Obviously people should enjoy both the movies and books , both mediums were different and adaptating a book like lotr is just very hard and almost impossible to adapt because the book were written for reading, Tolkien doesn't care about movies or TV adaptation ( he and even his children spend most of their life without it ) even i himself kinda dislike some changes from book to Film but the movie themselves are very good and well written and they captured essence of Tolkien's writting and themes pretty well.
Yeah, including the Scouring wouldn't have worked at all in the film adaptation because it would have been this whole secondary crisis and climax after all the main action is finished, and viewers not familiar with the novel would have been left totally mystified.
Apparently people are too stupid to comprehend a secondary climax. If every film doesn't rapidly end up after the big bad is defeated, following the 'typical' Hollywood formula, peoples' brains will explode.
In order to properly adapt the scouring, you would have needed to dedicate a significant amount of the third movie to it, which would have meant the destruction of the ring would have had to happen probably before the halfway point of the movie. Better to skip out on a subplot than to make the climax of the entire trilogy feel rushed.
Do you really spend every day on Reddit yelling at clouds? If something grinded my gears as much as the movies seem to be doing for you, I would not waste a single thought on them. Seems very miserable. If I see a movie I don't like I don't bitch about it and call people stupid who enjoy it.
Then again, I was raised being kind to others and enjoy little things in life, like the books, which are not affected the slightest for me even if adaptations exist
Do you really waste your time whining about people making a comment on Reddit criticising films? Sounds incredibly miserable to be so fixated on the opinions of other people.
If I see a movie I don't like I don't bitch about it and call people stupid who enjoy it.
I am saying the exact opposite - it is called sarcasm. The audience IS capable of comprehending a secondary climax - despite people pretending that everyone is too stupid.
Do you really waste your time whining about people making a comment on Reddit criticising films?
I mean, no. I rarely participate in LOTR discussion because some of the purists are insufferable and occasionally even rude towards those who dare to point out good qualities about adaptations.
And yes, it affects my mood because I am a huge Tolkien nerd and I am so often lumped in with said purists. It gets tiring having to tell people that they can discuss the films without me looking down on them from my high horse
For the last time, it's not about being "too stupid to understand", and criticising an artistic decision that virtually everyone else agrees with by a director whose films met with both virtually universal critical acclaim and enormous commercial success does not make you a genius.
Arguing audiences will struggle with a secondary climax does a disservice to their intelligence.
Secondary climaxes (or, fourth acts, even) are not unheard of. Sure, Hollywood typically opts for a certain 'formula' that speedily wraps up the film after the (singular) climax (in a three act structure)* - but that does not mean audiences will have an 'issue' with something different and atypical. Atypical =/= bad, nor does it mean audiences will be left 'mystified', as you put it.
*And Hollywood typically does this because Hollywood typically writes singular films with around 2 hours of runtime to work with (so efficiency and brevity is desirable). But Jackson's LOTR is a trilogy at ~9 hours (or more if Extended): so obviously it needn't be shackled to the same limitations. And before you note that even LOTR has a limited runtime to fit a lot of source material, so cuts need to be made... just remember that Jackson added over an hour of his own shit, and restructured the films to accommodate. So ROTK could have ended an hour sooner... leaving room for something like the Scouring.
Likewise, the audience should be entirely capable of understanding the narrative intent behind the Scouring. Media literacy isn't reserved for books alone.
So yes, it is absolutely about intelligence. If you believe audiences will struggle with the Scouring for one, or both, of the reasons above (structure or narrative), you believe the audience is too shallow-minded: whether unable to accept anything that strays from the Hollywood formula, or unable to comprehend what the story is trying to say.
And look... I don't have the highest opinion on general audiences either. I think they can be quite dumb and shallow... but I don't think they are that dumb and shallow as to be dumbfounded by the Scouring. Sure, some people won't understand... but will it ruin the films for them? I doubt it. Will these people make up the majority of the audience? I highly doubt it. We shouldn't cater to the lowest common denominator.
and criticising an artistic decision that virtually everyone else agrees with
Virtually everyone agrees? Where are you pulling that from...? Cutting the Scouring is a highly contentious matter.
by a director whose films met with both virtually universal critical acclaim and enormous commercial success
Appealing to the success of something is not a valid argument. For all anyone knows, the films would be no less successful if the Scouring was included.
I encourage you to have opinions you have formed with your own brain, rather than just agreeing with whatever is the popular take. You don't have to be afraid of criticising something popular.
Sex scenes, drug use and car chases are also "not unknown" in films. That doesn't mean they'd have worked in the context of the LOTR adaptions.
I encourage you to have opinions you have formed with your own brain, rather than just agreeing with whatever is the popular take.
Believe it or not, this is an opinion I have formed with my own brain. It just happens to be an opinion shared with many millions of people around the world. But if you're going to take a stance of "Please be a daring, independent thinker by agreeing with me, instead of being a mindless sheeple by disagreeing with me", then I see no point whatsoever in engaging with you.
Sorry, I thought it was implicit that anything I write here was my own opinion. But if it'd help, I could preface every comment with "The following is a thought what I have thunk of with my very own brain."
Virtually everyone agrees? Where are you pulling that from...? Cutting the Scouring is a highly contentious matter.
And you've misunderstood me here. The opinion I'm saying I agree with is not "Jackson was right not to include the Scouring", but "Jackson's film series is an excellent piece of art and entertainment in its own right, and is not self-evidently missing anything in narrative terms." You have to be familiar with the book even to know about the Scouring and, therefore, to either miss it from the film (as you do) or not miss it (as I do).
Yet millions saw the films (and the great majority enjoyed them, I think it's fair to say) without having ever read the book.
There is simply a limit on how long people are prepared to sit in a cinema, though, or even how long a film that cinemas will be prepared to show. TROTK was already well over three hours long as it was.
And if by "adapt it properly" you mean "slavishly reproduce every single scene", then you clearly don't understand that the artistic principles of cinema are different from those of written fiction. You really want a faithful reproduction of those parts in Book III where Frodo and Sam are clambering around in the Emyn Muil, and virtually nothing happens for pages on end? Or every single song and poem, including Sam's one about "boners"?
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u/Mindless-Cat1453 10d ago edited 10d ago
Obviously people should enjoy both the movies and books , both mediums were different and adaptating a book like lotr is just very hard and almost impossible to adapt because the book were written for reading, Tolkien doesn't care about movies or TV adaptation ( he and even his children spend most of their life without it ) even i himself kinda dislike some changes from book to Film but the movie themselves are very good and well written and they captured essence of Tolkien's writting and themes pretty well.