A big subject of debate among lord of the rings fans is whether the books or movies are best. Personally, I think that the books are better. What do you think about this?
Books all the way. As cool as the movies are, they books are the things that really immerse you in Middle Earth, and contain so much more content than what is in the movies. (And every time our family watches a movie, we can't stop heckling it. ::) ) Frodo was too wimpy, ARAGORN was too wimpy (the person who played Boromir would have been great actor for Aragorn), Marry and Pippin were too childish, etc.
Yep the books are better. The movies are good, but the books are better.
Books! (However, I LOVE watching the extras on ALL the movies. The miniature work is sooo pretty!)
I LOVE the books, but the movies seemed to have captured more action. Now the hobbit I prefer the book, but LOTR the movies by just a small hair.
The reason I like the books more is because they have more detail than the Movies. Also, the movies leave out a pretty important scene, which is the capture of the shire by Saruman and his ruffians. The movies leave out Tom Bombadil too, but I think he's a fairly pointless character anyway :P
QuoteBooks all the way. As cool as the movies are, they books are the things that really immerse you in Middle Earth, and contain so much more content than what is in the movies.
Completely and totally agree!
Quote from: Izeroth on August 09, 2014, 08:08:49 AM
The reason I like the books more is because they have more detail than the Movies. Also, the movies leave out a pretty important scene, which is the capture of the shire by Saruman and his ruffians. The movies leave out Tom Bombadil too, but I think he's a fairly pointless character anyway :P
But the whole part in the forest with Tom Bombadil was so interesting.
Quote from: The Skarzs on August 09, 2014, 06:54:13 PM
Quote from: Izeroth on August 09, 2014, 08:08:49 AM
The reason I like the books more is because they have more detail than the Movies. Also, the movies leave out a pretty important scene, which is the capture of the shire by Saruman and his ruffians. The movies leave out Tom Bombadil too, but I think he's a fairly pointless character anyway :P
But the whole part in the forest with Tom Bombadil was so interesting.
But did anyone else find him really creepy? I never trusted him and I was happy when they left his house.
Tom Bombadil is freaking awesome! His nature is a bit weird, yeah, but he's a fun fellow (for bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow!)
(I made a rhyme. :P )
He's also strongly implied to be a god, I personally think he's a manifestation of Orome or Eru
Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow
Bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow
Green was his girdle and his breeches all of leather
In his tall hat he wore a swan wing feather
He lived up under hill where the withywindle
Ran from a grassy well down into the dingle
Definitely not Eru, but Bombadil being Orome would be extremely interesting...
Tolkien himself described Bombadil as an 'enigma'.
C. S. Lewis (author of the Narnia series, as well as Tolkiens friend) actually thought Tom Bombadil should be removed because he seperated from the main plot. Tolkien insisted on having Bombadil in the books.
Good for Tolkien! Bombadil ROCKS.
Quote from: Izeroth on August 10, 2014, 07:03:14 AM
C. S. Lewis (author of the Narnia series, as well as Tolkiens friend) actually thought Tom Bombadil should be removed because he seperated from the main plot. Tolkien insisted on having Bombadil in the books.
Awesome picture, Ize. ;D
Omigosh yes! How cute!
Revive!
With The Hobbit, I prefer the movies. With LotR (although I'm still reading TRotK), I prefer the books. Mostly. Some things I like better in the movies, like the condensing of timelines, the fact that Sam doesn't call Frodo 'Master,' the fact that Frodo doesn't call Sam 'lad,' and the fact that Sam and Frodo seem to be closer in age.
Also, Tom Bombadil is weird.
With the Hobbit, I vastly prefer the book. I also prefer the LotR books to the movies. And yes, Tom Bombadil is weird but anyone powerful enough to consider the One Ring unimportant is awesome in my book
Tom Bombadil is supposed to be wierd. Even the elves don't know what he is.
Like Ize said, he's considered pretty widely to be an omnipotent god. But he is a pretty funny god. ;D
Valar of funniness?
His wife I believe was supposed to represent the changing of the seasons.
I do so like the films :D... haven't read the books in quite a few years, but books usually are better for being the 'original' and most immersive. I really need to re-read the books. I remember some parts were a bit drag-y, otherwise most readable.
I liked the appendices in the ROTK book.
Quote from: Izeroth on August 09, 2014, 08:08:49 AM
The movies leave out Tom Bombadil too, but I think he's a fairly pointless character anyway :P
YOU TAKE THAT BACK.
But seriously, though, I can understand why. He pops out of nowhere, does things with the Ring NODODY should be able to do, and then POOF disappears.
Interesting characters add to the story nonetheless. (It is explained in the book why the ring has no power over him and how he is able to treat it like a normal ring, so I won't go into that here.)
Also, if one may notice, the style of writing has changed significantly over the past century, heck even in the past thirty years, so having someone pop in then out may have been the style.
Quote from: The Skarzs on March 20, 2015, 03:07:16 AM
Interesting characters add to the story nonetheless. (It is explained in the book why the ring has no power over him and how he is able to treat it like a normal ring, so I won't go into that here.)
Also, if one may notice, the style of writing has changed significantly over the past century, heck even in the past thirty years, so having someone pop in then out may have been the style.
