The Human Times #2: Adapted for the Screen By...

Written By: Marianne Moro

        While updating a film industry website at my part-time job, I noted there where were about 100 reviews for Lord of the Rings– the bulk of the fan reviews on the website. Very few complaints from avid book fans about the movie how unusual is that. We all know how ardent and vociferous fans like to compare and complain that their fave book, comic, sideshow freak was co-opted and vilified by the corporate money-making machine. The best way to get a cross-section of opinions nowadays is to head to the internet! One especially erudite fan gave a detailed paragraph by paragraph description defending the movie and its faithfulness to the book. Now that's dedication – or a little too much free time.

Well, a few of the more loyal Harry Potter fans are complaining are now voicing their dissatisfaction, but they appear to be in the minority. After the initial 90.5 million dollar week-end, the nitpicking kids came out of the woodwork. Let's face it, anybody who just needs to run out and see a movie as soon as its released wants to like it, and would have to be confronted with a real stinker to complain vehemently.

And Lord of the Rings – how thoroughly bashed was Ralph Bakshi's animated version? It can't be done

cried the purists, Aha!! We've now seen that it could be done quite wonderfully. The worst review I heard came from a critic who said that the film descended into a life or death video game near the end, but that was such a small portion of the film. Its good versus evil, c'mon, what should they do play chess to settle things like in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

What is perhaps the greatest obstacles to filmed epic novels? The authors themselves either make it nearly impossible or demand replication of the novel to the nth degree, as J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The original complaint about Interview With The Vampire was voiced by its author. Anne Rice, who went so far as too take full page ads in the trades to harp about the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat. Of course she took it back later, as the performance turned out to be one of his best and most distinctive. And it took how many rewrites, changes of directors, and overall bickering to finally get the film made?

Realistically, film a book like Lord Of The Rings would take as suggested a mini-series which is a dying form, or so say the networks. Despite recent entries like HBO's Band Of Brothers. Dune was a mini-series – Merlin and assorted others hit the small screen. A mainstay of the 70s and 80s, the mini-series explored novels as diverse as Roots, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, The Thornbirds, all the Stephen King adaptation, have been forgotten after the initial airing. A case of too much of a good thing?

Queen of the Damned, another Anne Rice novel, will be released this spring, with Aaliyah in the title role. Somehow I visualized a Grace Jones from Conan The Barbarian type, not a skinny young girl like the late R & B singer. But it's not necessary to cast an eccentric actor to portray a larger than life character? You don't need a larger than life actor. You just need a good one.

                                                    -30-