Lord of the Rings

I strongly disliked Comic Relief Gimli.

Also, "Gimli had no personality in the books"? What. He was a Proud Warrior Race Guy, he waxed lyrical about artistic and natural beauty (the glittering caves of Helm's Deep), he mourned silently when finding out that Balin was dead, he had a Courtly Love crush on Galadriel. (I appreciate that at least the Extended Edition included the scene of him asking for a hair from her head.) He had about as much personality as Legolas or Boromir.

Gimli may have had a personality in the books, but he never resonated very strongly to me and just seemed to be...there. A lot of the time. I liked him, but I generally preferred him being the goofy thing he was in the films.

And Madass mentioned the thing that is the reason I love the books so much more but never mentioned...because...I didn't. The tone and style. The book reads like an epic poem in narrative form and it's fucking awesome for it. I love epic poems. Quite a bit.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Legolas might actually have less personality than Gimli in the books.

Where Gimli and Legolas were difficult to connect to because of how sparsely written they were, Boromir was explored with greater depth. We learn that he sees rebuilding the might of Gondor as a personal task of sorts. Sometimes he fears Aragorn as an interruption of the current order and sometimes he loves Aragorn like a brother. He's being corrupted by the presence of the Ring, but wants to turn it towards good works.

Boromir has a goal, flaws and is given enough attention to have good reasons to stay with the Fellowship, leave it or even betray it without any of those options seeming out of character. He's a really good character, and possibly my favourite of the Fellowship.

Of course, these days I see him as Sean Bean. Which probably helps.

Gimli and Legolas both lack their own agency and they both lack meaningful, plot-relevant goals. That doesn't mean they drag the books (or films) down, but it does mean they're more or less side characters compared to the rest of the Fellowship. Take them out and nothing really changes. Sure, they were pretty good at killing Orcs, but neither of them did anything that had true plot relevance.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Comes to post with hair on his foot and smoking pipe-weed, on his shirt is a button reading 'Member of the Church of Frodology'.

...What?

Okay, yeah, Point #7 was horrible I'll admit. It was my OCD desiring to end the list on a lucky number and not being able to come up with something to fill it on such short notice (something had come up).

If I were to re-write (no point in editing it now that so many people have replied to it) I'd probably replace it with that I still don't like that Sauron is basically a huge man with a mace. I was actually working on a video that would demonstrate all the problems with that, the day my tablet died *:so bye bye miss american pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry...

Personally I never minded Gimli and Legolas "flatness." This is a massive story involving dozens if not hundreds of named characters, they can't all be special.

As for Movie!Faramir, to be honest he wouldn't have bothered me too much except that I got the feeling they went too far with it, and he felt like he was just there to artificially generate conflict (while the book version seemed more like a device for expediency). I don't generally like Artificial Conflict Generators.

It seems like everything else has been said, so I think I'll go back to blowing smoke-rings.

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I have a love/hate relationship with the films, on the one hand they're damn good films but on the other hand they have some really glaring flaws. The lack of subtlty has been noted, which I feel is best illustrated by the fact that in the books the 'Eye of Sauron' was a metaphor for Sauron's will and malice and the such, in the films it was. . . a big, giant eye on a tower. The second and third films were essentially actions movies (although the fights were so awesome I'll forgive this) and they missed out the Scouring of the Shire, which I honestly consider the most important chapter. It ties up the four hobbits character arcs as well as that of Saruman (also, we were deprived of more Christopher Lee, which makes me want to cry). Also I hate the scene in the extended edition where the Witch-King breaks Gandalf's staff, it's just wrong, ruins one of the best scenes in the book (the two of them trying to face the other down in the courtyard).

I agree with the above point about Movie!Faramir, I liked him, but they took him too far.

edited 25th Jan '11 12:38:15 PM by Wagrid

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You know what my favorite adaptation of the books is? The BBC radio dramatization. Shit is pretty awesome. Best Christmas gift I ever got, for sure. People should talk about it more.

I'll turn your neocortex into a flowerpot!

