dreamflower
Lorien
Nov 9 2012, 4:49pm
Views: 1184
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Some people seem to think that you have to hate the movies in order to love the books. I can pick nits with the best of the purists, and I can find fault with the characterizations like the rest--here are a few you missed: "Merry and Pippin were not just clueless accidents! PJ gutted the Conspiracy and all their backstory!" "Arwen would never even have started for the Havens." "Elrond was kind as summer, not a grumpy old man! And he was fond of Aragorn!" And yet. There are a lot of movie moments that do bother me lifted straight from the screen--but I do understand the need to simplify things onscreen for those who never read the books. For those of us who DID we can use our knowledge to fill in the parts PJ missed, or to interpret them in a slightly different way that brings the characters closer to our own interpretations. For example, I HATE the whole Gollum/Sam/Lembas scene, finding it rather lame. And yet, while I agree that book-Frodo would never send Sam away at all, I don't see movie-Frodo as sending Sam off because he believed Gollum, but rather because he feared for Sam and for how he would react to Sam as the Ring increased its influence on him. I dislike immensely the way the hobbits cross the Brandywine in one scene and end up in Bree in the next--but I can imagine what happens in between. Also, I have to differ with those who see movie-Frodo as "weak"; certainly he was more conflicted than book-Frodo, and the Ring began its hold on him more quickly, but he kept going. There was nothing weak about him when he began that last crawl up Mount Doom. And I can interpret Aragorn's supposed doubts in the movies not as doubt of his right to be King, but as the very proper and virtuous humility of someone who knows his duty but is not seeking after power. Likewise I can interpret some of Gimli's and Pippin's sillier moments as deliberate attempts to lighten the mood and cheer the Company. (For example: in the movies, Merry and Pippin must have known exactly where they were going after the Council--they'd been eavesdropping just like Sam; Pippin's question must have been a deliberate choice to make a joke. And in the EE, when Gimli falls off the horse in the "stew scene" I think he was telling the absolute truth when he said "that was deliberate". He made Eowyn smile. ) Most of the really poor characterization changes were due to PJ's insistence on magnifying the Ring's power beyond what it was even in the books. So within the movie-verse they make a certain amount of sense. I have a harder time with things that did not even make sense in the context of the movie: Gandalf telling Frodo and Sam he'd meet them in Bree when he's heading off to Isengard is one; failing to account for Elrond's actions after showing up in Dunharrow is another. Yet these things do not take away from the great achievement of PJ's version of LotR. There are flaws in every movie ever made, and even more in most movies made from books. He did a brilliant job overall, and I expect that with the things he learned from the making of it, his version of TH will be even better. But just like the LotR movies, it will still be fanfic. Nothing wrong with that, so long as you can remember the difference between fanon and canon.
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