What All Was Wrong with PJ's LOTR

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by Gordis

He did ruin a lot. OK, there are lots of people who would buy and read the books after seeing the movies - but how many would not? How many will think they KNOW Tolkien because they have only seen the movies? We meet such again and again on all the forums - they are a plague.

I just meant that he didn't track down every copy of LotR in the world and light them on fire. The books really are untouched.

Maybe it isn't like this for a lot of people but when I read the books, it's my own images of the Nine Companions that are in my head. Aragorn does look vaguely like Viggo Mortensen with long hair and a three day's growth beard, but I always thought Viggo Mortensen did look vaguely like Aragorn.

Frodo has curly brown hair, but I actually can't picture his eyes (must re-read the book I guess). He looks like he's in his mid-thirties even though he's fifty.

Gandalf has a grey-blue hat and Legolas has black hair.

My mental images have faded a bit, but I haven't read the books in quite a while. While I find the LotR movies mediocre, they also don't have a lot of sticking power because of this. They bugged me a lot more when they first came out.

My biggest problem with them now is they don't stand alone as good movies. Without the audience's knowledge of the book the plot is incoherent, yet the movie needlessly mangles aspects of the book. If you're going to mangle, you have least have to have a functioning plot at the end. That's what I say about book>movie adaptations.