Best of... Movies forum 2002 - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 01:49 PM

Here are posts that were discovered and saved during renovation - they are so thoughtful, insightful or humorous that they are well worth keeping! (Posted in random order.)Morquesse provided quotes in answer to the question of Christopher Tolkien's opinion on the movies:Tolkien family not on speaking terms due to 'Rings' film London-The family of writer J.R.R. Tolkien is divided over the the film version of the Lord of the Rings, a newpaper said sunday. The Independent on sunday said 77-year-old Christopher Tolkien, one of the late author's children, won't see or talk to his eldest son, Simon Tolkien, because Simon Tolkien supported the filming of the epic fantasy. The film is to open later this month, and two sequels are expected to follow. Simon Tolkien, 42, a lawyer, said he has been excluded from the family's business affairs because of his support. Christopher Tolkien has played a major role in overseeing the Tolkien legacy and reportedly disliked eariler attempts at bringing the stories to the screen. "My father has refused to have anything to do with me or my son, who is 11, for three years, and he has rejected all request to have a meeting. As long as 1999, it was my view that we should take a more positive line of on the and that was overruled by my father. Following that, I was excluded from the board of the Tolkien company," Simon Tolkien was quoted as saying. J.R.R Tolkien sold the film rights for the Lord of the Rings in 1968 for 10,000 pounds, the equivalent of $14,500. Tolkien's son breaks silence over "The Lord of the Rings" London-breaking his silence over the film 'the Lord of the Rings', the son of fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien says he is not critical of the way the film has interpeted his father's classic books. Report suggest that Christopher Tolkien was unhappy about how the the films of the trilogy had been made that he had fallen out with family members. But in a statement issued Friday, Tolkien said that while he had doubts about the viability of the projects, these were personal opinions. Tolkien said that his position is that 'The Lord of the Rings' is unsuitable for tranformation into visual dramatic form. 'On the the other hand, I reconize that this is a dabatable and complex question of art, and the suggestions that have been made that I "disapprove" of the films, whatever their cinematic quality, even to the extent of thinking ill of those with whom I may differ, are wholly without foundation,' he said. J.R.R. Tolkien sold the film rights to his books in 1969, leaving his family and those in charge of his estate with no control over the movies.[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ]

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 01:57 PM

Birdland, on a thread speculating that Imrahil will not be in the movie: Well! Just what other minor characters do they intend to get rid of? Ioreth's kinswoman? Bergil? The Herb Master? Oh No! Not Forlong the Fat! ...and Birdland again, on the debate about the proper abbreviation of The Two Towers:"Oh T's for 2, and 2 for TT, or 3 T's for The 2 T's, or T-T-T-dee-dee..."T-hee! ...and here is Birdie's Rocky Horror contribution to the audience participation suggestions:It's just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right. Put a finger in your mouth, And take a great, big bi-yi-yi-yi-yite! But it's that blood-red Eye, That really drives you insane. Let's do the Ring Wraith again! Let's do the Ring Wraith again!

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 01:59 PM

Rose Cotton’s version of Arwen waiting for Aragorn:(The Battle at Helms Deep)(They are deep in battle when they all hear a ringing coming from somewhere. Aragon takes out a cellphone) Aragorn: Hello? Arwen: ARE YOU KING YET??!! Aragorn: Not yet darling, I'm working on it. (as Aragon talks he fights off orcs with his other hand and isn't even watching what he is doing) Arwen: WELL HURRY UP! My father is being such a pessimist. "Our time is ending." "The world of men is ending." Aragorn: I'll try harder. Arwen: Thank you sweety! Luv ya!(they hang up and Aragon goes back to fighting)[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ]

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:04 PM

Here is part of a discussion on Patrick Stewart and roles he could have played in the LotR movies:Maril: Let's give him more of a challenge - Denethor! Seriously, I think he could carry Denethor's blend of glittering intelligence, subtlety and dignified arrogance really well. And I think an actor of Patrick Stewart's calibre would appreciate playing the grey area of morality for a while. One does get tired of the white hat. Estelyn: Wow, Maril, that suggestion raised a mental image of Patrick "Denethor" Stewart sitting in his tower, looking into the palantir and declaiming: "I am Locutus of Minas Borgith - resistance is futile." Actually, he'd be good for the role - anyone who can play the crazed Captain Ahab in Moby D could do Denethor well, I think. Then again, he'd probably be too expensive for the movie's budget!

