was Clancy's story, albeit
rethought a bit.
>Disney's version of Davy Crockett (much as I love it) is not an
>accurate interpretation of the real person (who preferred to be called
>David) or many of the events, but that doesnt mean its not really
>based on the historical person.
The same could be said of, say, /Gladiator/, but that doesn't make
/Gladiator/ anything more than a brain-dead chick flick disguised as a
historical drama. In that respect, /Gladiator/ is sort of like
/Inception/, except that /Inception/ was a brain-dead chick flick
disguised as a Type 2 Caper Movie (that is, a caper movie that starts
near the end and then tells the bulk of the story as a flashback) and,
of course, makes no pretence of historical reference.
Disney's live action was designed for families with young children. I
found it increasingly less entertaining as I grew older. And it owed
far more to what people wanted to believe about the old frontier than
to history. As such, it was an integral part of the 50's, which, of
course, means that it had no integrity of any sort or kind.
>I get it that many readers here did not like PJ's version (I have
>issues with some of what he did myself, but I enjoy the movies) but be
>honest - you could not have visualized many of the scenes in movies
>better than what he did (the Riders of Rohan cavalry charge is my
>favorite).
Oh, I think I could have visualized many of the scenes far better than
PJ did, mostly by not showing those that were not from the book and
the rest by showing them as they were described in the book. In fact,
I think I already have -- in my mind. The films, the second and third
in particular, would have been a /lot/ shorter -- perhaps short enough
to include the Gandalf-Saruman confrontation (the one in the book, not
the Wizard's Battle in the film).
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:19:53 -0700, Paul S. Person
><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>>Ridiculous or not, the topic ("is PJs /TH/ on-topic just because it
>>has the same name as the book by JRRT") itself is certainly on-topic,
>>whether the film turns out to be or not.
>
>The thing is, "just because it has the same name as the book" is so
>patently unlikely for most values of intellectual honesty that the
>topic qualifies as a work of fiction in and of itself, requiring a new
>group in which to reside. Lessee, what shall we call it?
I'm sorry, you appear to be drivelling here.
Perhaps you could clarify what you meant. If anything.
A movie I bought because Willis O'Brien did the special effects, /The
Last Days of Pompeii/ begins with a screen explaining to the audience
that it is /not/ based on a more famous story of the same name. So,
films which have the same name as a book or another film and nothing
else whatsoever in common with them do exist -- and, if PJ's /TH/
turns out to be the same, it's being on-topic in r.a.b.t. would be
debatable.
Sandman
Paul S. Person <pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
> >To deny that LOTR or TH cannot claim to be based on Tolkien's books is
> >both peevish and naive. Whether you like Peter Jackson's interpretion
> >or not, the characters, the venue and much of the story line is
> >directly from the books. If you rated all the movies produced by
> >Hollywood on a scale of 1-10 where 1=no connection other than the
> >title, then PJ is closer to 8 than 1.
>
> 1) /LOTR/ is not the issue. I agree that PJ's /LOTR/ can be called an
> adaptation of JRRT's /LOTR/ -- at least, it can if you forget as much
> of JRRT's /LOTR/ as possible before watching it. And, on a scale of
> 1-10, as an adaptation, PJ's /LOTR/ is, overall, about a 5; the
> physical setting (that is, Middle-Earth itself) is a 10 or very close
> to it; the characters average about 3, although if a few are
> considerably higher, many are much worse. As a story, it is about 1:
> on an extremely abstract level it looks something like JRRT's story,
> but at any level of detail is clearly is not. Overall, it simply is
> not JRRT's story.
I recently wrote a rather lengthy (swedish) blog post about "being
true to the book" and whether it is possible or not. It started with
establishing that no film could ever be literally true to any book,
given the difference in medium. An image doesn't always tell the same
tale as a thousand words.
So, if one is so inclined to take this position, than no movie could
ever be true to LotR, and the term "being true to the book" a misnomer.
But, if one is able to accept the differences in medium and
*production* none the less, you can start to have both reasonable
expectations and reasonable debate about an adaptation.
So, I think asking what book adaption that you have seen that you *do*
consider to be not only good, but perhaps great? because either no
such adaptations exist or perhaps LotR is so neat and dear to you that
no adaptation that won't fit into your internal mold would be
undesirable to you?
> 2) Since PJ's /TH/ is not out yet, it is premature to assert that it
> is an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/. However, since JRRT's book is a
> fairly short children's book, and PJ's /TH/ will, it appears, be
> neither short nor a children's film, it seem unlikely that it will be
> an adaptation, even by the very broad standard that allows PJ's /LOTR/
> to claim that status with respect to JRRT's /LOTR/. And, if it is not
> an adaptation, it may not be on-topic in r.a.b.t.
Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It is
defined by the person creating the work. You are free to regard it as
a poor or a misguided adaption, or even claim that you subjectively
feel that it is not an adaptation in spite of the artists claim, but
that won't change anything of course.
I'm only assuming that your comment about it perhaps not being an
adaptation is just a disguised premature commentary on your trust in
the production to create an adaptation that you personally feel would
be a valid one, but you seem to project this to include whether or not
it would be in topic in a discussion forum based on these subjective
feelings of yours. I feel that it is misguided.
--
Sandman[.net]
Troels Forchhammer
Sandman <m...@sandman.net> spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
> I recently wrote a rather lengthy (swedish) blog post about "being
> true to the book" and whether it is possible or not.
Would you mind linking to it? Many of us here can read Swedish.
> It started with establishing that no film could ever be literally
> true to any book,
That, of course, depends entirely on what you mean by that. A film
can certainly be 'literally true' to a book in all but the most
trivial matters (no book that I would wish to read will ever describe
the scenery in the level of detail that is attainable on film, but
that is what I consider trivial).
> given the difference in medium.
And that is also not entirely true. The differences in medium has
very little /actual/ influence -- the difference is in the minds of
those who tell stories in book or film respectively: film-makers are
caught in a story-telling tradition that is different from the
tradition in which book-authors' minds are set, but that has little
to do with the actual capabilities of either medium. I will not
attempt to judge whether it would work on film to use the same
narrative style as in a book, but I am firmly disinclined to believe
the mere claim that 'it cannot be done' just because it is repeated
without any rational argument for the umpteenth time.
I am not even sure that I accept Tolkien's own word that fairy-
stories cannot be told in any dramatic form (whether on stage or
film), though admittedly his is the only cogent argument I have seen
(and that only applies to fairy-stories, not to other kinds of
stories).
> An image doesn't always tell the same tale as a thousand words.
I use to say 'only if the words are written by a /very/ poor
writer' ;-)
> So, if one is so inclined to take this position, than no movie
> could ever be true to LotR, and the term "being true to the book"
> a misnomer.
Of course it isn't. Even if you accept the position (which I do not),
it is still a matter of grading -- it is not a dichotomy and you can
speak of being more or less 'true' to the book (personally I am not
particular fond of the phrase to be 'true to the book', but that's a
different matter entirely).
> But, if one is able to accept the differences in medium and
> *production* none the less, you can start to have both reasonable
> expectations and reasonable debate about an adaptation.
Well, if you cannot accept that there is a difference between a book
and a film, then I think you need to have your mind examined ;-) I
suspect, however, that this is not actually what you mean -- what you
mean appears to me to be if one is willing to accept that the
differences between the two media /necessarily/ and /inevitably/ by
their basic nature impose large differences in narrative style, and
that is of course considerably more controversial than the statement
that book and film are different media, and it is, first and
foremost, a claim that I have never seen any cogent and rational
argument for.
> So, I think asking what book adaption that you have seen that you
> *do* consider to be not only good, but perhaps great? because
> either no such adaptations exist or perhaps LotR is so neat and
> dear to you that no adaptation that won't fit into your internal
> mold would be undesirable to you?
Well, personally I think that riduculing the moral position of the
original work (and the original artist) is not a very nice thing to
do in an adaptation. I care less about the surface elements of the
story than I do about the underlying themes. To say that the LotR
films of Mr. Jackson and his cohorts is 'a fundamentally religious
and Catholic work' would be a lie -- in many ways Mr. Jackson's
version of the story is in opposition to the Catholic undercurrents
that were so important to Tolkien, and at times he turns to ridicule
of the very Catholic virtues that Tolkien felt very strongly about.
I know that Jackson claimed to have wanted to honour Tolkien's themes
and to translate them directly into his film, but all I can say to
that claim is that he either lied (quite possible -- after all he
wanted to get all us Tolkien geeks to watch his films) or he has
extremely poor reading skills. In any case getting it that much wrong
also requires a wilfull disregard for all that experts have said
about the book. I know that Tolkien acknowledged the reader's right
to applicability, but Jackson gets it at least as wrong as those who
see Tolkien as supporting authoritarian fascism.
<snip>
> Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It
> is defined by the person creating the work.
Nonsense. He may attempt to arrogate to himself the rights of Humpty
Dumpty, but that kind of arrogance is not to my liking. The meaning
of a word is defined by common understanding in the context in which
it appears, and in that sense it can very well be used incorrectly --
if I were to say that Jackson is making a children's picture book
called /The Hobbit/, I would be wrong.
The lines between 'adapted from', 'based on' and 'inspired by' are
somewhat blurry, and little agreement can be found about the border-
line cases, so I think it is legitimate to question, and certainly to
withold judgement on, whether Jackson's /The Hobbit/ films will
qualify as adaptations.
Personally I really don't care what we call it -- it is, in my
opinion, clear that Jackson is basing his work on Tolkien's stories
(the very close similarity of surface elements such as names etc.
makes this, in my view, incontrovertible), and what we call it is not
very interesting for me.
> but you seem to project this to include whether or not it would
> be in topic in a discussion forum based on these subjective
> feelings of yours.
The charter of RABT expressly states that '[t]he group would be open
to discussion about art works which are based on Tolkien's works' --
and I think that it will be much more difficult to argue that
Jackon's works are not 'based on Tolkien's works' even if one feels
they do not qualify as adaptations. AFT, of course, does not have a
charter.
<http://tolkien.slimy.com/newsgroups/RABTcharter.txt>
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I'm explaining me.
- Piet Hein, /The Egocentrics/
Ronald O. Christian
>2) Since PJ's /TH/ is not out yet, it is premature to assert that it
>is an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/. However, since JRRT's book is a
>fairly short children's book, and PJ's /TH/ will, it appears, be
>neither short nor a children's film
Hang on, point of order here.
When you say "JRRT's book", (bear with me here, I do have a point) do
you mean JRRT's original 1937 edition, where Gollum freely bargains
away the ring, and it's *not* the One Ring, the 1951 edition which has
a "riddles in the dark" more closely matching the current, but overall
still doesn't really match up with the events of LotR, the 1966
edition that has more detail and some changes to bring it more in
align with Fellowship of the Ring, or do you mean the version he began
in 1960 that was to better fit the *tone* of FOTR, and which he
(tragically) was argued out of completing? This revision, which he
clearly *wanted* to write, would probably not be considered a
"children's book" (that being one of the criticisms). I submit that
since he *wanted* to write it, and had written at least some of it,
it's a valid version, arguably every bit as much as anything
Christopher has published since, and incidentally I'd love to have the
honor of reading it.
Or are you talking about some completely different book? Just
wondering.
If you mean, whatever text happens to be in the most common version
you can find at Borders, I'd say you're just as much reading what the
publishers at Ballantine wanted you to read, as what Tolkien
(ultimately) wanted you to read. Yes, it's a book called "The
Hobbit", but it is neither what Tolkien originally wrote, nor is it
the story Tolkien wanted it to become.
Parenthetically, the "children's book" has already been made into a
short, children's movie, in 1977. It stank. And it didn't have
Beorn. And the wood elves were stupid looking. But I digress.
Now, regarding "short". So just to make things clear, you are *not*
among Tolkien's fans that fervently believe that LotR (for instance)
could not have been made in anything less than a 22 hour miniseries,
with all the songs and every inch of the landscape included, and the
elves rendered in CGI because no human would be beautiful enough, and
anything shorter than that would be an abomination? By speaking of
Jackson's Hobbit film(s) derogatorily as being "long", are you
conceding that in the process of making a movie from a novel, it is
*not* necessary to put every word on the screen? Because this point
might be important later.
Ronald O. Christian
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>By speaking of
>Jackson's Hobbit film(s) derogatorily as being "long", are you
>conceding that in the process of making a movie from a novel, it is
>*not* necessary to put every word on the screen? Because this point
>might be important later.
And just to stir things up even more, I suspect since Elijah Wood is
in it, and considering the rumor that Frodo's conversation with...
someone... will provide bookends to the story, I strongly suspect that
Jackson might actually be making (or at least, including many elements
from) The Quest of Erebor, which is really Gandalf's story, containing
Bilbo's narrative within it. This allows much more alignment with
Lord of the Rings, goes along with Jackson's previous practice of
dipping into the appendices and other sources for additional material,
and would help explain the talk about "bridging with FOTR" and also
why it's two films. Moreover, it gives the script writers an excuse
to make part of the story (the part Gandalf narrates) rather dark, and
still gives room for cutesy stuff (shudder) in Bilbo's part of the
story. But of course, this is mostly speculation on my part.
(Oh and incidentally, we might actually see part of Gandalf's struggle
with The Necromancer, rather than have it happen mysteriously off
stage.)
Discuss. In what way does this make Jackson's The Hobbit even more an
abomination? (Sigh...)
Ronald O. Christian
<pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>On Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:30:27 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
><ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:19:53 -0700, Paul S. Person
>><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Ridiculous or not, the topic ("is PJs /TH/ on-topic just because it
>>>has the same name as the book by JRRT") itself is certainly on-topic,
>>>whether the film turns out to be or not.
>>
>>The thing is, "just because it has the same name as the book" is so
>>patently unlikely for most values of intellectual honesty that the
>>topic qualifies as a work of fiction in and of itself, requiring a new
>>group in which to reside. Lessee, what shall we call it?
>
>I'm sorry, you appear to be drivelling here.
It seems that way because you are working from a value of intellectual
honesty that is not included in "most values". This is common amongst
Tolkien literary purists, so I'm not offended at all by your personal
attacks.
>Perhaps you could clarify what you meant. If anything.
>
>A movie I bought because Willis O'Brien did the special effects, /The
>Last Days of Pompeii/ begins with a screen explaining to the audience
>that it is /not/ based on a more famous story of the same name. So,
>films which have the same name as a book or another film and nothing
>else whatsoever in common with them do exist -- and, if PJ's /TH/
>turns out to be the same, it's being on-topic in r.a.b.t. would be
>debatable.
Steve Hayes
>I recently wrote a rather lengthy (swedish) blog post about "being
>true to the book" and whether it is possible or not. It started with
>establishing that no film could ever be literally true to any book,
>given the difference in medium. An image doesn't always tell the same
>tale as a thousand words.
I recently saw "The girl with the dragon tattoo", which was made in Sweden,
and it was pretty true to the book.
Perhaps the people who made that could make one of LotR and The Hobbit as
well.
I'm not generally in favour of remakes, especially if a film was good to start
with, but perhaps in this case...
Sandman
Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:43:25 +0200, Sandman <m...@sandman.net> wrote:
>
> >I recently wrote a rather lengthy (swedish) blog post about "being
> >true to the book" and whether it is possible or not. It started with
> >establishing that no film could ever be literally true to any book,
> >given the difference in medium. An image doesn't always tell the same
> >tale as a thousand words.
>
> I recently saw "The girl with the dragon tattoo", which was made in Sweden,
> and it was pretty true to the book.
I haven't read those books, can't comment.
> Perhaps the people who made that could make one of LotR and The Hobbit as
> well.
>
> I'm not generally in favour of remakes, especially if a film was good to start
> with, but perhaps in this case...
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> > I recently wrote a rather lengthy (swedish) blog post about "being
> > true to the book" and whether it is possible or not.
>
> Would you mind linking to it? Many of us here can read Swedish.
http://sandman.net/pages/Boksann
> > It started with establishing that no film could ever be literally
> > true to any book,
>
> That, of course, depends entirely on what you mean by that. A film
> can certainly be 'literally true' to a book in all but the most
> trivial matters (no book that I would wish to read will ever describe
> the scenery in the level of detail that is attainable on film, but
> that is what I consider trivial).
What I meant, and wrote about in the blog post, is that a book
describes events with words and a movie describes them with images.
The thoughts of a character can't always be narrated in a film, so it
is conveyed using the actors ability to portray said thoughts and
feelings, which is a lesser medium than just using words.
There are things that a movie portrays *better* than a book could, but
in the context whether a movie is true to a book, that's not the
problem.
<snip>
> > So, if one is so inclined to take this position, than no movie
> > could ever be true to LotR, and the term "being true to the book"
> > a misnomer.
>
> Of course it isn't. Even if you accept the position (which I do not),
> it is still a matter of grading
Well, I was in reference to it in a more binary manner, rather than
"how true is it to the book" I wanted to establish that being "true to
the book" was impossible if one expected 100% of the book to be
portrayed by the movie.
