Poll: Have you read or seen Lord of the Rings?

I saw the film of the first one. I was so lost it wasn't funny. *shrugs*

I saw the films... but I wasn't lost at all.. what confused you?

(I tried to read the books, but was so bored it wasn't funny. heh. 'course, that was years ago.)

(I tried to read the books, but was so bored it wasn't funny. heh. 'course, that was years ago.)

Same here, really... I got through The Hobbit because I was reading it as part of a group english project in 8th grade. I started Fellowship shortly thereafter, but didn't make it past the tavern scene ("They come in pints?!?!?") before my interest waned.

-- Pauley

i read the hobbit, the silmarillion, & one & a half ring books. i liked the hobbit, then i started reading the next ones... rest were pretty dull.

i read the silmarillion only later cause a boyfriend had loved it & read a passage to me.... i figured if he could read the whiole thing without being a native english speaker, there's no reason i couldn't get through it. but get through it is all i did.

i don't really even remember the books...they just were so dull that they didn't stick in my memory...but the hobbit was wonderful...i think that the other books were just to focused on the intellectual details for a 6th grader...and they require more dedication and time than i have now

er, how exactly does one read the film? subtitles, i suppose..closed captioning...

Heh.. I was going to comment on that, but decided to be nice. Thanks for being the jerk, sheryl!
:D

anytime! that's what i'm here for :D

of course, film has its own language . . you could technically read a film.

or you could just sit back and enjoy the pretty. either way.

of course, film has its own language . . you could technically read a film

Well, yes, but is it a *document*?! ;-)

maybe.

of course, the antelope might be one, too. i don't know if you can read an antelope :P

Haven't you people learned to speak Gordondon yet?

I had to pick just the films, though I did get through 2/3 of the books when I was younger. But I didn't absorb any of it, being 10 at the time. After seeing the first movie I bought the books and got halfway through one but then stopped reading much of anything. I mean to finish them someday but now's just not the time.

I adore the films though.

I need an option for 'read the books *years* ago and don't remember anything about them then got dragged to the films' :)

I had to read them in high school, and then again in college. Didn't care for it then mainly because someone else was dictating the pace at which I was to read. After college, I sat down with the books and read them at my own leisure and was simply blown away; few books have ever had such a profound effect on my life. Not only is it just a well written story, the underlying themes and "message" of the book is just fantastic.

I've read the book (it's actually one book, split into three parts), not counting school, four or five times.

The movies have been good, but for someone who loves the books some of the changes in the two movies thus far were a little annoying. Especially in the Two Towers. Some things I can see why they glossed over to be able to make the movie watchable (and not be 7 hours long), but others (expanding Arwen's role, changing the way the Ents went to war, changing the endgame of the battle of Helm's Deep) were annoying.

but others (expanding Arwen's role, changing the way the Ents went to war, changing the endgame of the battle of Helm's Deep) were annoying.

i'm reserving full judgement until i see the whole movie (so, november 2004? ;) )

but from a character perspective, some of that was necessary.

(do we need SPOILER SPACE here? i have no idea)

to get pippin from the guy who's stealing carrots and alerting cave trolls to a knight of gondor and eventual thain, you have to show some development in the middle third of your story. the tricking of the orc as shown in the book won't do it, because it's too close to the start of the film. the character pacing is wrong. so he needs to show resourcefullness and quick thinking later in the story.

similarly, if you're going to have eowyn - who kicks serious ass in the books and the film - mooning over aragorn - you're going to have to let the audience know why he's not responding. arwen, for that character arc, has to be more prominent than just another chick at the dinner table in rivendell. personally, i think there's been some overkill there. ymmv.

i'm waiting to see how the rest of TTT plays out in ROTK before i have a full grasp on helm's deep. so for now, haldir lives. that is all. (although! the inclusion of the elves serves tolkien's greater theme regarding unity and tolerance blahblahblah.)

now, it can be argued that there were better ways to go about achieving these goals, but from a film perspective - especially in terms of reaching a broader audience - the reasoning behind the changes seems fairly obvious.

of course, i've only read the books twice and i have a slight obsession with the films. so flame away.

I have come here not to flame, but to agree heartily. :) Interesting that this discussion should come up today of all days, as I've been entertaining something similar regarding the Harry Potter books/movies (as you know), but I do think that when making a film adaptation of a book, one has to ultimately serve the best interests of the film if one is to make a good film. What works in one medium does not always work in the other.

i thought that was interesting, too. i was thinking about harry potter more on the bus home, and the great fandom drama surrounding the recent PoA film info - particularly the spin on dumbledore. and the thing is, everything that comes out that pisses off levels of fandom just delights the hell out of me because it screams "VISION!" in big red flashing letters.

*dance*

plus, all of these discussions give both my english major and my film nerd sides a workout, so that's of the good :)

Yes, I've been feeling the same way... well, as you probably already know, due to my (somewhat spoilery) rant. I think we are in the minority, but hopefully PoA will be so good that everyone will forget how much they are supposed to hate it by the time they leave the theater.

I have similarily high hopes for ROTK. Moreso, I suppose, since I already know how much I like Jackson's vision for the films.

I read them in Jr. High (over 20 years ago, for all ya fetuses). I was astonished at how much I remembered when I went to see the first film. I then re-read them before The Two Towers came out.