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:12 PM

Some contributions to the ongoing debate of book vs. movie:Elendur: Never connect the movie with the books. They are two separate things. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. Do you get it? Movie | Book. Not Movie = Book. Ok? Lord of The Rings movies? Wow. That is a coincidence that it has the same name as the books I love. I should go see those movies to experience them for themselves. Not experience the movie as a visual of the book. Ok? I hope I have made myself clear here. Susan Delgado: These movies are NOT Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth; they are a collaboration between Jackson and the writers. They will naturally have different views of the events, and I for one am glad of it. It allows me to see the story through someone else's eyes and get a different perspective. Such an opportunity is quite rare and I'm glad of it. I feel the same way about Arwen's expanded role: it's just a different perspective of the same basic story. Rimbaud: I doubt Tolkien would have objected to a misstelling of his story. It was never intended to be concrete. Myths swell and distort over time - think King Arthur, Robin Hood et al - and so Tolkien hoped, perhaps, for his writings to be considered. I believe this to be the reason for PJ to have sanctioned plot changes etc... If it works for the film - which is correctly identified above as a stand-alone work - and is unlikely to have offended the author...well, then I see few problems with it. Cazoz: You can't stay too faithful to the book to make a universally liked film. If PJ had been more literal, the film might have dragged more for the non-Tolkien audience and the attention to detail and meticulosity that we all love might have been interpreted as pedantry by many others. Elenna: The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss Tolkien's books and the movie. Therefore if some of us have a negative opinion, we are free to express it. Bethberry: I have to disagree with those who think that the posts here are simply whining complaints about PJ or Blanchett. Many posts are more than just simple opinion. They put forth reasons or ideas in defense of a position or offer relevant facts. This is what a discussion is about, trying to determine the basis or criteria which we use to analyze a movie or a performance, finding some kind of comparison or yardstick by which to evaluate or judge something. No one is trying to change PJ's mind. Rather we are trying to learn something about how to "read" the movie and come away with a better understanding of acting or movie-making. That is what a discussion board is all about, isn't it?[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ]

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:17 PM

And of course, that favourite topic, the role of women in LotR, especially Arwen's expanded role in the movie:Kalessin: Couldn't it be argued that in the trilogy, aside from Galadriel and Eowyn, the female characters tend to occupy pretty much "medieval" territory in all respects. Duty, obedience, grace and beauty are the prime virtues. There is also arguably at least an inference that Eowyn's ultimately heroic part in the narrative is motivated partly at least by 'feminine' desires - her feelings for Aragorn - and pride. Galadriel herself has an element of pride that she overcomes in resisting the One Ring, and in many ways meets the archetype of feminine sorceress - the ability to read the hearts and minds of men - and of traditional "femininity", as a giver of fertility (the seeds to Sam). In all cases, the beauty (or appearance) of the female characters is of critical importance (Gimli and Eomer quibbling about Galadriel and Arwen, etc.), whilst the male characters seem judged by their deeds, or by a kind of invisible 'air of regality' or similar quality. Kalla: I have refined my feelings of Arwen to this: I do not care if she has more screenplay than in the book and I no longer care...ok, I care less, and how clumsy as someone said she was introduced. What I disliked was at the Ford, she "saves" Frodo rather than him standing up to the wraiths. That was, I felt, an important point in the book that when Gandalf later remarks that Hobbits are quite remarkable folk (forgive me I don't have the book to look it up in at the moment)that he is remarking upon Frodo's strength of will and heart at such a vuneralbe moment, as well as other things. I dunno, I just felt that was a bad character development move...I waited for that scene and then it was like WHOOSH Frodo is now saved. I was going...huh?! It just seemed after reading the book that that was OUT of character for Frodo...if that makes sense. It wouldn't matter who saved him at the ford...if it was Legolas or Aragorn or Sam, etc...I'd still feel the same way about them. You can empower or modernize characters, although I actually felt the women had a strong role in the book, just more subtle, without detracting from other characters. Lush: Oh, pish posh. As long as she's not wielding an axe and wearing a fur bikini, I'm down with the changes. Bill Ferny: I can see it now. Liv Tyler leading the terrorized Gimli and Legolas down the Paths of the Dead, while Aragorn, still whinning and doubting himself, decides to stay with the women and children of Rohan and sew up a flag for Arwen. Of course, not only does Eowyn fall in love with Aragorn, but she manages to seduce him (because he's at a fragile moment in his life, of course) and they get a steamy love scene, just to spice things up, and make the movie more appealing to the Fatal Attraction crowd. Of course, Arwen blows a gasket when she gets word of this, but wise Legolas councils her to turn her anger to better use by taming the undead of Dunharrow, and, of course, it is she who saves the day on the Pelennor Fields. When all is said and done, Aragorn realizes that his little trist with Eowyn was due to his doubt and weakness, marries Arwen and becomes king of Gondor. Of course, having a king is just alittle too chauvenistic for the modern movie goer, so Aragorn hands over the kingdom to Arwen and runs off with his gay lover, Glorfindel (hey, we finally found a role for Glorfindel!). Ah, what the heck, lets wrap up the whole movie. Leg and Gim go to Fangorn and start up a dwarf/elf brothel. Eowyn stops stalking Aragorn, and she and Faramir establish the Henneth Annun health resort and self help center in Ithilien. Pip becomes the first bartender of a liberated Osgiliath. His first customer is Mer, who suffering from post-tramatic stress syndrome becomes an alchoholic. That's OK, because Mer pulls it together and later becomes a guru of fringe fundamentalist cult. Oh, yeah, and Frodo. Well, Frodo finally grows some... well, you know.