> > But, if one is able to accept the differences in medium and
> > *production* none the less, you can start to have both reasonable
> > expectations and reasonable debate about an adaptation.
>
> Well, if you cannot accept that there is a difference between a book
> and a film, then I think you need to have your mind examined ;-)
As I'm sure you realize, there are plenty here that have difficulty
with that concept :-D
> > So, I think asking what book adaption that you have seen that you
> > *do* consider to be not only good, but perhaps great? because
> > either no such adaptations exist or perhaps LotR is so neat and
> > dear to you that no adaptation that won't fit into your internal
> > mold would be undesirable to you?
>
> Well, personally I think that riduculing the moral position of the
> original work (and the original artist) is not a very nice thing to
> do in an adaptation.
While I am not aware of any such event in regards to LotR, I fail to
see how it is relevant to the question?
> I know that Jackson claimed to have wanted to honour Tolkien's themes
> and to translate them directly into his film, but all I can say to
> that claim is that he either lied (quite possible -- after all he
> wanted to get all us Tolkien geeks to watch his films) or he has
> extremely poor reading skills.
Again, this has nothing to do with the question being asked, but I
have to interject and just state that intentions aside - the
interpretation of said "underlying theme" may differ between you,
Peter Jackson and Tolkien himself.
Plus, stop referring to the movies as a brainchild of just one man.
These three movies took over five years to produce and included the
creative minds of hundreds, if not thousands, minds. I know that the
director is the front figure and ultimately bears the responsibility
of the end result, but he was far from omniscient in the production
and had some tremendous help from a lot of people.
<snip>
> > Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It
> > is defined by the person creating the work.
>
> Nonsense. He may attempt to arrogate to himself the rights of Humpty
> Dumpty, but that kind of arrogance is not to my liking. The meaning
> of a word is defined by common understanding in the context in which
> it appears, and in that sense it can very well be used incorrectly --
> if I were to say that Jackson is making a children's picture book
> called /The Hobbit/, I would be wrong.
Huh? Your example is again you passing judgement on another mans work,
which is exactly what I was in reference to. Whether or not he is
making an adaption is decided by him (or rather, the collected minds
of the creative work in the production crew of The Hobbit). They may
adapt it too loosely for your tastes, but it would still be an
adaption.
> The lines between 'adapted from', 'based on' and 'inspired by' are
> somewhat blurry, and little agreement can be found about the border-
> line cases, so I think it is legitimate to question, and certainly to
> withold judgement on, whether Jackson's /The Hobbit/ films will
> qualify as adaptations.
Whether or not something "qualifies as an adaptation" presupposes that
the word "adaptation" is defined by a given set of quality rules which
needs to be met for the word to be used. It is not. It's just a word
that has a very loose and open-ended meaning. The only qualifiers you
can attach to it are your subjectives view on how good or bad the
adaptation was.
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
> (Oh and incidentally, we might actually see part of Gandalf's struggle
> with The Necromancer, rather than have it happen mysteriously off
> stage.)
Just to clarify here - The Necromancer, as described in The Hobbit,
was Sauron - right? I know that the identity of the Necromancer was
unknown for a long time, but I'm not sure whether it was revealed in
the timeframe of The Hobbit (and yes, I'm actually reading the book
right now, to catch up).
--
Sandman[.net]
Morgoth's Curse
<pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>>Disney's version of Davy Crockett (much as I love it) is not an
>>accurate interpretation of the real person (who preferred to be called
>>David) or many of the events, but that doesnt mean its not really
>>based on the historical person.
>
>The same could be said of, say, /Gladiator/, but that doesn't make
>/Gladiator/ anything more than a brain-dead chick flick disguised as a
>historical drama. In that respect, /Gladiator/ is sort of like
>/Inception/, except that /Inception/ was a brain-dead chick flick
>disguised as a Type 2 Caper Movie (that is, a caper movie that starts
>near the end and then tells the bulk of the story as a flashback) and,
>of course, makes no pretence of historical reference.
< blink >
This is certainly the first time I ever saw anyone describe
"Gladiator" as a "chick flick."
Ignorance truly is bliss. The more you know, the harder it is to
enjoy certain movies. ("Braveheart" is one example.) As many have
observed over the years, it is the people who are most familiar with
Tolkien's works that are the most critical of the films. I suspect
that it is because we are only too aware of how much richer the tale
could be.
Morgoth's Curse
Morgoth's Curse
The fact that Jackson must necessarily invent additional
characters and dialogue which will then be mistaken as the work of
Tolkien. (I can still recall people wondering where Lurtz appears in
the Lord of the Rings.) It's also a blatant attempt to exploit the
love, labor and knowledge that Tolkien put into his works. Jackson
has profited enormously from Tolkien's long labor and yet contributed
nothing to his artistic legacy. As Steuard Jensen has somewhat
ironically noted, Jackson's version is mostly flash and dazzle.
Eliminate the spectacular scenery and I am sure that most people would
agree that Jackson's version is an inferior version indeed.
Morgoth's Curse
Morgoth's Curse
<ste...@slimy.com> wrote:
>But then I paused and thought about it for a minute. In the book, the
>scene with the Dwarves getting bagged by the Trolls is utterly
>ridiculous. I mean, sure, if Bilbo disappears they could send a single
>Dwarf to look for him. But the thought that the whole troop of them
>would walk up one at a time is quite simply impossible to believe.
>Thorin and Co. weren't always brilliant, but they weren't suicidal!
>After Bilbo and one Dwarf failed to report back, they should have
>known something was wrong and taken advantage of their numbers. (I
>could imagine sending one, then two or three, but after that the rest
>shouldn't have split up for any reason.)
In addition to the other reasons that have been raised, I am
wondering if there is a factor that you may have overlooked--magic.
William's talking purse is perhaps the most prominent example, but
there is also the fact that Oin and Gloin were unable to light a fire
that night and also one of the ponies bolted from fright. Moreover,
how is it that three such dimwits as Tom, Bert and Bill come into the
possession of such powerful swords as Glamdring and Orcrist? I am not
saying that the trolls were sorcerers, of course, but they must have
had some sort of small magic to be able to successfully waylay so many
travelers.
Toss in the fact that the dwarves were seriously sleep-deprived
and hungry and their bad judgment is not so surprising. It may not
necessarily be enough to explain their absurd behavior, of course, but
it does reduce the degree of implausibility.
Morgoth's Curse
Ronald O. Christian
My understanding is that at the time Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, The
Necromancer was his own character. Later retconned into Sauron to
bring The Hobbit more in line with LotR. So yes, as of about 1966,
The Necromancer is Sauron.
Ronald O. Christian
<morgoths...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:49:03 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
><ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>
>>Discuss. In what way does this make Jackson's The Hobbit even more an
>>abomination? (Sigh...)
>
> The fact that Jackson must necessarily invent additional
>characters and dialogue which will then be mistaken as the work of
>Tolkien.
Just to clarify, you do realize that at least some of that (in LotR)
was drawn from other Tolkien sources, right? That regardless of what
Jackson might have added in the course of having to make a movie from
a book, he had also added (for instance) material from the appendices
that almost nobody reads in the back of Return of the King. A lot of
people stop reading at "Well, I'm back" and end up missing some
important story points. That Tolkien actually wrote.
Paul S. Person
If you hadn't snipped it, my comments on /The Sum of All Fears/ would
have provided an answer.
Other films that I consider to be effective adaptions of other forms
include (in no particular order, and restricted to books I have read
or musicals I have seen):
/The Satan Bug/ -- as I have frequently mentioned on r.a.b.t.
any Jack Ryan film so far, no matter who played Jack Ryan
/Evita/ -- quite possibly the best film adaptation of a musical ever
made
/Advise and Consent/
/Seven Days in May/
/Quo Vadis/
/The Prize/
/The Shoes of the Fisherman/
/For Your Eyes Only/ -- for blending the title story and "Risico" into
a satisfying James Bond film
The first five James Bond films, particularly /From Russia With Love/
and /OHMSS/. After that the films began diverging quite seriously from
the books, occasionally literally having only the title in common.
The first three Harry Potter films, and the seventh Harry Potter film
(in two parts). The others are adaptations, but they leave out so much
that they feel more like pastiches.
These are all characterized by telling the story of the original. In
many cases they tell a different version, in some cases they change
darn near everything, but it is still clearly the same story.
They are all also competently done films, and most of them were done
more than just "competently".
There are, of course, many other very good films based on a stage play
or novel that I have not read or seen.
>> 2) Since PJ's /TH/ is not out yet, it is premature to assert that it
>> is an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/. However, since JRRT's book is a
>> fairly short children's book, and PJ's /TH/ will, it appears, be
>> neither short nor a children's film, it seem unlikely that it will be
>> an adaptation, even by the very broad standard that allows PJ's /LOTR/
>> to claim that status with respect to JRRT's /LOTR/. And, if it is not
>> an adaptation, it may not be on-topic in r.a.b.t.
>
>Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It is
>defined by the person creating the work. You are free to regard it as
>a poor or a misguided adaption, or even claim that you subjectively
>feel that it is not an adaptation in spite of the artists claim, but
>that won't change anything of course.
So, your theory is that, if I made a movie based on, say, /Dick and
Jane/, and /said/ that it was an adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted &
Alice/, it would /be/ and adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice/
even though it two characters were named "Dick" and "Jane" and they
did what they do in the children's books that are their natural
habitat?
Sorry. Whether "A" is "B" or "A" is "C" does not depend on what
someone /says/, it depends on what it /is/.
>I'm only assuming that your comment about it perhaps not being an
>adaptation is just a disguised premature commentary on your trust in
>the production to create an adaptation that you personally feel would
>be a valid one, but you seem to project this to include whether or not
>it would be in topic in a discussion forum based on these subjective
>feelings of yours. I feel that it is misguided.
Wow, and I thought I was getting convoluted!
I just think the topic is worth discussing. Apparently, others agree.
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>
>>2) Since PJ's /TH/ is not out yet, it is premature to assert that it
>>is an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/. However, since JRRT's book is a
>>fairly short children's book, and PJ's /TH/ will, it appears, be
>>neither short nor a children's film
>
>Hang on, point of order here.
>
>When you say "JRRT's book", (bear with me here, I do have a point) do
>you mean JRRT's original 1937 edition, where Gollum freely bargains
>away the ring, and it's *not* the One Ring, the 1951 edition which has
>a "riddles in the dark" more closely matching the current, but overall
>still doesn't really match up with the events of LotR, the 1966
>edition that has more detail and some changes to bring it more in
>align with Fellowship of the Ring, or do you mean the version he began
>in 1960 that was to better fit the *tone* of FOTR, and which he
>(tragically) was argued out of completing? This revision, which he
>clearly *wanted* to write, would probably not be considered a
>"children's book" (that being one of the criticisms). I submit that
>since he *wanted* to write it, and had written at least some of it,
>it's a valid version, arguably every bit as much as anything
>Christopher has published since, and incidentally I'd love to have the
>honor of reading it.
I mean the commonly-available edition, lightly adjusted to set the
stage for /LOTR/.
If you are talking about the last version of /TH/, so far as I know,
it is present, in its entirety, in /The History of the Hobbit/ (vol
2). Also present is the comment of the Reader, which may be
paraphrased as "it's very good, but it is /not/ /The Hobbit/".
<snippo>
>Parenthetically, the "children's book" has already been made into a
>short, children's movie, in 1977. It stank. And it didn't have
>Beorn. And the wood elves were stupid looking. But I digress.
You mean, of course, that it was proof positive that even the most
unlikely genre (RB animated kiddie shows) could transcend their
limitations and achieve excellence.
The Wood Elves may not have been stupid in the book, but they were
quite rude. Actually, in the movie they have always looked slavic to
me. When their King speaks, it is as if Krushchev were speaking.
Well, they /were/ in the East ... and the Cold War was in full force.
As to Beorn, are we quite sure that he will be in PJ's /TH/? Bombadil
didn't make it into PJ's /LOTR/ (or anybody else's, except JRRT's, for
that matter).
>Now, regarding "short". So just to make things clear, you are *not*
>among Tolkien's fans that fervently believe that LotR (for instance)
>could not have been made in anything less than a 22 hour miniseries,
>with all the songs and every inch of the landscape included, and the
>elves rendered in CGI because no human would be beautiful enough, and
>anything shorter than that would be an abomination? By speaking of
>Jackson's Hobbit film(s) derogatorily as being "long", are you
>conceding that in the process of making a movie from a novel, it is
>*not* necessary to put every word on the screen? Because this point
>might be important later.
I have already stated that one of the benefits of PJ's /LOTR/ is that
it shows that six 3-hour films should be enough to film JRRT's story.
That's 18 hours, not 22. You appear to have me confused with somebody
else. Perhaps a straw man?
And I think the RB version shows that one 2-hour film should be
adequate for /TH/. Anything else is likely to be superfluous. This
will be easier to judge when the PJ films arrive; we can then see how
much of /TH/ actually made it into the film, how much was left out,
and how much additional material was added so PJ could mark it as his
own.
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:35:50 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
><ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>>By speaking of
>>Jackson's Hobbit film(s) derogatorily as being "long", are you
>>conceding that in the process of making a movie from a novel, it is
>>*not* necessary to put every word on the screen? Because this point
>>might be important later.
>
>And just to stir things up even more, I suspect since Elijah Wood is
>in it, and considering the rumor that Frodo's conversation with...
>someone... will provide bookends to the story, I strongly suspect that
>Jackson might actually be making (or at least, including many elements
>from) The Quest of Erebor, which is really Gandalf's story, containing
>Bilbo's narrative within it. This allows much more alignment with
>Lord of the Rings, goes along with Jackson's previous practice of
>dipping into the appendices and other sources for additional material,
>and would help explain the talk about "bridging with FOTR" and also
>why it's two films. Moreover, it gives the script writers an excuse
>to make part of the story (the part Gandalf narrates) rather dark, and
>still gives room for cutesy stuff (shudder) in Bilbo's part of the
>story. But of course, this is mostly speculation on my part.
>
>(Oh and incidentally, we might actually see part of Gandalf's struggle
>with The Necromancer, rather than have it happen mysteriously off
>stage.)
That might make a very interesting film.
It would not, of course, be an adaptation of JRRT's /TH/.
>Discuss. In what way does this make Jackson's The Hobbit even more an
>abomination? (Sigh...)
You mean, of course, even less of an adaptation.
If it is not an adaptation at all, then it will only be an
"abomination" if it is a badly-made film. Which, considering PJ's /TT/
and /ROTK/, is definitely possible.
Paul S. Person
Yes and No.
Yes, the Necromancer was revealed to be Sauron, just as the Ring was
revealed to be, well, the Ring, in order to connect /TH/ with /LOTR/.
IIRC, No, this does not appear in /TH/. In fact, IIRC, Gandalf (and
the Wise) did not realize that the Necromancer was Sauron Reforming at
that time. It was only in retrospect that the identification was made.
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 04 Aug 2011 06:33:12 -0500, Morgoth's Curse
><morgoths...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:49:03 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
>><ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Discuss. In what way does this make Jackson's The Hobbit even more an
>>>abomination? (Sigh...)
>>
>> The fact that Jackson must necessarily invent additional
>>characters and dialogue which will then be mistaken as the work of
>>Tolkien.
>
>Just to clarify, you do realize that at least some of that (in LotR)
>was drawn from other Tolkien sources, right? That regardless of what
>Jackson might have added in the course of having to make a movie from
>a book, he had also added (for instance) material from the appendices
>that almost nobody reads in the back of Return of the King. A lot of
>people stop reading at "Well, I'm back" and end up missing some
>important story points. That Tolkien actually wrote.
I suspect he is talking about the additional characters and dialog and
entire sequences of events that do not appear anywhere in anything
JRRT wrote at any time in any connection but which are nonetheless
present in PJ's /LOTR/.
But I could be wrong.
Sandman
Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
> >> (Oh and incidentally, we might actually see part of Gandalf's struggle
> >> with The Necromancer, rather than have it happen mysteriously off
> >> stage.)
> >
> >Just to clarify here - The Necromancer, as described in The Hobbit,
> >was Sauron - right? I know that the identity of the Necromancer was
> >unknown for a long time, but I'm not sure whether it was revealed in
> >the timeframe of The Hobbit (and yes, I'm actually reading the book
> >right now, to catch up).
>
> My understanding is that at the time Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, The
> Necromancer was his own character. Later retconned into Sauron to
> bring The Hobbit more in line with LotR. So yes, as of about 1966,
> The Necromancer is Sauron.
Yes, indeed. What I was going after is whether, in this revised
version of events, the Necromancer had been exposed as Sauron.
