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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 16 2015, 5:14pm
Post #26 of 47
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Well, then we have no regrets: glad you have you around!
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We Tolkien fans need such a place.
I note now at work, where NONE of my friends watch or read anything JRRT because they all live under rocks or something, whenever I say anything that may be construed as odd (or 'quotey') they look at me suspiciously, and say, is that from 'The Hobbit'? 
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Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
Feb 16 2015, 5:25pm
Post #27 of 47
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They definitely feel very separate to me.
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Just like the book and the movie of "The Wizard of Oz" (my favorite story since 1960) are two completely different things. One can appreciate both without mixing them up.
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The Grey Elf
Grey Havens
Feb 16 2015, 9:01pm
Post #28 of 47
(1654 views)
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I think it's really both reasons. Disappointed expectations, I guess, expectations that were shaped by the books.
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Eruvandi
Tol Eressea
Feb 17 2015, 4:12pm
Post #29 of 47
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Films brought me to reading the text...
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And the Lego LOTR video game brought me to watching the films. I honestly didn't understand the story enough to watch the movies or read the text before I played that game. I had tried to do both before then with no success. (For some reason, I had it in my head that the Ring was a good thing and didn't understand why the big glowing eye wanted it and kept bothering the little guy with hairy feet. *shrug*) Only after playing my way through the story did I understand and enjoy it. Then I watched the LOTR movies and loved them. Read The Hobbit and loved it. Then I got AUJ on DVD, loved it, and started anxiously awaiting DOS with the rest of the TORn community while passing the time between Hobbit movies by reading my way through LOTR.
The main impact that the films had on my enjoyment of the text was that they helped me understand the things that probably would have and did confused me if I only had the text. I view movies and books as two distinctly different types of media and that's why I don't mind that there are things in the books that aren't in the movies and vice-verse. It's not like the movie content has any effect on the content of the books. No matter how many movies get made about LOTR and TH, the text will still be there and it will still be the same as it always was.
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Dame Ioreth
Tol Eressea
Feb 17 2015, 5:53pm
Post #30 of 47
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I've been thinking about this more
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and it makes me wonder if this is an issue that affects fantasy (and perhaps SciFi) films more than other genre. Reading fantasy requires the reader to have enough imagination to create the world being described in their heads because it doesn't exist anywhere else. That internal relationship with the text is so much more personal than say reading Jane Austen. There are nuances of character to play with in a movie but Lyme is Lyme and we know what an empire waist looks like.
Screen writers and directors tackling a fantasy book have another layer of expectation from the fans - to create the movie as it played in their heads. Good fantasy lets the reader make the world their own so they can wander around in the world. But we all wander differently so no one adaptation will ever be "right". Some will say the movie was "based on an idea" but was nowhere near as good and some will (if they are lucky) say "perfect".
It's like asking someone to try a new Bar-b-que recipe is here in certain parts of the states. Depending on how attached you are to your granpappy's recipe, you may not even try the new one and even if you do, it's not going to be "right".
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 17 2015, 6:20pm
Post #31 of 47
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Which is different than mine, but not so much as you would think. In the ages past when I had 'heard' of LOTR it was not through video-gaming, but pan-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons gaming. Everyone made references to it, and of course the early D and D material that we were using was pretty closely based on JRRT's ideas.
So unlike you, I had no cardinal, overall idea of the books before I read them, but I had heard of some of the elements. I had also read a lot of other fantasy. But LOTR gripped me like nothing else had. 