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:22 PM

If Tom Bombadil had been in the movie, who should have played him?Evisse the Blue: Mum pictures Tom Bombadil as being played by Mel Gibson. Silly, eh? Melkor the Morgoth: I bet your mom's the kind of woman that wants EVERYONE to be portrayed by Mel Gibson, kinda like all those Legolas fangirls but 25 years older.

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:31 PM

Here are the outstanding posts on the subject of religious beliefs, sexuality and the movies: Maril: Tolkien had an instinct for recognizing when his work was being appropriated by extreme views, whether they were puritanical or hedonistic. He was fairly vehement in disavowing either, whether it was Christian allegory or hippie free love. His writing was Christian by virtue of the fact he was a Catholic? Logically that makes no sense. If someone was first a Christian, then followed a New Age Guru, then converted to Islam, which would their writings reflect? All of them, because a human being is the sum total of their entire life experience. Since Tolkien converted to Catholicism, there was a time he was not Catholic. So how can his writing reflect only his Catholicism, and not the time he wasn't Catholic? I find that there are stages of spiritual growth one goes through on a spiritual path, veering from extremes. First you have a meeting with something profound. You're humbled. After that, it's kind of like being in love. You're all fired up, you want everyone to have this great thing you've found, you want to declare it to the world. You're kinda high. Without realizing it, you get pretty puffed up. On the other hand you're really committed, and many people get a lot of good works done during this time. This, although it feels just terrific, is when you're really obnoxious to your friends, judgemental and harsh to those who don't agree with you. The next thing that happens is that you mess up. You do something that's against your ethics and you can't believe it. Pride goeth before a fall. Finally you realize that it's not enough to just have this thing in your life, you have to make some major changes in yourself. It's pretty painful to find you're not so great as you thought you were. You become disillusioned with yourself. But suddenly people like being around you again, and as you recover you start to discover something more stable and mature (and a lot more work). It's so relaxing to realize that you aren't special, takes a lot of pressure off. You start feeling pretty good, balanced. The next is a rough patch. A disillusionment with the church, or the community. It seems you've been mislead, or something or someone doesn't live up to your expectations. There's a period of cynicism or rebellion. Heh. The truth is, you need to revaluate your expectations, your false image, and discover you are responsible for your spirituality. The church has nothing to do with how your spiritual path works or doesn't work. Their faults are not responsible for your problems, and, even harder to accept, the church is not responsible for your virtues. There's something freeing about proceeding without any expectations of others. There's a kind of open-handed generousity to participating even though you know the church is made of human beings. It takes a lot of work and self-examination, but at this point you find out how spirituality is really going to work in your life. It takes a lot of honesty, and your committment is really tested once it becomes clear you're on your own. There are other stages after I'm sure, but this is what I know about. It varies from person to person, but this pattern seems to flow for every religious tradition I've encountered. Some people seem to whip through these stages subtly, some dramatically, some fast, some slow. A lot of people drop out at the various rough patches (especially the first fall-out). I don't know what got me started on this, something about puritanism. But I wanted to thank you for bringing it up as I managed in the process of writing this clarify some things for myself. I hope it's useful for you, too. As far as waiting or not waiting, I think waiting till college is a good idea (why waste your first time on an inept immature highschooler?). But don't wait out of fear, or shame, or guilt. Don't wait because someone tells you to. Do so out of self-respect. I believe it should be your own choice, not pressured from peer pressure - either way. mark12_30: Maril, Your analysis of religious stages is brilliant, and