I was thinking about this the other day, how painstakingly accurate the Harry Potter film of the first book was last year. In fact, the only criticism about it that I heard was that it was TOO much exactly like the book, there wasn't really anything new or surprising.
Now, I know that the Conventional Wisdom has been that you just couldn't film "Rings" that way, but I now think that's hogwash. Harry Potter is every bit as detailed and exacting as the Tolkien works (please, no stupid flames, I'm talking about TECHNICALLY; don't let's get into some dumb-*ss debate over the relative artistic merits). I now wish they'd been more accurate with "Fellowship."
Sorry, but the thing with Arwen taking Frodo across the river still chaps my bum.
Maybe I'm unusually dense, but when I first read the book I remember being surprised when Arwen showed up in ROTK. OTOH, I was in second grade, so a lot of things probably got by me.
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.
It confused me, wasn't it Glorfindel that took Frodo?