MGM is raising funds to make "The Hobbit," and appear to be planning to do so by way of a recently revitalized United Artists.
New Line is running out of time, and perhaps has run out of time entirely, especially with MGM stonewalling them on Peter Jackson. I think we'll be hearing more about this in the weeks to come, but it looks like New Line might not be getting their way after all, and if MGM makes it, they've said from day one that they want PJ and no one else to make the movie.
posted
I watched the middle section of King Kong again this weekend, and now I question whether I want PJ to do it at all. Tyranasouruses in the trees is hard to take.
As books go, it's far easier to translate to a workable script than most - much easier than LotR.
There are only 4 or so scenes outside of Bilbo's pov, and very few flashbacks. It can be filmed almost (relatively speaking) as written.
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I am less worried about what might be left out as opposed to what he might ADD to "improve" the story, as he puts it.
There were plenty of added, overwrought scenes in LOTR that either never existed in the books...or were completely at odds with actual original source material.
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posted
Kwea: I think that was necessary for LOTR to make a good MOVIE. How well PJ did it is obviously a point of contention, but I do not think it could have been avoided.
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I personally think that PJ's LOTR is better than the original, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Nope - I agree. Sorry, Tolkien fans - he did many things well, but plotting and dialogue are not among them.
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Better than the original I can't agree with. Made a good movie, I'll certainly agree with that.
Some of the best lines in the movie were straight out of the book, and some of the worst lines in the movies were great lines of Tolkien's that he mangled and garbled beyond recognition.
I think he did as good a job as anyone in turning a very difficult book into a great movie. I think PJ's strengths lay in creating a Middle Earth that feels so true. The majority of his dialogue was fine, but for some glaring ick here and there, and I think he made a lot of changes that weren't at all necessary, but his Middle Earth feels like the real one. If we could have him on and be in control of that, but have someone else be in charge of the plot and script I might be happier. I too worry about what he might try to spice up the script with.
I can understand why people would have a problem with Tolkien's archaic dialogue (I happen to like it), but what was wrong with his plot?
My biggest problem with changes made was Eowyn. Specifically, the scene where she faces the Witch King. I think it was one of the weakest scenes in ROTK the movie, and one of the strongest in the book. I would have been happier if they had taken the scene from the cartoon movie, spliced it into the live action film, and overwrote everything PJ did.
Added to that, how he handled the Army of the Dead and the Corsairs was wretched, and I felt it would have been far more powerful to show it the way it was shown in the book, and the Battle of the Pellennor Fields in general.
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posted
I love the book, and thoroughly enjoyed the movies, although I didn't like some of the things that PJ did. Nevertheless, when I watch the movie I'm watching a different work of art from the book, I'm watching PJ's interpretation of the book, and I can live with that without any problem. Tolkien wrote that he hoped that others in the future would pick up on the world he had created and add their own take on it, come up with their own tales for it. I think that's what someone like PJ can do, and if he decides to flesh out some of the story (I've heard the White Council vs the Necromancer mentioned) then that's his privilege (?) as an interpreter. We all saw what happened to the first Harry Potter movie by being subjected to a literalistic reproduction by Chris Columbus. So I hope PJ and Weta get the movie. It'll be great. I want a book and/or movie about the Witch King and the loss of the last king, that whole history of Gondor, the wainriders, all that!!! Wow!!
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posted
You want someone to come in and make it all up? I don't think I could get on board with that. Maybe if Chris Tolkien were to do it, but that'd be as far as I could go.
And the last king of Gondor died at Minas Morgul. He challenged the Witch King to single combat and was dragged into the city then killed. The Stewards took over afterwards.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Kwea: I think that was necessary for LOTR to make a good MOVIE. How well PJ did it is obviously a point of contention, but I do not think it could have been avoided.
Bull. Most of the added crap took away from the story, and replaced things that were better left in.
I liked the movies, but I almost got up and left at the end of the second one....and whatever that crap was, it wasn't a necessary, and actually removed a huge section of the book....the complete secrecy that was necessary for the Ringbearer.
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posted
I agree, although less vehemently, with Kwea.
Jackson has an occult fixation that Tolkien would have found extremely distasteful. When C.S. Lewis was writing "That Hideous Strength" and including all sorts of occultism, Tolkien was a sharp critic. Jackson's various depictions of possession in TTT (Theoden by Saruman; Frodo by the Nazgul) and his treatment of the whole Army of the Dead in RotK was totally out of character for the books, IMO.
