LotR: Not as good as the movies

I don't know about anyone else, but I found JRR Tolkien's book really dull and reading it was a real chore.  Big props to Peter Jackson for turning it into a highly watchable trilogy.

To each their own, I say. There`s no definitive answer to this statement. Only opinion and conjecture. I liked the books more, and in the end, we`re probably both right. It`s all relative anyway.

It was boring when I read it in 5th grade, and I haven't since. Maybe I should pick it up again.

I read the book once as a kid and it was boring as hell. Then in the army I took it up again and WHOAA - it's excellent. I actually like both the movies and the book very much. While the book is vastly more detailed and richer, the movies tell the story very well on their own terms. I agree that since pretty much of the book involves travelling, those parts wouldn't make too interesting a movie. So I guess I'm just not as "pure" a Tolkien fan since I happen to like them both.

This is a familiar story. I left the book and resumed weeks later more than a few times due to the boring descriptions of travelling and such. It often takes Tolkien 3-4 pages to describe one room. Ultimately it's worth it, though, the books have their status for a reason.

There was just too much in the book I couldn't swallow. If Tom Bombadil is immune to the ring then why not just get him to carry it?  And as for Aragorn carrying the blade that was broken around with him, okay, very nice, very symbolic. But he was a ranger. He wouldn't carry dead weight around with him, no matter how symbolic.

they're both somewhat boring

The book is famous because it's an classic epic-style story written with considerable skill and depth.

But this also means that it suffers from many of the same flaws. Personally, since I'm not a linguist, I found it deadfully dull (and it has little to do with the descriptive passages, which I like).

>>3
Ditto, I read the Hobbit when I was 9 and thought it was pretty good.  When I was 10 I began the Fellowship of the Ring.  I got as far as the council of Elrond.  There was no way in hell I was going to read 40, count 'em, 40, pages of people just sitting and talking.  And singing.

Tolkein is one of the few writers who succeeds in actually making his characters seem less real as time goes on

Also, Frodo/Sam have a Master and Servant relationship. Jackson couldn't translate that so he made them fags. wtf

I think Tolkien had some fantastic concepts and a great skill at developing his world... He just wasn't really a particularly good writer. His world and its history is a lot more detailed than his characters- and it's hard to care about the story-world stuff when the characters and plot motion is so flat.

I liked the movies, though I wouldn't say I was really a huge fan or them or anything, and I think Jackson worked really well within Tolkien's world. The books, I can stand, but there's just so much out there that's so much better-  and hasn't been as conveniently adapted into genuinely great film.

Tolkien is an excellent writer.  He just loves description.  Too much.  Which is both a strength and a weakness.  He can describe things in detail for pages, giving such a solid picture in one's mind, but then can drone on about the bark of a tree for even longer.  Still, this helped immenseley in making the movies true to life, as the description was already firmly in place. 

But then Jackson whipped out his creative license, and you get cheesy jokes, simplified events, and some changed scenes.  But other than that, the adaptation is dead on in most places, just like I imagined in the book. 

Except for the Two Towers.  Treants weren't as awesome as they could have been.  And I liked the book's ending better.

>>6
"Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)."
 - J.R.R Tolkien

The first thought I had after seeing Fellowship was that I didn't remember the books being anywhere near that exciting. A Tolkein-fetishist friend of mine sat through it seething at all the horrible changes to her beloved books.

I told her she was insane, and she hit me :(

LOTR books > LOTR games > LOTR movies

The ending of the books was an anticlimax. It was also amazingly annoying.

I will never understand why they are held in such high regard. The world was carefully developed and linguists will enjoy a fair bit of the material, but the pacing was poor and the characterization ridiculous. If you ripped the plot and characters out you could transplant them in a children's story. Yet the book is too dense for a child. So what exactly was the target audience?

Certainly, it's modelled quite well after some classic epics, but it's a bore as well. I suppose they're like Ulysses: completely overrated.

>>13 Fair enough, but please, no enigmas that blow holes in the plot big enough to drive an ocean liner through, thanks.

Faramir didn't help either.  If he can resist the ring so easily in the book, then get HIM to take it to Mordor!  Jackson's rewrite of the Faramir character made him far more believable.

Those movies sucked. The first one was just people walking for three hours, and I wasn't attatched to any of the characters. When that guy turned into a pincussion at the end, I didn't care except to think "was he a good guy?"

And what the hell was the deal with #3? It looked like he would just pick up the camera and throw it every few minutes, it made me feel ill every time it happened. And the script was so self-important it hurt. "No man shall kill me" what the fuck? No, you just have a reputation as a badass, people aren't going to figure out that you're immortal. And then the ending faded to black so many times I wanted to slit my throat. Why can't the fucker just End and put me out of my misery?

I enjoyed the movies the first time I watched them.  I haven't watched them since then, probably because I can't stay awake for more than 40 hours at a time.

>>1
Watchable?  That's the biggest thing I don't like about them ... they're so *un*watchable.

These books are rather old, remember.  At one point in time people read poetry for fun.  The people complaining about the books are probably just very poor readers who can't read efficiently or for enjoyment like so many could in the old days.  In today's society having more of these isn't surprising.  Personally I find Tolkien's material light and easy compared to some of the long winded French stuff I've had to read that was still considered wildly popular.

Btw, was anyone else really disappointed with the Balrog fight in the movies?  Basically the thing sat there and got wacked.  Real exciting.  If they couldn't animate it well I would have rathered a guy in a suit...