By the way, I have a serious rant about that movie. It speaks of the two towers as Barad Dur and Isengard. Bullshit. The two towers are Minas Tirith (tower of guard) and Minas Morgul (tower of sorcery), formerly Minas Ithil and Minas Anor (Towers of the sun and moon).

I beg to disagree with you here. I know it says that in the books but that was not written by tolkien but by the publishers. Minas Tirith isn't even in The Two Towers, they arrive in the first chapter of Return of the King. The Two Towers are actually Isengard and Cirith Ungol, the focal points of the action. In the film they moved the Cirith Ungol part to Return of the King.

JRR himself agrees with you, but recognized the problem:

"I am not at all happy about the title 'the Two Towers'. It must if there is any real reference in it to Vol II refer to Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. But since there is so much made of the basic opposition of the Dark Tower and Minas Tirith, that seems very misleading."
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien No 143, dated 1954

Most of the action in the Tower of Cirith Ungol is in ROTK, Frodo just gets taken there in Two Towers, so it seems an odd choice.

Tolkien also considered at least five other combinations of the towers of Barad-d�r, Cirith Ungol, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith and Orthanc, and it seems that he never settled on a definitive identity for the eponymous towers.

Heh, if you see my post below and know anything about me, I am nearly caught up to you. I started reading them in Grade School, which was also over 20 years ago.... I have recently decided to esatblish my own Festival at Falcon Ridge... it will be a week earlier than the traditional festival and will be called Falcon Ridge Fogey Festival. I see it involving RV's (with hook-up for your every need!) instead of tents, assigned padded seating with lumbar supports that recline, plenty of hot bathes, hot food, hot massueses and cold drinks. Oh, and lots of zippy scooters and plenty of "I've Fallen and I Can't get Up" pagers... and I am not talking about Viagra deliveries when I say that!

8^)

I read the books the first time when I was about 10 and started rereading them regularly. For a while it was many times a year. Now it's down to once every few years. It's also a longer job because I'll also reread the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales now.

LOTR really is one long book printed in three volumes for convenience. Is it really one movie divided into three parts? I think it is.

i'm reading the sil now! *hearts*

I read The Hobbit at age 7 and absolutely adored it... big fan of the underdog, am I. I wanted to read The Fellowship right away, but my oldest sister (8.5 years my senior), told me that she had just read it herself, and when she got the the first significant passage involveing the Black Riders, she had to hide in the family bathroom tub covered in blankets, waiting for someone to come home so she did not have to be alone. I'll admit, it shied my away for about a year, then I finally swallowed the lump in my throat, and picked the first book up... I enjoyed it immensely, and, yes, the afore mentioned passage scared the crap out of me... but in that good way that pumps your blood in your ears and pounds the crap out of your Amygdala! (MMMmmmmmm...epinephrine...aaauuuuuhhhh!). I had the rest read before age ten, and agian in H.S/Freshman Undergradute. I have both the Hobbit and the single volume (three in one, like it was originally written) in leather bound and boxed editions, and I even have all of Christopher Tolkien's 12 volume elaborations of Middle Earth history in hardcover and have read the Silmarillion and his other tales and poetry.

*AND*, if any of you are interested, there are two impressive and engaging trilogies (for a total of 6 volumes; the first trilogy is the best!) written by Stephen R. Donaldson that are nearly equally enjoyable, though a bit less romantic and considerably more existential called "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever" which I would enthusiatically endorse to anyone who enjoyed the Tolkien works, either in book or movie form. His Gap Series is equally well written and perhaps even more interetesting (from an Existential perspective), but it caters to more of the SciFi reads, rather than the Fantasy buffs.

Those interested in Fantasy - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - can start here:

Book 1: Lord Foul's Bane

Those of you more interested in SciFi - The Gap Series - can start here:

Book 1: The Real Story

And if you don't believe me, follow the links and read the reviews... I swear this guy is one of the most talented and deserving of modern and *under-read* writers

I have to back Paul up here.

I loved both of those series.

But especially Thomas Covenant.

v.v.good.

There are days where all I can think is "leper outcast unclean".

I need to re-read that series!

I also really like the Belgariad by David Eddings.

Ah, when I had time to read..........

my father inundated me with lotr books as a kid. so, now it's tradition to make my sibs read'em ten times each. we've seen movie one and two about seven times. have a bootleg dvd of number two and the special addition of number one with like, 27 more hours of footage. lol. and now john and danielle have at least two figures of each character, set up in the basement in a huge HUGE battle scene. have we taken a step over the line of pathetic yet?

i made it through the hobbit as an endurance challenge.� when i tried to pick up fellowship, i gave up.� again, and again, and again.� eight times now i've tried to read fellowship and i just can't get through it.� i'm not sure if i'm simply distracted by other things in life or what, but something about the writing style makes me want to go look for something else to do.

i just can't figure out why i, therefore, enjoy robert jordan.� or can read harry potter book number�five in a day and a half.� boggles my mind.

�-= george =-

Last year, I was determined , through hell and high water to actually read the Two Towers before the film opened. And after such, I realized that I really only needed to read aboot three quarters of each section. I have been trying to read return of the king, but I just can't seem to get into it. don't know why.

HOBBITSES!! liek, omg.

*ducks*

(sorry. i just felt it needed to be said. :D)

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!