On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Horn, John wrote: > I'm going at 4 p.m. this afternoon. Took the day off from work in honor of > the movie and everything. Can you get more geeky than that? Other than > wearing hobbit feet or something. (Which I am NOT doing!)
Lucky bum. Alas, still hot with shame for being used by Lucas and Ep. 1 a few years ago, I steadfastly REFUSED to allow myself to give LoTR hype any attention. Until the last couple of days, that is, when all the reviews started pouring in, but by then it was too late. Still, I've just finished rereading the books, and that was a lot of fun. It seems to me to be a good idea to have the original firmly in mind so that I'll see Jackson's version as an interpretation rather than as something authoritative. I'd rather see the movie thinking, "but that's not in the book" than read the book and think, "but that's not in the movie!" Possible spoilage: One change I think will work well is the decision to give Arwen a greater role in the movies. I notice that in LoTR Tolkien does almost nothing to establish the relationship between Arwen and Aragorn until the very end, and parts that my memory had interwoven into the story proper actually only occur in the appendices. It seems to me that the ending won't make much sense to "virgin" moviegoers unless something more is done to show why and that Arwen and Aragorn are in love in the first place. On the other hand, I have great fears about the handling of the ending of the third movie. But I won't find out about that for a couple of years... Marvin Long Austin, Texas