I also thought the changed storyline for Aragorn in TTT was completely unnecessary, distracting and an utter waste of reel estate.
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posted
Posted by Lyrhawn: "And the last king of Gondor died at Minas Morgul. He challenged the Witch King to single combat and was dragged into the city then killed. The Stewards took over afterwards."
Well, Lyrhawn, I know all that, I've read the books many times. What I'm saying is that there are so many wonderful things only touched on in the Appendices that would make amazing stories if they were to be fleshed out, in a similar manner to the way Asimov's Foundation world has been opened up to selected other writers. It was JRRT himself who hoped for that, according to a letter he wrote to a friend and quoted in the preface to a book on him I read a few years ago. Can't remember the name of the book, unfortunately, otherwise I'd give you chapter and verse.
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posted
There were heaps of things to be disliked in PJ's interpretation of the books, but that's what you're going to get no matter who interprets it in whatever medium. I struggled with some things, one of them being Frodo and the Witch King in TT, but the overall vision and realisation overcame the details for me. If I want the real thing I read the book again.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
i loved the movies HP and ROTR and i think peple who have problems with them are way to anal and litteralisic for thir own good.
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What I liked and didn't like about the movies (off the top of my head): Liked: >the look >Hobbiton >the locations >Elrond >the overall vision >the fact they were MADE!! >the Pelennor Fields (awe-inspiring) >Arwen and Elrond in TT (the father-daughter thing) >the allusions to things they couldn't include, like Eowen's dream of the drowning of Numenor >Galadriel >Arwen... >the costumes >the actors, generally >Minas Tirith >Gollum (superb) lots of other things,all I can think of specifically for now... DIDN'T LIKE: >the elves at Helm's Deep (too rigid and militaristic in their manner) >battle of Helm's Deep >confrontation of the witch king and Frodo Faramir's decision to take the ring to his father (PJ seems to have a problem relating to the absolute moral strength of Faramir and Aragorn) >the characterization of Theoden >the fight of Gollum and Frodo on the edge of the crack of doom (bordered on the comic) >the whole Arwen dying thing that'll do... Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movies, and see them as another's interpretation of a story that I love, so am willing to cut him some slack, because without PJ they almost certainly wouldn't have been made.
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quote: Bull. Most of the added crap took away from the story, and replaced things that were better left in.
You are only reiterating what I already said. Remember "How well PJ did it is obviously a point of contention..."
I am not interested in arguing over whether or not PJ did a good job with LOTR or not, though I personally adore the movies. They helped me to process the books much better after rereading them. I read them for the first time in middle school and I liked them alot, but I still felt like I had comprehended far too little of what was being said and what was going on.
The LOTR books were NOT written as a screenplay or even a movie script. Typically the only criticims of the movies I have heard are,
1: "It did not follow the books faithfully."
2: "These elements did not work well in a movie format."
"The movies were so lengthy!" "ROTK the movie had a resolution that took far too long!" "Where was Tom Bombadil?!" "Balrogs do NOT fly!" "Balrogs DO fly." "Sam didn't have a yorkshire English accent!"
Again, the books were not written with the intent that they follow a movie formula. If Peter Jackson had literally included EVERY single thing in the LOTR books, he would have far surpassed his budget, the movies would have taken longer then a decade to make, and people would be intimidated by a series of movies each 6 hours long, to say nothing of 1 movie over 24 hours long.
Movies must have a sort of pacing. Could Jackson have really stuck purely to the book format and told the entire story of the events at Minas Tirith then recapped what had happened at the SAME time from Sam/Frodo's perspectives in another place entirely?
If you had Biblo's birthday party, Gandalf confronting Saruman, the tense departure of Frodo with the ring, Tom Bombadil saving the hobbits (which is a VERY long series of events that would then have to also be interwoven with the rest of the movie), more ring wraith tensions, etc. The audience has far too much tension build up.
Books are not like movies, in that you can put down a book if you must and start it again later, everyone in the audience is chained to their seats and for the most part with you for the long haul. The audience cannot recap as needed, can't rewatch parts of the movie if they misunderstood.
You can scream to high heaven about how Peter Jackson raped the LOTR stories, but the fact remains that a perfect movie adaption of the LOTR is impossible, and such a movie would make purists happy, it would not make the LOTR more accessible to people who have not been exposed to it.
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posted
Agree completely, BlackBlade. They are two different works of art, neither perfect, but both intensely rewarding in their own contexts.
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I remember when my brother-in-law took his girlfriend to see TTT. He was into LOTR, but she knew practically nothing about it. She hadn't even seen FOTR. She just went to see a movie that he was into.
