Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why...

> Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."

> This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. "Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."

Search your feelings; you know it to be true.

I agree. The story itself is already shaky and tremendously bland by itself. An adaptation only exacerbates it and reveals its glaring weaknesses much harsher.

Tolkien isn't meant to be experienced narratively. A soyedditor film trilogy ala Hollywood is recipe for ultimate disaster.

...

The trilogy was fine though. Gollum annoyed me, especially that part where Frodo sends Sam away

>spewing this much nonsense
Must have taken you forever, you poor baby. Next time just say "generic" and "soulless" like you usually do. It'll save you the time.

Based Tolkein family. We will never see a work of literature like that gain, since society is rapidly spiraling clockwise down the drain.

*again

> Imagine being Christopher
> Father told you these tales as a kid
> Brought the both of you closer together
> Entrusts his work to you after his death
> Continue his legacy and argue his legitimacy for decades
> Family pressures you to give over rights to them to sell to amazon
> Hope that people will remember the sincerity and integrity of his Father and his works
> see pic related

Gollum is best character

He's great in the books. He's annoying as fuck in the movies

>shaky and bland

Yeah, if only Tolkien would have went into great detail about 14 year old girls shitting so he could jerk off to it. How the fuck is the story “shaky”? Even people who don’t like it agree it’s the most complete and self consistent world building in modern fantasy.

>They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25
ehh... that's much more accurate of the Hobbit movies though.

...

Loved the books. I enjoyed the movies. Moreso than the first SW trilogy. LotR spoke to me. Good vs evil. Keeping faith when things seem hopeless. I think the movies complimented the story well.

The hobbit was an abomination

>soon
WE

Yeah, really should have left Tom Bombadil in.

I love the books, but this pretentious faglord needs to get over himself. He was only responsible for protecting the rights, and he managed to fuck that up.

>promoted your father's works and financially secure your family forever
>bring more people to the books and lore and immortalize him and the universe he built
>"well it's not quite what I had hoped for"
what an absolute faggot. And I guarantee you he had no qualms meeting with the creator of the abomination that was LOTR (1978)

LOTR books > Star Wars OT > LOTR movies > Star Wars EU > Prequels > Passing a gallstone > The Hobbit

>gimli turning into jar jar for the entire second movie
>sauron literally being a huge flaming eye (at one point literally even used as a search light to find frodo) instead of an evil presence felt whenever you look at the tower

only things that ever bugged me

* LOTR books > The Hobbit books > Star Wars OT

>story /= world building

Tolkien excels at world building. He can't write though.

You will notice this once you mature a little more and your redditey capeshit sensibilities of what constitute a good story begin to wear off.

Jackson could have made it way worse if you watch the production diaries. He was going have Sauron appear in battle and fight Aragorn at the end but replaced it with a troll in post production.

I was considering watching the movies, so I looked up the film's version of my favorite scene from the books: The mirror of Galadriel.

I didn't know it was possible to fuck something up so thoroughly and completely. Everything, EVERYTHING that was so good about that scene, everything that was beautiful in itself and everything that was important to the larger context of the story in that scene was either removed or misinterpreted.

Even the shitty 70's cartoon version did it better.

>we /lit/ now
List some good fiction writers.

Truth

>The Hobbit books
>books
boi

>he didn't watch the movies yet
Hello underageb&

Im an autist, repitition rules me

It did completely change the way Galadriel is portrayed in the book. Her monologue is one of self reflection and contemplation, but never truly tempted.

I should clarify that I watched the first two as a kid but remember almost nothing about them.

I would also mention that I also looked up the Mouth of Sauron scene and holy shit what a mess that was.

>Mouth of Sauron scene
Hello underage, that wasn't even in the theatrical version

mouth of sauron scene is kino, kys

I saw the picture and thought he died. Fuck you for making me hopeful.

> Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh. 'Wise the Lady Galadriel may be,' she said, 'yet here she has met her match in courtesy. Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye. I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. The evil that was devised long ago works on in many ways, whether Sauron himself stands or falls. Would not that have been a noble deed to set to the credit of his Ring, if I had taken it by force or fear from my guest? 'And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!' She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. 'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.'

Jackson just took it too literally. He simpllified everything in the movies and arranged the story around action set pieces.

Nobody except turbo autists would’ve went to see all three films if they were 6 hour page for page adaptations.

Okay? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

You're bitching about a scene that didn't even make the final cut retard.

It not like he rules the estate anymore. His family just sold it to amazon. Look forward to you forced diversity, modern politics and lack of morality.

Exactly, and I thought it kind of det reacted from the character, which we only see a handful of times, but is one of the most based of all the elves.

That doesn't contradict what CT said.

Is this a Hobbit thread?

He'd only be satisfied with a static Beowulf radio drama and would disown family members having a different opinion. His father would've also be against anything but a literal play-like adaptation but at least he wouldn't have been such an asshole about it.