When the Hobbit takes place, the White Council moves against Dol
Goldur and the Necromancer (ca III 2940?). This happens after Gandalf
has exposed him to be Sauron (and probably because of it). I'm just
not sure it it takes place before, during or after the events in the
Hobbit
--
Sandman[.net]
Troels Forchhammer
Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> spoke these staves:
>
> My understanding is that at the time Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, The
> Necromancer was his own character. Later retconned into Sauron to
> bring The Hobbit more in line with LotR. So yes, as of about
> 1966, The Necromancer is Sauron.
The Necromancer was Sauron (or rather Th� as the character was named at
the time) from the first he entered the tale. In the two surviving
fragments from what Rateliff identifies as the first phase, there is no
reference to the Necromancer -- he enters the tale with the second
phase, where the first mention of the Necromancer also explains that
'his castle stands no more and [his >] he is flown [added: to another
darker place] - Beren and Tinuviel broke his power'.
The start of the second phase also seems to mark the point where
Tolkien decided to use his Silmarillion legendarium as the setting for
the hobbit story. By this I don't mean that he made /The Hobbit/ a part
of his Silmarillion mythology -- he just used the mythology as a
backcloth for the new story with no intention of ever allowing any
influence the opposite way. Earlier geographical references include
the Gobi Desert and China, but such references disappear from this
point.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Thus, the future of the universe is not completely
determined by the laws of science, and its present state,
as Laplace thought. God still has a few tricks up his
sleeve.
- Stephen Hawking
Paul S. Person
<morgoths...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 09:55:47 -0700, Paul S. Person
><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>>>Disney's version of Davy Crockett (much as I love it) is not an
>>>accurate interpretation of the real person (who preferred to be called
>>>David) or many of the events, but that doesnt mean its not really
>>>based on the historical person.
>>
>>The same could be said of, say, /Gladiator/, but that doesn't make
>>/Gladiator/ anything more than a brain-dead chick flick disguised as a
>>historical drama. In that respect, /Gladiator/ is sort of like
>>/Inception/, except that /Inception/ was a brain-dead chick flick
>>disguised as a Type 2 Caper Movie (that is, a caper movie that starts
>>near the end and then tells the bulk of the story as a flashback) and,
>>of course, makes no pretence of historical reference.
>
>< blink >
>
> This is certainly the first time I ever saw anyone describe
>"Gladiator" as a "chick flick."
I only saw it because a chick recommended it.
Consider the ending: Our Hero, dead, finds himself in a world exactly
like this one, except his wife and son are still around. What could
possibly be clearer?
It is a brain-dead chick flick because, if Our Hero and his family are
in a world /just like this one/, so is the Emperor and the Praetorian
Guard. So we must infer that he, his wife and his son are toast.
Again. And maybe again and again and again after that, as they
traverse endless afterlifes just like this life.
This same chick complained that /Spiderman/ had "the wrong ending"
because the Boy and the Girl didn't end up together.
It took this same chick several months to realize that the Elf that
popped out like a rabbit and starting kissing Aragorn at the end of
/ROTK/ was the same Elf that was holding hands with him in /FOTR/ --
proof positive that PJ had completely lost control by that point in
the film (a filmmaker who was still in control would have used
flashbacks to remind the audience who they were looking at -- that,
after all, is what those earlier scenes were there for: to ensure that
Arwen would be known to the audience when she popped out like a rabbit
in a magic show at the end).
> Ignorance truly is bliss. The more you know, the harder it is to
>enjoy certain movies. ("Braveheart" is one example.) As many have
>observed over the years, it is the people who are most familiar with
>Tolkien's works that are the most critical of the films. I suspect
>that it is because we are only too aware of how much richer the tale
>could be.
I find it is generally best to temporarily forget all that I know
about a topic before watching a film on that topic. This makes it much
easier to enjoy the movie!
On the other hand, the Dario Argento flick /Cat o' Nine Tails/ has a
scene that is funnier if you do know what the reality is. So,
sometimes, such knowledge can enhance your enjoyment of the film. The
film was inspired by the early "XXY" studies, but the film makers were
too busy to find out what "XXY" actually referred to so, when the time
comes to inform one of the protagonists (and the audience) of its
meaning the film makers came up with an explanation that has to be
seen to be believed (not the explanation, the fact that it is used in
the film despite being so far off base that it can't even be said to
be wrong).
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:03:31 -0700, Paul S. Person
><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:30:27 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
>><ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:19:53 -0700, Paul S. Person
>>><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Ridiculous or not, the topic ("is PJs /TH/ on-topic just because it
>>>>has the same name as the book by JRRT") itself is certainly on-topic,
>>>>whether the film turns out to be or not.
>>>
>>>The thing is, "just because it has the same name as the book" is so
>>>patently unlikely for most values of intellectual honesty that the
>>>topic qualifies as a work of fiction in and of itself, requiring a new
>>>group in which to reside. Lessee, what shall we call it?
>>
>>I'm sorry, you appear to be drivelling here.
>
>It seems that way because you are working from a value of intellectual
>honesty that is not included in "most values". This is common amongst
>Tolkien literary purists, so I'm not offended at all by your personal
>attacks.
I have re-read the original statement and it still appears to be
drivel.
>>Perhaps you could clarify what you meant. If anything.
Perhaps you should take advantage of the opportunity to clarify your
statement.
>>A movie I bought because Willis O'Brien did the special effects, /The
>>Last Days of Pompeii/ begins with a screen explaining to the audience
>>that it is /not/ based on a more famous story of the same name. So,
>>films which have the same name as a book or another film and nothing
>>else whatsoever in common with them do exist -- and, if PJ's /TH/
>>turns out to be the same, it's being on-topic in r.a.b.t. would be
>>debatable.
I take it, then, that you are /not/ contending that "just because it
has the same name as the book" is not relevant to your statement, even
though the phrase occurs in it. Please try again.
Sandman
Morgoth's Curse <morgoths...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:49:03 -0700, Ronald O. Christian
> <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>
> >Discuss. In what way does this make Jackson's The Hobbit even more an
> >abomination? (Sigh...)
>
> The fact that Jackson must necessarily invent additional
> characters and dialogue which will then be mistaken as the work of
> Tolkien. (I can still recall people wondering where Lurtz appears in
> the Lord of the Rings.) It's also a blatant attempt to exploit the
> love, labor and knowledge that Tolkien put into his works. Jackson
> has profited enormously from Tolkien's long labor and yet contributed
> nothing to his artistic legacy.
That's a bit harsch. Not only do I object to the notion of pinning all
of your objections to one single person, but I also object to the
notion that the movies hasn't contributed to the Tolkien legacy seeing
how his book saw a tremendous sales boost after the movies had
premiered.
> As Steuard Jensen has somewhat ironically noted, Jackson's version
> is mostly flash and dazzle. Eliminate the spectacular scenery and I
> am sure that most people would agree that Jackson's version is an
> inferior version indeed.
Well, wouldn't you have to remove the spectacular scenery from the
books as well, as to make a fair comparison?
--
Sandman[.net], not defending either version.
Morgoth's Curse
<pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>>< blink >
>>
>> This is certainly the first time I ever saw anyone describe
>>"Gladiator" as a "chick flick."
>
>I only saw it because a chick recommended it.
>
>Consider the ending: Our Hero, dead, finds himself in a world exactly
>like this one, except his wife and son are still around. What could
>possibly be clearer?
>
>It is a brain-dead chick flick because, if Our Hero and his family are
>in a world /just like this one/, so is the Emperor and the Praetorian
>Guard. So we must infer that he, his wife and his son are toast.
>Again. And maybe again and again and again after that, as they
>traverse endless afterlifes just like this life.
Different definitions, I guess. As I understand it, a chick
flick is typically described as the video equivalent of one of those
Harlequin romance novels that women are so fond of. In other words,
love and romance are the dominate themes. (Movies such as "Sleepless
in Seattle", "When Harry Met Sally" and "Pretty Women" come readily to
mind.) I find that hard to apply to "Gladiator" if only because most
of the film (and certainly the most interesting scenes) were devoted
to battles. I always considered it an action film or at best, to use
your own phrase, a historical drama.
Morgoth's Curse
Troels Forchhammer
>
<rearranging>
> If you mean, whatever text happens to be in the most common
> version you can find at Borders,
No longer at Borders, I understand, but I get the point ;-)
> I'd say you're just as much reading what the publishers at
> Ballantine wanted you to read, as what Tolkien (ultimately)
> wanted you to read. Yes, it's a book called "The Hobbit",
> but it is neither what Tolkien originally wrote, nor is it
> the story Tolkien wanted it to become.
That is, IMO, a valid point. Tolkien was himself clearly unhappy with
the childish tone of /The Hobbit/ and regretted the whimiscal nature
of the book.
> or do you mean the version he began in 1960 that was to better fit
> the *tone* of FOTR, and which he (tragically) was argued out of
> completing? This revision, which he clearly *wanted* to write,
> would probably not be considered a "children's book" (that being
> one of the criticisms).
I was quite surprised when reading the actual changes that he made
how light they were. The book is still, in my view, a children's
book, though most of the whimsicality is removed. The narrator still
explains the situation to the reader, but now the address is not
quite as direct. To take just a single example from chapter 2, the
passage
Yes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those
with only one head each.
is, in the 1960 revision, replaced by this:
That is the way of trolls of their sort. Great greedy
slow-witted brutes. There are other kinds, more cunning and
dangerous; but Tom and Bert and Bill were quite dangerous
enough.
While the narrator still explains things, he doesn't refer to himself
and the reader in the first and second person.
One of the elements that I, personally, find whimsicial and rather
incongruous with the texture of Middle-earth is the speaking troll-
purse, and that is retained in this version.
> I submit that since he *wanted* to write it, and had written at
> least some of it, it's a valid version,
It only extends into the first page or two of the third chapter, and
for much of its length it consists of rather light correction notes
to the 1951 edition. I do not agree with Rateliff that Bilbo is made
more foolish as such. Bilbo's ignorance of the wide world outside the
Shire is made more consistent and it shows a bit more. Overall the
portrayal of Bilbo is more in line with the portrayal in 'The Quest
of Erebor' (in /Unfinished Tales/ and in /The Annotated Hobbit/).
> arguably every bit as much as anything Christopher has published
> since, and incidentally I'd love to have the honor of reading it.
It is published in /The History of the Hobbit/ volume 2 /Return to
Bag-End/ which is edited and commented by John Rateliff. I would
expect that it is available from the library, though probably in most
places only through inter-library loan.
> Or are you talking about some completely different book? Just
> wondering.
In the case of the Hobbit film, however, there is little doubt about
which book is referred to -- Middle-earth enterprises only own the
rights to the 1966 /Hobbit/, so this is the only book that Jackson
can legally attempt to adapt (besides /The Lord of the Rings/ of
course -- I suppose that would also be the mid-sixties edition).
So, as for the book Jackson will base his films on, this is indeed a
children's book.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
People are self-centered
Troels Forchhammer
> Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> Sandman <m...@sandman.net> spoke these staves:
>>>
>>> "being true to the book" and whether it is possible or not.
>>
>> Would you mind linking to it? Many of us here can read Swedish.
>
> http://sandman.net/pages/Boksann
Thank you!
>>> It started with establishing that no film could ever be literally
>>> true to any book,
>>
>> That, of course, depends entirely on what you mean by that. A
>> film can certainly be 'literally true' to a book in all but the
>> most trivial matters
[...]
>
> What I meant, and wrote about in the blog post, is that a book
> describes events with words and a movie describes them with images.
A film of course also works with words as well as other sounds (in
particular music), but this doesn't really address the issue that I
raised. I will maintain that, except for trivial differences that
really /are/ due the medium[#], there are no technical limitations to
telling exactly the same story, with the same characters and
underlying themes in both media (at least -- not unless Tolkien is
right and any attempt to tell a fairy story other than with words
will inevitably fail, in which case those who say that Jackson was
wrong to even try would be right -- but I don't really agree with
Tolkien on that).
[#] You can, of course, in a film say 'the grass is green', but that
is fairly pointless when the viewer can merely look at the grass on
the screen as see for herself that it is indeed green. This, however,
is a change of the kind that I would consider trivial -- showing the
exact same thing in different ways is a trivial change, and that is
definitely possible at all levels of Tolkien's work.
> The thoughts of a character can't always be narrated in a film, so
> it is conveyed using the actors ability to portray said thoughts
> and feelings, which is a lesser medium than just using words.
While I agree entirely that this is the /conventional/ way to handle
it in film, it is by no means the only way to do so, and there are
many ways to communicate in the thoughts of a person using words.
And of course a modern film uses lots and lots of words to carry the
plot -- it is usually given in dialogue, but Jackson should be
credited for being willing to use voice-over in ways that are not
common in modern (adventure) films. This is device that could be used
far more to convey feelings and thoughts, but it generally isn't.
This is not due to any inherent limitation in films, but merely due
to the conventions of the industry.
My claim is that for the majority of these perceived differences, it
is mostly a matter of industry conventions rather than actual
limitations in the film medium. Another example is that there is no
technical problem in creating a 12-hour film to tell the story of
even a short book, but again it is the conventions of the film
industry that create the limitation. Saying that, however, I also
need to acknowledge that many of these conventions probably do make
/economic/ sense -- the audience to a 12-hour film might be severely
limited ;-) In many cases, however, this is also due to a limited
tolerance of the audience: they are, as a rule, unwilling to accept
too many changes to the story-telling techniques.
It is certainly not important for the end-product whether the
limitations are self-imposed due to conventions of the industry or
are inherent in the medium, but I prefer to keep things straight --
if we say that the limitations are mostly because Jackson was
unwilling to deviate drastically from the accepted conventions of
story-telling in adventure (and horror) films, then we can put the
issue to rest.
> There are things that a movie portrays *better* than a book could,
> but in the context whether a movie is true to a book, that's not
> the problem.
'Better' is probably subjective matter (personally I tend to prefer
the written word in most, if not all, situations). The combination of
image, music, ambient sounds and spoken words obviously has a
different effect on the audience than does the written word in
itself. Off the top of my head, I can't imagine anything that can be
portrayed in a film that cannot be equally portrayed in a book
(though reading a scene may take considerably longer than seeing it
on film), but I shan't rule out the possibility.
>>> So, if one is so inclined to take this position, than no movie
>>> could ever be true to LotR, and the term "being true to the book"
>>> a misnomer.
>>
>> Of course it isn't. Even if you accept the position (which I do
>> not), it is still a matter of grading
>
> Well, I was in reference to it in a more binary manner, rather
> than "how true is it to the book" I wanted to establish that being
> "true to the book" was impossible if one expected 100% of the book
> to be portrayed by the movie.
Yes, I see that from the blog -- I clearly misunderstood your
intention above, sorry!
>> Well, if you cannot accept that there is a difference between a
>> book and a film, then I think you need to have your mind examined
>> ;-)
>
> As I'm sure you realize, there are plenty here that have difficulty
> with that concept :-D
Actually I don't think so -- the number of people who can sit in a
cinema and firmly believe that they are reading a book (or vice-
versa) must be extremely small.
I think what people refuse to accept is the further proposition of
what consequences the difference has, and that is a different matter.
You, or at least some of those who use the 'they are different
media' argument, seem to imply that being able to tell the two apart
automatically means that one should accept that non-trivial changes
to the plot, the characters and the underlying themes are forced upon
you by this difference in medium, but that is not so -- the same
story can easily be told in both media, and you can of course
translate the characters, the plot and the underlying themes without
sacrificing anything. Whether this is /desirable/ is another
question, but the arguments appears to me to imply not a question of
desirability, but one of basic nature, and it is that gross
generalisation that is fallacious.
>>> So, I think asking what book adaption that you have seen that you
>>> *do* consider to be not only good, but perhaps great? because
>>> either no such adaptations exist or perhaps LotR is so neat and
>>> dear to you that no adaptation that won't fit into your internal
>>> mold would be undesirable to you?
>>
>> Well, personally I think that riduculing the moral position of
>> the original work (and the original artist) is not a very nice
>> thing to do in an adaptation.
>
> While I am not aware of any such event in regards to LotR,
While I suppose that 'ridiculing' i probably a matter of opinion, I
think it should be fairly easy for anyone that is reasonably
acquainted with Tolkien's work to identify several instances where
the Jackson films support an ethical position that is in direct
contradiction of the ethical position of the book. If you can't find
any such examples on your own, I suggest you either take my word for
it or we discontinue that line of the discussion.
> I fail to see how it is relevant to the question?
I merely chose to go about the question from the other end, so to
speak. Instead of trying to identify some book adaptation that I'd
consider good (though, did you see /Pelle the Conqueror/ - /Pelle
Erobreren/?), I'd rather try to specify what it is that makes an
adaptation fail in my eyes. There are so many ways in which to
succeed that it is much easier for me to discuss the few things that
can make it fail.
