PDWT_12 said:
In fairness Tolkien likely would not have liked his name being associated with the PJ movies but that's less indicative of the movies themselves and more the type of guy the Professor was.
I'm not so sure on that. He was very pessimistic about his works being translated to film, but I think he would have at least accepted Peter Jackson's movies, if not actually liked them. Compromises had to be made between what he wrote and what ended up on film, but I think Jackson approached it with a genuine intent to be as true as possible. I think he also approached it with the same vision and attention to detail that Tolkien did. Tolkien certainly would have wanted some changes, but I think he would have been absolutely amazed at the final product given what he saw in his day in the genre (think **** like Barbarella) and how that tempered his expectations on what the movie industry would do with his work.
Tolkien was afraid his work would be pared down and turned into a cartoon or cheap caricature of itself. I don't think he could have ever envisioned the scale of a lot of what Jackson and Weta achieved. A lot of the sweeping shots of the battle of pelennor fields, isengard, helm's deep, etc simply wouldn't have been possible in his day. Even the attention to detail on the costumes and sets was beyond anything in the 60's. For instance, orcs might have been a black guy wearing paint back then, but in Jackson's trilogy everything about them to the smallest detail is perfected. Hollywood might have filmed the riders of rohan on a soundstage in front of a green screen, but Jackson put together hundreds of horses and fully dressed riders on site in New Zealand for some of the scenes.
And consider, a massive epic like Spartacus or the Ten Commandments cost the equivalent of $120 million today. That's the equivalent of Jackson's
per film budget without even releasing one. I don't think Tolkien ever believed or even considered his work would be given that kind of gravitas. Turning LOTR into 3 movies with a nearly 9 figure budget for each would have been beyond his wildest dreams.
Now, he would absolutely slap the **** out of someone for The Hobbit though.
