Non Tolkien Readers watching the show?

[Elessar_elfstone]

I just thought of another questoin from my previous posting on "Some opinions needed..." and I hope you guys would not find it annoying.

For those non-LOTR readers watching the movie, would they be confused up by the history of Middle-Earth and all of the discussions ehld out by various councils in the story, as I did need to read certain points over again to fully understand the text.

Further more in the Eastern countries, I think language might hinder the viewers from further understanding the story...

[Churl]

I think this will be one of the primary challenges that the screenwriters face. Unfortunately, some of the history will be glossed over or ignored completely, but even to present the minimum required exposition in a way that doesn't baffle newbies will be a balancing act.

Different sources say different things: some have said that Fellowship will start with a 10-minute recap of the ring's forging and history; others say that this exposition was rearranged to appear later in the film (a flashback during the council of Elrond?) to avoid baffling non-fans with a whirlwind name-rich history lesson up front.

As for language barriers — in countries where they don't want to burn our films outright, that is — I trust that a high-profile project like this will be translated well. After all, the books have been translated into dozens of languages and are loved all over the world … since worldwide audiences are so important to movie tallies nowadays, I can only expect that New Line will fund good translation.

[samwise of the shire]

The Movie will begin with Frodo saying something(I forgot what something about peace being hard earned I dunno)then it will go through the Forging and the wars the Ring caused, then it'll boom or something like that then it'll zoom in on the Shire and I think maybe Frodo reading a book in a tree. That's the impression I got anyway.

[Darth Tater]

Actually, sam, that's not true. That was the original plan. However now it begins with a Galadriel voice over of a Treebeard line (something about change), then panning over the map and fading in to Hobbiton. The forging info will be in a flashback sorta thing when Gandalf tells Frodo about the ring.

[samwise of the shire]

How funny, I thought that the NEW plan was the ORIGINAL plan. I just read my version on the Onering but it's probably buried under interveiws and all that in the scrap book.

[Ben]

I'm sure they'll structure it so that it makes sense to everyone. Hopefully the movie will inspire the non-readers to read the books!