When she came out of the theater, she was stunned. At first, all she said was "Wow." She then went on to say that it was an amazing, epic movie.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and just watch FOTR in the theater for the first time, having not known anything about LOTR. If you take a step back, these movies are, overall, absolutely amazing. The effect and feeling of them is truly epic, I think.
Of course, when I watched FOTR, I still absolutely loved it, but there was that voice in the back of my head that kept distracting me by saying things like, "That's not how it happened in the book," or "I imagined that character differently," or "I can't believe they left that out!" or whatever other objection it had. I wish I could watch the series with a fresh mind, without those subtle objections.
When I step away from comparing it to the books, the series is truly an amazing accomplishment. Yes, I can pick apart lines of dialogue, and some acting, and some interpretation. However, as a whole work of art, the movies are just that, and I think they amazingly well accomplish giving you an overall feeling of another world, with epic problems and feats. I can think of no other movie-watching experience that was as influential for me, despite its flaws.
And if we want to talk about flaws, there are plenty to pick apart even in Tolkien's writings.
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quote:Originally posted by Cashew: Posted by Lyrhawn: "And the last king of Gondor died at Minas Morgul. He challenged the Witch King to single combat and was dragged into the city then killed. The Stewards took over afterwards."
Well, Lyrhawn, I know all that, I've read the books many times. What I'm saying is that there are so many wonderful things only touched on in the Appendices that would make amazing stories if they were to be fleshed out, in a similar manner to the way Asimov's Foundation world has been opened up to selected other writers. It was JRRT himself who hoped for that, according to a letter he wrote to a friend and quoted in the preface to a book on him I read a few years ago. Can't remember the name of the book, unfortunately, otherwise I'd give you chapter and verse.
Geez, no need to get snippy with me. How am I supposd to know what you know about LOTR? Frankly I don't remember him ever writing anything like that, that he wanted others to continue his work after he was gone. If you could give me a date on the letter, even what year it was written, I'd appreciate it. I have the collected letters of JRR Tolkien, and I could go check for it.
But to be honest, I don't think Middle Earth is something I want anyone else poking their heads into. There's a bit more about the Wainriders if you read the Histories of Middle Earth, and really, a lot more about a lot of things, though most of it is First Age stuff. I too wish I could get more information on a bunch of things, like the foundation of Dol Amroth, some history of Annuminas and the northern kingdom, the building of Angrenost and what not, but it's left unfinished, and I think it should stay that way. LOTR (for me at least) is something epic, and you don't come across a world that rich very often. It had a full, true history, and only JRR knew what that history was/is, and I don't want someone else coming in with incomplete knowledge and making something up. As far as I'm concerned, it'd be fanfiction.
quote:Originally posted by pooka:
quote:PJ's LOTR is better than the original
Took me a minute to realize you didn't mean the cartoons. Tru, dat.
Personally, I like the ROTK cartoon better than the live action movies. They handled the Fields of Cormallen, The Pellennor Fields, the Rohirrim, the Witch King, Eowyn, Frodo & Sam, actually pretty much everything, better than PJ, in my opinion.
It was a more true adaptation of the books, in the sense that dialogue was taken more word for word, and plot elements matched up, and I think it was quite workable. Sure it had its problems, and they would have been fixed up, but much of what was changed was done so for no discernable reason (to me anyway). I think they're all still pretty good films, but they could have been better.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Personally, I like the ROTK cartoon better than the live action movies. They handled the Fields of Cormallen, The Pellennor Fields, the Rohirrim, the Witch King, Eowyn, Frodo & Sam, actually pretty much everything, better than PJ, in my opinion.
Except Sam has no idea who Galadriel is, Faramir is glimpsed but never explained, Denethor is cameoed but never explained, Gollum's sudden appearance in the climax is never explained, "The Houses of Healing" and "The Scouring of the Shire" are -still- deleted, those AWFUL, AWFUL songs....
Seriously. "Where there's a whip, there's a way!".
I disagree strongly. The RotK cartoon was one of Rankin Bass' worst cartoons ever. Yes, even worse that Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas is July! Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Cashew: (PJ seems to have a problem relating to the absolute moral strength of Faramir and Aragorn)
First of all, I love Tolkien's LOTR, and while I have some issue's w/ Peter Jackson's films, I'm delighted that he made them and would love to see his version of The Hobbit.