>>20
"Very poor" readers are still able to judge if the plot is full of holes and the characterization laughable.

Come down from your ivory tower. If you're done descending into insipid ad hominem attacks maybe we can get on with the discussion.

>>21
Some posters say it's a chore to read and a others, myself and likely many of the fans, found it very easy.  It's only logical to start analyzing what the causes of this could be.  In the case where the book was written for a ~1940's audience it is very valid to consider the readers may have changed between then and now.  Making completely unsupported complaints like you do is what holds up discussion.

Of course. And if someone disagrees with your assessment they're one of the unenlightened unwashed masses. Your judgement is beyond measure.

Most classics come from before the 1940's, you realize? Your argument doesn't hold. Furthermore, as a reader of distinction you still fail comprehension in reading this thread. Around half the complaints are regarding the characters and plot, not the prose.

Having been a fanatical fan of the books in my younger years, I thought the movies were alright. Not perfect, but I do think they're about the best translation that one could hope for. What's interesting about the movies, however, was that they made me realize how dated the books truly are, in the respect that they were written in a different 'world' than now. As a classic, it'll always be respected, but there are far better stories out there.

And there are far more substandard hacks and copies of Tolkien's work.  No examples are needed.

The issues with pacing and characterization come from two things.  One is that, as noted, Tolkien wrote a good bit, but was more of an academic than a "writer".  The other thing to realize is that it's rather awkward to compare the pacing/characterization/etc of LotR (or The Silmarillion) to standard novels--especially modern novels where the current ideal is to lean towards clipped, sparse, fast-paced writing--because Tolkien wasn't writing a "novel", he was creating a mythology for his beloved country of England in the tradition of old epics like Beowulf or the Norse Eddas.

The characters are supposed to be heroic, mythic icons.  Given the way most characters in older epics and sagas are portrayed, Tolkien's characters show quite a bit of humanity and complexity.  But yes, ultimately, it's a story about Good vs. Evil in an iconic as well as personal way.

Also, the setting of Middle-Earth was pretty much a character in and of itself, which is a big reason why there's so much description of places as they travel, even when it doesn't connect to the main plot.

As for Tom Bombadil, the reason they can't leave The One Ring with him is that he's too up in the clouds.  He's a nature spirit, and as you can see from the book, far too unconcerned with serious worldly matters.  If they gave him the Ring, he'd eventually forget about it and misplace it--he wouldn't prevent Sauron from getting his hands on it.

Faramir is a bit of a stickier issue.  Personally, I think that if he were exposed to the Ring for a length of time that it would take to bring it to Mount Doom, he probably would have still been corrupted by it.  Even Frodo was, after all, and hobbits were unusually resistant to the temptations of the Ring.

The reason there's such a big difference between The Hobbit and LotR is that The Hobbit was written for his children.  It's a kids' book.  LotR was not.  So it's paced differently.

I won't deny that some parts of LotR are very slow, though.  :)  Heck, have you tried The Silmarillion?  Great stuff if you're interested in the world and history of Middle-Earth, but it's rather like reading The Bible.

>Great stuff if you're interested in the world and history of Middle-Earth, but it's rather like reading The Bible.

Quite true. That's something I find in a lot of the books I read, though -- I'm more interested in the world the story takes place in than the story itself. One example, if anyone has ever heard of him, is Paul Edwin Zimmer. He only wrote 4 books, and they were pretty much straight-up heroic goblin-slaying, but the world he set his stories in had a lot of potential. Shame he never got to do more with it.

i fell in love with the hobbit/LOTR through books on tape (the mind's eye theater dub) which i'm sure will have everyone laughing at me.  books were great, movies were pretty good.

>>6
see 26.  tom doesn't give a fuck.

>>16
the climax happens at mount doom.

>>17
the point is made over and over again that someone like faramir (together with all the guys he commands) has no chance of getting through mordor and destroying the ring.  it has to be a small party, hobbits are small, lucky, and resourceful.  again see 26, the ring corrupts rather quickly.

yes 28, I do laugh at you. My brother pointed out what you said to me and I said "no, that can't be right". then I re-read what you said.

Who has enough free time to listen to LotR via books on tape? Do you spend a lot of time in the car? Are you a traveling salesman.

I admit I liked the movies better also, by the way. The only bad part about translating it to a movie is that after Mount Doom I was ready to leave the theater. Movies aren't supposed to be structured with so much after the climax.

>>29

i always like to listen to something when i'm going to sleep, i just like to have some noise on but not a TV because i like to close my eyes.  talk radio or books on tape are the best, and there's plenty of great books in that format available for free at your local library.  the minds-eye theater dub is, of course, abridged.  12 tapes, 20-25 minutes a side, doesn't take that long.

I just finished The Hobbit and it was totally rad.

What a ringing endorsement...

>>28
To say there was one climax in a book is silly. Short stories and small novels have one climax.  long books and series like LotR have multiple climaxes and multiple intertwining plots. Throwing the ring into mount doom was one of many climaxes in the story and maybe the one most built up to in the story but by no means the "CLIMAX" of the book or series.

I CAME

tolkien is for geek!

>>1

plz die in a fire.

If you want a sucky thread to die, don't bump it.

I liked the books when I read them in 6th grade, but I can't stand the idea of reading them again..there're just way too many boring parts and too much uninspired language. They're not as bad as silmarilliwhatevah though.

For the record, I love the movies.

I only wish sage worked for the entire thread, not just the last post.

welll, if you've too much time on your hands, you can script together a "power sager" that automatically sages a thread to 999.