How many of you read Lord of the rings after seeing the film?

[Lady Blue03]

When someone asks you if the Lady Blue is a character from LotR, you know they havnt read them! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

But seriously, the same guy who asked me that said "The movie will spoil the book though" when i asked him if he had read the books, RRR!

[Aelia Jusa]

I didn't see LOTR until last week because I hadn't read the books when it came out in cinemas and I wanted to read it first. So I had to wait till it came out on video. I actually thought the movie was better than the book (on balance), because I found lots of parts of the books extremely confusing, and lots of things were explained better in the movie. Sam was even slightly less irritating in the movie lol

[Angelouss]

i haven't read the books or seen the movie but i know a lot of people who were reading the books in prepration for the movie. (my guess is so they could say "the book was much better" well u know my favorite part of the movie, the part where i didn't have to read) Some of the people in their discussions just read them too.

anybody heard anything about middlearth the mmorpg. i know they were making it but it had some problems

[the sauceman]

Its not a directors cut dvd, its the EXTENDED DVD...
directors cut implies that the director likes that dvd and doesnt like the other one. and I tried to read the hobbit when i was like, 11, but it was too slow...
after seeing the movie, I was able to got in to the books for some strange reason???? ... anywhoos, both the movie and the books are great.

[Firestormalpha]

I read all the books. The Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King several times back when I was in 6th grade, long before the Film was conceived. BTW I am 18yrs. old so you can figure out how long ago I was in 6th grade.

[Paladin2000]

Nope. Never bother with the book. IMHO, I liked the movie but it is not as good as I have expected (been reading too much previews).

[Lifetime]

Was planning to read LOTR for ages before the movie but I only got as far as the Hobbit. When the movie craze started I finally got around to buying the books and I read Fellowship of the Ring months before the movie came out. Ohh I loved that feeling, sitting down one sunday afternoon in bed and admiring the beautiful cover (with the Ringwraiths).. It was just such a cool, mysteriously awesome feeling. Now that I've seen the movie the mystery is gone, because expectations and everything that you have when you START reading the book are replaced by what really happens in the book. Anyone know how I mean? I'd love to be able to recapture that feeling everytime I start a new hobby or play a new game or read a new book series.

And 6hr movie? Naahh.. I own the LOTR DVD (I was conned into thinking it was the extended version! Grrrrr) and everytime I watch it I cant sit through it without falling asleep. Some parts are just so slow. I tend to fall asleep after the Hobbits leave Bree with Aragorn and after the escape from Weathertop.. till the bit where Gandalf and Saruman duke it out.. Its just too long winded methinks, but possibly it be my state of mind.

[Jorath Calar]

I had been meaning to read it since I was 16 but never got to it, but when I heard they were going to make the movies I finally read them because I knew I never would after I saw the movie... kind of wish I had done it before... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Cerek the Barbaric]

I fell in love with the hobbits, elves, and dwarves of Middle-Earth waaaaaaaaay back in high school. And I'll never forget the feeling of delightful glee I felt when I learned that Gandalf was a GOOD wizard (I had just assumed he would be the arch-villain).

The Lord of the Rings was my first real introduction to fantasy literature. I read them the first time as a freshman in high school....I read them for the third time less than 6 years later. I haven't read them since, but they have always been the standard by which other books or series were measured.

I really enjoyed the animated version of The Hobbit and I absolutely DESPISED the feeble attempt at the animated version of LOTR (AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS!!!).

I awaited the release of LOTR with same anxious trepidation as the release of the X-Men (my favorite comic series). I was thoroughly pleased with BOTH efforts. Lord of the Rings is quite possibly the BEST movie I have EVER seen. I bought the VHS version the day it was released. I JUST got a new computer system with a DVD drive...and I am SOOOO tempted to go back and buy the DVD version as well. But after reading the other posts, I think I'll wait for the extended DVD in November.

Now...I don't even know where my books are. Hmmmm, may be time to buy some new copies.

[Tancred]

I work in an environment where I sell stuff connected to the film LotR and I hear one thing over and over again.

"Oh, I didn't like the film because the film didn't have all the scenes from the book in it."

And this is what really annoys me - no-one even tries to defend the movie like they would defend the book. But surely... it's ALL Lord of the Rings.

I've thought about this a lot, and I'll be brutal. I think, if the movie encapsualted the entire book, the Fellowship of the Ring, it would have been a god-awful movie. I mean dire. Really. The book is a fantastic epic, and an incredible story; the film is an excellent film. Never the twain shall meet. It just doesn't work that easily when dealing with the translation of one media to another.

The scenes that never made it I'm very, very glad about. Tom Bombadil?!? What?!?How could a normal human actor (other than Robin Williams, dear GOD) possibly convey the otherworldy carefree nature of Bombadil without making him seeming deranged, extremely high on dangerous chemicals? How could you film Old Man Willow without it seeming like that bit in Evil Dead? Could anyone - especially a book fan, who knows the words - sit through an hour of hobbits chatting in the Green Dragon? Are we to have Merry wake up from a wraith-induced nightmare and say "Agh, the men of Carn Dum came upon us in the night! The spear in my heart!", to which everyone will look at each other and say 'huh?'. In fact, after having the Black Riders disappear for two hours while the Hobbits 'do' the Old Forest, can you really take them seriously as supernatural hunters of the Ring?

To come to the crux of the matter: Bearing in mnd what I've just said, would anyone who hadn't read the book actually want to go and read it if they made the ENTIRE book into a movie? Or would they just walk out of the cinema during the Third Camp Conversation Scene in Redhorn Pass, having been bored to tears? Don't we want MORE people to read the book?

What I appreciated - wht we all should appreciate - was that they added, and they added well. It wasn't a similar case to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which seemed to run 'book - photocopier - take out pages - script'. There are quite a few things in the film that work BETTER than they do in the book - the complete reinvention of Boromir into a hero instead of the complete berk he is in the book being the absolute shining example. They surprised me, and I'm glad they put the work in to surprise me.

We could compare the film to 'Dune', where they took out too much and changed too much and my god does the film stink. The recent Sci-Fi Channel 'Dune' miniseries showed up how dismal the film was. Perhaps we should look to The BBC version of 'Ghormenghast', which was actually quite well-done despite them leaving out the entire of the third book; because, in all honesty, the third book is so, so weird. We could even dredge up the animated version of Lord of the Rings, by old dead Ralph Bakshi, and see how bad it COULD have been. I for one am counting my blessings because my god! What they HAVE done is probably the best we could have hoped for.

For that, I am prepared to forgive much. So should all of you.