I'm pretty sure there's a companion thread to this one in the Film forum that hasn't gone anywhere in ages. It's funny that discussion of the book now uniformly turns to the PJ movies.

LOTR is one of my favorite books of all time. I've also read The Hobbit, of course, plus The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin. I didn't get through Unfinished Tales when I tried to read it; it looked like a college literature textbook.

More later.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Unfinished Tales is great because it shows off how the stories changed as Tolkien wrote them.

If I ever have $500 lying around I'll get all the History of Middle Earth books too. I really want to read The Lost Road (the time-travel one, IIRC).

It's not over. Not yet.

I'm split on recommending Unfinished Tales. Half of it is great material but I could take or leave the rest. The main selling point for me was that it contained the expanded Children of Húrin story from The Silmarillion. Of course, this is a rather moot point now with the neatly-assembled published book version.

The other interesting bits for me were the start of the longer Gondolin story (about 50 pages; ends when Voronwe and Tuor arrive in Gondolin), the chapter that expanded on Galadriel's past(s), and the Erendis story. There's also information about the other wizards Everything else I could leave, as it was, as Fighteer mentioned above, too text-booky to hold by interest.

From the History series, I would read (starting with my favourite):

• Morgoth's Ring, for the Athrabeth and various other metaphyscial / philosophical bits. The Athrabeth is the main selling point though, because I think it's amazing.
• Lays of Beleriand: For the Lay of Leithian (just awesome) and the Lay of the Children of Húrin (which uses somewhat difficult, archaic language, but is still a good read).
• War Of the Jewels: for the unfinished Children of Húrin continuation (epilogue?). EDIT: Oh, yeah, and either the Grey Annals or the Annals of Beleriand (forgot which one was in this book), which was the latest Silmarillion outline.
• Book of Lost Tales 2: For the only complete, unabbreviated, finished version of the Gondolin story, as well as the earlier Beren and Lúthien and Túrin story. I would say these earlier stories are much more "fairy tale" (especially the Beren and Lúthien tale). Oh, and everyone has really funny names.  ^*
  ^{Honestly I got bored, and well, lost when reading the other parts of Lost Tales}
  .

Haven't read the time travel story yet, but I plan to. Sometime.

Of course, your mileage and taste may vary from mine — I'm mostly interested in additional stories, further characterization, and philosophical/metaphysical discussion that I am in languages or knowing who the 31st king of Númenor was (or whatever) when he didn't particularly do anything worthy of a story.

edited 26th Jan '11 12:29:43 PM by apassingthought

The Athrabeth was fantastic; Morgoth's Ring is the only one of the Histories I've read, but it was fascinating. I too am big on the metaphysical/philosophical bits, and the explorations of Morgoth, Sauron, and evil in general in Arda were great. Definitely a goldmine as far as that goes. I really gotta finish The Silmarillion and get to the rest of those.

I'll turn your neocortex into a flowerpot!

Getting hold of The History of Middle-earth is one of my dreams in life.

I don't understand why people are acting like the Histories are all so hard to come by. A quick search on Amazon shows that most of them are still in-print and go for no more than $25 new for hardcover.

I don't have any of them myself—not much space for books I'm afraid—but they're a project worth considering.

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I just get 'em from various libraries. I barely ever spend money on books that way (though I do own The Hobbit, LOTR, and The Silmarillion).

I'll turn your neocortex into a flowerpot!

I also get the History books from the library, though I'd like to get volumes 3, 10, and 11 if I manage to save up.

If the hardcovers are too expensive, I know that there's some relatively cheap (probably no more than $10) mass market paperback versions that are quite easy to find in most bookstores. The covers are ugly and the text is tiny, though.

Amazon has the first five Histories books in a paperback box set for $25.

Personally I own hardcovers of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. To be honest I've never read UT all the way through.

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I've got hardcovers of The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. I have paperbacks of The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, Unfinished Tales, and The Book of Lost Tales Part 2. I have two copies of The Fellowship of the Ring. One is a copy I bought sometime when the first movie came out so it has one of those stupid "Stick characters from film on front" covers that books are so fond of when movies come out. The other is a copy I inherited from my grandfather along with both copies of The Silmarillion I own. The Children of Hurin will be my next addition to my collection...Then come the Histories which shouldn't be too hard.

