Posted on 10/29/2011 5:30:04 PM PDT by Immerito
The full, uncut video of filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson and Prime Minister John Key speaking at Hobbiton today
(Excerpt) Read more at 3news.co.nz ...
Man, he gained most of his weight back. On King Kong he looked like he weighted about 97 pounds.
Apparently LOTR movies really help him pack on the pounds. I can understand why. He works 18 hour days sitting in chairs mostly. I just hope he doesn’t kill himself (especially anytime in the next two years!).
Hopefully he’s spending those 18 hour days being far truer to the source material than he was when making LOTR.
I don’t know. I love how the LOTR turned out. I hope he does at least as good a job with the Hobbit.
With emasculated male characters? (”I just don’t wanna be king” Aragorn who has to receive a few PEP TALKS before he is willing to lead?; making Theoden the victim of possession who, instead of manning up and casting aside Wormtongue’s lies, has to be ‘depossessed’ by Gandalf?)
Nonsensical decisions made by characters who chose the OPPOSITE decision or who never would have entertained such a choice? (Faramir choosing to take the Ring to his father, Frodo sending Sam away from his side)
Blurring distinctions between characters? (Theoden and Denethor, Boromir and Faramir, Merry and Pippin)
Not to mention the complete omission of the Scouring of the Shire
Jackson does well with scenery and costumes, but he intentionally, deliberately twisted the characters, their motivations, and the story because it did not fit his liberal worldview.
J.R.R. Tolkien would never have allowed the LOTR movies to be made; he turned down an earlier attempt to translate LOTR to film for lesser departures from the book.
I’m on a lookout for liberal BS, but I didn’t see that in the LOTR movies. Less liberal then the books, the orcs were veiled capitalists and they were just nasty badguys in the movies. The internal conflict the characters had more in the movies just comes off as the difference between read and viewed media
Yes, even with all of that, I thought the films were very entertaining.
As Jackson himself said, they had to condense characters, switch certain roles, in order to get the movies to work with an acceptable time limit.
And I think you’re wrong about Tolkien not allowing the films to be made: he sold the rights for a film version in 1968 or 1969 depending on what source you read and would have had little or no ability to stop a film treatment - especially since he died 5 years later.
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/United_Artists
I suspect it’s been awhile since you read the book. Read it again. The Scouring of the Shire contains one of the best rebuttals of socialism in literature. (Gee, I wonder why Jackson once said in an interview that he didn’t like that part of the book?)
I wouldn’t call the book “liberal” (except, perhaps, in the classical sense), nor would I have ever expected “veiled capitalists” to be used appositionally to “orcs”.
Here are some DEPARTURES FROM THE BOOK for you: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/John_Boorman%27s_The_Lord_of_the_Rings
Did you ever read Letter 210?
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_210
Yes, Tolkien did sell filming rights-—but that does not imply that he would have approved of the final result, as evidenced in letter 210.
After reading the book three or four times, it was easy for me to say, “Man, they left out a LOT!” But someone who had never read the book wouldn’t miss it, and the story still hung together pretty well. As far as I’m concerned, the trilogy is still the best movie I’ve ever seen. Even the late Mr. Redhead, who never went to movies, saw them three or four times each.
“I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.”
Letters, no. 207.
(Tolkien, commentating on a screenplay for the Lord of the Rings that he received; based on his letters, that screenplay took fewer liberties than Jackson’s!)
You’re missing the point. If he sold the rights, he knew it could end up being a film very different than he liked.
I live in the real world. They’re books. I thoroughly enjoy them, but don’t worship them and don’t get bent out of shape over the fact that some changes were made. The great thing is we live in a free society so you have the freedom to get as overwrought to the point of crying (as you seem to be) while I can just enjoy the artistry of the films. You might hate them, but I am looking forward to them.
Omitting material due to time restraints is understandable.
Changing characters, their motivations and even the story to suit the whims of the director is another matter.
My earnest hope for the new films is that Jackson will remain truer to the source material.
It seems you were projecting some of your emotions onto me; I am only interested in discussing the facts—which can be summed up in the statement that Jackson took great liberties with the films.
Liberal directors twist popular conservative stories because they know that if they wrote down their scripts as books, no one would buy them.
But, if they manage to get the rights to a conservative book, they repackage their desires and force the conservative story to fit their demands (and where it will not accede to the demands of their story, they remove and rewrite the offending passages) and then “sell” the director’s story to the movie audience, packaged as the original conservative masterpiece.
I submit that the movies would have been far more successful had Jackson decided to tell Tolkien’s story the way Tolkien told it (with the understandable omissions, etc that are part of necessary conversion from book to movie).
“As Jackson himself said:”
“Sure, it’s not really THE LORD OF THE RINGS ... but it could still be a pretty damn cool movie.” —Peter Jackson
Taken from:
http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/Resources.html
and
http://www.theonering.com/page3-25/TheMoviesTheCompleteListofFilmChanges
No, I think you’re an obsessive purist. More successful if they slavishly followed Tolkien? Nope. The movies easily grossed over a billion dollars. The simple fact is the vast majority of LOTR book fans went to and enjoyed the films. And those fans were a tiny minority compared to the many millions who watched the films - and loved them - even though they had never read a single page of Tolkien.
Again, Immapurist, liberties would have to be taken in any case. Feel free to not enjoy the films. Jackson will not miss you or your few dollars when the films come out. If The Hobbit is as well made as LOTR, they will be huge hits (although possibly smaller than LOTR because the story is so much smaller).
In another 25 years there will be an effort to make a series of programs that will follow the books precisely. Probably it will be computerized and not use live actors.
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