By Derek Muller
Special to the Collegian

Books are not film.

While such a revelation may be obvious to some moviegoers, others have apparently become a bit confused by this notion. I do sympathize: movie posters contain words, which are also found in books. Some books have pictures like movies.

But despite the accolades from film critics, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers has become the latest victim of intellectual snobbery and academic elitism, predominantly from those who attend the theater in search of a book.

The most common claim is an irrefutable assertion: books are better than movies. Equally flippant would be a remark that paintings are better than orchestra concerts, or photographs better than theater. If we accept film as an legitimate art genre, then we must hold it to its own standards; if we do not, then I can argue no farther.

The greater question is whether or not a film can be based upon a book or any other idea aside from a pure film script. To hold prose to the same standard is considered preposterous. Is Keats’s poem any less beautiful than the Grecian urn itself? Can oral tradition be transcribed as Homer was? No film seeks to replace a book, just as no written work seeks to replaces its own source of inspiration; rather, it is a distinct interpretation offered to the willing audience.

Of course, most complaints stem from the fact that a film is different than the book. The cries of Clancy and Grisham fans have been lost in the past decade, due to movies which present their dramas in a highly likeable fashion; and Jane Austen and Laura Ingalls Wilder fans have embraced even the cinematic differences as good but, well, different. If your own imagination cannot distinguish between a book and a film, I truly pity you.

Such comparisons apparently only apply to famous and popular recent works. Who, for example, has criticized the classic The Great Escape because it does not live up to Paul Brickhill’s excellent historical narrative? Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has received nearly as much acclaim as Stanley Kubrick’s film.
In foolish critiques, a good movie matches its appropriate books; a poor movie fails to do so.

We should throw out Mission: Impossible for its television basis, X-Men for a comic book, A Beautiful Mind for a real story, all modified on film. And if we throw out every cinematic version of Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde, since live theater ought never to occur on film, we spiral into losing many of the greatest films ever created.

The most ridiculous comeback of the elite stands in the argument, “His vision in the book is impossible to transfer to film.” And that is precisely the argument I have made: books are not movies. A film can have its own merits, its own plot, its own vision, and still be based upon a theme, a premise, or a series of characters put forth in a novel.

Some of the points of the plot may very well have been diminished through an interpretation of the film. While the comic relief of Gimli, the outwitting of the Ents and the trip to Osgiliath may have harmed the greater nature of the film, it harmed the film on its own merits and not by any comparative means.

Perhaps that is why we are now left with a single question: how much may a work be changed before it ceases to be that work? That is, when can we call a work The Lord of the Rings and when does it become Peter Jackson’s filmed version? Certainly, a majority of the characters and names are the same, and the geography of Middle Earth is the same. The ideas of eternal hope, of industry opposing nature, and of numerous religious metaphors still stand out.

We are left with a question for the philosopher, and apparently for the intellectual fop. According to the inconsistent detractors of the film, if any portion of the film changes from Tolkien’s original words, then the film contains no semblance of Tolkien, and the title ought to be scrapped. Instead, I do contest: we ought to examine the storyline as Peter Jackson has presented it. Rather than disparage the fact that plot changes occurred, we exam events by their own merits and follow this story in its own way.

Based upon their own inconsistent methodology, snobs have insisted that their own aesthetic taste may dictate what is good and poor in film. As soon as they reject all films which have been inspired by non-film sources, I may be willing to listen to their arguments.

But as of late, inconsistency reigns, and I await their logic before conceding my position. I have greatly enjoyed reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and I have greatly enjoyed viewing Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.

And I like these books as books, these films as films.

Derek Muller is a junior majoring in English.