You just completely confused me.

Well, you said high fantasy meant things which were really fantastic - alien to the real world. (Mantis people... *mutter*)

Middle-Earth is written as a perfectly logical prehistory of the world, so there's nothing really opposed to reality in it. It's not alien, is what I meant.

And you saw the Balrog die... dinosaurs are really evil Maia demons!

Oh.

I didn't know that...

So anyway, that just reinforces my point.

EDIT: And the Thri-kreen are pretty badass actually. Don't diss 'em.

Maiar, not Maia!

And there is sort of magic, but not any kind you're used to from other fantasies. The world was called into being with a song, that's pretty magical, and Gandalf has some neat tricks here and there that are basically magic. There's just no gesturing, vocalizing, or nifty visual effects to make it stand out. It just is.

Then again, Christians believe in miracles and such like that, and not magic, so I guess it's just a certain way of viewing and defining things.

Tolkien had felt that Europe had lost it's Mythology, and originally was trying to create a new one.

He was also creating a world where his 15 languages could be spoken. Unlike most authors that just make up random words when they needed it, Tolkien created real languages that could be spoken. A few other authors have done that, but most create the story first and then the language, where Tolkien created the languages and then the story.

Tolkien spoiled me. Now when I see some "language" tossed around in a book, I get aggravated. Especially the ones that aren't even internally consistent. How hard is it to make up less than 20 words, and have them at least work amongst themselves?

EDIT: Stoppit. ~Shiri~
EDIT2: I'm going to start censoring myself and putting little Shirisms at the end, just to screw with people.

Adaptations, by definition, can be hit or miss.

Books are not screenplays. Sin City, in part worked so well, because not only the directory truly wanted to interpret it instead of adapting it, but Sin City is a graphic novel, which can pretty much act as a film storyboard.

You can't do that with novels. They can take advantage of literary techniques that don't work well in even a 3 hour film. So, naturally, there are elements that have to be changed. You can't take advantage of omniscient narration, inner thoughts, or abstractions without altering some techniques.

I guess it depends on how much you love the original work in part. That will always affect your interpretation. For instance, I am a big fan of comic books, especially the Marvel heroes, so I usually have a dislike of comic adaptations, especially if it's something I'm really a fan of. I could tolerate Spider-Man and X-Men, since they used loving care, but Fantastic Four took so many liberties I refused to see it. Even if an author approves it, I may dislike it. For instance, even though it was done at Schulz's insistance, I always disliked the fact that Snoppy became Harpo Marx in the TV adaptations. Use an echoed voice for Snoopy's thoughts, damnit!

I enjoyed Jackson's LoTR, but disliked other quirks, especially the way the story got abbrevated at the end, Peter Jackson's dislike for Magical Effects (his DVD commentary said he hated wizardly magic), and his insistance on making too much eye-candy in the terms of battles. But I've only read LoTR a few times, same with this Narnia movie coming out.

Also--The thing about JRRT, or R.E. Howard, or Lovecraft, or C.S. Lewis or older authors in general (Wells, Dickens, etc.), that makes the works harder to adapt is the fact that TV (and even film) has sort of corrupted literary techniques. A lot of people write modern novels like they are screenplays, even unconciously. About 20 year ago, one critic compared a TSR novel by Douglas Niles with Gary Gygax's Gord books, and he said the former read like a visual screenplay, while the later read like a radio drama--probably showing the latter's authors age (reading and writing before TV became mainstream). So, a lot of the classic works of literature would have to take more liberties to get it to a screen-ready form.

I can understand adapting some things, but those LOTR movies went FAR beyond that. They added characters where they didn't exist, highly changed the significance of certain items(such as the sword that was broken, a powerful artifact and sign of the true king... instead in the movie it's some dusty old blade sitting in some dusty old room). Bringing the elves to Helms Deep was NOT needed, it was to make for a pretty battle. Elrond seemed to hate Aragon in the movies... they are family(History of Numenor), and it was Elrond who made the profecy that once the ring was found, the sword would be reforged and THEN the kind would return... in the movie he claims Aragon forsake his kingship. And even little things, the journey to Bree took 14 days in the book, and it just said "The trip took 14 days" there was no story in that 14 days... movie you have the same thing, someone saying the trip took SEVEN days... what is the point in changing that? All it does is make the world seem smaller, in both book and movie there was no story during that part of the trip. Nazgul fought with deceit and fear, they would NEVER openly attack Bree... yet they did in the movie(Nazgul on his black horse breaking down the gates).

There's a lot more, the whole story of Gollem is screwed up, Athalas the rarest herb in the world... seemingly a common weed in the movie...

Enough hijack.

The movie got four stars out of four in our snooty upperclass artsy newspaper.

I just saw it, I loved it!

