27.12.01

Update on Tolkien vs. Jackson.

I've been reading The Fellowship of the Ring online and it seems like Tolkien left a lot of things up to the imagination. There were indeed hordes of snarling orcs, but they were quick to flee if their leader was slain. The landscape features as described could be either breathtakingly majestic, or only so from a homebound hobbit's perspective depending on one's reading. I still would like to see a more subdued version of the film - one that spends more time with the details of travelling and feasting and tale-telling that are skipped over in favor of visceral violence and stunning effects.

Naturally too much of this and we'd all be snoring into our popcorn, but it was the scenes with carrots and teapots that tickled me the most. Jackson insisted that making everything believable was a primary concern - but he seems to have put it slightly behind making everything unbelievable. In any case, I'm hungering to go again and pay more attention to details.

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