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 17 2015, 6:39pm
Post #32 of 47
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and it makes me wonder if this is an issue that affects fantasy (and perhaps SciFi) films more than other genre. Reading fantasy requires the reader to have enough imagination to create the world being described in their heads because it doesn't exist anywhere else. That internal relationship with the text is so much more personal than say reading Jane Austen. There are nuances of character to play with in a movie but Lyme is Lyme and we know what an empire waist looks like. Screen writers and directors tackling a fantasy book have another layer of expectation from the fans - to create the movie as it played in their heads. Good fantasy lets the reader make the world their own so they can wander around in the world. But we all wander differently so no one adaptation will ever be "right". Some will say the movie was "based on an idea" but was nowhere near as good and some will (if they are lucky) say "perfect". I see and feel a lot of this. The notions that people have conceived from the text become internal and fixed, which is the whole point of reading and especially fantasy reading I think: the creation of new vistas. But we can use the Stone Giants as an example: not much is said about them. It is the reader's choice as to how they are pictured on quite short description. So when that had to be brought onto film, what are the odds that it matches? In my case, I was lucky, or just semantically similar in thought here to the writers: I 'saw' the Stone Giants literally as stone, from ages back. But of course, as JRRT's early philological contexts ('green great dragon' vs 'great green dragon') show, a word in relation to another word can be critical in in understanding the picture. So we have two words: a description lends itself to a few interpretations. Stone Giants: Giants who live among and threw stones? Sure. Giants who are stone? Also, sure. Maybe the latter more literal, and less literary of the two...there I don't know. Maybe. So I get that internal and long-held pictures are valid. The trick is how do you mesh your internal view with an adapter's internal view? Especially if they DON'T match; which I think can be a huge letdown. (I had such a feeling about Thorin's death scene: just not what I pictured.) I think there is a whole spectrum of how this makes people feel about what they are seeing. If it feels familiar, or not. It's like asking someone to try a new Bar-b-que recipe is here in certain parts of the states. Depending on how attached you are to your granpappy's recipe, you may not even try the new one and even if you do, it's not going to be "right".
Exactly.
(This post was edited by Brethil on Feb 17 2015, 6:39pm)
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swordwhale
Tol Eressea
Feb 18 2015, 6:35pm
Post #33 of 47
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but films enhanced the visuals, and some of the characterizations (like characters I had not paid much attention to in the books), so another level of wonder.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 20 2015, 2:50am
Post #34 of 47
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'Another level of wonder'. I like that. //
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Dwarewien
Rohan
Feb 20 2015, 3:31am
Post #35 of 47
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Film brought me to reading the text...
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not so much with LotR, since I first read it in college (and almost gave up on it. I had to re-buy the last volume in my local used bookstore, which is still in business to this day), but before Peter Jackson's films started coming out, I've never read The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, volumes 1,2,4,5 and 12 of the History of Middle-earth series as well as the hardcover edition of The Children of Hurin. Of those I listed, I've re-read The Hobbit two more times (the last just prior to my favorite changing after viewing AUJ about seven times) and the LotR five more times. Another thing the movies have done is teach me how to pronounce the names right, since I know I didn't pronounce Sauron or Erebor right (it even irritates me when cast and crew of the films continue to do this. Where is David Salo when you need him).
(This post was edited by Queen of Erebor on Feb 20 2015, 3:36am)
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Pandallo
Rivendell
Feb 20 2015, 4:33am
Post #36 of 47
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When I re-read the books I can picture some movie events happening off to the side and when I re-watch the movies I can imagine some book events happening off to the side. I got into the books because of the movies when FotR came out and so the two are perennially married in my mind, the book characters to me look exactly like their onscreen personages, it helps me appreciate both of these mediums much more.
With The Hobbit I honestly expected to be let down since it had been so long and how were they going to make a 300-some page story into three movies? Well I got my answer! Admittedly I didn't love the TE of AUJ. I found it to be a bit slow and lacking in tension for a fair amount of it the first few times...
But when I saw the EE (aside from the Rivendell bathing scene) everything felt just a little more richer and when I saw DoS I could then appreciate AUJ for what it was and I grew to like it. That said it is my least favorite of any of the movies, but it is still a terrific movie! Make no mistake, there's no shame in shining a little less brightly than five other bright stars in the sky.