I give it four paws up!



FYI, C.S. Lewis is known for some Christian writings (notably The Screwtape Letters) but, IMHO, the Chronicles of Narnia really were not written as serious Christian fables but rather are pure fantasy entertainment. In the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you can make a case for some parallels to Christ, but really I think it's superficial. After this first novel, the Narnia books are pure fantasy (though C.S. Lewis did seem to like popping in the Lilith archetype now and then, which isn't a mainstream Christian teaching but rather more popular among esoteric occult theosophists back in his day--which makes me question how really "Christian" he was).

I don't want to spoil it for people, but yes, (even though I'm not really regilous myself) i did see a lot of connections with the christian religious "mythos" you could call it. It stands out the most in the 7th and last book, which, was mostly a downer for me but, well, the series ends on a luke-warm note, sorta good, sorta bad, whatever.

I enjoyed the whole Chronicles, because they set up a nice little world, had a few adventures in it that were connected I really enjoyed the.. "boy and his horse" and the one where they give the backstory of the witch, and the backstory of the old guy in the house. the two that don't take place in the common time-line. (well, the boy and his horse does, but it has an interesting spin to it)

Throughout the books you get the sense that the Lion is a heavenly being, and is sending these little kids to do his work in a world which he doesn't like to interfere directly *cough* Estarra *cough*

Over all it was a great couple of books, and i encourage movie goers who enjoyed the movie to go read the books, they are easy reads, I think I ended up reading 1 every other day when I went through them in my sisters book collection.

I sorta can't remember why I started this post, (because it's 3am, and I just woke up, and my sleeping schedual is all turned around, and I'm groggy and need some tea), or where it was going.. hmm, geuss I'll go see the movie and check it out for myself, and compair it to the books. (which is useally a downer for me, because I useally enjoy the directors interp. of the book, which is good, and then useally point out to myself all the little details where they went astray, which is slighty "meh" )

Oh boy, I'm terribly late replying. But I'm really excited about seeing the movie! I think I may go before work one day. I may have to go by myself, though. Sometimes I hate having an evening job. When you are at work, all your friends are home doing whatever or out having fun. When you are home, everybody else is at work.

Also, I haven't read the books yet. It seems like everyone else read them when they were kids. How come I didn't? I have to add this series to my "To Read List." I think I'll put it between finishing up the Eragon series and starting the Harry Potter series.

Pretty much sums it up for me as well, for -those- book/movie changes.

Ya, they needed to add to the female roles, to give the story more connection to female viewers... but it turned parts of it into a "oooh who is aragorn going to fall in love with in this movie" which made me want to tear my eyes out.

...but it really doesn't ruin the books for me, because in truth the whole LOTR world, to me isn't based on the LOTR book, that is just some add-on, I enjoyed the Silmarillion 1000x better, somehow, it's only a tiny 350ish pages (compaired with 1300+ *is to lazy to dig through to find the books trillogy right now*), with maps and glossery, but it tells a much broader better indepth story, i just don't know how he did it.

LOTR is just the tieing up and conclusion of the Silmarillion to me, a few pages, after thousands of books worth of history in tens of kingdoms.

*cradles his silmarillion and rocks back and forth in the corner*

"No, no icky short directers are going to mess with you, no, no they arn't!"

I just got back from seeing it, and it was excellent; very well done. The music (which is very important to me in a movie) was fantastic, the special effects were nearly seamless (I loved when Jadis turned the gryphon to stone, it crashed into a cliff and exploded, and rained down over the battlefield), and all the actors fit very well. Ewan McGregor seemed a bit out of place to me, as Aslan, but it could have been because he was the only famous person I recognized. Also, absolutely loved that they added to the beginning a bit, I was reading the book the other day, and noted how terribly short it was.

Go see it!

*cries over the loss of his TWO first print run Silmarillion and first print run Cottage of Lost Play... damn floods*

Oh God the Silmarrillion SUCKS, it's so bloody boring.

I can't actually remember much of it now... I remember there being stuff about the Silmarrilli and the Valor and stuff. Kinda reminded me of the Elder Gods I think.

Boring? More happens in the Silmarillion then does in the entire LotR trilogy!

It reads like the freaking Bible though.

Anyway, saw Harry Potter yesterday...my conclusion is that it's a perfectly fine movie, because you go in KNOWING that the plot is going to be a sort of mangled version of the book and miss out lots of important stuff and screw up some others, so you watch it for the flashy effects and pretty dragons et al. That Hungarian horntail was awesome, for example, but Harry/Ron/Dumbledore all made me want to punch them, a lot. And Voldemort looked way too energetic at the end, heh.

Ok, you don't like it, fine. That doesn't mean it sucks, some people just don't have the eye for detail and depth of story, did you get past the first page?