Posted on 06/14/2002 1:28:43 PM PDT by maquiladora
Yes I have! It's fantastic, a real gem. The realism and sence of doom and fear in the movie is fantastic. I love it.
'Run Silent, Run Deep' is an old WWII sub movie. It's a good one though, there's something extra special about it. Check it out.
They make a good salve for that!
Hehehehe - There are parts of the movie that chap my bum too... but not that part. (Mine is the Galadriel Halloween Ghost part)
There are parts of the book that I read through and wonder - Now why didn't PJ just leave it this way? Other places it worked to change the dialogue and I like it just fine.
I am reminded of when we were remodeling our house. We knew what we wanted to do, which was basically to preserve as much about the house as possible, while adding a few new improvements. It is an heirloom house that I grew up visiting on every special occasion. It needed to remain the same house.
We hired an architect to help us with the planning, and he first came back with a drawing of a beautiful house that was just not ours. The little things that meant so much to us, were just a window, or just a wall, to him, and could be eliminated or moved.
As an architect, he saw our house as his palette... He wanted to put his signature on it... And had we let him, he would have created a beautiful, but different house.
He eventually came around to drawings which were exactly what we wanted. We used a couple of his ideas, but I am sure he wonders why we paid the big bucks to a designer so that we could design it ourselves.
To me it feels like the same conflict of emotions...
PJ put his own fingerprint on the story. His vision was beautiful. Some of us that were around before liked the old window more, but I am getting used to the new one, and the house is still ours.
At least that was in the book.
BTW, GREAT analogy you use, concerning the architect for your house (I'm a structural engineer who does residential design so that resonates with me).
I don't so much mind that PJ had a great "vision," but that so much of his "vision" seemed, coincidentally, to be based on political correctness. (Thus, the part about Arwen).
Why he felt he had to have a strong female character right off the bat, when in the second and especially the third books/films you have Éowyn, as strong a female character as you can imagine, I'll never figure out except he didn't want to tick off a "target" audience most of whom aren't interested in the books anyway.
(Oddly, two-thirds of Tolkien afficionados are male).
BTW (to PJ and any other men that might be trying to think for us) wimmen don't go to films to see other wimmen!) hehehehe
Honestly, I think he brought Arwen in so that the love story at the end would make more sense, not to "be PC". This film has created new female Tolkien fans because of 1-Viggo. 2-Orlando 3-Elijah! Not because of breathless Arwen! Arwen and Aragorn are a beautiful love story, but you have to read the LoTR Appendeces to find it, and PJ just brought it out into the open earlier than we knew about it in the book...
Glad you liked my little remodel story! It occured to me as a good analogy too.
It confused me, wasn't it Glorfindel that took Frodo?
One problem with LOTR was the poor dramatization of the relationship of Aragorn and Arwen...we are left to the appendices to figure it out and to discern her characterization. When I read LOTR for the first time as a teen, I thought, "And Aragorn rejected Eowyn for this figure?". Took the appendix to explain it.
There's no way an audience that isn't immersed in Tolkein (like me) could accept Aragorn's eventual rejection of Eowyn with no sense of who Arwen is and the sacrifices she is making (losing her immortality, her Elfhood, and her family to the West)...I think PJ has a workable answer here. Movies have to be different from books, to show instead of tell.
I've been reading of other changes that bother me more than drawing Arwen as a more active character...like elimination of the Scouring of the Shire, Killing Saruman on some sort of wheel in TTT...
I can't wait to see the ents!
I be happy if she'd just talk elvish to me (hehehe)
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