http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,49256,00.html
LOTR: One for the Book
By Declan McCullagh (declan_at_wired.com)
9:00 a.m. Dec. 19, 2001 PST
Arwen Evenstar, elven warrior of Rivendell, snatches a dying hobbit
from his foes and outraces the fell steeds of the dark lord to bear
her frail burden to safety.
With the wraith-riders routed by her magical arts, doughty Arwen (Liv
Tyler) bends over the listless Frodo and bequeaths him a boon beyond
measure: Immortality, her place on the ship that eventually will bear
her kin across the great sea of Middle Earth.
Welcome to the new old world of Lord of the Rings, at least as
imagined by director Peter Jackson in the three-hour film, The
Fellowship of the Ring by New Line Cinema that opened Wednesday.
As any devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic will know soon enough,
Jackson's vision of Middle Earth is not the same as Tolkien's. In the
first volume of the trilogy, Arwen is depicted in only six paragraphs
-- "such loveliness in living thing Frodo had never seen before" --
and as an serene maiden, not a grim princess.
To squeeze the 423-page first volume into a three-hour movie, Jackson
ruthlessly pruned chapters from the book and rearranged the
narrative's flow. (November's Harry Potter film, on the other hand,
was a far more faithful adaptation of its source.)
Jackson discarded prominent characters such as the faun-like Tom
Bombadil, who shows up in three book chapters. Other scenes are added,
like when the obstreperous dwarf Gimli attempts to hack apart the
great ring with his trusty axe. (It didn't work.)
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Dec 19 2001
Intro
