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Comment by metroholografix | Hacker News Reader

I found the LOTR movies completely missed the essence and magic of the books and I see them as little more than cliche-ridden hollywood garbage. I can't possibly imagine Tolkien being happy about such depraved debasement of his life's work.

The only adaptation of Tolkien's work that I think does justice to it and captures part of Tolkien's spark, are the albums of the Austrian black metal band "Summoning".

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Watching Leg-o-Lamb surf in the battle of Helm's Deep kinda ripped me back to "this is just a movie". Jackson should just snip that out and burn the footage of it.

These days, I tend to just put LotR on with the sound off, as moving wallpaper.

You should try the Russian subtitling of Helm’s Deep for some comic relief

In the "Letters of Tolkien" you see a couple of references to screen-plays where he's very critical of changes, condensing, etc. But also a memorable entry in which he says:

"Stanley & I have agreed on our policy : Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alterations."

Tolkien sold the movie rights to both the Hobbit and LOTR in 1969 for £100,000.

Source is an interesting interview with Christopher Tolkien in Le Monde: https://web.archive.org/web/20180709130054/https://www.world...

... which is translated from the French original: https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-...

Finally somebody other than me who is aware of Summoning. They are awesome. "The Passing of the Grey Company", "Land of the Dead", "Mirdautas Vras", "Nightshade Forests" and "Kor" all evoke specific scenes from the books for me.

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