If I look at the Harry Potter films, I would say that the best
adaptation of these is the third, /Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban/. Even if this is my favourite book of the series (with the
fourth coming in second and the last three books failing miserably
for me), I think the film adaptation succeeds so very well precisely
because the director dared loosen up. Cameron, who directed the first
two films, stayed extremely close to the plot of the books (much
closer even than Jackson), but they nonetheless felt, to me, rather
flat -- there was a depth that was missing, which Cuar�n managed to
create by using his own artistic talent in a looser interpretation of
the plot, while adhering more closely to the thematic undercurrents
of the book.
Incidentally this of course doesn't mean that I have any desire to
refuse Jackson the right to create exactly the work of art that he
wishes to. I think it is a very important point when making a new
work of art that is based on some other work that the new artist is
free to find their own artistic expression. This obviously applies to
anyone creating new art based on Tolkien's work, whether pictures,
music, songs or film.
I fully support Jackson's right to disregard Tolkien's ideas and
thoughts about his own work and to substitute Jackson's own thoughts
and ideas -- of course that runs the risk of someone like me saying
that his (Jackson's) work fails for them as a piece of art because
of this or that, but that is a risk run by any artist and it should
certainly not stop him!
To some extent Jackson's own statements are of course responsible for
creating an expectation that he had no intention of actually trying
to live up to, but I also think that he might have succeeded better
if he had not been so fixated on staying extremely close to the book
at the surface level (e.g. in a number of cases he takes some of
Tolkien's dialogue and transplant it to another character at another
point in the plot, and generally this does not work -- he would have
done much better to let his character find their own voice rather
than this).
As I say below, I agree with the decision to cut Tom Bombadil -- I
could add that I agree with the decision to give Glorfindel's role to
Arwen, and the changes to the Rohan storyline are quite fine by me
(except the heavy-handed exorcism of Th�oden -- this, to my taste,
was much overdone). I could go on to express praise to some and
indifference to many of the changes that he introduced, but that, I
think, is rather besides the point.
>> I know that Jackson claimed to have wanted to honour Tolkien's
>> themes and to translate them directly into his film, but all I
>> can say to that claim is that he either lied (quite possible --
>> after all he wanted to get all us Tolkien geeks to watch his
>> films) or he has extremely poor reading skills.
>
> Again, this has nothing to do with the question being asked, but I
> have to interject and just state that intentions aside - the
> interpretation of said "underlying theme" may differ between you,
> Peter Jackson and Tolkien himself.
Certainly, but we are not talking about mine or Jackson's
interpretations -- we are talking about what Tolkien saw. This is
actually quite well documented (e.g. in his published letters and in
the /History of Middle-earth/ series), so it is not just a matter of
conjecture. Certainly I saw some things in the book that Tolkien
never intended, and certainly he saw things in his own work that I
had to have him[*] point out to me before I could see them. The point
is, however, that I have spent a considerable effort in studying
Tolkien's writings including his own interpretations of his work, and
I have, even if I do say so myself, managed to get a rather good
understanding of what Tolkien himself saw in his own work (and
certainly a much better understanding than Jackson et Al.). But
while I may not have been consciously aware of Tolkien's thoughts and
ideas, much of it can still be perceived in the 'feeling' of the
book.
[*] Through his surviving writings -- unfortunately I have never
spoken to him, and I was too young anyway to have appreciated it
before he died.
Based on my knowledge of the book and its author, it is fairly easy
to see that Jackson definitely does /not/ honour the thematic
material in the book by translating /Tolkien's/ themes from book to
film, as he has explicitly stated was his intention. I do, of
course, realize that it is only a very small fraction of the cinema-
going audience that has a similar understanding of Tolkien's own view
of his work, and that Jackson's aim was to please the many rather
than the few, but this does not invalidate my claims (though it
probably makes them irrelevant to Jackson, but I can live with that
;-)
And actually the mere change of thematic content doesn't necessarily
bother me -- I am quite happy with Jackson's decision to cut out
Bombadil because I think it would have been impossible for him to
translate the thematic content of Bombadil's character (I do not
believe that it is impossible to do it on film /per se/, but I am
convinced that Jackson couldn't do it). It is quite OK with me that
he merely cuts out some of the thematic contents rather than try and
do a botched translation. What irks me is when he does take up a
theme, and then presents the opposite position from Tolkien or in
other ways make severe and unnecessary changes to the underlying
ethical position of the book. This /also/ irks me in the cases where
I don't actually myself agree with Tolkien (regardless of whether or
not I agree with the position of the films) -- it irks me because the
/feeling/ of Middle-earth is so dependent on the underlying ethical
position that when you change that, the feeling of Middle-earth is
lost.
Incidentally Middle-earth is not, in the intention of Tolkien,
another world -- it is this world, our world, in an imaginary period.
It is, however, also much more than that -- it is a sub-creation by
Tolkien that bears the marks of his touch and his world-view
throughout. Thus the basic causative structure of Middle-earth is
definitely 'fundamentally religious and Catholic' -- something that
Jackson failed to convey. Also Tolkien's sub-creation is to some
extent knowingly inspired by the old Norse myths (as well as myths of
other mythologies), which lends it a heroic air where greater-than-
life heroes walk the earth -- this, too, Jackson failed to convey.
I will, however, credit Jackson for at least attempting to convey
some of the historical depth of Tolkien's sub-creation. Unfortunately
this mostly succeeds on the visual side (old ruins, remnants of old
statues etc. etc.) and the few references that are actually in the
films to a history that his deeper and wider than merely the battles
of the Last Alliance are available only to those who know the book
quite well -- it is, of course, slightly ironic that he should have
to rely on his audience knowing the book quite well in order to
convey something of the same depth, but at least it does work.
The physical appearance of Middle-earth and the sense of a deeper
history are the two points where I think Jackson did (or mostly did)
succeed very well in adapting Tolkien's work in more than a very
superficial manner. The characters and the plot he adapted only in a
very superficial manner, and the underlying themes he generally
failed miserably to adapt at all, and for me that means that the
'feeling' of Middle-earth was missing completely.
> Plus, stop referring to the movies as a brainchild of just one man.
I'm sorry if it bothers you, but I really can't be bothered to add
'and culprits' or something similar at every point. I know that they
were more, but Jackson is the front figure and the one to bear
ultimate responsibility.
<snip>
> Whether or not he is making an adaption is decided by him
No. Whether or not he is making an adaptation is decided by the
meaning of the word 'adaptation' (which neither he, you nor I decide)
in comparison with the final result. If the final result matches the
definition, then he has made an adaptation. If the final result does
not match the definition, then no amount of name-calling will make it
one. If the end result falls in the grey zone where disagreement
exist on whether it's an adaptation or not, then it cannot be
ultimately resolved, and while it may not be wrong to call it an
adaptation, neither is it wrong to reject that designation.
However, as I said, I don't really care what we call it -- personally
I have no problem calling at least the LotR films adaptations of
Tolkien's book, even if I insist that it is /not/ Tolkien's story,
/not/ Tolkien's characters and /not/ Tolkien's world.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
- Piet Hein, /Wide Road/
Sandman
Paul S. Person <pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
> >So, I think asking what book adaption that you have seen that you *do*
> >consider to be not only good, but perhaps great? because either no
> >such adaptations exist or perhaps LotR is so neat and dear to you that
> >no adaptation that won't fit into your internal mold would be
> >undesirable to you?
>
> If you hadn't snipped it, my comments on /The Sum of All Fears/ would
> have provided an answer.
It was described as "pretty well", and I didn't consider it an example
of an adaptation neither good nor great.
> Other films that I consider to be effective adaptions of other forms
> include (in no particular order, and restricted to books I have read
> or musicals I have seen):
> /The Satan Bug/ -- as I have frequently mentioned on r.a.b.t.
> any Jack Ryan film so far, no matter who played Jack Ryan
> /Evita/ -- quite possibly the best film adaptation of a musical ever
> made
> /Advise and Consent/
> /Seven Days in May/
> /Quo Vadis/
> /The Prize/
> /The Shoes of the Fisherman/
> /For Your Eyes Only/ -- for blending the title story and "Risico" into
> a satisfying James Bond film
> The first five James Bond films, particularly /From Russia With Love/
> and /OHMSS/. After that the films began diverging quite seriously from
> the books, occasionally literally having only the title in common.
> The first three Harry Potter films, and the seventh Harry Potter film
> (in two parts). The others are adaptations, but they leave out so much
> that they feel more like pastiches.
I see that our opinion about great adaptations differ too greatly as
to make a basis for comparison.
> These are all characterized by telling the story of the original. In
> many cases they tell a different version, in some cases they change
> darn near everything, but it is still clearly the same story.
And, I take it, that the LotR movies told another story then the one
found in the books? The synposis of the books on Wikipedia is here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lord_of_the_rings#Synopsis>
Any moviegoer that hasn't read the books and would read that text
would just as easily mistake it as the synposis of the movies. In
fact, in all that text, the things that are incorrect that I could
find are:
1. No Tom Bombadill
2. Elrond conjures the ford of Bruinen
3. The scouring of the Shire
Out of all that text, with only some three-ish points that differ, I'd
say that claiming it doesn't tell the same story to be quite foolish.
Does the movie add, alter and remove content? Of course, and I don't
agree with all of it either, but I'd be a fool if I were to claim that
the story is something different.
> >Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It is
> >defined by the person creating the work. You are free to regard it as
> >a poor or a misguided adaption, or even claim that you subjectively
> >feel that it is not an adaptation in spite of the artists claim, but
> >that won't change anything of course.
>
> So, your theory is that, if I made a movie based on, say, /Dick and
> Jane/, and /said/ that it was an adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted &
> Alice/, it would /be/ and adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice/
> even though it two characters were named "Dick" and "Jane" and they
> did what they do in the children's books that are their natural
> habitat?
In your example above, you describe your actions as basing your movie
on one material and then claiming that you are basing it another. In
this example, I would call you a liar.
> Sorry. Whether "A" is "B" or "A" is "C" does not depend on what
> someone /says/, it depends on what it /is/.
Only, you are using a mathematical resolution test to determine the
binary state of an assigned value in your above conclusion. As I
mentioned, the word "adaptation" doesn't come with a resolution test
for its validity. Words have meanings, definitions, but unlike the
world of mathematics, those meanings and definitions aren't governed
by a set of rules that can be used for every situation.
"Adaptation" is the noun for the verb "adapt". One of the definitions
of the word "adapt" is "alter (a text) to make it suitable for
filming, broadcasting, or the stage".
But I digress, I never meant to try to define the word, only to
explain how the act of adapting something is not defined on the
quality of the end result, but rather by the person performing the act.
> >I'm only assuming that your comment about it perhaps not being an
> >adaptation is just a disguised premature commentary on your trust in
> >the production to create an adaptation that you personally feel would
> >be a valid one, but you seem to project this to include whether or not
> >it would be in topic in a discussion forum based on these subjective
> >feelings of yours. I feel that it is misguided.
>
> Wow, and I thought I was getting convoluted!
>
> I just think the topic is worth discussing. Apparently, others agree.
Apparently, I'm one of them :)
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Paul S. Person <pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
But, in relation to TH, when did the Council move against Dol Goldur
then? Because they did so knowing he was Sauron (again, in the revised
story line), which Gandalf found out by sneaking into Dol Goldur prior
to that event, which as far as I know, takes place at least in the
same year as TH.
--
Sandman[.net]
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> And, I take it, that the LotR movies told another story then the
> one found in the books? The synposis of the books on Wikipedia is
> here:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lord_of_the_rings#Synopsis>
This is probably going to sound quite condescending, which is not
really my intention, but perhaps inevitable. If you honestly mean that
this is all that you get out of reading Tolkien's /The Lord of the
Rings/, if you truly mean that this is a fair and comprehensive summary
of what a reader finds in Tolkien's book, then I am stunned! All I can
think is that I pity those who see nothing more in the book (at least
if they are otherwise sympathetic to the book -- if they dislike it,
there is no reason to pity them -- then it is merely not to their taste
and there is not reason for them to attempt to get anything out if it).
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> Just to clarify, you do realize that at least some of that (in
> LotR) was drawn from other Tolkien sources, right?
Not to my knowledge. Jackson did not have the rights to use anything
not in /The Lord of the Rings/, so he could, legally, not add
anything from other writings, and I am indeed not aware of anything
such.
His version of the disaster of the Gladden Fields (where Isildur was
killed), and of the events when Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron's
finger are substantially different from anything that Tolkien wrote
about it (even some of what is in /LotR/).
Ironically there is actually one thing where Jackson clearly changes
what is in /The Lord of the Rings/ to replace it with a version that
is closer to another version of Tolkien's legendarium. In the earlier
versions of the mythos, the Orcs were bred 'of the subterranean heats
and slime' -- and Jackson's slime-pods are far closer to this
description than they are to the description in /The Lord of the
Rings/, but Jackson could not legally base his portrayal of Saruman's
orc-breeding programme on anything outside LotR (and I actually doubt
that any of the people involved in the script-writing have read the
/History of Middle-earth/ series).
> That regardless of what Jackson might have added in the course of
> having to make a movie from a book, he had also added (for
> instance) material from the appendices that almost nobody reads in
> the back of Return of the King.
I think that most of the regular contributors to AFT and RABT are
intimately familiar with the appendices -- when we did our chapter-
by-chapter discussions of /The Lord of the Rings/ some years ago, we
also discussed every single appendix (splitting appendix A into
several discussions because there is so much material there).
For an overview of our discussions, you can see here:
http://tolkien.forchhammer.net/CotW_1.html
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
A common mistake people make when trying to design
something completely foolproof is to underestimate the
ingenuity of complete fools.
- Douglas Adams, /Mostly Harmless/
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> > The thoughts of a character can't always be narrated in a film, so
> > it is conveyed using the actors ability to portray said thoughts
> > and feelings, which is a lesser medium than just using words.
>
> While I agree entirely that this is the /conventional/ way to handle
> it in film, it is by no means the only way to do so, and there are
> many ways to communicate in the thoughts of a person using words.
>
> And of course a modern film uses lots and lots of words to carry the
> plot -- it is usually given in dialogue, but Jackson should be
> credited for being willing to use voice-over in ways that are not
> common in modern (adventure) films. This is device that could be used
> far more to convey feelings and thoughts, but it generally isn't.
> This is not due to any inherent limitation in films, but merely due
> to the conventions of the industry.
Indeed, and the conventions are the medium I am talking about in a
sense. Meaning that the way movies are made create possibilities and
limitations for the narration of a story. Movies are made to be seen
just as books are made to be read, but the production cost of a movie
far outnumbers that of a book, so greater care is spent to ensure that
the movie is made in a way as to maximize the number of people willing
to pay for seeing it, which means that (for example) having a voice
over spelling out Sam's thoughts and feelings when first wearing the
ring (which probably was one of the reason this scene didn't make it
to the movie) isn't preferable.
> My claim is that for the majority of these perceived differences, it
> is mostly a matter of industry conventions rather than actual
> limitations in the film medium.
Agreed. I didn't elaborate enough to make it clear that this is my
point as well.
> Another example is that there is no technical problem in creating a
> 12-hour film to tell the story of even a short book, but again it
> is the conventions of the film industry that create the limitation.
> Saying that, however, I also need to acknowledge that many of these
> conventions probably do make /economic/ sense -- the audience to a
> 12-hour film might be severely limited ;-)
Well, the LotR movie *is* 12 hours long, and has a huge audience. :)
> It is certainly not important for the end-product whether the
> limitations are self-imposed due to conventions of the industry or
> are inherent in the medium, but I prefer to keep things straight --
> if we say that the limitations are mostly because Jackson was
> unwilling to deviate drastically from the accepted conventions of
> story-telling in adventure (and horror) films, then we can put the
> issue to rest.
:)
> > There are things that a movie portrays *better* than a book could,
> > but in the context whether a movie is true to a book, that's not
> > the problem.
>
> 'Better' is probably subjective matter (personally I tend to prefer
> the written word in most, if not all, situations).
Well, how many books about car chases have you read? Fast paced action
is hard to describe in words and easy to portray on the screen.
Consider the scene in The Matrix where Neo and Trinity storms the
entrance to the Agents buildings and in slow motion shoots up the
entire place. While "fast-paced" may be the wrong way to describe it,
writing the same scene using only words and keeping the same intensity
would be difficult, if not impossible.
Also, actors do bring a new dimensions to words. Dialogue in a book
may be perfectly fine, but when said out loud and portrayed on screen,
it can become something glorious. Think about the opening scene in
Inglorious Basterds, or the dialogue between Christopher Walken and
Dennis Hopper in True Romance. It's just text, and as written would
probably be quite boring, even if underlying tension and tone is
described as good as possible.
> >> Well, if you cannot accept that there is a difference between a
> >> book and a film, then I think you need to have your mind examined
> >
> > As I'm sure you realize, there are plenty here that have difficulty
> > with that concept :-D
>
> Actually I don't think so -- the number of people who can sit in a
> cinema and firmly believe that they are reading a book (or vice-
> versa) must be extremely small.
