Just Because

By Cap8tin, in The World of H. P. Lovecraft

Someone made a movie for the Lord of the Rings a number of years ago. It involved three separate films. I watched each one, and I believe that I did like the movies at the time, however I am not completely satisfied with it now, and I never did end up reading the novel. The point that I am making, is that just because someone has made a film version of the Dunwich Horror, or a film version of the Lord of the Rings, does that mean that it can never be attempted again. I would go for a different Lord of the Rings tomorrow, because I feel that it was misleading and perhaps Dunwich was too, that is an old movie for sure. What I think that should happen is that something like Star Wars can be put aside. It should be abandoned. Now this is a new direction keeping in mind that whatever was done has had less done to it the harder they try, and it will be a shame to lose it all.

I loved the LoTR movies, i thought they were way better than the books personally, the books had to much rambling about things off topic. I think that JR got so immersed in his world that he felt he had to over describe everything, i still have never been able to finish all the books, but from what i hear (and from watching the documentary's) all the people involved in the film were huge JR fans and they made it as accurate as possible. Who cares if Frodo isnt fifty, also are you talking about the seventies Dunwitch horror with Dean Stockwell? Cause i love that movie, true its not the most accurate to the film but honestly in the story Wilber dies in the very start. Not much of a movie really.

Lucas should definitely stop messing with Star Wars :)

The Lord of the Rings movies are pretty good. They do differ quite a lot from the books though. The key people involved may have been Tolkien fans but I think they put what they thought was for the good of the movie's success above keeping true to the books. In no way are they "as accurate as possible".

Most of it is typical hollywood stuff. Bigger action scenes, cutting out "slow" parts or character development that didn't seem necessary to the story, inflating the love interest. Almost everything Arwen does in the movie is made up. Either it never existed at all, or her actions originally were performed by a different character. If you didn't read the books first you won't notice it, but if you're familiar then you're going to jump up and say "Hey, what just happened there!"

If you're interested, take a look at this page for a list of many of the differences:

http://gary.appenzeller.net/FotRDifferences.html

Watching the extended edition versions helps some, as some of the cut scenes are restored and I recommend doing so if you can.

Now, on to Lovecraft... ANY movie can be remade, and if you can at least roughly as good a job as the older version and there's enough of an audience who wants to see it then it seems to me that it would be a good decision to do so. It's BAD remakes that really stick in the craw, someone clearly had no respect for the source material and just tried to mangle it for financial gain most likely.

The problem we face here is the audience bit. We have hard PROOF that people will pay money to see even bad Star Wars movies. I'm sure a new Lord of the Rings would be successful once enough time has passed and if it could be well done. In fact, they're working on The Hobbit right now which is planned to be a 2-movie deal. I've already warned my wife that when both of them are out on DVD we'll be doing an all-day event to watch all five extended edition movies in sequence! She has several years to prepare for this.

I don't know that we have enough audience for Lovecraft though. Those who love the mythos LOVE it, but the public at large is still not that aware of it which is a huge problem for movies. It's going to take some raising of awareness before I think we see much being spent to make mythos films.