Desolation of Smaug was (and still is) one of the most Exciting movies I have ever seen, it is a roller coaster from beginning to end (TE, the EE adds a bit more useful characterization and adventure... in some places, not with The Master, eh heh)
Battle of the Five Armies, was admittedly an acquired taste... I loved it, but I didn't feel that emotional connection the first several times watching it (I think honestly 3D and HFR may have been distracting my senses) but when I saw it in 2D in my third viewing the emotions all hit me, I had tears running down my face when Fili was killed, Kili was killed, and bleary eyed when Thorin died.
Also Martin Freeman's Bilbo delivering the line "I know Dwarves can be stubborn, rude (etc...), but they are also fiercely loyal, even to a fault" the way he delivers that line gets to me every single time, even writing now it puts a lump in my throat.
To all of this I also read the portions of the books that linked up to the movies, and after seeing the movies I actually felt the book was a little scarce, not in the way of "Why did they add that!" but in the meaning of, "That was abrupt." Smaug was a perfect example of this. Bilbo taunts Smaug, runs away, Smaug chases him, flies outside. everybody goes inside the mountain, Smaug smashes the Hidden Door and flies towards Laketown, a man not talked about at all prior appears and kills the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities.
What are the Dwarves doing that should be scared for their lives? They're like kids in a candy shop with all of this gold and treasure. It all just felt, a little bit hollow, but now I have the movies to fill in what I see as gaps in the original story.
There is one line from the books that I was really looking forward to when Thorin lay dying; "There is more of good in you, than you know child of the kindly west." That line stuck with me ever since I read the book as a boy, and I was just a little disappointed that wasn't in the movie.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 20 2015, 7:20pm
Post #37 of 47
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Awesome that Film brought you to such a level of reading texts
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I love the films in their own right, I truly do; but experiences like yours give me such a happy feeling. To have those adaptations lead back to the source.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 20 2015, 7:27pm
Post #38 of 47
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I agree with a lot of this Pandallo
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When I re-read the books I can picture some movie events happening off to the side and when I re-watch the movies I can imagine some book events happening off to the side.
Yes, I do that too.
Battle of the Five Armies, was admittedly an acquired taste... I loved it, but I didn't feel that emotional connection the first several times watching it (I think honestly 3D and HFR may have been distracting my senses) but when I saw it in 2D in my third viewing the emotions all hit me, I had tears running down my face when Fili was killed, Kili was killed, and bleary eyed when Thorin died.
It has been for me too. Third viewing was the most meaningful for me. So of all the films, this one was the one I had the hardest time connecting with, making it 'fit'. And a lot of that was my own expectations I think, going in, and revising them to adapt to the film itself. (Also, I saw it the third time in wonderful company and circumstances, so maybe that helped.)
To all of this I also read the portions of the books that linked up to the movies, and after seeing the movies I actually felt the book was a little scarce, not in the way of "Why did they add that!" but in the meaning of, "That was abrupt." Smaug was a perfect example of this. Bilbo taunts Smaug, runs away, Smaug chases him, flies outside. everybody goes inside the mountain, Smaug smashes the Hidden Door and flies towards Laketown, a man not talked about at all prior appears and kills the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities.
What are the Dwarves doing that should be scared for their lives? They're like kids in a candy shop with all of this gold and treasure. It all just felt, a little bit hollow, but now I have the movies to fill in what I see as gaps in the original story.
Agreed, that's why I can see the conflict between the Dwarves and Smaug as working better onscreen than the clueless Dwarves just checking out the gold while Smaug flies off. I like the burden of guilt it creates too.
There is one line from the books that I was really looking forward to when Thorin lay dying; "There is more of good in you, than you know child of the kindly west." That line stuck with me ever since I read the book as a boy, and I was just a little disappointed that wasn't in the movie.
Hmmm. Yes.
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arithmancer
Grey Havens
Feb 21 2015, 1:55pm
Post #39 of 47
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There are two main reasons for this. One is that the books were a mainstay of my childhood and young adulthood; I used to read them a few times a year. But at the time the LotR films came out, I might have gone as long as 4 years without reading them - I had finished school (20 years of my life!), had a job, a relationship, and a serious hobby, and was simply not reading as much as I used to. The films reminded me I wanted to read the books again!