Hehe, well, that's not what I mean. I mean that there are lots of
people that can't accept the differences between a book and a movie
and therefor expect the same from the movie which they got from the
book, which I say is impossible.
> >> Well, personally I think that riduculing the moral position of
> >> the original work (and the original artist) is not a very nice
> >> thing to do in an adaptation.
> >
> > While I am not aware of any such event in regards to LotR,
>
> While I suppose that 'ridiculing' i probably a matter of opinion, I
> think it should be fairly easy for anyone that is reasonably
> acquainted with Tolkien's work to identify several instances where
> the Jackson films support an ethical position that is in direct
> contradiction of the ethical position of the book. If you can't find
> any such examples on your own, I suggest you either take my word for
> it or we discontinue that line of the discussion.
I did indeed object to the word "ridicule" in this instance.
Differences between the two artistic works are obvious, both in story,
tone, ethics and underlying meaning. I disagree that any such
differences is an act of ridiculing Tolkien, a person I believe that
the entire film team have the outmost respect for.
<snip>
> As I say below, I agree with the decision to cut Tom Bombadil -- I
> could add that I agree with the decision to give Glorfindel's role to
> Arwen, and the changes to the Rohan storyline are quite fine by me
> (except the heavy-handed exorcism of Th�oden -- this, to my taste,
> was much overdone). I could go on to express praise to some and
> indifference to many of the changes that he introduced, but that, I
> think, is rather besides the point.
I agree with all of the above, by the way.
> > Again, this has nothing to do with the question being asked, but I
> > have to interject and just state that intentions aside - the
> > interpretation of said "underlying theme" may differ between you,
> > Peter Jackson and Tolkien himself.
>
> Certainly, but we are not talking about mine or Jackson's
> interpretations -- we are talking about what Tolkien saw. This is
> actually quite well documented (e.g. in his published letters and in
> the /History of Middle-earth/ series), so it is not just a matter of
> conjecture. Certainly I saw some things in the book that Tolkien
> never intended, and certainly he saw things in his own work that I
> had to have him[*] point out to me before I could see them. The point
> is, however, that I have spent a considerable effort in studying
> Tolkien's writings including his own interpretations of his work, and
> I have, even if I do say so myself, managed to get a rather good
> understanding of what Tolkien himself saw in his own work (and
> certainly a much better understanding than Jackson et Al.).
I dislike this line of reasoning for a number of reasons. I would
never be so bold as to claim that I have a good understanding of how
another person perceives anything, regardless on how much I've studied
said persons written thoughts. Secondly, the team behind the movies
was filled with people who had worked with Tolkiens material for
decades. Any divergence was most likely not the result of ignorance
about Tolkiens works, but rather the result of trying to make an
adaptation as interesting as possible to the movie-going audience.
> Incidentally Middle-earth is not, in the intention of Tolkien,
> another world -- it is this world, our world, in an imaginary period.
> It is, however, also much more than that -- it is a sub-creation by
> Tolkien that bears the marks of his touch and his world-view
> throughout. Thus the basic causative structure of Middle-earth is
> definitely 'fundamentally religious and Catholic' -- something that
> Jackson failed to convey. Also Tolkien's sub-creation is to some
> extent knowingly inspired by the old Norse myths (as well as myths of
> other mythologies), which lends it a heroic air where greater-than-
> life heroes walk the earth -- this, too, Jackson failed to convey.
I agree with the first, but not the latter. One thing that comes to
mind is a specific passage in TT where Aragon presents himself to
Eomer in chapter 2, Riders of Rohan. The same scene in the movie is
not portrayed in the same way, but the same large-than-life air about
Aragorn is very well portrayed throughout the movie, if you ask me.
> I will, however, credit Jackson for at least attempting to convey
> some of the historical depth of Tolkien's sub-creation. Unfortunately
> this mostly succeeds on the visual side (old ruins, remnants of old
> statues etc. etc.) and the few references that are actually in the
> films to a history that his deeper and wider than merely the battles
> of the Last Alliance are available only to those who know the book
> quite well -- it is, of course, slightly ironic that he should have
> to rely on his audience knowing the book quite well in order to
> convey something of the same depth, but at least it does work.
Agreed.
> The physical appearance of Middle-earth and the sense of a deeper
> history are the two points where I think Jackson did (or mostly did)
> succeed very well in adapting Tolkien's work in more than a very
> superficial manner. The characters and the plot he adapted only in a
> very superficial manner, and the underlying themes he generally
> failed miserably to adapt at all, and for me that means that the
> 'feeling' of Middle-earth was missing completely.
A "feeling" that is not only highly subjective, but also has only been
conveyed by words alone up til the movie. While I understand what you
mean, the feeling wasn't as lost to me as it seems to have been for
you. I'm sure you will attribute this to your immensely deeper
knowledge about Tolkiens actual intended "feeling" :-D
> > Whether or not he is making an adaption is decided by him
>
> No. Whether or not he is making an adaptation is decided by the
> meaning of the word 'adaptation'
No.
<snip>
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > And, I take it, that the LotR movies told another story then the
> > one found in the books? The synposis of the books on Wikipedia is
> > here:
> >
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lord_of_the_rings#Synopsis>
>
> This is probably going to sound quite condescending, which is not
> really my intention, but perhaps inevitable. If you honestly mean that
> this is all that you get out of reading Tolkien's /The Lord of the
> Rings/, if you truly mean that this is a fair and comprehensive summary
> of what a reader finds in Tolkien's book, then I am stunned!
Ah, but now it is my turn to sound (unintentionally) condescending! It
seems that you missed to read the passage to which I was responding,
maybe because you snipped it?
The passage dealt with whether or not a movie told the same story as
the book it was an adaptation of. My assumption was that the one I
responded to meant to say that the LotR movies did not "tell the story
of the original", and the best way (that I can think of) to test this
claim is to compare the synopsis of the books to the story portrayed
by the movies - rather than, for example, read the book scene by scene
and compare it to the movie, since the question wasn't whether the
movie was verbatim to the books, but rather if it told the same story.
Your reply here is more concerned with that one would "get out" of
reading the books, meaning (I'm assuming) the combined lasting
impression from the books for the reader, which is highly subjective
and would be impossible to summarize in any way. Summarizing the story
is (as shown) quite easily done. You only have to decide on the
verbosity of the summary.
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> In message <news:qjfl37hgum97hdn2i...@4ax.com>
> Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> spoke these staves:
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> > Just to clarify, you do realize that at least some of that (in
> > LotR) was drawn from other Tolkien sources, right?
>
> Not to my knowledge. Jackson did not have the rights to use anything
> not in /The Lord of the Rings/, so he could, legally, not add
> anything from other writings, and I am indeed not aware of anything
> such.
>
> His version of the disaster of the Gladden Fields (where Isildur was
> killed), and of the events when Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron's
> finger are substantially different from anything that Tolkien wrote
> about it (even some of what is in /LotR/).
>
> Ironically there is actually one thing where Jackson clearly changes
> what is in /The Lord of the Rings/ to replace it with a version that
> is closer to another version of Tolkien's legendarium. In the earlier
> versions of the mythos, the Orcs were bred 'of the subterranean heats
> and slime' -- and Jackson's slime-pods are far closer to this
> description than they are to the description in /The Lord of the
> Rings/, but Jackson could not legally base his portrayal of Saruman's
> orc-breeding programme on anything outside LotR (and I actually doubt
> that any of the people involved in the script-writing have read the
> /History of Middle-earth/ series).
"Legally"? Seriously?
> > That regardless of what Jackson might have added in the course of
> > having to make a movie from a book, he had also added (for
> > instance) material from the appendices that almost nobody reads in
> > the back of Return of the King.
>
> I think that most of the regular contributors to AFT and RABT are
> intimately familiar with the appendices -- when we did our chapter-
> by-chapter discussions of /The Lord of the Rings/ some years ago, we
> also discussed every single appendix (splitting appendix A into
> several discussions because there is so much material there).
>
> For an overview of our discussions, you can see here:
> http://tolkien.forchhammer.net/CotW_1.html
--
Sandman[.net]
Troels Forchhammer
> Indeed, and the conventions are the medium I am talking about in a
> sense. Meaning that the way movies are made create possibilities
> and limitations for the narration of a story.
Thanks again. I am possibly being over sensitive, but I have
discussed the matter more times than I can count, and have often
encounted the claim that I erroneously attributed to you, and I guess
I reacted in a knee-jerk manner that wasn't necessary. Sorry!
<snip>
>> 'Better' is probably subjective matter (personally I tend to
>> prefer the written word in most, if not all, situations).
>
> Well, how many books about car chases have you read?
I don't really remember, though I know for sure that I have read some
very fast-paced horseback-chases :-)
> Fast paced action is hard to describe in words and easy to portray
> on the screen.
I agree entirely with that. I don't, however, think that this is the
same as saying that film is /better/ to describe fast paced action --
when done well in a book (which takes a very good author), I think it
at least as good as when done well on film by a very good director
and photographer.
> Consider the scene in The Matrix where Neo and Trinity storms
> the entrance to the Agents buildings and in slow motion shoots
> up the entire place. While "fast-paced" may be the wrong way to
> describe it, writing the same scene using only words and keeping
> the same intensity would be difficult, if not impossible.
Not, I think, impossible, but I do agree that it would be very
difficult.
I think I'd probably prefer a film version by a mediocre team than a
written version by a mediocre author, but I also think I would prefer
a written version by a sublime author to a film version by a sublime
film team.
This of course adds an extra dimension of subjectivity to the whole
thing -- whether we are to compare best to best, or median to median?
;-)
> Also, actors do bring a new dimensions to words. Dialogue in a
> book may be perfectly fine, but when said out loud and portrayed
> on screen, it can become something glorious.
Yeess -- I agree, but conditionally ;) I do think it depends on both
the actor and the text. With a sublime sub-creative text that
commands Secondary Belief, I don't really think an actor can add
anything.
Perhaps I had better explain something of my reading experience:
I know that many people get mental pictures when they read a book --
sort of like a film inside their head. I don't! For me it is the
written word itself that carries all the magic, all the enchantment.
Perhaps a brief flash here, a smell there or a couple of flashes of
soundscape somewhere else, but for most of the part, it is just the
words there on the page. When I try to recall the plot, it is the
words I remember as they stand there on the paper, black on white.
For me one of the best scenes in the three LotR films (well, five if
you count the non-Jackson couple) is when Christopher Lee is standing
at the top of Orthanc guiding the storm about Caradhras. I don't care
that he didn't do it in the book, that is a brilliant scene because
it is just him and the /words/ that carry all the magic.
Do you know Tolkien's essay 'On Fairy-Stories'? He has a description
there that was like a revelation for me when I first read it. Tolkien
rejects the idea of 'willing suspension of disbelief' as anything but
'a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when
condescending to games or make-believe'. What happens when the author
is a successful sub-creator is that 'he makes a Secondary World which
your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords
with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are,
as it were, inside.' However this works for others, this is a very
good description of what I experience when I read a book, but the
enchantment to Secondary Belief is in the words themselves.
Unfortunately I rarely reach this state when watching a film, and
then only in brief bursts until something destroys the moment. This
difference in how I perceive and experience the different media is, I
am sure, a significant contributing factor to my experience of Peter
Jackson's /The Lord of the Rings/.
<snip>
>> The point is, however, that I have spent a considerable effort
>> in studying Tolkien's writings including his own interpretations
>> of his work, and I have, even if I do say so myself, managed to
>> get a rather good understanding of what Tolkien himself saw in
>> his own work (and certainly a much better understanding than
>> Jackson et Al.).
>
> I dislike this line of reasoning for a number of reasons. I would
> never be so bold as to claim that I have a good understanding of
> how another person perceives anything, regardless on how much I've
> studied said persons written thoughts.
Well, there is of course a limit to how well we can understand how
Tolkien interpreted his own work, but within these limits, I will
nonetheless hold to my statement. You may think that studying the
various writings of an author with great care doesn't teach you
anything about his intentions and aspirations with his art, or his
own interpretations of his art, but I disagree strongly with that
(actually I don't think that is what you meant, but the implication
of what you say appears to be that such a study doesn't improve one's
understanding).
I don't claim to possess omniscience in this matter, nor do I aspire
to infallibility, but I do claim that I know considerably more than
most people and that I am more likely to be correct than most even
among Tolkien fans (that said, I can name many regulars, past and
present, here in AFT and RABT who know at least as much as I do about
Tolkien's work).
> Secondly, the team behind the movies was filled with people who
> had worked with Tolkiens material for decades.
Not really. David Salo is an excellent Tolkien linguist (there are
those that hold in higher esteem, but still) but his focus is
linguistic rather than critical and he didn't actually have any
influence on the films as such, only on the use of Tolkien's invented
languages. Pretty much the same can be said of John Howe and Alan Lee
-- both are excellent artist who have long worked on the visual
expression of the film, but neither is a critical specialist and
neither had anything to do with the script.
I am sure that the script team had all read the book at least once,
but none of them have any special knowledge, nor have they said or
done anything that suggests that they have done any particular study
of Tolkien's work. The same applies to the producers. The special
features on the extended DVD set are rather superficial and do not
reveal any particular knowledge of Tolkien either.
All in all there has probably been less than a handful of people who
had worked with Tolkien's works from before the start of the project,
and none of them had any influence on the script.
> Any divergence was most likely not the result of ignorance about
> Tolkiens works, but rather the result of trying to make an
> adaptation as interesting as possible to the movie-going audience.
You are probably to a large extent correct. There is of course
something to say about the specific part of the audience that they
targeted as well as about how well they understood the different
segments that they might have targeted (I tend to hold that people
aren't stupid and they can understand and appreciate even quite
complex things if you give them just half a chance), but that's
besides the point here. I also believe that none of the people
involved in writing the script had done any particular effort to
understand Tolkien's own thoughts and ideas. They had probably read
what Tolkien wrote about the Zimmerman story-line and a few other
letters, but nothing substantial. I don't think that they were really
all that interested -- as you say, their main concern was to get many
people to go see the films, and so there was no reason for them to
attempt to remedy their ignorance.
I say that Jackson lied about his interest in translating Tolkien's
themes, but of course that 'lie' is no worse than the many, many
other little marketing lies that we offered every day -- I don't mean
'lie' in the sense of reviling him for base treachery, but merely
that I was unfortunately na�ve enough to believe his little marketing
dishonesty (one believes what one wants to believe).
Middle-earth
>> is a sub-creation by Tolkien that bears the marks of his touch
>> and his world-view throughout. Thus the basic causative
>> structure of Middle-earth is definitely 'fundamentally religious
>> and Catholic' -- something that Jackson failed to convey. Also
>> Tolkien's sub-creation is to some extent knowingly inspired by
>> the old Norse myths (as well as myths of other mythologies),
>> which lends it a heroic air where greater-than- life heroes walk
>> the earth -- this, too, Jackson failed to convey.
>
> I agree with the first, but not the latter. One thing that comes
> to mind is a specific passage in TT where Aragon presents himself
> to Eomer in chapter 2, Riders of Rohan. The same scene in the
> movie is not portrayed in the same way, but the same
> large-than-life air about Aragorn is very well portrayed
> throughout the movie, if you ask me.
I have to disagree strongly with that. Aragorn, as the only
character, does get some of this larger-than-life quality, but not
until /after/ he accepts And�ril (IIRC that is early in the third
film).
Go read about Sigurd, Beowulf (who was apparently from southern
Sweden), Regnar Lodbrog and other of the legendary and larger-than-
life heroes of our ancestors -- the self-doubt and hesitation that
plagues Aragorn throughout the first two films is wholly alien to
these heroes. And it is of course not just Aragorn -- a great many of
the characters are in different ways made lesser than they are in the
book (Faramir is of course the obvious example, but this is also
reflected in Elrond's speech about his lack of faith in Men), and the
collective effect of this lack of nobility is, to me, an important
aspect in the loss of the 'feeling' of Middle-earth as I perceive it.
> A "feeling" that is not only highly subjective, but also has only
> been conveyed by words alone up til the movie.
As well as after the films ;-)
> While I understand what you mean, the feeling wasn't as lost
> to me as it seems to have been for you. I'm sure you will
> attribute this to your immensely deeper knowledge about Tolkiens
> actual intended "feeling" :-D
No, not really. My better understanding of Tolkien and his work has
enabled me to better express my thoughts on the matter, but the
feeling itself doesn't really depend on it -- before I engaged in my
studies, I had the same feeling, but I just couldn't explain the
various elements of that feeling as I can today. Possibly it has to
do with the way that I relate to the written word -- obviously I do
pay a lot of attention to what I read.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows
how to read.