As for actually reading them...I've read them all through multiple times save for Lot R.

edited 27th Jan '11 12:03:25 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

For the topic post, Gandalf several times laments his own folly in delaying so long. Now as to whether that renders the book unrealistic...the obsession with realism in stories is kind of a fetish these days that ought to die down a little bit. Much of the history of this planet is not realistic, and had it not happened no one would believe it.

The hobbits were able to resist the ring's allure because of how the ring works. It takes your ambitions and feeds off them. Hobbits, however, are a simple, humble race,and few have any ambition beyond tending their gardens or inheriting their relatives hobbit holes. This is one of the morals of the story, that in the end none of the great and wise could take the ring because they would be corrupted by it; it took a simple hobbit to do it.

This is what made movie Faramir so much different than book Faramir. In the book, Boromir is a good guy, but very proud and ambitious. Faramir is able to resist the pull of the ring because he is Boromir's opposite in these areas. Movie Faramir was basically Boromir 2, right down to regretting his attempt to subvert Frodo's quest. I didn't like the change, but something like that is basically a matter of taste.

Legolas in the books comes off as having less personality than Gimli. Gimli is proud and very much 'for the dwarves'. Despite that, he's a bit of a complainer and in the Two Towers is annoyed when Legolas and Aragorn turn out to have more stamina for the chase than he does. The comic relief version in the movie was definitely a step down. The thing about Tolkien's characterization is that it is subtle, especially given the more formal dialogue (which is brilliant). Contrast this with, say, A Song of Ice and Fire where GRRM just tells you what everyone thinks about everything, or Robert Jordan's braid tugging.

Tolkien doesn't really work well on film, but Jackson's movies were about as good as you could expect. Most of the songs, the allusions to grand history, and wordplay were removed while battle scenes were extended. This is great if you like battles and don't care about songs and that sense of a world and history waiting to be explored. The Silmarillion would be impossible to put on live-action film, because myth just doesn't work well with that. An animated version might work, but I don't know who I'd trust to handle it. In any case, there's no mass audience so it would be direct to video.

Those are some excellent interpretations right there, I agree with quite a bit of it.

I have The Children of Hurin (which is honestly my favourite book of all time), The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and the versions of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings with Alan Lee's illustrations (which as I said earlier, are fantastic). I'm fairly certain my grandad has first edition hard backs knocking around somehwere, I shall have to enquire.

I have a podcast! I think that you should listen to it.

I have paperback copies of all the books I named earlier, plus that green leatherbound edition of The Hobbit in the slipcase. That thing is one of my pride and joys.

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I've always liked Tolkien's subtle characterization, and it's very much in the spirit of the "show, not tell" mantra. The audience is almost never told what a character's direct thoughts are, but we still learn about their thoughts, motivations, and personality through action and dialogue.

Regarding Tolkien on film: I agree that a dramatic adaptation of the whole Silmarillion (mentioned above) is an impossible, if not downright terrible idea. Issue of filming rights aside  ^*

, however, I think some of the smaller stories could potentially make good adaptations if placed in the hands of the right people. (Yes, I realise this borders on Fandom Heresy). The Children Of Hurin I think, could possibly make a good cable miniseries on a network like HBO, because I simply can't see this one being made into a successful Hollywood release without getting hacked up and Bowdlerised. A miniseries would also eliminate potential issues that may come with a mainstream release. Cable networks are far less likely to have qualms about particular story elements (you know which ones I'm talking about), so there would be no need to change the story to appeal to a mainstream audience.

The other story I think that has potential is Beren/Lúthien. Much more appeal to mainstream moviegoers with that one (romance! adventure! loyal dog!) but isn't without problems of it's own (namely the heavy use of Kalevala -inspired magical singing). Actually, I think an animated version would fly better with this one...

