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W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

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Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#41

Post by aikinai »

retrac wrote: post #33
vlunkr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think any LOTR fan should be so grateful for those movies. It could have gone wrong in so many ways. At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. Remember, the books didn't have a big pop culture presence at the time. Fortunately, Jackson and others involved were really passionate about doing it right, and convin…

> At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. The problem, if you will, with a great but imperfect work of art is that no one else will attempt the same work again. Because it has already been done and it's hard to top a smashing success. If it had been a bad LotR movie, one would be able to hope, probably reasonably, that…

There’s no way it will be left alone; I don’t think you need to worry about any “final words” from Hollywood. They’re already moving on another large LotR project that might actually just be the main story remade already.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#42

Post by hinkley »

vlunkr wrote: post #17
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

Honestly I think any LOTR fan should be so grateful for those movies. It could have gone wrong in so many ways. At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. Remember, the books didn't have a big pop culture presence at the time. Fortunately, Jackson and others involved were really passionate about doing it right, and convin…

Peter Jackson got NLC to give him HALF A BILLION DOLLARS to film the second and third movies back to back. That was an amazing feat.

Cameron has now surpassed that number, almost twenty years later. But for the time that was crazy.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#43

Post by mikepurvis »

retrac wrote: post #33
vlunkr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think any LOTR fan should be so grateful for those movies. It could have gone wrong in so many ways. At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. Remember, the books didn't have a big pop culture presence at the time. Fortunately, Jackson and others involved were really passionate about doing it right, and convin…

> At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. The problem, if you will, with a great but imperfect work of art is that no one else will attempt the same work again. Because it has already been done and it's hard to top a smashing success. If it had been a bad LotR movie, one would be able to hope, probably reasonably, that…

It seems pretty inevitable that there will eventually be a TV series style live action LOTR— in theory that should give the breathing room necessary for the story to unfold over 30-50 hours rather than 8-9.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#44

Post by mikepurvis »

hogepiyo wrote: post #18
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

I don't think the original Lord of the Rings trilogy would really be filmable as a 1:1 book to film adaptation. As a book fan I think Peter Jackson did a pretty good job with it in general; the behind the scenes footage really shows that they did care about the source material. Fellowship particularly I would still say is great, Two Towers and ROTK have some moments that are either downright ridiculous or against the…

As a potential heir to the stewardship, Christopher Tolkien was very much alive at the time the movies were being made and was famously opposed to a lot of the artistic choices being made.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#45

Post by mouse_8b »

mberning wrote: post #5

I need to re-read it. I probably finished the last book 20 years ago. Then I saw the films. And in the intervening years my opinion and attitude towards it, and the genre as a whole, has shifted toward the negative. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just from getting older.

I get it. I was really into fantasy as a teenager, but now I'm on the wrong side of 35 and nonfiction is all I'm interested in. I feel like there is so much stuff that has happened in real life that fantasy seems hollow.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#46

Post by aikinai »

soligern wrote: post #39
eredengrin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too love the books, I've read the trilogy at least 16 times and the Silmarillion at least 3 or 4 at this point (haven't gotten into the others yet but hope to one day). Yes, the tv series can be entirely forgotten. So can the hobbit trilogy - I personally don't mind if the tone is a bit more lighthearted, the book was as well, it was meant to be more of a children's book after all. But certainly much of the extra m…

Well what are the two major gripes?

One has to be the ghost army wiping out all impact and meaning from the mortals’ battle and sacrifice in the Return of the King.

I’m in the camp that the quality and faithfulness in Peter Jackson’s movies were an insanely improbable miracle—lightning in a bottle that we should be thankful happened once and you could never hope to capture again. But I’m still flabbergasted at the decision to make the ghost army omnipotent. They were so thoughtful with everything else, especially the changes they made—you can see this clearly in the behind-the-scenes discussion. So what in the world happened here?

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#47

Post by hinkley »

hogepiyo wrote: post #18
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

I don't think the original Lord of the Rings trilogy would really be filmable as a 1:1 book to film adaptation. As a book fan I think Peter Jackson did a pretty good job with it in general; the behind the scenes footage really shows that they did care about the source material. Fellowship particularly I would still say is great, Two Towers and ROTK have some moments that are either downright ridiculous or against the…

It is for instance interesting to see Gaiman’s adaptations before and after he basically had a blank check from studios.

Stardust is… okay. Cute. I need a new Neverwhere. Even though half the reason I gave “Vigil” a shot is because it had the Marquis as the captain.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#48

Post by mellosouls »

csallen wrote: post #12
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

If you don't like the recent commercial depictions of the LotR series… don't watch them? Of course you have the right to criticize and complain about them. But to let their existence "spoil" your enjoyment of the original works seems excessive. The original works were not somehow changed by the creation of new works, and so neither should your ability to enjoy them change.

The original works were not somehow changed by the creation of new works, and so neither should your ability to enjoy them change.

Our experience of art is necessarily influenced by the world; works don't just pass pristine and unaltered from their creation into our consciousness. They can be both enriched and cheapened by the cultural detritus they and we float through on the way; whether it's the mythology of an artist died beautiful and young, or the commodification of something once felt precious and unique.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#49

Post by defrost »

slibhb wrote: post #37
stevenwoo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m old and tried re-reading it recently and the low number of female characters and voices is really jarring now. YMMV. There’s so much I haven’t yet read I just moved on.

[flagged]

That's exactly right Bertie, the University of Oxford Literary circles famously consisted of nothing but straight white school chums who gathered together to butter crumpets placed in toast racks while talking at length of fairies and such things.

Such well adjusted literary Dons were incapable of writing coded tales of unspoken love.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#50

Post by ProjectArcturis »

retrac wrote: post #33
vlunkr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think any LOTR fan should be so grateful for those movies. It could have gone wrong in so many ways. At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. Remember, the books didn't have a big pop culture presence at the time. Fortunately, Jackson and others involved were really passionate about doing it right, and convin…

> At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. The problem, if you will, with a great but imperfect work of art is that no one else will attempt the same work again. Because it has already been done and it's hard to top a smashing success. If it had been a bad LotR movie, one would be able to hope, probably reasonably, that…

Hollywood recently came up with something called a "reboot". It's where they take a movie that was successful in the past, and remake it with modern actors.
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