But I hated the moral wishy-washiness of Aragorn in the films, especially as he stood before the broken sword in Rivendell experiencing all that angst over whether he would be just as weak as Isildur. I know some would say that Tolkien's Aragorn is bland and boring, and I can't entirely disagree, but JRRT was writing in the heroic tradition and his Aragorn was eager to take up his rightful crown. I think there were other ways the character could have been fleshed out and developed without taking away from the confidence that was his hallmark.
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posted
That's funny, Uprooted. I didn't have a problem with that scene with Aragorn nearly as much as the problem I had with the way they changed Faramir. I thought the point in the books was the drastic difference between Boromir and Faramir. Faramir had more integrity, but Boromir was the one his father loved.
I HATED how they took the character of Faramir and turned him into someone who would do anything for his father's approval.
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posted
See, and I think I just had a crush on David Wenham as Faramir, so I forgave them the liberties w/ his character. ;-) I loved Faramir in the movies and the book.
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posted
Sorry Lyrhawn didn't mean to sound snippy. I honestly couldn't give you any more yhan what I already did on that letter. As I said, it was in the preface to a book on Tolkien, and the letter was quoted. It really surprised me, because I read it around the time of the making of the first film, when Christopher Tolkien was saying that he wouldn't be seeing the films and that he was against them, so it stuck in my mind as Tolkien himself legitimising them, sort of. I cannot remember the name of the book (I don't own it) but have tried to find it again. If you did come across the quote I'd be interested to hear. I tend to agree with you on the fan fiction thing, I just find the Appendices so tantalising, and so amazingly inventive. Maybe if Christopher Tolkien himself, or maybe the guy he worked with (Guy Gavriel Kay?), did something it would work...
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posted
Sorry everyone ( ), the books were better than the films. Tolkien had some areas he didn't shine in, and some of them were improved by PJ's handling of the story, but that does not make the films better than the books.
He did a heckuva number on Aragorn and Faramir, for example...which is kind of weird, since he hit Boromir dead to rights. Some of the Elves he really screwed up, but that's understandable since so many of the qualities Tolkien gave them are difficult, to say the least, to get display in any medium.
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posted
I thought Elrond was spot on, after at first not liking him. That's the way a lot of the movies were for me, I needed a second viewing to really enjoy them just as movies and not as Peter Jackson not getting my interpretation/visualisation of the stories right.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Personally, I like the ROTK cartoon better than the live action movies. They handled the Fields of Cormallen, The Pellennor Fields, the Rohirrim, the Witch King, Eowyn, Frodo & Sam, actually pretty much everything, better than PJ, in my opinion.
Except Sam has no idea who Galadriel is, Faramir is glimpsed but never explained, Denethor is cameoed but never explained, Gollum's sudden appearance in the climax is never explained, "The Houses of Healing" and "The Scouring of the Shire" are -still- deleted, those AWFUL, AWFUL songs....
Seriously. "Where there's a whip, there's a way!".
I disagree strongly. The RotK cartoon was one of Rankin Bass' worst cartoons ever. Yes, even worse that Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas is July!
I've loved the cartoon since I was a little kid, which is why I probably also like the songs, not because I think they are good, but because it's a childhood thing, though I did like "Win the Battle Lose the War." And I like that they had singing in The Hobbit, as there really was singing in the book, and they took at least two of the songs directly from the book text.
Anyway, well yeah, it had some huge holes in it, but then so did PJ's ROTK, and I know this is an opinion probably shared by no one other than me, but with the marked exception of the Hobbit scenes, everything dealing with the Rohan and Gondor plot was better I thought. A mixture of the two would have created an awesome movie. That and I love John Huston as the voice of Gandalf. Whoever played the voice of Eowyn was much better than Miranda Otto as well. I get the difference between voice acting and real acting, but I found her to be totally unbelievable as Eowyn when she get to the Pellennor Fields. Utter and total crap. They wrote it horribly wrong.
I've no problem with most people thinking it sucked, in all honestly it probably does, but that'll never stop me from loving it Or from thinking that a lot of it is fantastic and better than the live action movies. Eowyn's dialougue so much better word for word from the book text than the gibberish PJ had her say.
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posted
Okay we have a Hobbit update, but it's not necessarily big news.
First off, this is from a couple months ago, but Howard Shore says (as of I think December 06) that both he and PJ want to do The Hobbit, and that he's even started to work on the music a bit in his head, and Jackson and he talked about it quite a bit when ROTK was winding down.
