Pearce and Pacwa

Thanks for the heads up Mr. Pearce, I was able to catch the re-run of it! It was a very interesting episode, I very much enjoyed it!
I was also happy to see you got asked some good questions by the audience, the one that really made me laugh though was the woman who had only seen the films and was asking about the film ents (which she loved), and what they meant; I already knew that the film portrayal of the ents was a goof on PJ’s part, so I was cracking up knowing the woman was going to get a very different answer from you than she expected!

However one of the questions made me want to ask my own of you. You were talking about how PJ had trouble portraying virtue, but was able to do evil very well. Whats funny about that was just a few weeks prior to this, I was on the OneRing.net site (the biggest Tolkien fan site out there), and there was a big discussion over what PJ would do with the Hobbit films, what changes he would make, etc. One of the few detractors there (it seems PJ has won over many Tolkien fans, who go out of their way to defend even his mistakes, sadly) was mentioning PJ’s limitations, and he cited his portrayal of evil as one of them! He said that PJ was only able to convey physically threatening, rather than spiritual, evil. He could only make the monsters bigger, the claws sharper, etc, but he could not portray evil the way Tolkien did, the kind of spiritual darkness Tolkien was so good at doing. He would be afraid of being mauled by Jackson’s monsters, but nothing more, more monster, less demon, nothing of the kind of spiritual warfare present in JRRT’s books. Whats more he cited his horror movie backround as his crutch! The very two things you cited as his good points! (You said his protrayal of evil was well done, and that his being a horror film director probably helped him with that). So I found the dichotomy very amusing!
I sort of straddle between his and your opinion; I think PJ did get the look of evil very right in the films, but after mulling over that man’s comments, I do feel that PJ’s vision of evil was not as good as Tolkien’s. Tolkien’s was….well more accurate. PJ’s was evil to be sure, but not a deep? I think that is what I mean…? Hah! I myself am still confused!
I guess it all gets wrapped up in this: I really enjoyed PJ’s trilogy, it’s my favorite film trilogy, period. BUT, while PJ’s visual saga was good, Tolkien’s was greater, on virtually every single level! Nowadays I kind of kick myself watching the films, because while I really like them, I just keep wishing they were more like the books. Virtually every change Jackson made was for the worse, not the better. He screwed up plot points, ignobled noble characters, left out most of Tolkien’s rich dialogue and replaced it with more mundane speech…the list goes on and on. Like I said I loved the movies…but at the same time it saddens me that PJ was not the faithful steward of the material he should have been.

So what do you make of my ponderings Mr. Pearce? Do you still hold your position on PJ’s vision of evil, or do you think the OneRing.net commenter was on to something?
And what about my own love/meloncholic response to the films? Did you feel anything similiar? And have you ever written a full critique of the films, or at least a comparison between the books and films showing what Jackson got wrong?
I’d very much like to now the answers to these questions! 🙂