Yes, they had to cut back. The first half of the Fellowship? The last part of Return of the King? Yes, they could have included those parts (I love you Tom Bombadil! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake, awake!) but granted the original epicness of the books, they did a marvelous job recreating Tolkien's world.
I could go on FOREVER ranting and raving over LOTR, but, alas, most people would bore of my mentioning that Sauron did not create the three elven rings and how blah diddy blah diddy blah. I'm sorry. But hey! Frodo changed through the books! He started out a semi-cheerful hobbit, "Still in love with the Shire" as Bilbo put it, to a rather reserved, solemn man.
They ruined EVERYTHING.
I should probably stop now, before I get all worked up.
The second movie fell short of its lofty expectations. The added battle, for example, and the Peter/ Caspian plotline were not welcomed by Narnia fans. (I still don't like the whole Caspian/Susan thing. He gets married!)
I would write much, much more, but this is enough for now. I have to go watch Lost. :)
Oh, and I sincerely hope I have not broken any copyright laws.
Do any of you have an opinion on the subject of books being turned into movies?
I think, like you showed very well, it really depends. It obviously just depends on how well the movie is done, but also some books just seem to lend themselves to being made into movies more than others. And there seems also to be a catergory that you forgot- movies better than their books! Granted, these are few and far between. A good example, at least I think, is Bridge to Terabithia. That movie is so much better than its book (and this is just my personal opinion)- it develops the characters better, and it does a lot more with Terabithia than the book did. Movies can do so much more with the visual- sometimes an image can do more than a description can. Sometimes showing the sad face of a character can do more than trying to describe his emotion, or showing an image of a person or place can be easier than trying to describe it. However, there are so many areas that books can go where movies cannot. For instance, books can go so much deeper into the minds of the characters. It's close to impossible to convey a thought of a character in a movie, without a cheesy, echoey voice-over, or like... a little thought bubble coming out of their head. Whereas books can tell you anything they want to, movies can basically only voice the dialogue between the characters. So I definitely think that both have their advantages.
ReplyDeleteSo, as to books being turned into movies, it's sometimes disappointing the limits that have to be put on them, but in some ways they can do wonderful things that could not be done in book form. (Lord of the Rings is a great illustration of both sides of the picture.)
So, yeah. ((And speaking of movies... TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON!!!!! I wonder if there's a book...))
-Stacey