- /Guards! Guards!/ (Terry Pratchett)
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> the best way (that I can think of) to test this claim is to
> compare the synopsis of the books to the story portrayed by
> the movies - rather than, for example, read the book scene
> by scene and compare it to the movie,
But then you reduce the story to only be the very topmost surface
plot, and that was what I found problematic. Comparing the plot in
such a superficial manner does, in my view, say nothing about whether
the film tells the same story -- that claim should be tested, in my
view, by looking at what the story is about, and that is, again IMO,
intimately linked with what you get out of the story, hence my strong
reaction. What you are doing here is the reverse of the mathematical
technique of /reductio ad absurdum/ -- instead of reducing the
expression until you reach an inconsistency, you merely reduce the
situation until you get rid of all inconsistency, but by doing that
you do create an absurd reduction of the story.
The question is not really whether the films tell the same story at
/some/ level -- we can always reduce the story enough to make it fit
(cue the story that I can never remember the details for about the
film-maker who said that there were only three stories, and he
wouldn't make cindarella (or something like that)). The question is
at what level the films stops to tell the same story. I claim that
this happens at a very superficial level -- you don't have to dig
very deep to find significant differences (and here I don't speak of
the cutting of some and adding of other plot elements). The story is
so much more than just the plot.
> Your reply here is more concerned with that one would "get out" of
> reading the books, meaning (I'm assuming) the combined lasting
> impression from the books for the reader, which is highly
> subjective and would be impossible to summarize in any way.
It is not quite so subjective as you seem to think. While we all take
something different away from the book, there are elements that
nearly most people come away with, and there are careful analyses
available that demonstrate in a quite rational manner what is there
to take away for those with 'eyes to see that can.'
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
In this case the cause (not the 'hero') was triumphant,
because by the exercise of pity, mercy, and forgiveness of
injury, a situation was produced in which all was redressed
and disaster averted.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, /The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien/ #192
Troels Forchhammer
> Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> Jackson did not have the rights to use anything not in /The Lord
>> of the Rings/, so he could, legally, not add anything from other
>> writings, and I am indeed not aware of anything such.
<snip>
> "Legally"? Seriously?
Completely. The Tolkien Estate owns all rights to Tolkien's writings,
except for /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/, where they hold
the rights to the books, but the film rights are held by Middle-earth
Enterprises owned by Saul Zaentz (Zaentz also holds the rights to do
games based on LotR and TH -- so it's very unlikely that we'll see a
game based on e.g. /The Silmarillion/).
There was some problems with the rights to /The Hobbit/, part of
which are currently leased by, IIRC, Warner Bros (the problems
surrounding this was part of what has delayed the Hobbit films).
The Tolkien Estate, however, is not going to let anyone put anything
into any film that they hold all rights to, and they are rich enough
to sue anyone (New Line etc. included) to the sewers if they try, so
I am very sure that Jackson did not include anything Tolkien wrote
from outside LotR when he did the LotR films. He probably still has
the rights to a film version of LotR, so he can, for instance,
include anything from the appendices in his Hobbit films, but not,
for instance, the 'Quest of Erebor' or other such texts (e.g.
Tolkien's notes towards a revision of TH in 1960).
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the
world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Ronald O. Christian
You know, reading all this discussion on how movies are made and what
the differences have to be between a movie and printed matter, (which
has been very illuminating, thanks) it occurs to me that the perfect
movie of the Hobbit would arguably be a visual of the book with a hand
occasionally turning the pages.
Then, the only issue would be which version of the book was being
shown. For instance, one could argue that it should be the version
Tolkien wanted it to be in later life. Others would argue it should
be the first version published. Others, the last version published
during his lifetime and so forth. (A very small and generally shunned
minority will insist on photos of the pages from Tolkien's own
typewriter.) You can't even go by the version of the story in stores
now, because there are several, unless one pedantically insists that
only books called precisely and completely "The Hobbit" could qualify,
and not, for instance, "The Annotated Hobbit". Oooh, this is fun.
Some may argue that the appearance of the hand would represent too
much input from the director. Should it look like Tolkien's hand in
1950, or 1966? Or should it be CGI?
Ronald O. Christian
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
>The Tolkien Estate, however, is not going to let anyone put anything
>into any film that they hold all rights to, and they are rich enough
>to sue anyone (New Line etc. included) to the sewers if they try, so
>I am very sure that Jackson did not include anything Tolkien wrote
>from outside LotR when he did the LotR films. He probably still has
>the rights to a film version of LotR, so he can, for instance,
>include anything from the appendices in his Hobbit films, but not,
>for instance, the 'Quest of Erebor' or other such texts (e.g.
>Tolkien's notes towards a revision of TH in 1960).
When I speculated earlier, it had not occurred to me at the time that
the studio didn't have the rights to Quest of Erebor and couldn't use
any of the material therein. That's unfortunate, but it is what it
is. There's still the appendices. I wonder what the legality is of
parts of the story not told anywhere, except in passing? For
instance, if somewhere in Hobbit or RotK is the phrase "the council
expelled the necromancer from mirkwood" could that legally be expanded
upon, I wonder?
Steve Hayes
To take an example from another book, or series of books, at which point did
who realise that "You know who" was Tom Riddle?
Gandalf no doubt knew, but in "The Hobbit" he gave information to the dwarves
and Bilbo on a "need to know" basis. The Necromancer was a shadowy figure of
evil that they must steer clear of. Only when they had to deal directly with
him and his growing power in LotR did they need to put all the information on
the table.
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> > Indeed, and the conventions are the medium I am talking about in a
> > sense. Meaning that the way movies are made create possibilities
> > and limitations for the narration of a story.
>
> Thanks again. I am possibly being over sensitive, but I have
> discussed the matter more times than I can count, and have often
> encounted the claim that I erroneously attributed to you, and I guess
> I reacted in a knee-jerk manner that wasn't necessary. Sorry!
Again, I didn't elaborate enough on the subject for you to know, and I
apologize as well.
> > Well, how many books about car chases have you read?
>
> I don't really remember, though I know for sure that I have read some
> very fast-paced horseback-chases :-)
It's not very common though. :)
> > Fast paced action is hard to describe in words and easy to portray
> > on the screen.
>
> I agree entirely with that. I don't, however, think that this is the
> same as saying that film is /better/ to describe fast paced action --
> when done well in a book (which takes a very good author), I think it
> at least as good as when done well on film by a very good director
> and photographer.
I don't think I can agree with this postulation. I can't remember any
book sI've read that actually did portray fast-paced action. Or
rather, may very well have been trying to describe a scenario of
fast-paced action but failed to do so in a convincing manner due to
the time consumed for the reader to read the description of the events.
As an author, I guess you have to choose whether to leave out critical
information or slow down the pace of the "scene" in order to properly
convey it all.
> > Consider the scene in The Matrix where Neo and Trinity storms
> > the entrance to the Agents buildings and in slow motion shoots
> > up the entire place. While "fast-paced" may be the wrong way to
> > describe it, writing the same scene using only words and keeping
> > the same intensity would be difficult, if not impossible.
>
> Not, I think, impossible, but I do agree that it would be very
> difficult.
And, I should have added, it would probably have lost what has been
referred to as "feeling" with regards to LotR. With the music, the
slow motion action and the feeling of supernatural empowerment, I
insist on saying it would be impossible to write these events :)
> I think I'd probably prefer a film version by a mediocre team than a
> written version by a mediocre author, but I also think I would prefer
> a written version by a sublime author to a film version by a sublime
> film team.
>
> This of course adds an extra dimension of subjectivity to the whole
> thing -- whether we are to compare best to best, or median to median?
Indeed, and that was never my intention. I was merely trying to
exemplify my position about the inherit limitations of the mediums.
> > Also, actors do bring a new dimensions to words. Dialogue in a
> > book may be perfectly fine, but when said out loud and portrayed
> > on screen, it can become something glorious.
>
> Yeess -- I agree, but conditionally ;) I do think it depends on both
> the actor and the text.
Certainly.
> Perhaps I had better explain something of my reading experience:
>
> I know that many people get mental pictures when they read a book --
> sort of like a film inside their head. I don't! For me it is the
> written word itself that carries all the magic, all the enchantment.
> Perhaps a brief flash here, a smell there or a couple of flashes of
> soundscape somewhere else, but for most of the part, it is just the
> words there on the page. When I try to recall the plot, it is the
> words I remember as they stand there on the paper, black on white.
While I wouldn't try to pretend to understand exactly what you mean
here, this is (as you note) far from the norm, and all my comments in
this discussion has been (or rather, I've tried to keep them) on a
more general level, and not enter my own feelings, opinions and
preferences. Whether I've succeeded with that is another topic, but it
has at least been my intention. While your diverging appreciation of
books in general was most interesting indeed, I see it as a sidenote
to the discussion as a whole, which I'm sure you won't mind.
> For me one of the best scenes in the three LotR films (well, five if
> you count the non-Jackson couple) is when Christopher Lee is standing
> at the top of Orthanc guiding the storm about Caradhras. I don't care
> that he didn't do it in the book, that is a brilliant scene because
> it is just him and the /words/ that carry all the magic.
I'm at loss here. What words are you in reference to with regards to
that scene?
> Do you know Tolkien's essay 'On Fairy-Stories'? He has a description
> there that was like a revelation for me when I first read it. Tolkien
> rejects the idea of 'willing suspension of disbelief' as anything but
> 'a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when
> condescending to games or make-believe'. What happens when the author
> is a successful sub-creator is that 'he makes a Secondary World which
> your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords
> with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are,
> as it were, inside.' However this works for others, this is a very
> good description of what I experience when I read a book, but the
> enchantment to Secondary Belief is in the words themselves.
> Unfortunately I rarely reach this state when watching a film, and
> then only in brief bursts until something destroys the moment. This
> difference in how I perceive and experience the different media is, I
> am sure, a significant contributing factor to my experience of Peter
> Jackson's /The Lord of the Rings/.
This I can totally relate to, and is also something inherit from the
limited time you have to tell a story through a movie.
I feel inclined to share with you something of similar magnitude as to
background story and world immersion, and it doesn't come from either
books or movies, but from games.
I don't know if you ever played "Myst"? It's a series of five games
set in this outer-worldly setting where "Ages" (worlds) are created by
using "The Art" to write a book, and when done, you can link to that
Age through that book.
The first game is simplistic enough, you start the game standing on
the docks of a small island and you soon realise that the place is
filled with puzzles, hints and ways to travel throughout the games. It
was released in 1991 so the graphics (still images) are crude by
todays standards, but were amazing at the time.
Its sequel, Riven, was released four years later, and with updated
graphics that stand the test of today just fine. It was enormously
more complex, and hinted at this huge history and civilisation as a
backdrop to the entire story. There was a numerical system, an
alphabet, a language and so on. The more you played, the more you
learned about what once was.
The writers of the games were never great *writers*, but they were
excellent "tellers", and I've never been as immersed in a game as with
the Myst series.
> > I dislike this line of reasoning for a number of reasons. I would
> > never be so bold as to claim that I have a good understanding of
> > how another person perceives anything, regardless on how much I've
> > studied said persons written thoughts.
>
> Well, there is of course a limit to how well we can understand how
> Tolkien interpreted his own work, but within these limits, I will
> nonetheless hold to my statement. You may think that studying the
> various writings of an author with great care doesn't teach you
> anything about his intentions and aspirations with his art, or his
> own interpretations of his art, but I disagree strongly with that
> (actually I don't think that is what you meant, but the implication
> of what you say appears to be that such a study doesn't improve one's
> understanding).
Improve it may, but not to the degree where I would claim with any
confidence that I am knowledgeable about the authors intentions,
thoughts and "feelings".
> > Any divergence was most likely not the result of ignorance about
> > Tolkiens works, but rather the result of trying to make an
> > adaptation as interesting as possible to the movie-going audience.
>
> You are probably to a large extent correct. There is of course
> something to say about the specific part of the audience that they
> targeted as well as about how well they understood the different
> segments that they might have targeted (I tend to hold that people
> aren't stupid and they can understand and appreciate even quite
> complex things if you give them just half a chance), but that's
> besides the point here. I also believe that none of the people
> involved in writing the script had done any particular effort to
> understand Tolkien's own thoughts and ideas. They had probably read
> what Tolkien wrote about the Zimmerman story-line and a few other
> letters, but nothing substantial. I don't think that they were really
> all that interested -- as you say, their main concern was to get many
> people to go see the films, and so there was no reason for them to
> attempt to remedy their ignorance.
Well, I think our guesswork diverges here :)
> I say that Jackson lied about his interest in translating Tolkien's
> themes, but of course that 'lie' is no worse than the many, many
> other little marketing lies that we offered every day -- I don't mean
> 'lie' in the sense of reviling him for base treachery, but merely
> that I was unfortunately na�ve enough to believe his little marketing
> dishonesty (one believes what one wants to believe).
Or, it could just be that when PJ talked about "themes", he was in
reference to something other than what you interpreted it as? I have
no recollection of this quote from him, so I can't really comment. But
it's quite possible for a person to say that he is trying to be true
to the theme of the original work, and the viewers to conclude that he
failed to do so while he himself feels he did his best.
I'm just vary of binary statements. I.e. he's trying to stay true to
"the themes" must mean 100% of every theme imaginable (which is odd in
itself, because it's all subjective) or he has failed. And with words
as "ridicule" being used to describe the end result, I kind of get the
impression that this is what's happening.
> > I agree with the first, but not the latter. One thing that comes
> > to mind is a specific passage in TT where Aragon presents himself
> > to Eomer in chapter 2, Riders of Rohan. The same scene in the
> > movie is not portrayed in the same way, but the same
> > large-than-life air about Aragorn is very well portrayed
> > throughout the movie, if you ask me.
>
> I have to disagree strongly with that. Aragorn, as the only
> character, does get some of this larger-than-life quality, but not
> until /after/ he accepts And�ril (IIRC that is early in the third
> film).
I can think of a few scenes.
1. When charging the wraiths on wheathertop
2. When refusing the ring from Frodo
3. When facing the orcs on Amun Sul
> Go read about Sigurd, Beowulf (who was apparently from southern
> Sweden), Regnar Lodbrog and other of the legendary and larger-than-
> life heroes of our ancestors -- the self-doubt and hesitation that
> plagues Aragorn throughout the first two films is wholly alien to
> these heroes. And it is of course not just Aragorn -- a great many of
> the characters are in different ways made lesser than they are in the
> book (Faramir is of course the obvious example, but this is also
> reflected in Elrond's speech about his lack of faith in Men), and the
> collective effect of this lack of nobility is, to me, an important
> aspect in the loss of the 'feeling' of Middle-earth as I perceive it.
I have no problem with this. But on the other hand, I think Gandalf is
being made larger in the movies than he was in the books. His magic,
stature and presence is more vivid. In the books, his magic is more
subliminal and his appearance is not as grand (I feel) as in the
movies. And the same can be said about Saruman, who in the book never
actually seems to use any magic, and his voice is what's most notable
to the characters. I'm over simplifying of course.
> > A "feeling" that is not only highly subjective, but also has only
> > been conveyed by words alone up til the movie.
>
> As well as after the films ;-)
:)
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
> You know, reading all this discussion on how movies are made and what
> the differences have to be between a movie and printed matter, (which
> has been very illuminating, thanks) it occurs to me that the perfect
> movie of the Hobbit would arguably be a visual of the book with a hand
> occasionally turning the pages.
Why, that's an excellent idea! :)
> Then, the only issue would be which version of the book was being
> shown. For instance, one could argue that it should be the version
> Tolkien wanted it to be in later life. Others would argue it should
> be the first version published. Others, the last version published
> during his lifetime and so forth. (A very small and generally shunned
> minority will insist on photos of the pages from Tolkien's own
> typewriter.) You can't even go by the version of the story in stores
> now, because there are several, unless one pedantically insists that
> only books called precisely and completely "The Hobbit" could qualify,
> and not, for instance, "The Annotated Hobbit". Oooh, this is fun.
Indeed, and I think in the interest of completeness, each version of
the book should be included, and each different version of a scene
should be read/shown on screen
> Some may argue that the appearance of the hand would represent too
> much input from the director. Should it look like Tolkien's hand in
> 1950, or 1966? Or should it be CGI?
Either way, it should have ring...
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >But, in relation to TH, when did the Council move against Dol Goldur
> >then? Because they did so knowing he was Sauron (again, in the revised
> >story line), which Gandalf found out by sneaking into Dol Goldur prior
> >to that event, which as far as I know, takes place at least in the
> >same year as TH.
>
> To take an example from another book, or series of books, at which point did
> who realise that "You know who" was Tom Riddle?
Uh, but that would be an open-ended identity left unrevealed until
later in the story for the sake of effect.
> Gandalf no doubt knew, but in "The Hobbit" he gave information to the dwarves
> and Bilbo on a "need to know" basis. The Necromancer was a shadowy figure of
> evil that they must steer clear of. Only when they had to deal directly with
> him and his growing power in LotR did they need to put all the information on
> the table.