resonates quite well with what I have seen. I would hazard to add one more stage: the stage where God asks the disciple, "What matters to you besides me?" And the disciple begins to see that what matters is God-at-work, and that all that the disciple wants to see is really the desire to see God-at-work, and so the disciple eventually realises that all that he or she wants, is to see God at work-- in self, in others, in the world. And so the answer refines and distills and simplifies down to... "...just God." Even Tolkien, I think, got there via his own work. In my opinion, that's illustrated somewhat in this Tolkien Letters quote (which blows my mind): Letter 183 (page 243): <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about 'freedom', though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and his sole right to divine honor. The Eldar and the Numenoreans beleived in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honor from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation 'the West' had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Kalimac: Peter Jackson is a good director. Good directors understand the story that they are attempting to tell, this is something they must be especially careful of if the original creator of the story is no longer around to explain what he finds acceptable and not. If the story they are trying to tell is (as in the already-cited "Heavenly Creatures") a story of semi-crazed erotic murderous obsession, there will be a fair amount of violence and a lot of sexually charged scenes simply because the story would not BE a story without them. This is what the characters are thinking about, and what they do, and in order to understand (or even be interested in them) we must see and experience, not necessarily everything that happens to them, but everything which happens to them that THEY consider important. That is why "Heavenly Creatures" is what it is; we are seeing the world through the eyes of these two girls - not necessarily to empathize, but to comprehend. In LOTR, OTOH, eroticism and suchlike are not important to the characters or the story; they're not what the story is about. This doesn't mean that nobody in ME ever slept with anyone else or that they all hold irreproachably high morals, simply that these things are *irrelevant.* Maybe Aragorn secretly harbors naughty thoughts about Arwen, maybe Legolas has a bit of a swinging reputation among the Wood-Elves back home. I'm not saying that IS the case, simply that even if it WERE it has no place in the story because it doesn't add to the story or our understanding of the character and his actions. There is no place in the entire course of the story where either of these things would be a deciding or illuminating factor as to the character's actions. So putting in extra eroticism would not just be untrue to Tolkien, it would also be the biggest possible waste of screen time. What would a long, steamy Aragorn/Arwen love scene DO? We've already established that they love each other; how would having them get cozier than Tolkien ever mentioned influence the story? It would only be worth the screen time if it made Aragorn decide maybe he shouldn't go/wonder if maybe he should elope with Arwen/father a child/think he's fathered a child; that is, if it could conceivably influence his subsequent actions. Now if any of these events had happened in the books, I don't doubt that we would have been shown some much more erotic scenes to drive home the point that this was something that was influencing Aragorn very heavily. But they weren't in the books, and if PJ changed the story that much, he'd be desecrating the books absolutely pointlessly, and he obviously loves them too much to change them for no reason (leaving aside quibbles about why Merry threw the stone in the pool as opposed to Boromir).

Estelyn Telcontar · 12-07-2002, 02:56 PM

Samwise on daydreams:Daydreams are just that, daydreams. Nice to have, but they very rarely come true, and if they did--well, 9 times out of 10 they wouldn't turn out the way YOU thought them up.Hey, if we can't TALK about daydreams here, where are we supposed to talk about them? Heck, I spend most of my time here imitating a Hobbit gardener, though I am neither (oi--if you saw the condition of my garden...) If God hadn't given us minds to daydream with, though, "quiet times might get awfully boring. (for that matter, what if a guy by the name of John Ronald Reuel hadn't daydreamed....none of us would be chatting about this, would we?)