More recent news however, is Sam Raimi has finally spoken out on The Hobbit:
quote:"Peter Jackson might be the best filmmaker on the planet right now. But, um, I don't know what's going to happen next for me right now. First and foremost, those are Peter Jackson and Bob Shaye's films. If Peter didn't want to do it, and Bob wanted me to do it—and they were both ok with me picking up the reigns—that would be great. I love the book. It's maybe a more kid-friendly story than the others."
Now, I think it's obvious that Jackson wants to do the film. He's changed his mind a bit on what it would take to get him together with New Line, but he wants to do it, which to mean would mean that Raimi would have to decline. Like I said before, time is running out for New Line, I don't know when the exact day is that they lose the rights to the movie, but I'll go searching for it. But they don't have a script, they don't have a director, and they don't have, well they don't have anything except the insistance that they're making a movie.
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posted
Lyrhawn, this is in reference to the letter from Tolkien I referred to in the earlier posts on this thread: QUOTING ME - "What I'm saying is that there are so many wonderful things only touched on in the Appendices that would make amazing stories if they were to be fleshed out, in a similar manner to the way Asimov's Foundation world has been opened up to selected other writers. It was JRRT himself who hoped for that, according to a letter he wrote to a friend and quoted in the preface to a book on him I read a few years ago. Can't remember the name of the book, unfortunately, otherwise I'd give you chapter and verse." AND AGAIN - "I cannot remember the name of the book (I don't own it) but have tried to find it again. If you did come across the quote I'd be interested to hear."
I've come across the letter. Christopher Tolkien actually quotes from it in the preface to The Children of Hurin, while leaving out the key line (in relation to what I was saying). It spurred my memory though, so I googled the quote and found the whole thing. Here it is:
Nonetheless, all the adaptations -- both realized and unrealized -- fulfill a promise the scope of which Tolkien himself did not full understand when he wrote about it in 1951.
...But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story....I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, AND YET LEAVE SCOPE FOR OTHER MINDS AND HANDS, wielding paint and music and drama. (Letter 131)
Now Tolkien himself refers to paint and music and drama. But to me the context of what he's saying is that some stories he himself has fully fleshed out, but others are only sketched, left for others ("minds and hands")to bring to a fulness. I'm willing to admit you could argue against this interpretation, but I think you can argue pretty strongly for it.
I think if the situation was controlled effectively some wonderful work could be produced.
posted
Ah, letter 131, that should make it pretty simple it look up. I'll check it out later and see what the whole letter says. I'll comment on it afterwards, but it seems you could be right.
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posted
I'm definitely not talking about fan fiction though. Something much more controlled and respectful of the integrity of the myhtology.
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posted
Wasn't it Tolkien's dream to create a folk mythology of its own for Britain, though? And folk mythologies are not "entrusted" to anyone, they're a community effort.
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posted
I found the letter in the book I have of his letters. It's 10,000 words long. I'll try and read it all tonight get back to commenting tomorrow.
When he wrote it, it took up 63 pages, and the man who he wrote it to was so impressed with he that he had it typed up, which was no small feat back then. Typists were expensive. The focus of the letter was to convince the man to print both the Silmarillion and the LOTR together, and how they were inseparable from each other.
Edit to add: Alright, that quote appears fairly early on in the letter, and reading it over a couple times in context, I think two things:
1. When he says "absurd" at the end, and when he starts it off with "Do not laugh! But once upon a time..." he is saying it as a long ago held belief that he's since stopped holding.
2. When he specifically says "wielding paint, music, and drama" he's talking about adapting his stories into other mediums, about someone seeing what he wrote and drawing a painting like Alan Lee, or writing music like Howard Shore. I think he means the rest is open to intepretation by the reader, which is why he hates allegory so much, he wants interpretations to be more open and less restrictive.
I don't think he meant that he'd leave gaps open for others to fill in with more written stories, at least not based on that quote.
posted
Quoting Lyrhawn: "Who off the top of your head would you trust with Middle Earth from among today's scifi/fantasy writers? No one comes to mind."
The only writer who springs to mind would be Guy Gavriel Kay, who worked closely with Christopher Tolkien on The Silmarillion.
Lyrhawn again: "When he specifically says "wielding paint, music, and drama" he's talking about adapting his stories into other mediums, about someone seeing what he wrote and drawing a painting like Alan Lee, or writing music like Howard Shore. I think he means the rest is open to intepretation by the reader, which is why he hates allegory so much, he wants interpretations to be more open and less restrictive.
I don't think he meant that he'd leave gaps open for others to fill in with more written stories, at least not based on that quote."
