February 7, 2003

It's Soooo Easy
Francois

First of all, I would like to say that I'm impressed with the quality of the comments and the level of Tolkien knowledge that can be found in this forum. It's always a pleasure to read, even if one does not agree with the comments made.

I would like to throw in my modest opinion about the new War of Middle-Earth: the war between the book and the movie. I work in the advertising industry (been doing it for 12 years now) and from experience I can tell you how hard it is for a director to put someone else's idea on film. A lot of my friends in the advertising and movie business have seen both films, numerous times, and their reaction has been the same: how the hell did PJ pulled this off! The movies that he made (and keep in mind he's making movies, not writing a book) are extremely well crafted. I don't know how many people have worked on those movies but all of them did an incredible job bringing this story to the silver screen. I don't think that people outside this industry can really appreciate the colossal amount of work that this trilogy is. All this nonsense about PJ doing this wrong or doing that unfaithfully or changing this reminds me of my days in college where we would watch the game on tv and everybody would second guess the coach . It's sooo easy. People putting down PJ should quit whatever jobs they have, go to film school, work as underdogs for years and then shoot LOTR the way they think it should be done. I don't think many of them, if any, could do a better job than PJ. Do you second guess your dentist, or your plummer, or your surgeon when he's about to cut? Usually, if it's not your job, you just keep quiet. Unless you are able to tackle a project of this magnitude and manage to do something equal or better, just shut up and enjoy the show. And if you don't like it, go back to the book. I can only imagine sitting next to you during a screening of The Ten Commandments: «well, in the Book, Moses was left-handed and the stones were light brown, not sandy grey»...

My God, you guys make Trekkies look good.