12-07-2002, 01:49 PM	#1
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	Best of... Movies forum 2002 Here are posts that were discovered and saved during renovation - they are so thoughtful, insightful or humorous that they are well worth keeping! (Posted in random order.)<P><B>Morquesse</B> provided quotes in answer to the question of Christopher Tolkien's opinion on the movies:<P><B>Tolkien family not on speaking terms due to 'Rings' film</B><BR>London-The family of writer J.R.R. Tolkien is divided over the the film version of the Lord of the Rings, a newpaper said sunday.<BR>The Independent on sunday said 77-year-old Christopher Tolkien, one of the late author's children, won't see or talk to his eldest son, Simon Tolkien, because Simon Tolkien supported the filming of the epic fantasy. The film is to open later this month, and two sequels are expected to follow.<BR>Simon Tolkien, 42, a lawyer, said he has been excluded from the family's business affairs because of his support. Christopher Tolkien has played a major role in overseeing the Tolkien legacy and reportedly disliked eariler attempts at bringing the stories to the screen.<BR>"My father has refused to have anything to do with me or my son, who is 11, for three years, and he has rejected all request to have a meeting. As long as 1999, it was my view that we should take a more positive line of on the and that was overruled by my father. Following that, I was excluded from the board of the Tolkien company," Simon Tolkien was quoted as saying.<BR>J.R.R Tolkien sold the film rights for the Lord of the Rings in 1968 for 10,000 pounds, the equivalent of $14,500. <P><B>Tolkien's son breaks silence over "The Lord of the Rings"</B><BR>London-breaking his silence over the film 'the Lord of the Rings', the son of fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien says he is not critical of the way the film has interpeted his father's classic books.<BR>Report suggest that Christopher Tolkien was unhappy about how the the films of the trilogy had been made that he had fallen out with family members.<BR>But in a statement issued Friday, Tolkien said that while he had doubts about the viability of the projects, these were personal opinions.<BR>Tolkien said that his position is that 'The Lord of the Rings' is unsuitable for tranformation into visual dramatic form. <BR>'On the the other hand, I reconize that this is a dabatable and complex question of art, and the suggestions that have been made that I "disapprove" of the films, whatever their cinematic quality, even to the extent of thinking ill of those with whom I may differ, are wholly without foundation,' he said.<BR>J.R.R. Tolkien sold the film rights to his books in 1969, leaving his family and those in charge of his estate with no control over the movies.<p>[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ] __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 01:57 PM	#2
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	<B>Birdland</B>, on a thread speculating that Imrahil will not be in the movie:<BR> <BR>Well! Just what other minor characters do they intend to get rid of? Ioreth's kinswoman? Bergil? The Herb Master? <P>Oh No! Not Forlong the Fat!<P><BR>...and <B>Birdland</B> again, on the debate about the proper abbreviation of The Two Towers:<P>"Oh T's for 2, and 2 for TT,<BR>or 3 T's for The 2 T's, or T-T-T-dee-dee..."<P>T-hee!<P><BR>...and here is <B>Birdie</B>'s Rocky Horror contribution to the audience participation suggestions:<P>It's just a jump to the left,<BR>And then a step to the right. <BR>Put a finger in your mouth,<BR>And take a great, big bi-yi-yi-yi-yite! <BR>But it's that blood-red Eye, <BR>That really drives you insane. <BR>Let's do the Ring Wraith again! <BR>Let's do the Ring Wraith again! __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 01:59 PM	#3
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	<B>Rose Cotton</B>’s version of Arwen waiting for Aragorn:<P>(The Battle at Helms Deep)<P>(They are deep in battle when they all hear a ringing coming from somewhere. Aragon takes out a cellphone)<BR> <BR>Aragorn: Hello? <P>Arwen: ARE YOU KING YET??!! <P>Aragorn: Not yet darling, I'm working on it.<BR>(as Aragon talks he fights off orcs with his other hand and isn't even watching what he is doing) <P>Arwen: WELL HURRY UP! My father is being such a pessimist. "Our time is ending." "The world of men is ending." <P>Aragorn: I'll try harder. <P>Arwen: Thank you sweety! Luv ya!<P>(they hang up and Aragon goes back to fighting)<p>[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ] __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:04 PM	#4
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	Here is part of a discussion on Patrick Stewart and roles he could have played in the LotR movies:<P><B>Maril</B>:<BR>Let's give him more of a challenge - Denethor! Seriously, I think he could carry Denethor's blend of glittering intelligence, subtlety and dignified arrogance really well. And I think an actor of Patrick Stewart's calibre would appreciate playing the grey area of morality for a while. One does get tired of the white hat. <P><B>Estelyn</B>:<BR>Wow, Maril, that suggestion raised a mental image of Patrick "Denethor" Stewart sitting in his tower, looking into the palantir and declaiming: "I am Locutus of Minas Borgith - resistance is futile." <P>Actually, he'd be good for the role - anyone who can play the crazed Captain Ahab in Moby D could do Denethor well, I think. Then again, he'd probably be too expensive for the movie's budget! __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:12 PM	#5
