.
.
Machardi:
B. She was also critiquing a work that was meant to directly connect with a pre-existing and forthcoming work (volumes I and III), by the same 'creators'. She wasn't critiquing a work that was essentially a fan-film of previous works. So while expecting someone who is watching LOTRII to actually have seen LOTRI makes sense, expecting someone who is watching WOTW to have read the original WOTW and seen the original movie isn't entirely senseless, but it makes a lot -less- sense.
C. Part of the absurdity of Dowd's critique was her desire to assert her own contemporary value system (manliness,evil orcs, live and let live, et al) on the world of
Tolkien. The issue of disliking the ending is not one of cultural disconnect, it is one of structural narrative dissatisfaction. Given that the culture of WotW was supposed to be ours, I'm not even sure if a Dowdian mistake (dowdian, lol) could even be made.
Good points. Regarding B: why should we not expect a critical audience who is going to a REMAKE not to be familiar with the original material? And why can we have a greater expectation that LOTR people should have read the books, but not WOW people?
Regarding C: man, you have hit it right on the head about Dowd... she was imposing her contemporary value system on a story that doesn't possibly pertain to that value system. However, I can argue (weakly) that what would have been a more satisfactory ending? Happy survivors, waving goodbye? Scene after scene of people lending a helping hand to unfortunates buried in the rubble? Sounds like a plastic Hollywood ending to me, which is what a lot of us on this forum don't buy. I frankly don't have a clue about that until I see it; but it seemed to me to be surprising considering the original story.
no offense, but I went back and read the last couple chapters of WotW just so I wasn't being a complete ass (or maroon) by responding to your post without a fairly complete frame of reference, and I'm pretty sure you're -almost- entirely wrong.
After reading it, I don't think that "The book ends abruptly" can be used to defend "the movie ends appropriately."
The movie ends with the protagonist being reunited with his family, and then a 2 sentence blurb about what killed the martians.
The end of chapter nine, leaves the protagonist with -his- family, but there's more closure and commentary as Wells uses the opportunity to illustrate how meaningless the Prot's original life was (comparitively) and how impossible it is to try to resume it ( but then comes chapter 10, "The Epilogue" (The bit that was cut from our movie, allegedly)
In Chapter 10, Wells discusses the laboratory experiments on the corpses of the aliens, the attempts to reverse engineer their technology, which would've been interesting but not necessary, but also he discusses several ramifications of the invasion, my favorite being
Will the [Martians] invade again?
Well, maybe I am a maroon after all. I do not remember that material you talk about, my impression from the original was, boof! That's it?! Hmm, I'm going to take my own advice and check it out.
.
Machardi:
B. She was also critiquing a work that was meant to directly connect with a pre-existing and forthcoming work (volumes I and III), by the same 'creators'. She wasn't critiquing a work that was essentially a fan-film of previous works. So while expecting someone who is watching LOTRII to actually have seen LOTRI makes sense, expecting someone who is watching WOTW to have read the original WOTW and seen the original movie isn't entirely senseless, but it makes a lot -less- sense.
C. Part of the absurdity of Dowd's critique was her desire to assert her own contemporary value system (manliness,evil orcs, live and let live, et al) on the world of
Tolkien. The issue of disliking the ending is not one of cultural disconnect, it is one of structural narrative dissatisfaction. Given that the culture of WotW was supposed to be ours, I'm not even sure if a Dowdian mistake (dowdian, lol) could even be made.
Good points. Regarding B: why should we not expect a critical audience who is going to a REMAKE not to be familiar with the original material? And why can we have a greater expectation that LOTR people should have read the books, but not WOW people?
Regarding C: man, you have hit it right on the head about Dowd... she was imposing her contemporary value system on a story that doesn't possibly pertain to that value system. However, I can argue (weakly) that what would have been a more satisfactory ending? Happy survivors, waving goodbye? Scene after scene of people lending a helping hand to unfortunates buried in the rubble? Sounds like a plastic Hollywood ending to me, which is what a lot of us on this forum don't buy. I frankly don't have a clue about that until I see it; but it seemed to me to be surprising considering the original story.
no offense, but I went back and read the last couple chapters of WotW just so I wasn't being a complete ass (or maroon) by responding to your post without a fairly complete frame of reference, and I'm pretty sure you're -almost- entirely wrong.
After reading it, I don't think that "The book ends abruptly" can be used to defend "the movie ends appropriately."
The movie ends with the protagonist being reunited with his family, and then a 2 sentence blurb about what killed the martians.
The end of chapter nine, leaves the protagonist with -his- family, but there's more closure and commentary as Wells uses the opportunity to illustrate how meaningless the Prot's original life was (comparitively) and how impossible it is to try to resume it ( but then comes chapter 10, "The Epilogue" (The bit that was cut from our movie, allegedly)
In Chapter 10, Wells discusses the laboratory experiments on the corpses of the aliens, the attempts to reverse engineer their technology, which would've been interesting but not necessary, but also he discusses several ramifications of the invasion, my favorite being
Will the [Martians] invade again?
Well, maybe I am a maroon after all. I do not remember that material you talk about, my impression from the original was, boof! That's it?! Hmm, I'm going to take my own advice and check it out.
