Talk:Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings/Archive 1

Archive 1

Title

An editor has without discussion moved the article from "The Lord of the Rings: film versus book" to "Differences between The Lord of the Rings book and film series", the edit comment asserting that this is more Wikipedia-like. That may well be; but it is far less like the article.

The article examines the extended debate among critics, scholars and others as to whether Peter Jackson's film series does justice to Tolkien's book. This is not a matter of making a list of differences between film and book in the style of popular websites which note that in scene 27 Frodo had his waistcoat incorrectly buttoned or whatever. Such a thing would not in any case be encyclopedic. Instead, the people cited in the article present their opinions on whether the film has captured the intention and meaning of the book, not least that the book was as Tolkien stated a Catholic work, and as critics have noted full of moral ambiguity (the opposite of a goodies-vs-baddies shoot-out movie) and focused at least as much on the small characters as the big heroes. They came to very different opinions on this question, which the article seeks to describe in all their variety. "Differences between" does not begin to capture this, the subject of the article. I'll reflect on whether I can think up a better title, but the opinions of colleagues would be much appreciated. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:41, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

That was me. I moved it. Call it an attempt to be WP:BOLD that backfired. I probably should have started a discussion first for something like moving an article. As for the discussion itself, I'll include my defense of the word "Differences". It's not a straight list of all the small changes made in the adaptation process, but it does extensively address the themes, characterization, plot construction, and imagery through the adaptation process, which are differences in how Tolkien and Jackson tell the story. At the very least, I'm not sure if "film versus book" and "Differences between book and film series" conveys all that different of a meaning to the reader.

As a comparison, the Changes in Star Wars re-releases article is not a comprehensive list of the changes in that series that can be found elsewhere, but rather an overview of the most notable changes with the response they prompted from critics, which is more fitting of Wikipedia than "They made the doors to Jabba's palace bigger".

I think "comparison" might work here, but that (to me, at least) implies a more A-B comparison like one would see elsewhere, which this article isn't. I'm interested in hearing other suggestions as well. HunterAlexBrown (talk) 11:28, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. This certainly isn't an A-B diff/comp article, so for me neither form of title would work. The "book and film series" manages to elide the names of both Tolkien and Jackson, as did "film vs book", though the latter had the merit of being short. I'm wondering whether something like Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings doesn't get closer to the topic. Since over 500 million copies of the book have been sold, and perhaps a billion or two people have read it, perhaps eliding Tolkien is tolerable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:32, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Inappropriate deletions

User:Quark1005 has seen fit to delete numerous "unnecessary truisms" and what they consider to be "over-uses" of "the word 'scholar'" from the article. The article was brought to GA back in 2021, i.e. the whole text has passed formal independent review, and it has remained largely stable since that time.

The edits have removed numerous glosses which introduce named individuals, whose opinions are summarized in the article, forming key elements of its structure. Thus "The film scholar Kristin Thompson" becomes the unexplained nobody "Kristin Thompson", and so on for all the rest. Now if as in this case there is a wikilink, I guess we can tell the puzzled reader to go away and read the article at the other end of the link. We can; but it interrupts the reader's flow, instead of allowing them to move smoothly through the text, picking up the key points as they go, so there is a definite downside.

Then, for a different kind of damage, thee is a table with a heading that used to read "Major differences between book and film noted by scholars". This has been truncated without thought to "Major differences between book and film". Sounds all right? But the meaning has been abruptly changed. Scholars are interested in changes of structure and meaning and approach, matters that cause the film version to give a different message from that of the book. Fans, to take just one of several other stakeholder groups, are interested in changes in the list of characters, whether a favourite short speech has been cut, whether someone names a different food, all sorts of trivial matters alongside more major issues. So the words "noted by scholars" aren't some kind of random filler to space out the table width or make the header look more impressive: they are a vital part of the meaning and purpose of the table, which makes no sense – or worse, gives exactly the wrong sense – in the context.

Or there's a paragraph that used to begin "Scholars have stated multiple reasons why a film-maker would need to transform the source text into a screenplay." Now it doesn't. Obviously Quark1005 felt it was just fluff, noise. But the paragraph needs to begin with a statement of what it is about. Otherwise, now, it just dives right into the technicalities without explanation or context or purpose. What might the paragraph be for? It now starts by saying there is a variety of types of writing. Well, why should we be discussing that? Because there is a major transformation that the film-maker has to make! And that's in the first sentence that the editor has decided was just fluff to be removed. Of course, the lead-in sentence has a critical function, to bring the reader to the place where the discussion makes sense to them.

Well, that has taken a bit of time to explain, and those are only 3 of many examples. The rest are, in a word, just as important. I notice for instance that "Some critics and scholars freely admitted ..." has, yes, been truncated to the marvellously vague, incomprehensible, and wildly general "Some freely admitted...". But the phrase was carefully chosen to specify who the "some were", distinguishing specific named groups, and intentionally in that particular paragraph not mentioning other groups of interest who undoubtedly hold different kinds of opinion. Without naming the intended groups who are discussed in the paragraph, the lead sentence is broken, useless, and misleading.

Once again, the whole article has been carefully constructed, formally reviewed for quality, and it has then been through the process of resolving any confusions or infelicities of expression that have tripped somebody up. The text until today was accurate, coherent, and well-polished. Now it is hard to follow, incompletely explained, and frankly rough. All of this is to say, the changes are highly deleterious, and need to be reverted as soon as possible. I do hope that other editors will see that this is necessary, for the kinds of reasons I have given. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

These deletions reduce my comprehension of the text, and I don’t know why someone is messing with a GA like this. Strebe (talk) 18:47, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I'll put it back now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:41, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

This is overall a very good article, but I think the writing could and should be improved in some areas. The two areas that stick out are a) the truistic sentences that open some sections, which make this read more like a high school term paper than an encyclopedia entry, and b) the extreme repetitive use of the word scholar, which is used so many times that it becomes distracting to the reader. If there isn't consensus around the specific edits, I'd be interested to hear opinions on if there are other ways the writing could be improved. No need to take Wiki edits personally; maybe this is the only perfect article on Wikipedia, but probably not ;) Quark1005 (talk) 04:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for discussing. I haven't taken it personally at all, but have carefully refuted your arguments. Leading into paragraphs is necessary, as explained above, when the reader would otherwise not see where the text was going. Distinguishing whether an opinion is from scholars, film critics, or fans is necessary because the mode of discourse is quite different in each case. We could attempt to vary the language ("academics", "researchers", ...) but this is actually deprecated on Wikipedia, and many editors forcibly remove what they consider such unnecessary or flowery variation. As for high school, I've edited down dozens of student efforts on Wikipedia from their full un-Wikilinked glory complete with tangled circumlocutions and uncited conclusions; there's nothing like that here. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

P.S. I've scanned through the article and have slimmed down the "scholars" where it was possible to do so without damaging the sense or leaving people unintroduced. Hope that helps. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:42, 17 May 2024 (UTC)