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	Some contributions to the ongoing debate of book vs. movie:<P><B>Elendur</B>:<BR>Never connect the movie with the books. They are two separate things. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. Do you get it? Movie \| Book. Not Movie = Book. Ok? Lord of The Rings movies? Wow. That is a coincidence that it has the same name as the books I love. I should go see those movies to experience them for themselves. Not experience the movie as a visual of the book. Ok? I hope I have made myself clear here. <P><B>Susan Delgado</B>:<BR>These movies are NOT Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth; they are a collaboration between Jackson and the writers. They will naturally have different views of the events, and I for one am glad of it. It allows me to see the story through someone else's eyes and get a different perspective. Such an opportunity is quite rare and I'm glad of it. I feel the same way about Arwen's expanded role: it's just a different perspective of the same basic story. <P><B>Rimbaud</B>:<BR>I doubt Tolkien would have objected to a misstelling of his story. It was never intended to be concrete. Myths swell and distort over time - think King Arthur, Robin Hood et al - and so Tolkien hoped, perhaps, for his writings to be considered. I believe this to be the reason for PJ to have sanctioned plot changes etc... If it works for the film - which is correctly identified above as a stand-alone work - and is unlikely to have offended the author...well, then I see few problems with it. <P><B>Cazoz</B>:<BR>You can't stay too faithful to the book to make a universally liked film. If PJ had been more literal, the film might have dragged more for the non-Tolkien audience and the attention to detail and meticulosity that we all love might have been interpreted as pedantry by many others. <P><B>Elenna</B>:<BR>The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss Tolkien's books and the movie. Therefore if some of us have a negative opinion, we are free to express it. <P><B>Bethberry</B>:<BR>I have to disagree with those who think that the posts here are simply whining complaints about PJ or Blanchett. Many posts are more than just simple opinion. They put forth reasons or ideas in defense of a position or offer relevant facts. This is what a discussion is about, trying to determine the basis or criteria which we use to analyze a movie or a performance, finding some kind of comparison or yardstick by which to evaluate or judge something. <P>No one is trying to change PJ's mind. Rather we are trying to learn something about how to "read" the movie and come away with a better understanding of acting or movie-making. That is what a discussion board is all about, isn't it?<p>[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ] __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:17 PM	#6
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	And of course, that favourite topic, the role of women in LotR, especially Arwen's expanded role in the movie:<P><B>Kalessin</B>:<BR>Couldn't it be argued that in the trilogy, aside from Galadriel and Eowyn, the female characters tend to occupy pretty much "medieval" territory in all respects. Duty, obedience, grace and beauty are the prime virtues. There is also arguably at least an inference that Eowyn's ultimately heroic part in the narrative is motivated partly at least by 'feminine' desires - her feelings for Aragorn - and pride. Galadriel herself has an element of pride that she overcomes in resisting the One Ring, and in many ways meets the archetype of feminine sorceress - the ability to read the hearts and minds of men - and of traditional "femininity", as a giver of fertility (the seeds to Sam). In all cases, the beauty (or appearance) of the female characters is of critical importance (Gimli and Eomer quibbling about Galadriel and Arwen, etc.), whilst the male characters seem judged by their deeds, or by a kind of invisible 'air of regality' or similar quality. <P><B>Kalla</B>:<BR>I have refined my feelings of Arwen to this: I do not care if she has more screenplay than in the book and I no longer care...ok, I care less, and how clumsy as someone said she was introduced. What I disliked was at the Ford, she "saves" Frodo rather than him standing up to the wraiths. That was, I felt, an important point in the book that when Gandalf later remarks that Hobbits are quite remarkable folk (forgive me I don't have the book to look it up in at the moment)that he is remarking upon Frodo's strength of will and heart at such a vuneralbe moment, as well as other things. I dunno, I just felt that was a bad character development move...I waited for that scene and then it was like WHOOSH Frodo is now saved. I was going...huh?! It just seemed after reading the book that that was OUT of character for Frodo...if that makes sense. It wouldn't matter who saved him at the ford...if it was Legolas or Aragorn or Sam, etc...I'd still feel the same way about them. You can empower or modernize characters, although I actually felt the women had a strong role in the book, just more subtle, without detracting from other characters. <P><B>Lush</B>:<BR>Oh, pish posh. As long as she's not wielding an axe and wearing a fur bikini, I'm down with the changes. <P><B>Bill Ferny</B>:<BR>I can see it now. Liv Tyler leading the terrorized Gimli and Legolas down the Paths of the Dead, while