The other reason is the look of Middle Earth. My imagination is not especially visual. So while I had some idea how places like e. g. Hobbiton must look (where we spend so much time, and also which are more familiar in a way), I only had the vaguest ideas about some of the other places. Now when I read I have help imagining the tranquility of Rivendell, the grandeur of Moria, and windswept Edoras (to mention three places I did not have very clear ideas about, before!)
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Annael
Immortal
Feb 21 2015, 4:46pm
Post #40 of 47
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it's a two-edged sword.
I did rate all the films in terms of how well they meshed with my imagination. Hobbitton, Rivendell, Edoras, Bilbo, Gandalf, Galadriel meshed perfectly. Minas Tirith was close. Lothlorien not so much, and Merry wasn't anything like MY Merry (who is very important to me). My Aragorn was more kingly from the start.
On the other hand, the script and Sean Bean made Boromir leap off the screen in a way he never did in the books, and we actually got to see Arwen do more than look pretty, so that was a plus.
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joec_34
Rivendell
Feb 23 2015, 5:35pm
Post #41 of 47
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The films filled in the gaps in my imagination while reading the books.//
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CathrineB
Rohan
Feb 27 2015, 1:21am
Post #42 of 47
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'Lord of the Rings' def. brought me to read the books. So yes my views of things were affected by what I had seen in Fellowship. I still did make up my own imaginations of how things and characters looked, but over time they have mostly been replaced with the movie versions - which to me is okay actually because I think 98% of the time they have done an amazing job with the casting - especially in the Hobbit (not saying LotR's cast isn't amazing because they are, but I mean I too do have issues with the Hobbit, but the ONE thing I think is pretty flawless is the cast.)
'The Hobbit' was a bit different because I read it first right after LotR back in 2002. So now here I did get to create my own idea of how things looked. Like Beorn's house I imagined somewhat different, but the location itself is pretty spot on. Mirkwood in the movie however look COMPLETELY (and disappointingly) different than what I imagined.
The dwarves however I had problem really picturing because we weren't given much of anything other than their hoods and their beards. I just had the names so to me the movies of the Hobbit is far superior with the dwarves looks (not in ignoring them in the last movie). Now I can go back to read the Hobbit and I enjoy it a lot more because I now have seperate faces for the dwarves and I love that so much.
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Darkstone
Immortal
Feb 27 2015, 3:16pm
Post #43 of 47
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Replaced all those Hildebrandt images in my mind.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 27 2015, 7:58pm
Post #44 of 47
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Now I can go back to read the Hobbit and I enjoy it a lot more because I now have seperate faces for the dwarves and I love that so much.
Because even if you do have a visual mind, TH doesn't give you much to work with in terms of each Dwarf. And I would agree with the idea that this franchise's casting is amazingly good in almost every case.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Feb 27 2015, 8:22pm
Post #45 of 47
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I can't get enough of that Beorn in a mini-skirt. //
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Fimbulfambi
The Shire
Mar 26 2015, 7:33pm
Post #46 of 47
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It has enhanced my reading of the text. It have been easier to put sections of the book into a context and visualizing the landscapes in a good way.
But it works the other way around as well. The texts enhance the films dramatically as well. Having read the text can give meaning to a moment in the films when maybe a character is just giving a small comment on something because I know more about it having read more extensively on the subject.
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Brethil
Half-elven
Mar 26 2015, 7:59pm
Post #47 of 47
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It has enhanced my reading of the text. It have been easier to put sections of the book into a context and visualizing the landscapes in a good way.
But it works the other way around as well. The texts enhance the films dramatically as well. Having read the text can give meaning to a moment in the films when maybe a character is just giving a small comment on something because I know more about it having read more extensively on the subject.
I agree particularly on your second part; it works that way for me too in giving depth to the character for me.
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