I work evenings. I have family over. I hate this. I mean - I love my kids and my grandkids and stuff - but this is, after all, Lord of the Rings we're talkin' about! I probably won't get to see it until
next week (!) Acccch! By then it'll be old news to everyone.
The books are sooo good that I was really afraid that the movie would spoil the effect. (The previous animated attempts did.) But from what I've seen, the director is like, part elf or something.
Chuck Colson, who does a daily radio commentary, had a good take on it today. What the heck. Here it is. (I hope I'm not infringing on some copyright or something.)
BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #011220 - 12/20/2001
Defrocking Frodo and the Death of Imagination: God-Given Special Effects
"Past the brooding lands of Mordor, across the river
Nimrodel, far beyond the lush valley of Rivendell,
the gentle followers of Frodo are freaking out." So
says a story last week in the L.A. Times about how
devoted fans of J.R.R. Tolkien are reacting to the
onslaught of Hollywood hype and merchandising tie-ins
that have preceded yesterday's release of the movie
version of Tolkien's fantasy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Long-time Tolkien fans feel as if the film's
marketing blitz will overwhelm the delicate fantasy
of Middle-earth -- a world straight out of Tolkien's
imagination and delivered complete with its own
languages, sciences, and history in more than a dozen
books that span fictitious millennia. One graduate
student at UCLA laments the day Frodo will appear on
some child's pajamas. "Have they no respect?" he
asks.
Now why are these people so upset? Ted Tschopp, co-
founder of TolkienOnline.com, gives a hint when he
says he hopes the movie will fail so he can go back
to enjoying Tolkien's books as sacrosanct. The fear
is that people, after watching a two-hour movie and
purchasing the appropriate hobbit gear, will think
they have something in common with Middle-earth
aficionados who have read and re-read Tolkien's
trilogy and know all its details.
Well, the critics have a point. As good as a movie
may be, there's still nothing like a good story told
in a good book. In a story, we cooperate with the
author by bringing our own imagination to play. The
writer may supply a description, but we provide the
mental images ourselves. The truth is that the human
imagination engaged by literature is more powerful
than all the special effects and technology employed
by Hollywood.
So there's always a problem when a book is made into
a movie. No one, who has read and experienced a
story, will ever be completely satisfied with someone
else's re-telling. To narrow an author's creativity
down to one visual image on a screen -- even worse,
on someone's pajamas -- is to trivialize the wonders
of one of God's greatest gifts to us, our
imagination.
A good example is the conclusion of the delightful
movie, A PRINCESS BRIDE. There is a culminating kiss
between the hero and his maiden. During the kiss, we
hear the voice of the grandfather who has been
reading this story to his grandson, and we see the
power of imagination over the visual. On the screen
we see only a kiss, and how many times have we seen a
movie kiss? They're all the same. But from the
narrator we hear: "In the history of true love, there
have been five truly great kisses, but this one
surpassed them all in its purity and its passion."
The kiss on the screen pales in comparison to the one
in our imaginations as we hear the words of the
story.
Now, this isn't to diminish the value of film as an
art form or as entertainment -- and certainly not THE
LORD OF THE RINGS, which I'm anxious to see. It is
simply to remind us of the limitations of film in
penetrating our imaginations. There's no substitute
for the richness of our imaginations when stimulated
by a great story. So, enjoy good films, but don't let
them ever substitute for the greater and richer
pleasures of good reading. It's a taste all of us
need to cultivate.
================================
J.R.R. Tolkien, THE LORD OF THE RINGS (Houghton
Mifflin, 1974).
<
http://www.parable.com/breakpoint/item.asp?sku=03951 93958>
Steve
P.S. Wishing you all glimmering Silmirils for Christmas.