Before and after the movie

[littlemanpoet]

I'm an Old School Fan. My two older brothers were Frodo Lives fans. My oldest brother read Riddles in the Dark to me in 1968, when I was 8 and he was 16, as a bedtime treat. That night changed me. Next day I started The Hobbit for myself.

My mother made capes with hoods for my two older brothers, and they traipsed all over the community in them; my oldest brother grew his hair long and had a scraggly beard, and he made himself a sword. Us boys and my sister were Gandalf, Aragorn, Eowyn, and Pippin. They decided that I was Pippin because I was so immature. I hadn't read LotR yet by then (1968). So us three brothers have more or less digested Tolkien (and Lewis to varying degrees) into our way of looking at the world. He is the greatest authorial influence for all three of us.

I read FotR and TT not long after, but ran out of gas at the beginning of RotK; I think I was disappointed that it was about Minas Tirith instead of about Frodo and Sam. I didn't pick up RotK again for a year and a half. But I finished it pretty soon after that, and started re-reading it in my teens. I read The Silmarillion right away when it came out, and snapped up Unfinished Tales the moment I discovered it in the book store. I was bequeathed by my oldest brother the old Middle Earth map in glossy paper, drawn up by Pauline Baynes, and still have it, and consider myself lucky. It's gorgeous!

Unlike many Tolkien purists (which I admittedly tend toward), I did enjoy the Bakshi film, although I hated the crazy-weird Treebeard with the stomping root-feet! I loved his Shire, Bree, Weathertop, Rivendell, and Moria; I can't remember his Lorien.

I did passionately dislike the Rankin-Bass Hobbit movie, but I did like most of the RotK movie by Rankin-Bass - except for the singing orcs!

You might say that my mind-images of the characters of LotR are influenced equally by my own imagination from the books, by Pauline Baynes' illustrations on the map (where you can only see the Fellowship characters' backs) , and by (cringe) a Lord of the Rings strategy game I bought way back in the late 70's, that came with cards depicting all of the major characters in the books. Actually, I thought those cards did more justice to Tolkien's descriptions than any of the movies, and much of the art out there! I have since given away the game to a friend - he still plays it to this day.

I loved PJ's FotR, but was outraged at TT; but then I found that I could live with his interpretation of RotK. I guess, going by my own lights, I judged that PJ had to jettison Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest, had to merge Glorfindel and Arwen, had to cut back on how much Lorien he showed. I judged that Elves at Helm's Deep was heinous, as was Theoden's querulousness after being healed by Gandalf! And all that pointless arguing in Helm's Deep for the sake of creating tension! blah. And that ridiculous Nazgul scene at Osgiliath, with Frodo offering the ring to the Nazgul? An outrage. Same with the mischaracterization of Faramir. But all the changes in RotK I felt had to be made in order to achieve the film - even leaving out the scouring of the shire, no matter how disappointing.

None of the characters' images from PJ's movies have had any kind of lasting impression on me. I can switch to them in my mind, if I wish, but my original images overshadow them.

I can't really speak to changes at BD, because I only showed up in January of 2002, and watched the membership climb in a hurry. I've felt that the intelligence of discussion here at BD was quite high, and that has kept drawing me back. And I've met some internet friends here that have been truly worth knowing. Mark 12_30 of special note, and Diamond 18 too. Now that I've started naming names, I must say that I'm leaving out so many; but I've had LotR and writerly interaction especially with these two individuals, and am blessed for it.