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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdavis" data-source="post: 1233447" data-attributes="member: 8704">Particularly when the story is responsible for the formula. I mean where would fantasy fiction be today if it wasn't for Lord of the Rings, yet if written today Lord of the Rings probably wouldn't get published into the genre it basically created. LotR is the formula, it is the holy grail of fantasy fiction, would the next Holy Grail of fantasy fiction get published or would it be sent back because it was too off the wall or didn't match preconcieved notions? Would we even be here at this board discussing D&D if the publisher had sent Lord of the Rings back to Tolkien and told him it was too convoluted to even mess with? Just thought that was a odd little point in one of the documentaries. As far as the purist book arguement goes, well in all actuality I'm sort of a book purist myself but I have the very informative circumstance that I have friends who have never read the books to go see the movies with. Everybody I talked to who hasn't actually read the books has loved the movies(except my wife but she never likes fantasy stuff), after we watch them the ones of us who have read the books talk about what has been changed, for the most part the people who haven't read the books prefer it the movie way, heck one guy decided that he will never go back and read the book as it sounds terribly boring where the movie is so much more fun. When you get right down to it it's not the book purist that Peter Jackson has to please it's the general viewing audience, he didn't want a cult classic movie with a small rabid fanbase he wanted a huge crossover audience of all the vast majority of the people out there who have never read the books. Lets face it most people have never read the books, heck most people really are not fans of fantasy fiction in general. He had to make a movie that would bring in the vast general audience to the theater or else no movie production company would of touched such a expensive production. Do I wish he had stuck closer to the books, oh hell yes, but I do realize that I can't argue with the huge numbers and tremendous amounts of money these movies are making and I can't argue with the significant number of people who are now LotR fans who were totally ignorant of the books before the movies came out. It's hard to say he did it wrong in so many areas when so many people are going to see it and talking about how great it is. A lot of people thought I was nuts for not liking Two Towers in the theater (many of my close friends included) and I have to admit I was in the minority. It's hard to say he's making a mistake with the Saruman scenes when so far everything he has touched has turned into a big mint of gold, of course I'm not in the movie buisness either (my friend with the film degree likes what he does and basically says Peter Jackson is what Lucas used to be when he first made Star Wars and these movies will be as important as Star Wars was to the industry). So I sit through the movies and occasionally twich and wince and for the most part they are pretty good but more important they are all I got. I do like the stuff he added in the extended version and I do understand the changes he had to make, I don't like a lot of them but I do understand their side of it. Heck the first movie had some pretty sizable changes in it too. At least it makes me twich and wince less than the new Star Wars movies do.</blockquote>

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