Quote:
Originally posted by Morgeruat:
Christopher tolkein is against any interpretation of his fathers work, meaning any condensed book format, movies, cartoons, etc he wants J.R.R.'s works to stand as written and not as seen through the eyes of anyone else, but the individual reader.
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You know, I'm definitely not a fan of the way Christopher Tolkien has chosen to run his life and his family/corporation, but that's definitely a very valid point he has. The reader is ultimately
the true judge of the work, and accepting the views of a third party (e.g. PJ) is essentially ripping yourself off: Deliberately reading spoilers, if you will. Instead of reading the book and forming your
own thoughts/images of the story, you instead turn to someone else's.....thus robbing yourself of
ever coming up with your own ideas on the subject. Seeing the movie (before reading the book) robs the imagination. Imagination might very well be the linchpin to the whole love/hate relationship to PJ's LotR: If your imagination is shallow or mediocre, you can see the films and be absolutely blown away by the cool imagery. If your imagination was better than PJ's, you can see the films and be disappointed.
With that said, I am not against a film version of LotR. And the funny thing is, under the right circumstances, Christopher might not be either. Christopher has said that <u>what his father wrote</u> is gospel. But, if you had gone back 40 years, and asked J.R.R. if he'd care to write (or endorse) a
screenplay, I'm pretty sure he'd say, "Heck, yeah." But as that never happened, it's a shame that Christopher has one more thing to be stubborn about. It's a shame that he's so immovable, really--there are some errors in LotR that are just
begging to be fixed (for example, there ain't a reason in hell that Aragorn would be carrying the actual shards of Narsil out in the wilderness), but I couldn't even get Christopher's permission to make an *authorized* film version, because I'd have to change those things.