Say What?!?

[hal 9000]

[dai bread]

Get the extended versions on DVD if you can. They're much more coherent than the cinema versions. Also a lot longer, so lay in lots of popcorn!

[ScottB]

Yes, that is true I have never seen any of the LOTR movies.

[DavidS]

Originally posted by ScottB:
Yes, that is true I have never seen any of the LOTR movies.

No, but (as I said to a friend of mine who hadn't seen The Ten Commandments) I expect you've read the book...

[Andy Warton]

I may be speaking as someone who is still miffed that LOTR beat Jane Austen's far superior book "Pride and Prejudice" in The Big Read solely on the basis of the movie, but... what was I saying? Oh yeah - the book's good too. One of the best things is that you can see how someone else invisioned what you imagined. Or, as I did, use the images of someone else's idea in your imagination when you're reading the story.

[FlyingSorcery]

If you've read the LOTR trilogy, see the first movie, if you must, but SKIP the rest. Especially 2Towers. Do yourself a favour -- read the books and paint your own pictures.

(I'm with AndyW -- P&P I absolutely love.)

[piqaboo]

Heck, watch em all, sound off, just for the scenery! (Last of the Mohicans is good this way too).

[mmichaelson]

I loved LOTR - all three. I'm a huge fan of the books, and they left a lot out of the last two.. .but the movies are worth seeing for the scenery, etc.

IMHO - The Abyss as a movie sucked compared to the book. . just like Sphere.

[ScottB]

No I havent read the books either. I know nothing about it except that it gets pretty violent.

[Andy Warton]

Read the books. You'll get more out of the film that way.

[Schmeelkie]

I loved the LOTR movies - as I said on another thread somewhere, I'm just so happy someone could take good fantasy and make a great film out of it. Often fantasy filmmakers are so concerned with the special effects to get the dragons, magic, etc. just right, they forget about the story. Peter Jackson remembered the story was the real star, while not skimping on the effects. You easily forget that the guy playing Gimli is actually probably 6 feet tall...

Tolkein was a scholar and I know people who really got bogged down in the books by his overwhelming detail in history and stories and songs. My husband barely finished Fellowship and didn't see any reason to read more. But after taking him to the first movie, he was as excited as I was to see the next two. Yes, Jackson cut a lot of this detail, but the main stories are still there. And for anyone who complains - it's a movie - an action movie really, and need to be relatively fast-paced to keep the viewers attention. Tolkein also, if I remember correctly, wrote the Two Towers following each group separately and consecutively - you don't get back to Frodo and Sam until you're 1/2-2/3's the way through, while Jackson interspersed the stories. This makes for a more watchable movie, without losing the story thread of any one group (which, if you don't read it fast enough, can happen with the books).

Well, I could go on, but I should really be working... my advice - see the movies, read the books, then see the movies again.

[DavidS]

Originally posted by Schmeelkie:
Often fantasy filmmakers are so concerned with the special effects to get the dragons, magic, etc. just right, they forget about the story.

Yeh, that's what happened to Cecil B. de Mille

But you've got to hand it to him too!

[barfle]

I'm a pretty big fan of S-F books and movies, but frankly, Tolkien doesn't turn my crank. I read The Hobbit and can only remember one fiction book that was more of a chore to get through (that was Lord Jim).

I rented LOTR and thought the makeup was pretty cool, and the scenery was spectacular. But that can't take me through four hours.

What I saw was a typically unprepared youth who was given a task to take a long hike through a magic forest, and he encountered various problems along the way, which we were certain he would overcome. And there's another eight hours of this stuff?

[OperaTenor]

Hey Scott, I think you should just do whatever you want!

[Iduna]

barfle, you have to read the books not watch the movies. I agree, the Hobbit is kind of boring. If I head read it before the Lord of the Rings, I'd probably not have started reading LotR. I consider most SciFi books I've read after that as cheap copies of the LotR. After I got through the first 100 pages or so it was so thrilling, I could not put it away.

Besides, don't you think the book is real interesting if you look at how Tolkien linked old mythology with the cold war.

Iduna

[barfle]

Having read The Hobbit and having watchted LOTR, I have given Tolkien about all I'm willing to give. From what I can tell, he has one story, sort of like Dan Brown. I know of other authors (like the ABCs - Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke) who do a better job of entertaining me.

My entertainment shouldn't have to be drudgery for me.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Iduna, Tolkien's mythology preceded the Cold War. Honest. He started writing the whole Middle Earth fantasy backstory sometime in the 1920's, there's an entire multivolume fictional history, the Unfinished Tales, the Silmarillion, and incidental side-stories. The whole massive thing takes up an entire library shelf, it's compulsively micro-detailed, and cross checked to a fair-thee-well. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the short, popular portion of the entire thing. The mythological and historical detail is what makes the work so challenging, and satisfying to the academically inclined.

That said, I enjoyed the trilogy. I love the movies. Tolkien was a genius, and a master craftsman, but brief he was not. He could have used an editor.

Most SF is written as an Adventure/Romance novel (with additional technical requirements) and provides a much better read. A little less detail can be a good thing <happy grin>.

barfle, have you found the David Drake/Eric Flint Belisarius series? I'm pretty sure haggis like 'em, too, and the six-volume set is now complete. The Dance of Time was just released from the publishers website as an advance unproofed e-book; I enjoyed the heck out of it. Now I have to re-read the whole series start to finish to locate all the starting ends of the threads that Dance tied neatly in a knot. Oh, Joy!

[Haggis@wk]

Yep, I like almost anything by Flint and most things by Drake (he does get carried away sometimes and parts of his books start to sound like dialogue in a soap opera)

I'm planning on re-reading all of Heinlein in the next year, I find that no matter how many times I re-read them, I still discover new thing - or maybe its just that I'm so forgetful.

I just finished ????? I'm drawing a blank, about a future naval task force thrown back to 1942, it was very good and I'll have to rememebr the name, I suspect Selma's seen it.

[Iduna]

Selma, I know Tolkien started writing his books in the 1920ies or before (and I have read the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales), but the LotR was not published till after the second world war (I think around '55!?) and whatever parts he has written in the twenties and thirties, I think, that the LotR is greatly influenced by the cold war. But I guess you can argue about that (I've already been through that discussion with a lot of friends at home). Just my feeling and opinion after reading the books. Can't help it.

<small>[ 09-02-2005, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: Iduna ]</small>

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I don't know how much the English got into the "cold war" mindset - I think the whole MAD/fallout shelter was largely American. The British were frying other fish, on other fires, weren't they?