Aragorn, still whinning and doubting himself, decides to stay with the women and children of Rohan and sew up a flag for Arwen. Of course, not only does Eowyn fall in love with Aragorn, but she manages to seduce him (because he's at a fragile moment in his life, of course) and they get a steamy love scene, just to spice things up, and make the movie more appealing to the Fatal Attraction crowd. Of course, Arwen blows a gasket when she gets word of this, but wise Legolas councils her to turn her anger to better use by taming the undead of Dunharrow, and, of course, it is she who saves the day on the Pelennor Fields. <BR>When all is said and done, Aragorn realizes that his little trist with Eowyn was due to his doubt and weakness, marries Arwen and becomes king of Gondor. Of course, having a king is just alittle too chauvenistic for the modern movie goer, so Aragorn hands over the kingdom to Arwen and runs off with his gay lover, Glorfindel (hey, we finally found a role for Glorfindel!). <BR>Ah, what the heck, lets wrap up the whole movie. Leg and Gim go to Fangorn and start up a dwarf/elf brothel. Eowyn stops stalking Aragorn, and she and Faramir establish the Henneth Annun health resort and self help center in Ithilien. Pip becomes the first bartender of a liberated Osgiliath. His first customer is Mer, who suffering from post-tramatic stress syndrome becomes an alchoholic. That's OK, because Mer pulls it together and later becomes a guru of fringe fundamentalist cult. Oh, yeah, and Frodo. Well, Frodo finally grows some... well, you know. __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:22 PM	#7
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	If Tom Bombadil had been in the movie, who should have played him?<P><B>Evisse the Blue</B>: Mum pictures Tom Bombadil as being played by Mel Gibson. Silly, eh? <P><B>Melkor the Morgoth</B>: I bet your mom's the kind of woman that wants EVERYONE to be portrayed by Mel Gibson, kinda like all those Legolas fangirls but 25 years older. __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:31 PM	#8
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	Here are the outstanding posts on the subject of religious beliefs, sexuality and the movies: <P><B>Maril</B>:<BR>Tolkien had an instinct for recognizing when his work was being appropriated by extreme views, whether they were puritanical or hedonistic. He was fairly vehement in disavowing either, whether it was Christian allegory or hippie free love. His writing was Christian by virtue of the fact he was a Catholic? Logically that makes no sense. If someone was first a Christian, then followed a New Age Guru, then converted to Islam, which would their writings reflect? All of them, because a human being is the sum total of their entire life experience. Since Tolkien converted to Catholicism, there was a time he was not Catholic. So how can his writing reflect only his Catholicism, and not the time he wasn't Catholic? <P>I find that there are stages of spiritual growth one goes through on a spiritual path, veering from extremes. <P>First you have a meeting with something profound. You're humbled. <P>After that, it's kind of like being in love. You're all fired up, you want everyone to have this great thing you've found, you want to declare it to the world. You're kinda high. Without realizing it, you get pretty puffed up. On the other hand you're really committed, and many people get a lot of good works done during this time. This, although it feels just terrific, is when you're really obnoxious to your friends, judgemental and harsh to those who don't agree with you. <P>The next thing that happens is that you mess up. You do something that's against your ethics and you can't believe it. Pride goeth before a fall. Finally you realize that it's not enough to just have this thing in your life, you have to make some major changes in yourself. It's pretty painful to find you're not so great as you thought you were. You become disillusioned with yourself. <P>But suddenly people like being around you again, and as you recover you start to discover something more stable and mature (and a lot more work). It's so relaxing to realize that you aren't special, takes a lot of pressure off. You start feeling pretty good, balanced. <P>The next is a rough patch. A disillusionment with the church, or the community. <P>It seems you've been mislead, or something or someone doesn't live up to your expectations. There's a period of cynicism or rebellion. Heh. The truth is, you need to revaluate your expectations, your false image, and discover you are responsible for your spirituality. The church has nothing to do with how your spiritual path works or doesn't work. Their faults are not responsible for your problems, and, even harder to accept, the church is not responsible for your virtues. <P>There's something freeing about proceeding without any expectations of others. There's a kind of open-handed generousity to participating even though you know the church is made of human beings. It takes a lot of work and self-examination, but at this point you find out how spirituality is really going to work in your life. It takes a lot of honesty, and your committment is really tested once it becomes clear you're on your own. <P>There are other stages after I'm sure, but this is what I know about. <P>It varies from person to person, but this pattern seems to flow for every religious tradition I've encountered. Some people seem to whip through these stages subtly, some dramatically, some fast, some slow. A lot of people drop out at the various rough patches (especially the first fall-out).