Regardless of these possibilities, it's unlikely that the film rights will be released soon, if ever (which to most is either a good thing or a mixed blessing) . I also think there needs to be a general shift in the attitude toward adapting books into film — too many filmmakers, I think, view the original material as a first draft screenplay to be tinkered with rather than seeing it as a work in itself. (I could probably write a whole topic on this — the process of adapting books and other media into film has always been a strange interest of mine.)

edited 31st Jan '11 6:30:13 AM by apassingthought

I always liked the parts with Earendil, especially when he gets to Valinor.

"Hail Earendil, and well met!" indeed.

It's not over. Not yet.

The only animators I think that are qualified enough to do that could be Russian animators. Partly because they have a folktale tradition that can be described as Tolkienque and partly they seem to love doing epic tales for animated films.

Russians doing animated adaptations of tales from that book is something I want to see. That or give it to Miyazaki and see what strange things result. Sure it would be extremely far from being a strict and accurate adaptation, but Miyazaki has this unusual ability to be entertaining regardless.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Yes to Russian animation! I haven't seen as much as I'd like to, but it has a very "storybook" feel that would work well with the tone of Tolkien's stories.

I'm conflicted about the idea of a theoretical Beren and Luthien movie: the story is almost perfectly suited to cinematic format and, unlike most things in The Silmarillion, is able to stand alone; but on the other hand, how do you cast ANYONE as the most beautiful woman to ever exist? The way the movies pick and dress up and make-up actresses, they all look pretty much equally gorgeous, so Luthien wouldn't look like anything particularly special. Other than that, I think it could be very good in the hands of a true Tolkein fan, and the whole Fingolfin-Sauron music duel could be cut out, with Sauron just capturing them - that wouldn't change the story significantly. There's some stuff in the Lay of Leithan (in The Lays of Beleriand) that could be added too.

I don't think The Tale of the Children of Hurin could be made into a movie though, mainly because it's too flat-out depressing. Most movies, there's at least something remotely hopeful about the ending even if the protagonist dies. The story of Turin Turambar is basically: antagonist sets out to destroy the protagonist's family in the most sadistic way possible and succeeds. That's rather unsatisfying; it's always been my least-favourite chapter of the Silmarillion (although I like some of the extra scenes in the Unfinished Tales version).

And I doubt anyone could do movies to the fans' satisfaction. I liked - and still like - the movie of Fellowship of the Ring, and didn't mind a bit that they cut Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs, which were unnecessary to the plot. What I really disliked was: 1. Stretching out Helm's Deep to be half the movie and throwing in the extra scene with Aragorn's faux-death, instead of keeping to the schedule of events in the books, and the battle-scene additions meaning they didn't include the Voice of Saruman scene, my favourite chapter in any of the books. Deeply, deeply disappointing, especially since I had been wondering ever since first hearing the movies were being made if it was possible to do that scene right, and the second I heard Christopher Lee speak as Saruman I knew he could pull it off and make it amazing. 2. Making the Ents passive rather than just cautious 3. Distorting Faramir's character (yes, I know it plays up the drama, but I'm a Faramir fangirl and I want him to be as good in the movies as he is in the books)

Return of the King I disliked so much I can't even re-watch it. The top point is that they completely lost the main POINT of the movie by having Gollum fall into Mt Doom while fighting with Frodo rather than have him fall in on his own, after getting the ring - having Frodo play a role in killing him completely undermines the point of the series that the main characters couldn't win on their own, but could win do to their own earlier choices to do what was right and show mercy. Then there's the stupid scene with the lembas and Sam leaving, which was needless and made no sense; the watchtower-Eye-of-Sauron (MUCH too literal there); wrecking Denethor's character (he was wrong but he had courage and dignity in the books; in the movie he had neither); and the avalanche-of-skulls effect in the Paths of the Dead, which is what you get for choosing a horror-movie director to make The Lord of the Rings.

I feel like a lot of the lesser character (Theoden, Treebeard, Faramir, Denathor) got short shrift in the interest of making the main characters look more heroic, and it's aggravating.