Phillipa Boyens (one of the writers of the Peter Jackson Tolkien Adaptions) made the comment that a Tolkien Purist is some one who is a self proclaimed guardian of the material.. I would argue that a Purist is a person who simply doesn't like her monkeying with the material... for her own shallow social engineering/politically correct reasons.
Don't get me wrong, I realize that certain changes must be made to adapt any novel to film or television. For the most part the changes to the Rings films were mild. This isn't some rant about Tom Bombadil being left out. The films also could have been much worse, after all the Hollywood financiers wanted them to kill one of the Hobbits! Make no mistake, bullets were dodged. But it was clearly the screenwriters choice to so drastically alter the entirety of Faramir's character. It was their choice to alter Theoden's character. It's there choice to add characters when they don't really need to be added. All of these things can and should be laid at their feet.
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4 comments:
I wonder what it would have been like if they killed a hobbit.
Beth ^_^
It would have gone from being a Fair to good adaption to being absolute plonk.
Its bad enough they assassinated the character of several of the characters.. actually assassinating one of them would have been to far.
Wantonly killing off characters is a cheap way to get an emotional rise out of your audience. its what poor or lazy writers do.
I'm of a mixed mind about this. On the one hand I don't like some of the changes in the films and view a few alterations as real missteps, and think the films are at their best in the places in which they hew closest to Tolkien; on the other hand I have to roll my eyes at the hard-core purists who wouldn't settle for anything less than a blank screen with Christopher Tolkien reading the exact text of The Lord of the Rings.
Brian, that kind of purist exists only in the land of Oz.
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