I was trying to describe to my MIL (who hasn’t seen the Hobbit movies) how they were bad. I ended up with
Do you remember the barrel scene in the Hobbit? How would you describe it?
“It’s kind of where Bilbo really felt his confidence, where he tried the ring for the first time and rescued the dwarves, and they snuck out down the river to the city”
Great great, and do you remember the battalion of orcs trying to kill them while they went downstream with Legolas and Tauriel doing sweet kick flips over them, while Bombur bounced around jokingly killing a dozen of them, and then Fili having a moment of weakness for his elf princess love while he opened the gate and then he gets shot with a poisoned arrow?
…no
Well there you go.
They took one of the most endearing moments of the book and made it a joke. No, they cannot recreate the Lord of the Rings. Even if you don’t like PJ’s version, there’s just no way modern Hollywood can do to improve on it.
It’s not “modern” Hollywood. Hollywood has been pretty consistently trash over the decades, most adaptations in the '90s were shit as well.
Of course no-one’s going to beat PJ at LOTR. Because no good creative is going to be interested in the challenge when PJ already did the thing perfectly so only soulless corpo-ghouls think a remake is a good idea.
But there are still flukes like LOTR from time to time when the moons align and funding goes to actually talented creators. Two years ago we got Dune, this summer we got Barbie.
I wouldn’t put either of those in quite the same category as LOTR but I do agree that good stuff is still being made here and there, I think people just like to complain and also only think about the best bits of the past, while LOTR came out a million shitty movies also did you just don’t remember them.
I agree that it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get a better adaptation. But to say that PJ’s adaptions were perfect is a bit insulting to the books. They weren’t great adaptions. Good movies on their own, but PJ was very opinionated and they weren’t super faithful.
I was trying to describe to my MIL (who hasn’t seen the Hobbit movies) how they were bad. I ended up with
“It’s kind of where Bilbo really felt his confidence, where he tried the ring for the first time and rescued the dwarves, and they snuck out down the river to the city”
…no
They took one of the most endearing moments of the book and made it a joke. No, they cannot recreate the Lord of the Rings. Even if you don’t like PJ’s version, there’s just no way modern Hollywood can do to improve on it.
It’s not “modern” Hollywood. Hollywood has been pretty consistently trash over the decades, most adaptations in the '90s were shit as well.
Of course no-one’s going to beat PJ at LOTR. Because no good creative is going to be interested in the challenge when PJ already did the thing perfectly so only soulless corpo-ghouls think a remake is a good idea.
But there are still flukes like LOTR from time to time when the moons align and funding goes to actually talented creators. Two years ago we got Dune, this summer we got Barbie.
I wouldn’t put either of those in quite the same category as LOTR but I do agree that good stuff is still being made here and there, I think people just like to complain and also only think about the best bits of the past, while LOTR came out a million shitty movies also did you just don’t remember them.
Dune is arguable. And PJ’s LOTR is arguable too. Barbie I haven’t seen.
I agree that it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get a better adaptation. But to say that PJ’s adaptions were perfect is a bit insulting to the books. They weren’t great adaptions. Good movies on their own, but PJ was very opinionated and they weren’t super faithful.
Great adaptations are never super faithful. Adapting means changing stuff around to make it work on a new medium.
I do agree the PJ movies have some issues, but for other reasons.