Oh noes, where are you Saruman?

[Bioture]

I really wanted Patrick Stewart to play Gandalf, but whatever.

[Liquid Blue]

I gotta hand it to Christopher Lee..81 years old and still acting. Hot damn that's commitment. He must really love acting.

[genocidal]

Originally posted by Bioture
I really wanted Patrick Stewart to play Gandalf, but whatever.

wtf? ian mcgreggor or whatever is the man. even though he's a 70+ year old gay man.

[froedrick]

Ian Mackellen

[wadi]

Originally posted by Verthanthi
It needed to be dumbed down, you can't keep everything Tolkein put in and keep the average movie going audience.

This made me laugh. Dumbing down Tolkien is like saying to the busboy who just refilled your water, "could you soften it a little bit? That's too strong a drink for me".

[Verthanthi]

And you know it's true anyway.

[Eric is God]

Originally posted by wadi
This made me laugh. Dumbing down Tolkien is like saying to the busboy who just refilled your water, "could you soften it a little bit? That's too strong a drink for me".

Sounds about right. Tolkien was the father of fantasy literature, but his novels didnt really require a high level of intelligence or force you to really think about anything important. They are definetely worht reading (especially The Hobbit) if you havent yet had the pleasure, but they make my favorite series: DragonLance seem complex and lofty by comparison. I suppose you have to be a fantasy nerd to understand what that means.

[Liquid Blue]

The first 3 Dragonlance books are good stuff; I didn't like the Test of the Twins trilogy though. I didn't even bother to read the rest of the series after TotT, it wore me out on the Dragonlance universe.

[Sleepy Weasel]

Tolkiens books are definitely accessable without a huge level of intelligence (I read the hobbit in 2nd grade, the trilogy in 3rd), but come on, you can't seriously believe DragonLance is more complex than Tolkien. Don't get me wrong, I loved Dragonlance, I read like all 40 of them that were out when I was in middle school, but they aren't written anywhere near as well.

It takes something special to write a series of books that can be enjoyed by kids, by grandparents (my 83 year old grandmother is probably a bigger fan of Tolkien's books than I am), and yet be highly respected by english teachers and professors. The language, creativity, style puts it on such a higher literary level than something like say Harry Potter. You don't have to be a genius to follow the events that take place in the story, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of depth to the book.

My favorite fantasy series right now is George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. It's great.

[Verthanthi]

He was refering to the fact that people have SEX in Dragonlance books.

[Eric is God]

When it comes to the story line and plot twists, yes DragonLance is definetely more complex than Tolkien's books. I own roughly 50 books of the series and have read most 3 times over, they dont offer any deep philosophical insight, but there is some great symbolism and foreshadowing if you own enough about the world it all takes place in. Anyways, I wasnt really knocking Tolkien's writing style or the sufistication level of his books .... just that the world and story he created are quite simplistic compared to other fantasy genres. Thats probably why the LOTR novels were a perfect choice for a movie series.

Oh and the Sword of Truth series I love at the moment also provides a much more "adult" fantasy world. Tonnes of detailed violence, sex, and the characters are faced with tonnes of harsh realities, which rarely ever work out to happy endings. Although the books tend to drag on before reaching the climax.

[Epinephrine]

That's too bad... well I guess you can't put everything into the movies or else they'd be like 5 days long =) Imagine if they sang all the songs.. oh man!

I'm not much into fantasy except for LOTR+The Hobbit.. but since Sci-Fi is usually grouped together, I'd say my favorite series (except for LOTR) is Foundation by Issac Asimov.

-Epi

[Epinephrine]

Originally posted by Bioture
I really wanted Patrick Stewart to play Gandalf, but whatever.

I wanted Sean Connery... apperently they asked Sean first, but he'd never even heard of LOTR and he rejected it Oh well Ian McKellen has done an amazing job with it so it's all good.

-Epi

[Liquid Blue]

You do realize that after the first 3 arcs of the story, the rest of dragonlance is fanfiction, right? I'm 90% sure the authors of the original stuff didn't write all those dragonlance spin-offs.
(1st Arc)- First 3 Dragonlance Books

(2nd Arc)- Twin trilogy

(3rd Arc)- Second Gen mofos (still need to read this arc but I'm too lazy/uninspired to do so)

Again, I'm not positive but I do remember my friend (who's read a good number of the books) say that most of the books out there aren't by the original creators of the Dragonlance series.

[ÆNIMA]

I think what he means by dumbing down Tolkein is by leaving out the stuff that isn't needed for a movie. For example...all the history involed. There is much history about Middle-Earth, and only people who are dedicated choose to learn it...not to mention the languages that Tolkein created. He was a genious.

I should also add to my paragraph with no points that complexity isn't tantamount to quality.