You should be able to then judge whether or not the movies have done justice to the spirit in which his books were written. Judge for yourself as C. Tolkein may or may not be right.
After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong. It helps to know the mind of the one you are reading.
After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong.
I read this essay years ago (in The Tolkien Reader), and I couldn't disagree more. If the standard is being faithful to the spirit in which Tolkien wrote, I think the movies got a lot wrong and very little right. There's plenty of discussion of this elsewhere in the thread so I won't belabor it, but I'm surprised that anyone could read "On Fairy-Stories" and think that that spirit is what the films portray. The films are Hollywood action movies with a "fantasy" veneer; Tolkien's essay was talking about something very different.
http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien...
You should be able to then judge whether or not the movies have done justice to the spirit in which his books were written. Judge for yourself as C. Tolkein may or may not be right.
After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong. It helps to know the mind of the one you are reading.