
Chen G.
Mithlond
Dec 10 2021, 5:11pm
Views: 4268
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While Jackson's first exposure to the story was the Ralph Bakshi film in 1978 or 1979, he had admitted he had "heard the name" of the book before, and he was certainly an avid fan of fantasy stories since a very young age. Jackson's reaction to the Bakshi film was as follows:
I got pretty confused! I liked the early part – it had some quaint sequences in Hobbiton, a creepy encounter with the Black Rider on the road, and a few quite good battle scenes – but then, about half way through, the storytelling became very disjointed and disorientating and I really didn’t understand what was going on. However, what it did do was to make me want to read the book – if only to find out what happened! He found a single-volume, paperback tie-in edition and started reading it. After having read it, he also picked-up the radio adaptation, which he listened to multiple times while working in his workshop. It is noteworthy that Jackson didn't revisit the books (nor the Bakshi film) until he started working on the films in earnest. In October 1995, when he first came-up with the idea of adapting The Lord of the Rings, Fran Walsh (who had also read the books in her youth) told him they should start with The Hobbit, which Jackson hadn't read, and promptly set to redress this issue: he read it through at least once during this early development period. He didn't re-read The Lord of the Rings beyond the introduction until well into 1997 for fear of "jinxing" the project. He admits that his memory of the book itself was "foggy" and he had a much stronger memory of the radio adaptation, instead. He acquired a new copy - the Alan Lee-illustrated edition - and started reading it and jotting comments in the book, while Costa Botes made a scene-by-scene precis of the book as the basis for what would become Jackson's first story treatment. Jackson had also looked for "every piece of visual interpretation of Tolkien that had ever been done." He had seen Tolkien's own illustrations, which helped him see what was "in his head" but decided they "weren't that helpful in terms of the lighting and the mood." Bakshi recalls that Jackson's company bought some of his designs, and Harvey Weinstein had made him rewatch the Bakshi film in their first story meeting together. At some point in the writing, Philippa Boyens joined and not only had she read the books once a year every year, but she also knew The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Tolkien's Biography, his letters, Shippey's Road to Middle Earth and David Day's books, so between the three principal writers they were all pretty well-read.
Regardless, Viggo hadn’t even heard of Lord of the Rings before taking the role of Aragorn. Neither had quite a few of the cast: Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen only read The Hobbit, Sean Astin and Liv Tyler hadn't read either of the two.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Dec 10 2021, 5:12pm)
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