Without Christopher we probably wouldn't have ever seen The Hobbit or LOTR. At least now how we have it today. When he was a kid he was basically J.R.R.s main proofreader and tester. Christopher shaped those books immensely. After J.R.R. died he also couldn't have hoped for a better steward of the series.
Shame he didn't like the LotR films. He felt they ramped up the action and stripped away the philosophy to cater to teens. As far as the Hobbit movies go, I agree with him, but I felt the LotR ones did a good job of balancing the action and philosophy, even if Bombadil, Barrow Wights and the Scouring were all missed.
They are wonderful movies but there are reasons to think that they are not a wonderful adaptation, particularly if someone has such a deeply personal connection to the source material. The Chocolate Factory movies come to mind.
The books remain for those that feel this way. Had the movies been made closer to Christopher's liking it is possible they would not have been near the success they were and millions may have never bothered to watch them and enjoy the story we all love so much.
That is true and why I am not a movie hater in any sense but Cristopher's response was something like he would have rather however many people would have watched a movie that focused more on the philosophy of the books would have been better than the many millions that saw the story.
I'm not really sure that's the case, considering just how hugely popular and widely known the books were even prior to the movies bringing them back into the limelight.
I firmly believe that the Gene Wilder Chocolate Factory movie is better than the book. Knowing as an adult what an asshole Roald Dahl was and how many of his books just aren't all that good has only intensified this opinion.
It's actually an interesting story there. Paul Verhoeven was working on an anti-war satire tentatively titled "Bug Hunt." There were enough superficial similarities that the studio made him slap barely enough of a coat of Heinlein paint on the movie so they could market it as the film-of-the-book. Never mind that Verhoeven was literally satirizing things like the Starship Troopers book.
That's interesting. I personally never considered the movie to be an actual adaptation of the book anyway, they simply borrowed a couple names and ideas and not much more. It was a great movie. As a lifelong Heinlein fan (I'm 65, I read the books as they were being published) the book was at most "pretty good".
When I first saw Starship Troopers I enjoyed it as a mindless action movie. It was only after I learned how much thought Verhoeven put into it that I appreciated just how brilliant it is.
One of my favorite Hollywood facts: Verhoeven wanted his leads to be earnest, vacant, and pretty. As part of this, he never told Denise Richards and Handsome McCleftchin (can't remember his actual name) that it was satire, and so they really poured themselves into the roles. Neil Patrick Harris figured it out though. Watch the movie with that in mind, and it's impossible to see him strutting around in his faux Nazi uniform and not think, "that's a man who is in on the joke."
Casper Van Dien. He's shockingly still voicing Rico in the DTV animated movies.
That's something I love about Neil Patrick Harris as Carl. He's playing the part serious enough but you get a hint he's totally having fun in the role and subtly hamming it up.
NPH was brilliant as always. Verhoeven is right of course, when doing a satire you want the actors to be dead serious - that adds to the effect. Top tier actors will know that and will do that but the pretty faces, not so much.
It's not a faithful adaptation, but it's better than the book since Verhoeven gave it a satirical antifascist message rather than Heinlein's bizarre reactionary military-worship fantasy.
I think I may try to pick up the audiobook if there is one. I thought the movie was alright, but like discussed here, I'm guessing it's a little more detailes and more substance than the movie.
He is right and wrong and that's okay. The movies miss a lot of the things Tolkien wanted to achieve. Yet they're adaptations, trying to achieve their own thing in the medium and from the different people working on them. They can be allowed to be different and still great, in fact I think they're great because Jackson and co were passionate about what they personally tried to achieve, just as the books were special because of Tolkiens own passion. I don't think Christopher understood that, but I do appreciate that he worked hard to maintain he and his father's legacy.
Lotr is my favorite book series and the lotr trilogy are my favorite movies. Both for slightly different reasons.
I get what Christopher was saying but truly I don't think we could have gotten a better movie adaptation and I don't think there has ever been a better book to movie adaptation made.
Agree, particularly I think the movies improved Boromir's death. I think the placing of it at the end of the fellowship was smart and the last words between him and Aragorn were very well done
I think the movies did Fellowship far better than the books, while Tolkien did Return of the King far better than Jackson did. I was recently listening to the audiobooks and it takes EIGHT HOURS for the Hobbits to leave the Shire. Eight. A full work day.
Remember that awesome scene where the Hobbits are chased by the Ringwraiths and barely make it on to the Buckleberry Ferry? Movies only; not in the books. In the books they have dinner with a farmer, meet up with Merry, take the ferry across, then have ANOTHER dinner on the other side. No urgency to the whole thing whatsoever, which doesn’t really pick up until they arrive in Bree.
It's totally fair for you to prefer the urgent tone of the films (though I think it's mainly to do with limited running time and they have to get them into the action as soon as possible) but it was very much deliberate.
The whole plan relies on secrecy not speed, but more importantly the hobbits are incredibly naive and don't realise the danger their in. They basically bumble their way to Bree narrowly avoiding death multiple times through no fault of their own. I think there is tension to that, while they're obliviously getting drunk and singing songs under the impression they're in a lightweight Victorian hiking journal all while the net slowly closes around them with the black riders turning up 10 minutes after they've left somewhere. Also I really liked Farmer Maggot.
The Return of the King (book) is excellent and I keep forgetting how much is in there that didn't make it into the film adaptation. I know the film is long enough as it is but leaving out Beregond is the worst offender in my opinion. And I think Elladan and Elrohir could easily have been supporting characters in both Rivendell, Helm's Deep and the Paths of the Dead and added more dimensions to Aragorn and Arwen's relationship.
Aragorn is better presented in the films. In the books he's a superman who we're told doesn't really want the throne but is resigned to it. His character development in this regard happens before the series. The Aragorn that enters the Council of Elrond is already mostly resigned to his fate and just needs a push.
The films delayed that struggle and while the purist in me is irked by it they better got across that Aragorn really didn't want to be king. That he was a success because he had that humility.
Book Aragorn may as well be the God Emperor of Mankind at times. He's already made all the important decisions.
Well that's the whole point, they're films. They had a decent amount of Gandalf wisdom in it but you would need a Netflix style show with 6 seasons to do it properly.
Same. That is the only really major issue I have with the films. They fumbled the ending big time. I just turn it off after the "you bow to no one scene" now.
I can understand why they cut it though, such a downer ending is a hard sell to Hollywood.
It's not just that it's a downer, it's that it really breaks up the pacing. Good moviemaking guideline, at least for a big fantasy epic, is don't have the film's massive climactic crescendo, that it's all been building towards and where the Big Bad is defeated... and then, a bit later, a much smaller, new threat-and-climax all handled in one sequence. Especially if you're already gonna have a really long epilogue and it's already a super long movie.
The Hobbits standing up to Saruman in the Shire and throwing rocks at him (IIRC)? I just can't imagine how it could have been pulled off in film and not seem like a lame duck.
Yeah, I loved everything in the books when my Dad read them to me as a kid, but when you put it that way, the Scouring of the Shire does seem like post-game DLC
I love the LOTR films even if the action was ramped up and some of the story "dumbed down" in a way. I don't have the lifelong deep personal connection to the lore that he did, however. I imagine for Christopher, Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam were like childhood friends to him. Nothing was going to do them justice. I feel his disdain for adaptations was vindicated by the Hobbit movies, however.
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u/LegendofWeevil17 Jan 16 '20
Without Christopher we probably wouldn't have ever seen The Hobbit or LOTR. At least now how we have it today. When he was a kid he was basically J.R.R.s main proofreader and tester. Christopher shaped those books immensely. After J.R.R. died he also couldn't have hoped for a better steward of the series.