2/22/04

What the LOTR fans want

Originally posted by tylerdurden
It aint gonna be Lord of the rings if Pj made it distinctly his own. Fans will be outraged.

Yeah, well...

When movies were in their infancy, not much more developed than the moving photos that Edison invented, people demanded that the camera show the entire person, on the theory that they are getting the fullest value for their money. It took filmmakers like DW Griffith and Sergei Esenstein to demonstrate that in fact film is more dynamic, more dramatic, and has far more visual impact if you leave the director alone to shoot and stage his actors according to his own ideas of how the film is to be shot.

If Jackson wanted to make great films, he should have put more of himself into them. If he had the guts, he wouldn't listen to the fans and would direct the film as needed, not as fans would want them.

Maybe the basic mistake was to use a LOTR fan like Jackson, who practically reveres the ground Tolkien walks on. Boorman, who was at one point connected with the film, might have given the LOTR books the same treatment he gave the Arthurian legends, and come up with a really great film. As is, what I think Jackson came up with is a nine-hour version of Classics Illustrated.

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