<P> I don't know what got me started on this, something about puritanism. But I wanted to thank you for bringing it up as I managed in the process of writing this clarify some things for myself. I hope it's useful for you, too. <P>As far as waiting or not waiting, I think waiting till college is a good idea (why waste your first time on an inept immature highschooler?). But don't wait out of fear, or shame, or guilt. Don't wait because someone tells you to. Do so out of self-respect. I believe it should be your own choice, not pressured from peer pressure - either way. <P><B>mark12_30</B>:<BR>Maril, <BR>Your analysis of religious stages is brilliant, and resonates quite well with what I have seen. <P>I would hazard to add one more stage: the stage where God asks the disciple, "What matters to you besides me?" <P>And the disciple begins to see that what matters is God-at-work, and that all that the disciple wants to see is really the desire to see God-at-work, and so the disciple eventually realises that all that he or she wants, is to see God at work-- in self, in others, in the world. And so the answer refines and distills and simplifies down to... "...just God." <P>Even Tolkien, I think, got there via his own work. In my opinion, that's illustrated somewhat in this Tolkien Letters quote (which blows my mind): <P>Letter 183 (page 243): <BR> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about 'freedom', though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and his sole right to divine honor. The Eldar and the Numenoreans beleived in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honor from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation 'the West' had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><B>Kalimac</B>:<BR>Peter Jackson is a good director. Good directors understand the story that they are attempting to tell, this is something they must be especially careful of if the original creator of the story is no longer around to explain what he finds acceptable and not. If the story they are trying to tell is (as in the already-cited "Heavenly Creatures") a story of semi-crazed erotic murderous obsession, there will be a fair amount of violence and a lot of sexually charged scenes simply because the story would not BE a story without them. This is what the characters are thinking about, and what they do, and in order to understand (or even be interested in them) we must see and experience, not necessarily everything that happens to them, but everything which happens to them that THEY consider important. That is why "Heavenly Creatures" is what it is; we are seeing the world through the eyes of these two girls - not necessarily to empathize, but to comprehend.<P> In LOTR, OTOH, eroticism and suchlike are not important to the characters or the story; they're not what the story is about. This doesn't mean that nobody in ME ever slept with anyone else or that they all hold irreproachably high morals, simply that these things are irrelevant. Maybe Aragorn secretly harbors naughty thoughts about Arwen, maybe Legolas has a bit of a swinging reputation among the Wood-Elves back home. I'm not saying that IS the case, simply that even if it WERE it has no place in the story because it doesn't add to the story or our understanding of the character and his actions. There is no place in the entire course of the story where either of these things would be a deciding or illuminating factor as to the character's actions. So putting in extra eroticism would not just be untrue to Tolkien, it would also be the biggest possible waste of screen time. What would a long, steamy Aragorn/Arwen love scene DO? We've already established that they love each other; how would having them get cozier than Tolkien ever mentioned influence the story? It would only be worth the screen time if it made Aragorn decide maybe he shouldn't go/wonder if maybe he should elope with Arwen/father a child/think he's fathered a child; that is, if it could conceivably influence his subsequent actions. Now if any of these events had happened in the books, I don't doubt that we would have been shown some much more erotic scenes to drive home the point that this was something that was influencing Aragorn very heavily. But they weren't in the books, and if PJ changed the story that much, he'd be desecrating the books absolutely pointlessly, and he obviously loves them too much to change them for no reason (leaving aside quibbles about why Merry threw the stone in the pool as opposed to Boromir). __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'

12-07-2002, 02:56 PM	#9
Estelyn Telcontar Princess of Skwerlz Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles) Posts: 7,500	<B>Samwise</B> on daydreams:<P>Daydreams are just that, daydreams. Nice to have, but they very rarely come true, and if they did--well, 9 times out of 10 they wouldn't turn out the way YOU thought them up.<P>Hey, if we can't TALK about daydreams here, where are we supposed to talk about them? Heck, I spend most of my time here imitating a Hobbit gardener, though I am neither (oi--if you saw the condition of my garden...) If God hadn't given us minds to daydream with, though, "quiet times might get awfully boring. (for that matter, what if a guy by the name of John Ronald Reuel hadn't daydreamed....none of us would be chatting about this, would we?) __________________ 'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'