Return of the King (this week's must read....)
(newleftreview.org)
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I received recently my copy of LOTR single volume Houghton/Mifflin 50th anniversary edition. The words almost sing right off the page.
...you will find this unbelievable...
...but I have never seen any of the movies...
...that is how much I love and respect Tolkien's work....
I have actually read the series of books 10 times and thought Peter Jackson and the actors really captured the essence of the story and "the fellowship", the struggles, friendship, wonder, etc. Was all there. Sure there were inaccuracies but the love of the story was there.
...that is encouraging, perhaps I will give it a go one day....
I think you should definitely give it a shot.
I think it was about as faithful as one could be in the book to film translation. Some portions were cut and some characters were mashed together to aid in pacing, but I think a great number of the fundamental lessons and morals still transfer over, and do so in an incredibly potent way.
In general, I agree with Tazzurit that it captured the essence excellently. I also would point out that for a great many involved it wasn't just another movie; this is evident in the amount of significant injuries received by cast members throughout filming.
Just take the actor for Aragorn, for example. There is a scene in which he arrives at a pile of burning orc corpses (the ones that had abducted Merry and Pippin) and is supposed to kick a helmet across the camera in his frustration; a cool cinematic blip. PJ was consistently not happy with the take, so they kept running it through time after time until ultimately the actor broke his foot mid kick; instead of ruining the scene, however, he channeled the immense pain into his performance of frustration and lets out this loud yell before collapsing to his knees. That's the take they kept in the film.
That same actor supposedly used his full-weight sword as much as possible (most of the swords had a "full weight" versions for the few scenes where that was required and a "lighter weight" version where it was just a standard prop) to not only improve his performance with it in action scenes but also to further "embody" the character while acting. This of course turned out to be deeply beneficial to him. There was a scene in which he is battling an orc whom was intended to throw a knife safely past Aragorn's head, but in the filming of the scene, the orc guy got makeup in his eyes during the throw and accidentally threw it at the actor for Aragorn's head. With his skills with the blade he had been taught for fight scenes and so on, he managed to deflect the oncoming knife and they continued the scene.
He also almost drowned due to sketchy rigging at another scene.
It's abundantly clear there was a deep passion in the project to try and capture the essence of the original as much as possible. It's definitely not perfect, but it is fantastic.