Not a Great Adaption

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2007)

By 2004 "The Lord of the Rings" had sold more than 100 million copies. It is the best selling fiction book of all time. It is the 3rd best selling book of all time after "The Bible" (more than 6 billion copies) and "Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung" (900 million copies). And yet Jackson obviously thought the novel unfit to become a success at the box-office. He caved in to the commercial needs. A lot of scenes are missing, important scenes even. That could be explained by the need to make the story fit into less than 10 hours of film. But hat is not the only reason. Jackson cut out scenes and even changed part of the message (!) because he wanted to set aside time for additional and prolonged battle scenes to make sure the kids get something to watch (Â„and then it was so cool when Legolas killed that elephant blablabla ..."). Jackson had the chance of a lifetime, not only to adapt such a fantastic story for the silver screen, but also to distinguish himself by not sacrificing the plot for some special effects as so many of his colleagues are doing these days. He failed.