I agree that the use of 'paint, music and drama' can certainly be interpreted that way. But I think the telling part is when he talks about stories in their fulness versus those only sketched, leaving scope for others. To me the implication is that he is hoping that others would find worth enough in what he is doing to build on it.
The "absurd" comment I feel more confidence in arguing: I don't see it as his dismissal of an idea once held dear but no longer important to him, but simply a resignation to the apparent fact that nobody else shared his hope. More in the tone of a rueful "Silly me for thinking so."
I have to admit I haven't read the whole comment in context, so you have the advantage over me in that. But I do feel that the quote at least legitimises the movies, and in light of it I found Christopher Tolkien's objection to them in principle at least a little surprising.
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posted
I have to say that, putting aside any other difficulties I may have had with the movies, I thought the character of Aragorn was so deeply improved as to make Tolkien's version laughable.
I never understood why Aragorn would bother to introduce himself as "Strider", only to identify himself as Aragorn son of Arathorn (and on and on and on), five seconds after meeting the hobbits. Everything about Aragorn's apparent exile felt totally artificial. He was so deeply egocentric, and obsessed with his lineage, and sure of himself, and simply eager to take the throne. It didn't fit with me. It's been a very long time since I read the books, but those are the impressions of Aragorn that stick with me.
I much prefer him as an actual exile, a reluctant king, who very gradually comes to realize that he is a better man than Isildur and he can lead Gondor. He was a much better character, in my opinion.
That said, I still hated his 'inspirational' speech in front of the Black Gates. As I said, it's been a very long time, but I don't remember a speech anything like that.
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posted
Not even close, man. Aragorn in the books was anything but obsessed with his lineage, and had refused to go to Gondor under his own name because of that.
The movies were good for what they were, but the only things they did new at all were NOT in keeping with anything in the books, and took AWAY fro the story....like the King of the Nazgul breaking Gandalf staff, but leaving him alive because of the horns of Rohan, and like having a Nazul see the ringbear heading into Mordor.
He was anything BUT eager to take the throne. Try reading it again. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I think the movies were probably the best possible ones that could have been produced from these books. Sure they changed stuff and sure some other director/writers might have done them differently, but I'm not sure how much closer to what the books were anyone could have come. There'd always have to be compromises.
I can forgive the films their flaws because at least they work as movies - compared to the Harry Potter films, for example, which are nothing but poorly constructed live action book illustrations. I can even sort of justify the lack of the Scouring of the Shire because it would have been difficult to include in the films properly even if it does take away the central message and overall makes the ending feel a little hollow. No Scouring is still ultimately better than all of that chapter crammed into 5 minutes would have been.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Dec 2006
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Originally posted by Kwea: "He was anything BUT eager to take the throne. Try reading it again. "
I don't agree with DanFrank on Aragorn, but have to also disagree with Kwea here also. I just finished Fellowship the other day, and am part way into The Two Towers, and although I'm not going to give you chapter and verse, I've come across at least two passages where Aragorn is filled with eager anticipation as he gets near to going to Gondor, no reluctance. His original intention, before circumstances changed, was to go to Gondor with Boromir.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Not even close, man. Aragorn in the books was anything but obsessed with his lineage, and had refused to go to Gondor under his own name because of that.
I thought his reluctance in the book stemmed solely from his desire not to start a power struggle with the ruling steward while Morder still threatened. I don't think he was "obsessed with his lineage," but he was definitely eager to be king and very eager to go to Gondor.
(Remember, Elrond had said he couldn't marry Arwen unless he was king of Gondor.)
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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More specifically: At the discovery of the dying Boromir, he says that his heart desires to go to Minas Tirith, as Boromir wished. Also, when they pass the Argonath, Aragorn is transformed from a "weatherworn Ranger" into "a king returning from exile to his own land", and proclaims himself and his lineage: "Under their shadow Elessar, the Elfstone son of Arathorn of the House of Valandil Isildur's son, heir of Elendil has nought to dread!" Then: "How my heart yearns for Minas Anor [note, not Minas Tirith, but the old name] and the walls of my own city."
He was very sure of who he was and was eager to reclaim his throne. I have no problem with that, and missed his moral certainty and power in the movie. I don't see it as 'egotistical', just someone certain of his lineage. There was no ambivalence about taking the throne. And don't forget he carried Narsil with him, even before it was reforged.
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), the books were better than the films. Tolkien had some areas he didn't shine in, and some of them were improved by PJ's handling of the story, but that does not make the films better than the books.
