3 ms·

but I imagine, as a purist, PJ's movies were then painful as well, or weren't they? personally I respect that opinion, but it's not quite how I see the LotR uni

but I imagine, as a purist, PJ's movies were then painful as well, or weren't they? personally I respect that opinion, but it's not quite how I see the LotR universe - to me, the 'mass market' entertainment aspect of it is fine. I'd rather have more people to be inspired in any form, than to lock it down to a small group of purists like e.g. Christopher Tolkien.

johncoltrane 4y ago
> but I imagine, as a purist, PJ's movies were then painful as well, or weren't they? I didn't watch them. > personally I respect that opinion, but it's not quite how I see the LotR universe - to me, the 'mass market' entertainment aspect of it is fine. I'm fine with it too. How it is adapted is just not my cup of tea. Besides, I wholeheartedly agree with William Gibson, here: > The assumption that a film adaption is the final and/or highest state, for a novel, is as woefully wrong as any assumption can be. I like to watch movies, but I like to read novels more and the original material is more than fine as-is. Tolkien's estate and William Gibson are just as much entitled to accept colossal cheques as "we" (this includes the authors themselves) are to reject what comes out of it. > I'd rather have more people to be inspired in any form, than to lock it down to a small group of purists like e.g. Christopher Tolkien. Well, I'd rather see the milking stop and have more people creating original stuff. If only because expectations would be low to non-existent.
- prepend 4y ago
  > I didn't watch them. This is really fascinating to me that someone would not watch the movies but is watching Rings of Power. Would you tell your story a bit for how that happened? As a lifelong Tolkien fan, I tend to at least check out everything even if I don’t read or watch it. And I don’t have the self control to avoid the movies. Especially ones as great as Jackson’s (Return of the King has the most Oscar’s ever awarded to a film, tied with Ben Hur).
  - johncoltrane 4y ago
    Well, as I mentioned in my comment, I have no interest for movie adaptations in general. I like movies (and I'm even somewhat of a film buff) but I don't think of them as a superior art form at all and I literally never hope for a movie adaptation of anything I read. In my opinion, a novel isn't enhanced or magnified or whatever when it is adapted for the screen. Quite the opposite, and I would prefer "Hollywood" to work on original ideas rather than whatever their current strategy is. There are, of course, plenty of cases of good adaptations that can live side-by-side with the original material, Blade Runner comes to mind, but they tend to be outliers. The movies were direct adaptations of the original material and the trailers I watched at the time were too off-base for me and I preferred my own head cannon to Peter Jackson's so I skipped the whole thing. On the other hand, the series was sold more like an ad-lib inspired by the annexes of The Lord of the Rings, which are as fuzzy as it gets, so it was supposed to be less tied to the original story and, in theory, less off-base with my head cannon. It turned out to be even worse than the little I now know of the movies so I will stop here. Some of it certainly is pretty but, as hinted above, I tend to value stories and characters more than visuals. In fact, the delta between my head cannon and the series is far greater than with the movies so I might as well watch them one of these days. Written word FTW.

johncoltrane 4y ago

> but I imagine, as a purist, PJ's movies were then painful as well, or weren't they? I didn't watch them. > personally I respect that opinion, but it's not quite how I see the LotR universe - to me, the 'mass market' entertainment aspect of it is fine. I'm fine with it too. How it is adapted is just not my cup of tea. Besides, I wholeheartedly agree with William Gibson, here: > The assumption that a film adaption is the final and/or highest state, for a novel, is as woefully wrong as any assumption can be. I like to watch movies, but I like to read novels more and the original material is more than fine as-is. Tolkien's estate and William Gibson are just as much entitled to accept colossal cheques as "we" (this includes the authors themselves) are to reject what comes out of it. > I'd rather have more people to be inspired in any form, than to lock it down to a small group of purists like e.g. Christopher Tolkien. Well, I'd rather see the milking stop and have more people creating original stuff. If only because expectations would be low to non-existent.

prepend 4y ago
> I didn't watch them. This is really fascinating to me that someone would not watch the movies but is watching Rings of Power. Would you tell your story a bit for how that happened? As a lifelong Tolkien fan, I tend to at least check out everything even if I don’t read or watch it. And I don’t have the self control to avoid the movies. Especially ones as great as Jackson’s (Return of the King has the most Oscar’s ever awarded to a film, tied with Ben Hur).
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  Well, as I mentioned in my comment, I have no interest for movie adaptations in general. I like movies (and I'm even somewhat of a film buff) but I don't think of them as a superior art form at all and I literally never hope for a movie adaptation of anything I read. In my opinion, a novel isn't enhanced or magnified or whatever when it is adapted for the screen. Quite the opposite, and I would prefer "Hollywood" to work on original ideas rather than whatever their current strategy is. There are, of course, plenty of cases of good adaptations that can live side-by-side with the original material, Blade Runner comes to mind, but they tend to be outliers. The movies were direct adaptations of the original material and the trailers I watched at the time were too off-base for me and I preferred my own head cannon to Peter Jackson's so I skipped the whole thing. On the other hand, the series was sold more like an ad-lib inspired by the annexes of The Lord of the Rings, which are as fuzzy as it gets, so it was supposed to be less tied to the original story and, in theory, less off-base with my head cannon. It turned out to be even worse than the little I now know of the movies so I will stop here. Some of it certainly is pretty but, as hinted above, I tend to value stories and characters more than visuals. In fact, the delta between my head cannon and the series is far greater than with the movies so I might as well watch them one of these days. Written word FTW.