Originally posted by: GoodMusician
As far as Lord of the Rings... I've always heard how well adapted it was by fans...
Which fans would that be? The first movie was the best adaptation. The second two (TTT and ROTK) were poor at best. Even listening to the commentary, Jackson says, in the first one, that they decided to keep things like the book most of the time because the fans would get mad and it wouldn't work any other way. When it comes to the second two, he plainly states that he decided to change a lot and then by the third they had to change even more because they changed things in the second one. Then, sometime during the third one, he states that if they had been able to release the movies a few months apart instead of one year apart, they would have stayed even more faithful to the books since it would be fresh in everyones mind. In fact, I think he even said that if it had been three movies straight to DVD it would have pretty much been the books on DVD.
I have seen an excellent fan edit of the movies that brings them as close as possible to the books and it does so remarkably well. No comic relief from Gimli. Very little Aragorn doubting himself. And just so much more than the original cuts had to offer.
Most true book fans would tell you that the first movie was done well, but the second two were done poorly. Even the first movie had many unnecessary changes, but they didn't change the overall story. The changes in the second two had major changes to characters that really were unnecessary.
Originally posted by: GoodMusician
Tolkein's novel is a great wealth of information of another kind. The symbolism you say is lost is replaced with another... similar to what I was saying with the music not explicitly stating something but showing it another way.
Personally, I've never read the novels, but the whole 'christian undertone' argument is kind of moot.
I saw "Narnia" and it is like the exact opposite. The whole time, I was stuck comparing it to the Bible. The whole story is like if you told the new testament but changed the nouns from 'Jesus' to 'Aslan' or from the two Mary's to the two girls.
I was stuck comparing it to the Bible and I couldn't see past that and see the film for what it is. For that, I think it greatly suffered if my eyes.
It may have been a good story and a moral one and what have you, but I personally could not see past the christian underpinnings and for me, that hindered the experience. It didn't go its own way or illustrate anything so dramatically different than the Bible. It didn't stand out as being as unique as the Bible; just a knock off copy.
The Christian undertone in Tolkien's work is there, but it requires a closer look than Lewis's does. In LOTR, the Wizards are Angels. Saruman is really just a lieutenant to Morgoth who is essentially Satan (fallen angel). Even the Balrog's are just corrupted Wizards. Most of this isn't in the novels or the movie though. It's in the appendix. It's not a great leap to get to it, it just requires some knowledge of Tolkien and the Bible.
Lewis's works are much more obvious. "Two daughts of Eve and two sons of Adam". If you know even a smidgeon of the Bible, it doesn't get more obvious than that. But it was suppose to be obvious. Lewis was a convert to Catholicism and he was essentially writing a Bible story for children. I didn't get it when I read it as a kid. It still doesn't hurt the story for me today.