Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Star Wars.
End of Discussion.
Next Question.
Just as an aside the fx is superior in 4-6 Star Wars because of the nature of its design and execution. The bonus disc that comes with the DVD set of 4-6 Star Wars never gets old. Real fx beats CGI any day of the week.
Though in slight defense of Episode 3 of Star Wars the last 30 minutes is equal to 4-6 Star Wars and may provide the best ending of 1-6.
What is it with guys and Star Wars?!?
Don't you realise that if Purgatory existed, that's what they would be doing 24/7 - watching compulsory, back-to-back SW?
Then occasionally, if that wasn't punishment enough, it would be varied with the only thing worse - Dr Who...
ColdSilverMoon said:I actually didn't like the LOTR film trilogy, though I love the books. They are well-made films, but how anyone can claim they are faithful adaptations is beyond me. Remember, the books are very little action (in terms of battles and fighting), whereas the movies are all action and special effects. The ending of the movies is a complete cop-out and not at all faithful to the books, which have the perfect ending. In my experience, most people who love the movies have either not read or not recently read the LOTR novels.
What is it with guys and Star Wars?!?
Don't you realise that if Purgatory existed, that's what they would be doing 24/7 - watching compulsory, back-to-back SW?
Then occasionally, if that wasn't punishment enough, it would be varied with the only thing worse - Dr Who...
force, schmorce -What is it with guys and Star Wars?!?
Don't you realise that if Purgatory existed, that's what they would be doing 24/7 - watching compulsory, back-to-back SW?
Then occasionally, if that wasn't punishment enough, it would be varied with the only thing worse - Dr Who...
Jenny, the force is strong with you...quit fighting it and come enjoy Star Wars...
Putting it crudely: the LOTR books are drenched in sorrow and nostalgia, and the movies are not. Despite their heroic trappings, the books aren't really about "good vs evil": they're about "simplicity vs evil". (In other words, they're about the Hobbits, not Aragorn and the Riders of Rohan and Gandalf and Elves.) And in the process of defeating evil, simplicity (in the person of Frodo) is crippled. It's a very sad story. Well, movies being movies, the heroic trappings dominate, and so the unique emotional depth of the books is lost. If you doubt me, consider this: the movies leave out virtually all of the harm that is done to the Shire *after* Sauron is defeated. *That* (the whole last third of "The Return of the King") is what ties the books together and completes their thematic development--and in the movies it's just not there.
I don't think the scouring of the Shire is simply "mopping up." Here's a better critic than I am:
Putting it crudely: the LOTR books are drenched in sorrow and nostalgia, and the movies are not. Despite their heroic trappings, the books aren't really about "good vs evil": they're about "simplicity vs evil". (In other words, they're about the Hobbits, not Aragorn and the Riders of Rohan and Gandalf and Elves.) And in the process of defeating evil, simplicity (in the person of Frodo) is crippled. It's a very sad story. Well, movies being movies, the heroic trappings dominate, and so the unique emotional depth of the books is lost. If you doubt me, consider this: the movies leave out virtually all of the harm that is done to the Shire *after* Sauron is defeated. *That* (the whole last third of "The Return of the King") is what ties the books together and completes their thematic development--and in the movies it's just not there.
(Stephen R. Donaldson, Gradual Interview)
If you took Lord of the Rings alone without the appendices or the larger mythos, you might have something there. However, while I would certainly place this as one theme in the books, it is one of many themes. It may be that only Frodo in his simplicity can carry the ring to Mordor, but insofar as a movie has (necessarily) to be more concise than a novel, The Scouring of the Shire had to be cut out. As it was, the films did a fairly good job of bringing these themes out. We cannot assign one simple message or theme as the dominant one in Tolkien because Tolkien himself stressed that doing this misses the point--this is myth, not modern novel-writing. A myth has no one clear message, but a wide range of applicability.
If you compare the stories with hobbits to the stories without Hobbits, I think you'll see that simplicity/homeyness or whatever you want to call that precise blend of qualities is what Hobbits add - Thorin has the key to them in his dying speech to Bilbo. So if you keep the Hobbits, but cut out what relates to the Shire, you've essentially dissociated them from their vital context. Whether something is myth or novel, it doesn't have to have one clear message; but it's not hard to see that without falling into that very obvious trap, if you change the tone of a work, you have done more than shorten it; you've transmogrified it on a very fundamental level. I don't believe that you could make the charge stick that Donaldson is saying "this is the dominant theme in Tolkien" or "in this one of Tolkien's works".
The plot is not arbitrary (not in a good book, anyway). Whether it would have worked in the movie or not isn't the point; the point is that if you alter the denouement you have altered the tone of a work, because tone is not is simply a question of shading. I Am Legend, the book and the movie were both good; but it is futile to pretend that they were the same work.
I think you can only take it that way if you take for granted that the overthrow of diminished Saruman and cleaning up his mess in the Shire isn't very significant; but how much like Tolkien would it be to spend a third of the last book on something that was of no essential consequence?