Hollywood Lacking in Clue, Film at Eleven

[gothwalk]

No church in movie of His Dark Materials

Ursula le Guin not impressed with Earthsea movie

That's impressively dumb. I don't think they've copped at all that the reason that the LOTR movies have succeeded so very well is that they stick very close to the plot of the book, and like glue to the spirit.

Comments

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

And they made Ged white... *grrr* One of the few books to really overturn the reader's (well, mine anyway) assumed skincolour of the protagonists. And it's done very subtly too, IIRC.

[yechidah.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It has been almost 25 years since I read the books, but I was pretty sure that Ged was black.

I recall that she waited until well into the story before she gave us a description of him, and it overturned my assumption, too.

[mcsnee.livejournal.com]

Um, isn't taking the church out of His Dark Materials sort of like doing Star Wars without the Empire?

[graylion.livejournal.com]

maybe eventually somebody will cop and not sell the rights to US filmmakers anymore, but EU or Kiwi ones ...

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

And to think, my brother stopped watching the LoTR movies because they added in all the bits with Stephen Tyler's daughter... I think he actually got disgusted and walked out when Aragorn fell off the cliff with the warg in The Two Towers...

Hollywood has never had a clue - check out Stephen Jay Gould's essay "The Monster's Human Nature" which discusses the dumbing down of books as they become movies.

[magiien.livejournal.com]

Do you have a link to this essay, or do you know in which book it appears? I just browsed through several different listings on BN.com, but none seemed to contain this essay.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I know it's in "Dinosaur in a Haystack"...

http://www.2think.org/diah.shtml

I haven't been able to find it reproduced online for a while now...

[microgirl.livejournal.com]

I think he actually got disgusted and walked out when Aragorn fell off the cliff with the warg in The Two Towers...

Oh, I was so very nearly with him there. Spiritually obviously. But yeah, I walked out in tears of rage at the end of that film. As anyone who knows me will attest, my catchphrase for pretty much all of 2003 was "There were no fcuking elves at fcuking Helm's Deep!!" :D

However, I got over it enough to go see the Extended Edition when it was shown before RotK last year, and the extra bits do make it a much better film - as does knowing what to expect as regards extraneous bits.

I'm not as much of a purist as many, but that bit with the wargs just pissed me off.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I can enjoy the films for what they are, and they are matching in spirit, as Drew points out in the original post.

I wouldn't count myself as a purist, although I'm sure some think of me as such when I rant on about Arwen, elves at Helm's Deep, dwarves who shouldn't be used solely as comic relief, and such things, as well as file a missing entity report on Tom Bombadil, who has yet to make an onscreen appearance to the best of my knowledge.

But I can get past that, and still love the movies, if only for the beautiful scenery and for the perfect casting of Gandalf and Saruman!

[opakele.livejournal.com]

I was going to make an effort to see the Earthsea mini series. I am very disappointed. Ursula is right up there with Tolkien in my esteem. It seems common courtesy, once again, has been by passed because someone smelled a profit.

Thanks for the mention. I missed it.

(I must admit, I enjoyed her tart comments.)

[d2leddy.livejournal.com]

Yea it was pretty poor. Nice array of actors, but . . no.