Is it LOTR or isn't it?

The film conveys the story in an interesting and exciting way and that is what you want. The style of story telling Tolkien uses would never have translated well to the screen and to attempt to do so would have been a foolish waste of money. As for the alterations I suspect they were made for two reasons 1 to get the movie down to a sensible length (if you call 12 hours a sensible length for a movie) and 2 to simplify the story so as someone watching a 12 hour movie can follow it.

How is Gollum black in the books?

I thought it was a good adaptation. The books were too long to try to duplicate it scene for scene, but they did get in most of the storyline. They also did some (no all) good character development, like Golum. Over all I loved the movies and doubt they could have made it any better.

Of course the whole book could not be put onto film; that’s not the question. But having nothing the same? Here are two examples, just picked at random: Aragorn in the books has no resistance to becoming king; he is ready and willing to take his place and proclaims it, and he takes the reforged sword along with him when he leaves Rivendell, showing it off several times to prove who he is and invoke the prophecy. Theoden does not see Eowyn as he is dying because she is lying wounded and unconscious some feet away.

Gollum is referred to numerous times as a black figure slinking along, and someone catches glimpses of something black in the trees.

Books aren’t movies. Good books don’t necessarily make good movies without serious changes. I’ve watched each movie over 40 times and read each book 17 times. I own the extended dvds and have watched all the commentaries. There are very precise reasons why they changed something (climatic problems, interesting but unnecesary plot points, making more interesting characters, needing to combine several book characters into one character in the movie, needing to cut down the huge character list in the books, intertwining separate story lines that don’t converge for a long while, etc). I care that the book and movie have the same spirit – and I full heartedly believe they do. The movies capture the essence of the books and tolkien. LOTR is my favourite book and movie by the way if you haven’t noticed ;)

No need for defense; there’s no attack here. I am just asking: if they are so different, component for component, in what sense are they the same? If they are the same in essence, what is the essence?

I hate it when a book I like is transformed Hollywood style. I haven’t read LOTR so I thoughts the movies were fun. Now I need to read them! Green Mile comes to mind as one that stayed true to the book.

Tolkien describes Gollum as having pale skin. The black figure, I suppose, is a reference to him being seen in the shadows or something.

It has always disappointed me how currently, the Rings saga is defined by the film rather than the books. I read the books long ago before the movies came out, so perhaps that my own imagination picturing the story renders me biased towards the film adaptation, but obviously I’m not that far off, or the only one.

A lot of liberties were taken with the making of the film, and while that is evidently understandable, I was a bit disappointed how the movies seem to retain the gloomiest and most depressing aspects of the story. No Tom Bombadil, no songs…of course we don’t want it to be a musical, and the frequent songs in the books sometimes annoyed me, but the point is, whatever I got from the books wasn’t included in the movies, so I felt a little deceived, but that may just be me, and my interpretation.

For what it’s worth, the movie is awesome, but that whole aspect of warm fuzziness I perceived seemed to have been replaced by dark skies and psycho Nazguls.

Nazguls are fucking awesome though, don’t get me wrong.

With that said, I denno what I’m saying, I just don’t like how the saga is so strongly defined on the film’s evident elements, when there was so much more to the book than flashy battles or fancy one liners.

In the end though that’s just my personal opinion. Technically, they’re both essentially the same since both formats are, dare I say, linked by the concrete impact of the film. As ironic as that is. I’m sure Gandalf could have explained alla that in one flashy sentence though.

I am pleased to have an equal disregard for both the books and the movies.

@Jeruba I’ve read them several times. I too, wished to see Tom Bombadil. I was disappointed that it wasn’t made clear that Merry and Pip were transformed by the drink of the Ents.
Arwen got a bigger role to play, and it wasn’t made nearly clear enough that Boromir was flawed and the blood of Numenor was weak in him while it ran strong and pure in his brother Faramir.
But, the shire looked exactly how I pictured it. Bilbo and his dithering was spot on for me. The companions were true and the essential LOTR, for me, was the battle between good and evil. The feeling of the Riddermark was captured with breathtaking sameness for me. The mines of Moria spewed the filth of Orcs and Isingard fell to darkness the way I pictured it while I read.
I always make allowances because I hate to be disappointed. Seeing what Mr Jacksono did with LOTR gave me hope that someone may, some day, create on film the Wheel of Time series.

@dpworkin I never could get into Tolkien, either…

I never read the LOTR. So, I cannot answer directly.
I was greatly impressed with the first Harry Potter movie. Most of the book is exactly shown on screen! There are a couple small changes, but it is nearly exactly as the book was.
Once they got around to HP4, hundreds of pages of the book had vanished! Important characters were completely deleted, and will end up causing trouble when they finish filming the 7th book.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was practically word for word the book. I was very pleased at how true they stayed, but the movie was a failure at the box office.
Maybe the movie benefited for the changes made to LOTR. I certainly prefer the way Aragorn is depicted in the movie, rather than how you describe him here.

I want to preface that I still haven’t seen the last LOTR movie. One of the things I like about the books is how they don’t play with the themes of good and evil in simplistic ways. We read of characters who wrestle with their capacity for both evil and good. We read how they engage such capacity while battling with their perceived enemies. In the first two movies it felt like the notions of good and evil were simplified into “good people pick the good side” and “bad people pick the bad side”. Of course, I may be remembering the movies wrong and would speak different had I seen the last one.