My question pertains to timeline only, really. At one point, Gandalf
found out that The Necromancer was Sauron, did this occur before,
after or during the events of TH?
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> > the best way (that I can think of) to test this claim is to
> > compare the synopsis of the books to the story portrayed by
> > the movies - rather than, for example, read the book scene
> > by scene and compare it to the movie,
>
> But then you reduce the story to only be the very topmost surface
> plot, and that was what I found problematic. Comparing the plot in
> such a superficial manner does, in my view, say nothing about whether
> the film tells the same story
Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be accomplished
by telling the same story 100%, word by word as written in the book.
And that renders further discussion quite impossible :)
> that claim should be tested, in my view, by looking at what the
> story is about, and that is, again IMO, intimately linked with what
> you get out of the story
But what you just described is a wholly subjective impression, which
no film maker could ever hope to portray since there are as many
impressions of LotR as there are readers of it.
For instance, many people saw LotR as commentary on WWII, which
Tolkien denied, but that's still the impression many got, and I think
it's good that the filmmakers didn't choose to portray this impression.
> hence my strong reaction. What you are doing here is the reverse of
> the mathematical technique of /reductio ad absurdum/ -- instead of
> reducing the expression until you reach an inconsistency, you
> merely reduce the situation until you get rid of all inconsistency,
> but by doing that you do create an absurd reduction of the story.
I don't think a story synopsis could ever be called an "absurd
reduction of the story". It's a reduction, an outline. But it's not
absurd.
--
Sandman[.net]
Paul S. Person
<ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>
>You know, reading all this discussion on how movies are made and what
>the differences have to be between a movie and printed matter, (which
>has been very illuminating, thanks) it occurs to me that the perfect
>movie of the Hobbit would arguably be a visual of the book with a hand
>occasionally turning the pages.
Like parts of /The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh/ (but only
parts), perhaps.
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> I wonder what the legality is of parts of the story not told
> anywhere, except in passing? For instance, if somewhere in
> Hobbit or RotK is the phrase "the council expelled the
> necromancer from mirkwood" could that legally be expanded
> upon, I wonder?
They can surely expand upon it -- I'm fairly sure about that. They
would get into trouble if their expansion is too obviously leaning on
material that they don't have the rights to, but I have no idea of
where the line may be (probably there's a big fat grey zone).
For instance, Saruman scoffing at Gandalf's pipe-smoking in the FotR
film ties with the descriptions in /Unfinished Tales/ of the two
Wizards discussing this issue (and Saruman secretly taking up the habit
in imitation of Gandalf), but the words that they use ('Your love of
the halfling's leaf has clearly slowed your mind.') is not written by
Tolkien, and the notion is quite natural given the relations between
Saruman and Gandalf. I have no idea whether the film-makers got the
idea independently, or if they did find inspiration in /Unfinished
Tales/ (for all that I can see, there is nothing to indicate that they
knew the descpriptions of both Isildur's and Th�odred's deaths that are
also in UT -- in some cases it might actually be better to just remain
ignorant).
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Giving in is no defeat.
Passing on is no retreat.
Selves are made to rise above.
You shall live in what you love.
- Piet Hein, /The Me Above the Me/
Troels Forchhammer
> accomplished by telling the same story 100%, word by word as
> written in the book.
Look rather at the description I gave of discussing rather at what
level of detail the stories diverge -- once again the description of a
dichotomy is, in my opinion, a gross over-simplification.
>> that claim should be tested, in my view, by looking at what the
>> story is about, and that is, again IMO, intimately linked with
>> what you get out of the story
>
> But what you just described is a wholly subjective impression,
Nonsense. While there are certainly some subjective elements, it is
mainly an objective exercise in the analysis and criticism of stories.
The idea that the reading of a book is /completely/ subjective is, in
my considered opinion, a post-modern fallacy (or delusion, if you
will).
> I don't think a story synopsis could ever be called an "absurd
> reduction of the story". It's a reduction, an outline. But it's
> not absurd.
Of course it's absurd. It may be quite useful in the context of a
lexical article, but for the purpose of comparing two versions of a
story, it is an absurd reduction. Of course one does need something
akin to the reduction in order to decide whether two stories are really
versions of the same story, but a simple reduction of the plot is
insufficient even for that purpose).
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Love while you've got
love to give.
Live while you've got
life to live.
- Piet Hein, /Memento Vivere/
Paul S. Person
<snippo>
>And, I take it, that the LotR movies told another story then the one
>found in the books? The synposis of the books on Wikipedia is here:
>
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lord_of_the_rings#Synopsis>
>
>Any moviegoer that hasn't read the books and would read that text
>would just as easily mistake it as the synposis of the movies. In
>fact, in all that text, the things that are incorrect that I could
>find are:
You missed a few:
0. No Old Forest.
>1. No Tom Bombadill
>2. Elrond conjures the ford of Bruinen
2a. Elrond had a /council/, which decides to destroy the ring, not a
shouting match, which ends when Frodo volunteers to take it.
2b. Theoden is in a "stupor of despair"; he is /not/ possessed by
Saruman.
2c. The Dead defeat the Corsairs and are dismissed at the Havens; it
is humans from the South who relieve Gondor, not a green slime.
>3. The scouring of the Shire
And that is with a description so abstract that the differences at
Weathertop, in the meaning of Gandalf's statement "So passes
Denethor", and in Gollum's fall into the fire are unnoticeable. Among
others.
A less abstract description would produce many many more differences.
Far more differences than similarities.
I'm not saying that a description that works for both could not be
created; it would just have to be far more abstract than the one in
Wikipedia. This would work:
The One Ring is discovered and Frodo takes it to Rivendell.
The Fellowship of the Ring is formed in Rivendell and starts off for
Mordor.
Gandalf is lost in combat with a Balrog in Moria.
The Fellowship is comforted and resupplied in Lorien.
The Followship collapses at Amon Hen: Boromir dies, Frodo and Sam go
East, Merry and Pippin are kidnapped, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli
pursue the kidnappers.
Gandalf reappears! Merry and Pippin are entrusted to the Ents.
Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli energize Theoden and defeat
Saruman at Helm's Deep.
Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam have turned Gollum into a guide, crossed the
swamps, seen the Black Gate, and turned south into Ithilien.
Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli travel to Isengard, where they
find Merry, Pippin and the Ents. Saruman is reduced, a Palantir is
acquired.
Pippin earns himself a ticket to Gondor by looking into the Palantir.
Rohan musters to ride to the defense of Gondor.
Frodo, Sam, and Gollum encounter Faramir, who lets them go to continue
their journey.
Gandalf reaches the White City and Pippin becomes a Guard. Merry has
by this time become a Knight of Rohan.
Gollum leads Frodo and Sam to Shelob, who tries to eat them.
Sam rescues Frodo from Cirith Ungol and they start moving to Mt Doom.
The Battle of the Pelennor: the tip of Sauron's smallest finger is
defeated by Rohan and Aragorn, who with Legolas and Gimli has
traversed the Paths of the Dead and brought aid from the South,
Denethor's suicide notwithstanding.
Aragorn leads an army to the Black Gate, thus emptying Mordor. Frodo
and Sam take advantage of this to reach Mt Doom.
Frodo fails! Gollum bites off his finger, with the Ring, and falls
into the Fire.
The world pretty much ends, at least as far as Sauron, his armies, and
Mordor are concerned.
Aragorn becomes King and marries Arwen.
Bilbo and Frodo take the last boat to the West.
Sam returns home.
Some additional detail could be added, but not much. Nothing can be
said about what happened between Aragorn's wedding and the Gray
Havens, for example. The /place/ where Pippin looks into the Palantir
cannot be specified. The location of the Rohirrim's women and children
must be left a mystery. The nature of the aid Aragorn brought from the
South must be obscured. Where, exactly, Frodo was attacked at
Weathertop must not be mentioned, and the name of the Elf who helped
get him to Rivendell and how that Elf helped cannot be noted. Far more
must be omitted than can be included, not from lack of space, but
because the films differ from the book.
And that doesn't take into account the additional material added by
PJ:
1) The Wizard's duel.
2) The diversion of Frodo into Osgiliath.
3) Aragorn falls off his horse.
4) All of the Aragorn and Arwen material -- all of it (see below).
5) The Sending Forth of Arwen.
6) The Imperial Walkers -- er, Really Big Elephants at The Pelennor
(IIRC).
Or the altered characterizations of:
1) Elrond
2) Aragorn
3) Denethor
4) Faramir
among others.
Or the time line problems:
1) No 17 years between the Party and Frodo's departure (among other
things, Merry and Pippin would have been about 16 at the time of the
party, much younger than in the film).
2) The carefully and painstakingly worked out synchronization of East
and West is destroyed. Basically, Part IV both starts and ends 2 weeks
after Part III, both lasting about 4 weeks. Frodo and Sam entered
Ithilian at about the time of the victory at Helm's Deep.
And citing the Appendices doesn't help. In the Appendices, Aragorn and
Arwen have been engaged for (IIRC) about 60 years the year Frodo takes
the Ring to Rivendell. During that time, he has been trying to find
some way to defeat Sauron and become King of Gondor and Arnor. He has
been trying very hard, because Elrond will not let the happy couple
marry (and, this being a Catholic work, that means no hanky-panky
beforehand) until that happens.
In the film, Elrond is a bitter, cynical Elf whose solution to the
Aragorn problem is to send his daughter far far away. Aragorn is a
slacker whose expression when crowned is that of a slacker who has
been conned into getting a job. To say the PJ used the Appendices is
to say that he used them as toilet paper.
IIRC, while the film was being made, there was a lot of talk about
"Arwen, Warrior Elf Maiden". After the second film came out, there
were rumors about Arwen being digitally erased from the Helm's Deep
sequences because Liv Tyler, it turned out, couldn't play a Warrior
Elf Maiden (it was said that she ran and hid behind Viggo Mortensen
during the filming of the battle scenes, being terrified of the Orcs).
How disappointing that discovery must have been to PJ!
Paul S. Person
>Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be accomplished
>by telling the same story 100%, word by word as written in the book.
>And that renders further discussion quite impossible :)
Perhaps you should test this hypothesis by reading a book (/Seven Days
in May/, say, or /The Satan Bug/) and then seeing the movie (which
will be a lot easier for /Seven Days in May/) and see for yourself
what a film that tells the same story as the book is like?
Alternately, watch both versions of /The Manchurian Candidate/ and see
for yourself how the same story can be told in two different ways. (I
haven't read the book, so I have no idea how well either film tells
that story).
The same story can be told in many different ways, and still be the
same story.
Paul S. Person
IANAL; my guess would be that, yes, they can be, but the result had
better not resemble anything JRRT wrote that is not in /LOTR/ or /TH/
too much.
Which, with PJ, shouldn't be much of a problem. It is an Action
Sequence, after all, and we know what PJ does with Action Sequences.
On the filmmakers reading /HOME/: it occurs to me that is is possible
that the lawyers "suggested" that it would be ... unwise ... for
anyone with any input into the development of the story to read
/anything/ by JRRT except /TH/ and /LOTR/. After all, if they don't
read it, they can't use it, or appear to use it, making it much easier
to defend against infringement suits.
Paul S. Person
<morgoths...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:44:40 -0700, Paul S. Person
><pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>>>< blink >
>>>
>>> This is certainly the first time I ever saw anyone describe
>>>"Gladiator" as a "chick flick."
>>
>>I only saw it because a chick recommended it.
>>
>>Consider the ending: Our Hero, dead, finds himself in a world exactly
>>like this one, except his wife and son are still around. What could
>>possibly be clearer?
>>
>>It is a brain-dead chick flick because, if Our Hero and his family are
>>in a world /just like this one/, so is the Emperor and the Praetorian
>>Guard. So we must infer that he, his wife and his son are toast.
>>Again. And maybe again and again and again after that, as they
>>traverse endless afterlifes just like this life.
>
> Different definitions, I guess. As I understand it, a chick
>flick is typically described as the video equivalent of one of those
>Harlequin romance novels that women are so fond of. In other words,
>love and romance are the dominate themes. (Movies such as "Sleepless
>in Seattle", "When Harry Met Sally" and "Pretty Women" come readily to
>mind.) I find that hard to apply to "Gladiator" if only because most
>of the film (and certainly the most interesting scenes) were devoted
>to battles. I always considered it an action film or at best, to use
>your own phrase, a historical drama.
I have probably developed my own definition and it may well be
different from that used more commonly.
I tend to categorize /any/ film whose entire reason for existing is a
payoff that, IMHO, a chick would find appealing: Boy Gets Girl, Family
Reunited, Parent Forgives Child, Child Forgives Parent, ad nauseum.
However, that tends to apply only to films I don't like. /Source Code/
arguably ends with Boy Gets Girl, but I still like it. So there is a
little bit of additional bias going on here.
/Gladiator/ was not a bad film, it just wasn't a good film. It was,
however, a better film (IMHO) than the earlier one on the same topic,
/The Fall of the Roman Empire/. Both ignore the minor detail that
Commodus had been Augustus (co-Augustus with Marcus Aurelius) for
three years before Aurelius died. There was no question of "inheriting
the Empire"; he was /already/ the Emperor. They did get one thing
right -- after Commodus died they had (IIRC) 90 Emperors in 60 years.
It took that long for stability at the top to be restored.
It was also advertised by liars: it claimed to be the story of "the
Gladiator who defied an Emperor". This "defiance" lasts about two
seconds; he folds as soon as pressure is applied. Of course, many
films are advertised by liars; one of the things that makes /Summer
Wars/ so worthwhile is that it delivers on every single promise made
by its trailer, and does even more.
Ronald O. Christian
>In article <fcam375bqcbnfq5rv...@4ax.com>,
> Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> wrote:
>> Then, the only issue would be which version of the book was being
>> shown. For instance, one could argue that it should be the version
>> Tolkien wanted it to be in later life. Others would argue it should
>> be the first version published. Others, the last version published
>> during his lifetime and so forth. (A very small and generally shunned
>> minority will insist on photos of the pages from Tolkien's own
>> typewriter.) You can't even go by the version of the story in stores
>> now, because there are several, unless one pedantically insists that
>> only books called precisely and completely "The Hobbit" could qualify,
>> and not, for instance, "The Annotated Hobbit". Oooh, this is fun.
>
>Indeed, and I think in the interest of completeness, each version of
>the book should be included, and each different version of a scene
>should be read/shown on screen
That's brilliant! Although purists would say that it couldn't be
called "The Hobbit". Maybe "The Ultimate Annotated Complete
Version-Neutral Hobbit".
Ronald O. Christian
>Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be accomplished
>by telling the same story 100%, word by word as written in the book.
>And that renders further discussion quite impossible :)
This is a similar problem to what I've been having discussing the
films here. The definition of "The story" is kind-of squirmy and
tends to morph into whatever is necessary to make one comfortable in
the position that the film (any film from any of Tolkien's books) is a
horrible thing. It makes it hard to have a conversation.
Troels Forchhammer
> wrote:
>>
>> Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be
>> accomplished by telling the same story 100%, word by word as
>> written in the book. And that renders further discussion quite
>> impossible :)
>
> This is a similar problem to what I've been having discussing the
> films here.
You really ought to include more people in your discussions, then ;)
There may be a very little minority here who would with the above
statement (for those who are concerned with such things, it is a
combination of a straw man and fallacious appeal to emotions), but
the vast majority of the posters here are quite happy withe, as I
perceive it, the majority of the changes introduced in the Jackson
films, they were less happy with the Bakshi, and of course the
Rankin-Bass version of /The Retun of the King/ was just downright
horrible.
Very few people, however, feel that the films were wholly and fully
satisfying either -- most people can find something that was
unsatisfying, and the majority of us, as I perceive, end up somewhere
in the grey 'so-so' middle of the scale when we try to evaluate the
films as adaptations -- somewhere in the range between 'they're OK, I
guess' and 'at least I've seen worse' ;-)
Of course there is little agreement on what it is, exactly, that is
the cause of the dissatisfaction, and it may seem that the only way
to satisfy everybody completely is the very literal adaptation, but I
strongly suspect that that, too, would be disatisfying to most
because few directors would, in my estimate, be able to make a good
film with so little artistic freedom.
> The definition of "The story" is kind-of squirmy and tends to
> morph into whatever is necessary to make one comfortable in
> the position that the film (any film from any of Tolkien's
> books) is a horrible thing.
Another fallacy, alas. Again the straw man and a fallacious emotional
appeal.
I realize that it must be just as frustrating to have your view of
the 'story' be challenged with an insistence on including such things
as depth and underlying thematic material, which, admittedly, is far
less tangible than a simple plot summary, but those are (and please
read the following with all possible 'as I see it' and 'IMO'
qualifiers) precisely the things that distinguish Tolkien's books
from so many other authors' and it is, to a very large extent, the
matter that is the focus of the discussion in these groups, so it can
hardly be surprising that the group should insist on including these
also in our evaluation of adaptations.
