Cable TV has begun advertising “The Fellowship of the Ring”, which will be starting on one of the movie channels in a few weeks. Just out of curiosity, am I the only person on the planet who found those first two movies to be spectacularly ordinary?
When you take on the task of making a movie adaptation of a book/trilogy, particularly a 20th century classic, you automatically adhere to an unwritten covenant which states that you must remain as faithful as possible to the text. Exceptional circumstances arise when the writer/director exploits the vast differences between the written word and audio/visual mediums to enhance upon elements in the book (see David Fincher’s Fight Club), but watering down the narrative to make it more digestible to the average, ignorant movie-goer (see Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, or rather, read Thomas Harris’ version instead) is unforgiveable. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, let me save you the trouble by summarising in neat, sequential format.
Tags: Roman