Not uncommon at all, actually. In Romantic era fiction (of which LOTR is arguably the last true example) , having a strange, powerful character show up, help the protagonist(s) and suddenly leave is a common mark of the genre.
The movies were really cool and I heard the books were cool too.
I tried reading them twice now, but I guess it is just not the writing style I like. Maybe i'll write some big review later
(first try I got up to them lost in the forrest)
(second try I got all the way up the near the end of Bree)
FINISH THEM.
I find it annoying that barley anything happens for the first 150 pages and so much could have been happening. To many loose ends too.
You're too impatient. ;D It's setting the scene, building the world. There's a charm to it that makes it so unique.
Bah humbug
I thought the LOTR books were very good, but I had watched the movies first so I always kinda leaned more toward them. It would be close though.
As for The Hobbit, I actually liked the movies a lot better than the book. I've read the book once and thought it was good, but... I don't know. I like the LOTR books better. Just my personal opinion.
The writing of the LOTR books is horrible. Tolkien was a good storyteller, but a trash writer. The two are not the same. The movies are pretty good, they chopped out a lot of the unnecessary bits.
I do really enjoy The Hobbit book, but I couldn't make it through the first movie.
How dare you.
Quote from: Cornflower MM on August 04, 2019, 04:55:29 AM
The writing of the LOTR books is horrible. Tolkien was a good storyteller, but a trash writer. The two are not the same. The movies are pretty good, they chopped out a lot of the unnecessary bits.
I do really enjoy The Hobbit book, but I couldn't make it through the first movie.
I pretty much agree
Quote from: Cornflower MM on August 04, 2019, 04:55:29 AM
The writing of the LOTR books is horrible. Tolkien was a good storyteller, but a trash writer. The two are not the same. The movies are pretty good, they chopped out a lot of the unnecessary bits.
I do really enjoy The Hobbit book, but I couldn't make it through the first movie.
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. It's not even subjective as to whether or not Tolkien is a great writer, he's objectively good. It's fine if you don't like it, but saying it's bad is just wrong!
There is no "objectively good" when it comes to writing.
I tried doing The Fellowship of the Ring and, save for the story arc with Tom Bombadil, I kind of struggled getting through the story. I'm all for a rousing adventure but this one just wasn't my cup of tea for some reason. That said...
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow,
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master.
Hi songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
I can never help but hum the song to myself!
Same, except I sing the:
"Green was his girdle and his breeches all of leather
In his tall hat he wore a swan wing feather
He lived up underhill where the Withywindle
Ran from a grassy knell down into the dingle."
Bit. And I don't know any of the lyrics after that.
I also sing The Man in the Moon Stayed Up too Late sometimes.
Such poor appreciation of prose is left to us in these days of impatience and discourtesy. There aren't many now who ever get through a single book by Hugo or Tolstoy. Tolkien was writing in a different tradition than modern fantasy authors- whose prose tends to vary from 'decent' to 'simple' to 'mind-numbingly awful.'
There is value in being direct. Tolkien wrote in the tradition of epic myth, and that is certainly impressive and worthy of praise. But it adds a layer of distance between the story and the reader, making it more difficult to immerse yourself in. When I read Tolkien's prose, I feel like I'm being told what to feel, and no story should do that (his poetry, on the other hand, is amazing). There are plenty of authors working today whose prose is beautiful, but still intimate and immersive.
Mm, there are different types of writing and prose, and I personally have very different experiences with Tolkien than what you have described (which is unsurprising). His writing is not meant to be intimate in this case, it is meant to be expansive- to cover the whole of the human experience and to convey in metaphor that which, oftentimes, cannot be satisfactorily expressed in other ways. I have often, upon reading Tolkien, been surprised at the feeling that I have that- despite the fact that the story being told is expressly fantastic and unreal- there is in it the sense of something absolutely real, something almost transcendent.
That is only my experience, but no one can reasonably argue that Tolkien's work is not poetic, with excellent word choice and unity as well as singularity of tone that distinguish it throughout, if you want to get more technical. A very different style than, say, Brian Jacques, but not lesser because it is less simple.
And in any case, if you wish to say anything about Tolkien's writing, you must take into account the Silmarillion and the Hobbit as much as the Lord of the Rings, and those three works are monumentally different in style and tone (which is another indication of Tolkien's skill).
People tend to forget the Lord of the Rings book (yes, book: it is one book in three instalments) was really one component of a much grander story Tolkien created. If you're just reading for the story, the more tedious detail would be off-putting. If you're there to get a better understanding of the wider Middle-Earth lore, it's all important detail. I lie somewhere in-between: I have read LOTR, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion, but haven't gone further and don't intend to. But that sort of explains why they aren't written in the action-packed style as, say, Redwall- it is storytelling, but it's actually telling a much wider story than what is contained in the books themselves. You can almost compare the writing style to the Bible in some respects- it is more interested in developing genealogy and history, and a lot of the action moments that take up most of the movies are neatly summarised in a few pages (or even paragraphs). Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now. :D
I am currently re-reading the books, and I can still say I prefer them mostly because of the deviations from the books in the movies (especially with Faramir). I also read the books before watching the movies, so I formed this opinion from the start. This is 10000x true for the Hobbit movies, which I honestly can barely stand to watch these days.