All I said was that it was a mess. Which cuts it was in doesn't change that.

...

I actually kind of liked Alfrid, it's a shame they killed him off in such a stupid way instead of giving him a small bit of redemption like it seemed they were working toward.

I also thought the presence of Sam and her remarks about his garden were incredibly important to the character and the story as a whole, and they removed that outright.

Is it really so bad to look with dismay at neverending video games, slot machines and toys banking on your fathers work?

I hope you die.

I dont agree. Having listened to Dan Carlin's hardcore history about WWI and then seeing the trilogy again you can really see how much the books are about the war. Like that scene were Frodo and Sam see all the bodies in the bog is exactly like how Carlin relayed descriptions of shell craters filled with mud, residual chemical weapon vapors and bodies. I mean, the allegory is baked into the plot. Chris sounds like a whiny baby.

So? Let him turn away, didn’t stop him from cashing out on the trilogy or rescinding his objection for allowing the hobbit movies to be made.

people take these books so seriously, it's funny. it has some good world building, but that's...pretty much it. the rest is absolute shit. harry potter has better written characters than this autismo shit. if they were to do a 1:1 fully detailed version of the books the movies would be unbelievably cheesy and boring. the movies are an improvement over the books. can't say the same for the hobbit.

> gritty war action
> fred flinstone out of nowhere

Then the estate should stop selling the rights for dosh. If he's going to be mad at anyone, it should be himself and now his grimy family who took over for him. This guy needs to seppuku and end his eternal misery.

LotR is a children's novel, as is The Hobbit. I don't see how adapting them to films that are palatable for 15-to-25 year olds betrays the source material.

I've known it to be true since Jackson's LotR's first came out. Don't get me wrong, Jackson did well... compared to the usual standards of Hollywood in this day and age. But for the most part his movies don't have the ethereal otherworldly beauty and noble grandeur of Tolkien, the plot changes he made are pointless (yes, I understand you have to cut stuff out, but you don't have to change stuff), he put in too much lowbrow humor and shield snowboarding type of shit, the soundtrack is blaring and almost omnipresent (there are some nice tracks, but also a lot of clang-bang filler in unnecessary moments), he made the hobbits Irish stereotypes for some reason, he turned Denethor from a fallen wise man into a sadist, he turned Legolas into a one-man death machine, and he let some really bad CGI be in the finished product (ghost army).
I salute Jackson for how well he did given usual standards. His LotR is often touching and often approaches, and sometimes even reaches, the artistic effects of Tolkien's work. But the real LotR is yet to be filmed.

Tolkien sold them in the 70s to make money for his family. The UK at that time had a 70% tax rate.

the people that complain about this shit are just tolkien autist fanboy losers.

...

Yes, he should be mad about that. Amazon can wipe their ass with LotR now. They sold out. Don't hate Jeff Bezos, hate your slimy family that sold out. Amazon's adaptation is going to make The Hobbit look like Citizen Kane, and he has no one to blame but himself and his family.

> I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right.

Jacksons LotR not diverse enough for you shlomo?

>LotR
>A fucking children's novel

Ah so you're an idiot, just say so next time

Why do people react with such vitriol when people love or care about something? I see it all the time, and I think it must be a symptom of increasing cynicism.

Jesus fucking christ

I empathise with autists. Allow me to explain. The whole utility of allegory is that it softens the edge of difficult topics for wider audiences. Tolkien was smart enough to know this.

dunsey
anderson
kippling
clarke
le guin
vance
moorcock

I think it's unfair of him to compare the first trilogy to the Hobbit

The Hobbit trilogy is indefensible. LoTR was fantastic though.

No mainstream writer of genre fiction writes better than Tolkien.

...

>put all monologues on it's fullest
>instead of being a three and half hours movie, four, if you count RotK It would be at least a twelve hours movie

I too have read all the books, but come on. You guys are literally asking for a paragraph by paragraph adaptation, and that is literally impossible.

LotR have made a great saga, one of the most memorable movie trilogys ever made. But OF COURSE it wouldn't be as complete as a book that you take like 30 hours to finish and paint it with your own colors in your mind.

the soundtrack is the most memorable thing in the movies... it's probably the most recognizable set of music in a series of movies since star wars....

lotr has plenty of 'otherwordly beauty', idk wtf you're talking about. most of the plot changes were necessary to condense the story, the movies are all almost 3 hours a piece as it is. the hobbits are just as stereotypical in the books as well, not sure why you think otherwise.

the only legit criticisms are legolas being a death machine, gimli and his lowbrow humor, and the denethor/faramir stuff. gimli and legolas barely have any type of characterization in the books anyway, they're just...there.

Fuck you Chris you had one job.
ONE JOB.
And that was to cockblock hollywood until the day you died. You quit early. Fuck you.