Personally I was rather surprised when I finally realized that
'Sandman' was employing such a reduction of the plot as his metric in
these groups -- clearly a case of habitual thinking making me a bit
dense :-)
> It makes it hard to have a conversation.
The only reason that I can see that would make it harder have a
conversation on this basis, would be if I insisted that everyone
should necessarily accept my premises as true. I don't. For me it
appears rather an interesting avenue for exploring and trying to
understand where someone comes from.
My reaction to the realisation that we ('Sandman' and myself) meant
two completely different things by 'story' was instead to forgo any
attempt to use a pre-defined line, but to look rather at the level at
which the differences appear. This can even be done along different
'dimensions' of the story independently. I had hoped that such might
prove a profitable route for conversation.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don't want to mend
their own ways, but each other's.
- Piet Hein, /Mankind/
Paul S. Person
>In article <62jl37hv6kthkfu1o...@4ax.com>,
> Paul S. Person <pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
<note: this is not me, of course, but whoever I am responding to>
<somebody needs to be more careful with his quoting>
<this was said, in fact, by Sandman, in message>
<mr-F74696.22...@News.Individual.NET>
>> >Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It is
>> >defined by the person creating the work. You are free to regard it as
>> >a poor or a misguided adaption, or even claim that you subjectively
>> >feel that it is not an adaptation in spite of the artists claim, but
>> >that won't change anything of course.
>>
>> So, your theory is that, if I made a movie based on, say, /Dick and
>> Jane/, and /said/ that it was an adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted &
>> Alice/, it would /be/ and adaptation of /Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice/
>> even though it two characters were named "Dick" and "Jane" and they
>> did what they do in the children's books that are their natural
>> habitat?
>
>In your example above, you describe your actions as basing your movie
>on one material and then claiming that you are basing it another. In
>this example, I would call you a liar.
So, you no longer believe that:
>> >Whether or not it's an adaptation is not defined by you or me. It is
>> >defined by the person creating the work.
unless they happen to be telling the truth.
In other words, what they define an adaptation to be makes no
difference. When their definition diverges enough from yours they
become "liars" and their claim to have made an adaptation is rejected.
>> Sorry. Whether "A" is "B" or "A" is "C" does not depend on what
>> someone /says/, it depends on what it /is/.
>
>Only, you are using a mathematical resolution test to determine the
>binary state of an assigned value in your above conclusion. As I
>mentioned, the word "adaptation" doesn't come with a resolution test
>for its validity. Words have meanings, definitions, but unlike the
>world of mathematics, those meanings and definitions aren't governed
>by a set of rules that can be used for every situation.
Logic applies to more than mathematics.
And is doesn't have to be binary. I could just as easily have added
'or "A" is"D"' and the point would remain the same.
A point which you conceded when you called the /Dick and Jane/ example
an example of a "liar" rather than an "adaptation".
>"Adaptation" is the noun for the verb "adapt". One of the definitions
>of the word "adapt" is "alter (a text) to make it suitable for
>filming, broadcasting, or the stage".
"Adaptation" as a /process/ is defined that way. "Adaptation" as a
/thing/ is not. "An adaptation" refers to a /thing/, not a /process/.
When I say that PJ's /LOTR/ is a mediocre (5 out of 10, overall)
adaptation of JRRT's /LOTR/, I am referring to the /film/, not to the
process PJ (and his minions) used to produce the film.
Paul S. Person
>Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be accomplished
>by telling the same story 100%, word by word as written in the book.
>And that renders further discussion quite impossible :)
This is a straw man argument. Nobody who thinks about the topic a bit
will maintain it.
The reason is that counterexamples can clearly be constructed.
Suppose you hear of a film adaptation of that children's classic,
/Jack and Jill/. You read that it is a very exact adaptation,
containing everything in the original book. You go to the theater.
Your first indication that something may be wrong is when you find
that it is rated NC-17. Nonetheless, you buy your ticked, fat-food up,
and go into the theater. And, indeed, it /is/ a complete adaptation:
at the start of the film, Jack and Jill do indeed go up the hill, to
fetch a pail of water; at the end of the film Jack does indeed fall
down, and break his crown, and Jill does come tumbling after.
However, Jack and Jill are being played by 20-somethings trying to
look like teenagers and, in between the start and the end, they remove
their clothes and engage in activities which fully explain the NC-17
rating -- activities you certainly do not remember reading about when
you read the book, and which you seriously doubt were ever included in
any edition.
So, is this an adaptation? It has all the criteria you have mentioned,
both those you appear to consider definitive and those you clearly
consider ridiculous:
1) The creators have clearly stated that their intent was to adapt the
book.
2) The film includes everything that is in the book.
Or might it more properly be regarded as a profanation?
I say that, not only is not /necessary/ for a film adaptation of a
book to include absolutely everything in the book, it is not
/sufficient/ for it to do so either. Whether a film is an adaptation
of a book, and how good an adaptation it is, is determined by other
criteria, for example:
1) Does it tell the same story?
2) Does it have the same characters?
3) Does it have the same target audience?
/Jack and Jill/ fails completely on #3 (an NC-17 film cannot have
small children as its target audience) and partially on #2 (the
characters should be small children, not teenagers being played by
20-somethings for legal reasons). Whether it fails #1 depends on how
that is interpreted: if it is taken to refer to how much of the book
made it into the film, then 100% made it in so #1 is satisfied
completely; if it is taken to refer to how much of the film was in the
book, then it fails since about 98% of it definitely was not.
PJ's /LOTR/ arguably succeeds on #3 (provided the "target audience"
is, not JRRT fanatics, but sword-and-sorcery fans), mostly fails #2 (a
few characters are the same in the film as in the book, but most are
either not merely not the same as the book but spectacularly not the
same as in the book or not in the book at all), and does poorly on #1
if taken in the first sense (many things in the book are not in the
film, even on a very abstract level) but does rather better if #1 is
taken in the second sense (off hand, I would say the new material is
no more than 50% to 75%, depending on the level of detail used to
compare book and film).
Taemon
> In message <news:mglo37tkcoa5slien...@4ax.com>
> Ronald O. Christian <ro...@europa.com> spoke these staves:
>>> Then I can only assume that "the same story" can only be
>>> accomplished by telling the same story 100%, word by word as
>>> written in the book. And that renders further discussion quite
>>> impossible :)
> There may be a very little minority here who would with the above
> statement (for those who are concerned with such things, it is a
> combination of a straw man and fallacious appeal to emotions), but
> the vast majority of the posters here are quite happy withe, as I
> perceive it, the majority of the changes introduced in the Jackson
> films, they were less happy with the Bakshi, and of course the
> Rankin-Bass version of /The Retun of the King/ was just downright
> horrible.
Well... Epstein was like that. And Paul Person is trying to fill his shoes,
lately. In that context, I don't think it's a strawman at all. There is a
sense in this group of the books being holy, and not allowed to be
moviefied. Exactly the reason why master Noel Q. is so irrestibly funny, one
might think.
T.
Disclaimer: your mileage may vary.
Troels Forchhammer
> accomplished by telling the same story 100%, word by word as
> written in the book.
Ignoring the straw man fallacy for a moment, I wonder if it would help
if we consider some other story? The story of Sigurd Fafnirsbane is
hopefully familiar to all?
This story is known in quite a number of versions, including
- Historical accounts of some events and persons, including Attila
(Atli) and the Burgundians.
1: Historical accounts
- Several versions in Old Norse, including
2: The /V�lsungasaga/
3: A set of poetic lays in skaldic meters (not complete) in the
/Poetic Edda/ -- the Niflung Cycle (Niflung being the same name in
Old Norse as German Nibelung)
4: A retelling by Snorri in the /Prose Edda/
- A version in Middle High German
5: /Nibelungenlied/
- A modern English version in skaldic meter by J.R.R. Tolkien
6: /The Legend of Sigurd and Gudr�n/
- An opera version by Richard Wagner
7: /Der Ring des Nibelungen/ (the Ring Cycle)
This list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it in any way intended as
such -- I merely wish to list a reasonably-sized set of texts (in
Wagner's case texts and scores) that tell the same sequence of events,
and which are to a greater or lesser degree based upon each other.
While it is generally agreed that all of these items tell a story about
the same basic sequence of events (or sections of the same basic
events), they are very different. The question before us would then be
to what degree they are 'the same story' and to what degree they are
different stories. I would also ask to what degree the modern versions
can be said to 'adaptations' to modern language of the older stories
(both Tolkien's and Wagner's work is primarily based on the Old Norse
tradition, though Wagner changed the names to follow the tradition of
the German Nibelungenlied).
Let me say from the outset that I know very little of both the German
/Nibelungenlied/ or Wagner's Ring Cycle (what little I have seen or
heard of the latter has always appeared to me pompous and self-
important in a way that I have distinctly disliked), but I hope that
others will chime in with a discussion of these items. I do, however,
know a little of some of the Old Norse versions (including retellings
in modern Danish) and I know Tolkien's version.
I include the historical accounts mainly to emphasize that it is
generally accepted that some of the events in the legends are based on
certain historical events, but mythologized in the epic legends. Does
this mean that the legends, e.g. the /Atlakvi�a/ (in the /Poetic Edda/)
tell the same story? Not in my opinion -- here I think we have a clear
example of real events being a remote inspiration for fiction (quite
probably the skalds who composed the Old Norse lays that we know today
never even knew about the historical events -- they probably built on
the work of other skalds before them).
Snorri's account in the /Prose Edda/ is essentially a plot summary of
the poems known as the Niflung cycle that is told in order to explain
certain kennings, starting by explaining why gold can also be called
/otrgj�ldum/ -- Otter's weregild -- and moving on from there. Snorri's
purpose is, in other words, quite different from that of the poets. In
many ways Snorri's synopsis of the Niflung cycle stand in the same
relation to the poetic texts as an encyclopedia synopsis to the
original text: different purposes, with the synopsis serving only to
provide an overview of the story, not an actual retelling of the story
-- while the story is certainly recognisable, the synopsis is a
carefully chosen subset of the story, but not the whole story, and with
comments added to put the story into perspective ('Now the tale is told
why gold is called Lair or Abode of F�fnir, or Metal of Gnita Heath, or
Grani's Burden.':
http://www.cybersamurai.net/Mythology/nordic_gods/LegendsSagas/Edda/Pro
seEdda/SkaldskaparmalXLI-L.htm#skald47 --
http://prevew.tinyurl.com/3m4kyt6).
I have said, only half jokingly, that Tolkien was attempting to retcon
the Old Norse tradition. A part of his intention seems to have been to
fill the gap that is in the /Poetic Edda/ and at the same time he
appears to have also wanted to forge a greater consistency out of the
ancient material. It is possibly, although not, I think, immediately
evident, that Tolkien may have had some idea of making the old tales
available to modern English-speaking people, though this does not seem
to be his main concern -- after all, there was also the retellings by
William Morris. In many ways Tolkien's retelling stands in the same
relation to the ancient lays as they must have done to their source
material, the lost lays that preceded them. Tolkien retells a very
large subset of the Niflung Cycle, actually almost all of it, while
alse adding to it and creating a consistency between the component
parts that is missing in the poetic lays. Tolkien tells /almost/ the
whole story, but some things are nonetheless lost that cannot be
explained by the use of modern language or the desire to create
consistency -- while Tolkien's is far from being the Bowdlerized
version that William Morris produced, there is a sense of heathen
savagery in the original lays that is, if not cut entirely, then at
least toned down.
--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal
nothing.
- Frodo Baggins, /The Return of the King/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Troels Forchhammer
"Taemon" <Tae...@zonnet.nl> spoke these staves:
>
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
<snip>
On the attitude of AFT & RABT to the New Line Cinema film version of
/The Lord of the Rings/ -- particularly the critical attitude towards
them:
> Well... Epstein was like that.
Actually I think Epstein's argument was that no film would ever
suffice or should even be allowed -- not even the 100% one that used
every single word that Tolkien wrote either as dialogue or by
visualizing, and added nothing but trivial extra visual details. Of
all the people I have seen posting in AFT & RABT over the past
decade, he seems the only one to hold such an opinion (and, truth be
told, I think he was sometimes ridiculed for it).
My current whitelist of legitimate posters to these group, started at
the time of the sporge attack about five years ago, I think, is at
709 e-mail addresses. Even considering that many posters are
registered with more than one address, and that many of these posters
haven't expressed themselves about the films, there is still a
considerable amount of opinions on the films from at least a couple
of hundred posters.
> And Paul Person is trying to fill his shoes, lately.
Well, I might add one or two others to that, but it is still no more
than one or two percent of the total amount of opinions about the
films that are on record here.
> In that context, I don't think it's a strawman at all.
I must insist that it /is/ a straw man.
While there may be, as I acknowledged in my previous post, a very
small minority that would agree that only the 100% adaptation would
suffice (and I would count anything below, say, 5% of the total a
very small minority), it is indeed a straw man argument to imply that
this opinion is held by anyone -- or even just a majority -- of the
people who are in some way critical of Jackson's achievement. It is
also a fallacious appeal to spite to attempt to claim that anyone
disagreeing with one self must be ludicrously extremist in their
position.
Out of the 702 minutes total run time for the special extended
edition (I just looked it up on IMDB), I thoroughly enjoyed perhaps
90% -- even some of the foolishly spectacular changes such as the
green skull avalanche -- and another at least 5% were, if not in
themselves enjoyable, then not actually problematic either. The
parts that I find truly problematic constitute less than 5% of the
total run time, and I honestly wish that I was better able to merely
'stand back' and ignore the relation to Tolkien's work. I have said
this in these groups before, and with that in mind, I find it
particularly unpleasant be attributed some irrational 'only a 100%
true adaptation will suffice' position.
> There is a sense in this group of the books being holy, and not
> allowed to be moviefied.
I hear you. I happen to disagree, but I am somewhat surprised that
you should feel that way.
It is true that we tend to dwell more on the problems we've had with
the films, but overall I think people tend to be careful to also note
that there were several of the changes that they either found very
sensible or at least didn't mind at all. I think it is only natural
that the comparison to Tolkien's work, and thereby the deviations
from that, will be the main focus of a group that is, after all,
devoted to the works of Tolkien. It is possible that this creates a
sense of fault-finding that may be at the root of your impression.
As you can hear, my impression of the 'overall' opinion (or median or
average opinion, whatever it is ;-) is different from yours, but I'm
concerned that we, as a group, should appear that way (after all,
/if/ my impression is correct, then it means that the majority of us
here appear to support a position we do not in actual fact agree
with) -- what might be done to explain our position better? Is it
possible to keep the focus on the deviations from Tolkien's story
without creating an air of fault-finding? Is there something that
/I/ can do?
> Exactly the reason why master Noel Q. is so irrestibly funny,
> one might think.
;-)
> Disclaimer: your mileage may vary.
Aye -- both ways :-)
Paul S. Person
Actually, I fall well-within the parameters put forth by Troels.
Except that I would not say "happy" but rather "at peace with" most of
the changes in PJ's /LOTR/ (and quite happy with a few of them), while
regarding some (Flaming Denethor, for example) as unforgiveable, and
have more appreciation for Bakshi's film than (I suspect) most. I
fully agree that the R-B /RotK/ was downright horrible, mostly because
it tried to turn an adult book into a kiddie film -- the opposite of
what PJ is apparently doing with /TH/, which I expect will work just
as well as it did in the R-B /RotK/.
Epstein rejected the films on principal; I do not reject them at all,
merely regard them as seriously flawed in many respects.
Ronald O. Christian
>Well... Epstein was like that. And Paul Person is trying to fill his shoes,
>lately. In that context, I don't think it's a strawman at all.
Thank you. Exactly. Some of the lines I quoted out of frustration
were from Epstein and his cronies, admittedly back a ways when LotR
movies were being made. I was the one who wrote "A Discussion of
Tolkien Fan Types" back around 2002 when it was obvious that one just
couldn't discuss the movies' relationship (or not) to the books
without the thread being hijacked by print-only fans. Paul's
responses kind of brought it all back. So no, it's not a straw man at
all. It's possible that things are different, here, now, and I've let
a few rants lead me to an assumption that things aren't. Let's find
out.
If the point was, there are Tolkien literary fans with which you could
have a intellectually honest conversation about the movies, I'm
willing to believe that for the sake of argument. But I don't live
here, I just stop in occasionally, so maybe those people haven't
noticed my postings yet. I have Tolkien's books in the bookcase by my
nightstand but geeze, I don't cuddle them to get to sleep.
(Parenthetically, I tend not to buy Christopher's publishings for
reasons I won't go into here.) I'm not entirely happy with the way
the last set of movies turned out, and I have some hopes and some
fears for the new ones, but we can't even *get* to that until we get
past "the only true story are the pages from JRR's typewriter" and
"Peter Jackson is the Antichrist".