I would live without the lotr trilogy of films if it meant that Christopher was happier. I like them though, and in the future they would be worse.

I find hugely entertaining to read writers denying the influence Tolkien had on them. Moorcock only reiterated what had been established by pulp writers while Tolkien brought Fantasy into the mainstream.

Orlando Bloom is such a mongaloid. All of his Legolas parkour shit looked funny as fuck.

why would you list seven writers that are inferior to JRRT?

Its not about including all the dialogue. Its about how it is portrayed. The movie handled the character wrong and this scene in particular was laughable in the film.

jk rowling is unironically a better writer than tolkien

This scene is awesome 2bh

...

She's obviously not, why are you pushing this weak small dick bait?

...

You’re a fuckin retard, I bet you’re one of those retards that post in the stupid MUH FEELS lotr threads

as bad as she is, at least she actually gave her characters a character in her books. can't say the same for tolkien.

>I too have read all the books, but come on. You guys are literally asking for a paragraph by paragraph adaptation, and that is literally impossible.

The length of the scene isn't the issue here. It's fine to shorten it, so long as the meaning is retained. But why even make an adaptation if some of the most important parts of it are fundamentally changed to the point where they lose their meaning? The Galadriel scenes in the books established Galadriel's character and through her demonstrate the difference between the humans and Elves and the old world and the new, reinforces the hopelessness of the mission,explains the reason that the Elves must leave for the West at the end, and expands on the themes of corruption and temptation through Sam, all of this leaving aside the aesthetic value. The equivalent scene in the movie accomplished almost none of these things, but is in there because Jackson apparently recognized THAT the scene was important without understanding WHY the scene was important.

those 'capeshit' moments were pretty sparse though. but I can understand where Chris is coming from.

is the silmarillion hard to read or am I just a brainlet? there are a lot of characters

See, this is why I'm all for a new LotR movie. Javkson, Rankin-Bass and Bakshi all had their take, I would like to see a new visual style.

Though naybe give another decade. LotR is too beloved atm.

i tried reading that piece of shit and just gave up. there are better things to read instead of wasting your time on that autismal garbage.

Yeah, it wasn't really written with the intention of being "readable" in the same way that The Hobbit and LotR are. Most of the material was written before Tolkien's world was anything more than a personal hobby.

If you can read anything from xenomorph or plutarch it shouldn't be a problem

You're really going to pretend to be some kind of authority when you can't even recognize different methods of storytelling besides those that utilize the template for practically all modern genre fiction? Might as well say Ulysses is bad because it doesn't have enough character quirks.

>make the most popular film adaption of a book series of all time
>the guy who literally just inherited the rights shits on you

>invent completely new story and universe for your film
>'fans' shit on you endlessly and can't wait for you to be gone

i guess only masochists have anything to do with making fantasy films now

heh

No, it's hard to read

>Start a chapter
>Character is born
>By end of chapter character dies of old age
>You're expected to remember this person and his entire lineage as well as all the fucking elves that don't even have the decency to eventually die

>Star Wars OT > LOTR movies
lol

Imagine it as a book of short stories and histories and its not as daunting.

The good parts of the soundtrack are very good, and those are the parts everyone remembers, but personally I feel that there are too many scenes with a bombastic generic "actiony" soundtrack that don't actually need a soundtrack and would be more effective without one. This reduces those scenes because it makes them feel a bit emotionally manipulative in a generic blockbuster way. The soundtrack basically tells you "Be! Excited! Now! This! Is! Dramatic!"
I agree that the movies do have some otherworldly beauty. I probably didn't explain what I meant very well. LotR, and Tolkien in general, stays almost constantly either on a plane that is sort of noble, lofty, almost alien in its severity, or on a fairy tale plane (Tom Bombadil, for example)... with the exception to those two being the hobbits, who are sort of real-world English villagers, relatively speaking. Jackson gets to that plane sometimes, but for the most part the films are just competent war movies about a group of friends who go to fight evil in a vaguely medieval setting. I feel that the movies mostly lack a certain extra touch of haunted philosophical grandeur that could have really elevated them. But yes, I know that this is a bit eccentric of me.
As for the plot changes... well, like I said before, I don't mind cutting stuff out to condense the story, what I don't understand is why Jackson replaced book stuff with new stuff he made up that takes as long. None of it is an improvement from what I can tell.
As for the hobbits being just as stereotypical in the books, maybe you're right. I haven't read them in a while.
It's true that Gimli and Legolas aren't characterized very much in the books. I do appreciate that Jackson fleshed them out a bit. Orlando Bloom's performance is underrated. He did a good job of coming off as a really old person in a really young-looking body. There's a certain weariness about his eyes that does it.

so using bland shitty characters is a method of storytelling. gotcha

How the fuck can I relate to Stepehen Dedalus if he's not a quirky teenager like in muh YA books????