Film vs book: an empirical approach

[Dunadan]

There's some great theatre being played out in the "Did PJ improve Tolkien?" thread. Much of it revolves around the notion that a film in some way "hijacks" our imagination and that we are subsequently unable to enjoy the text as much. This seems like a tremendous opportunity to do some first hand research.

Now, I would guess that around 95% of us saw the film after reading the book (possibly numerous times). Therefore, any argument we can put about text vs film is at best conjectural, and almost certainly biased.

Are there any people out there who saw the film first, then read the book? What was your experience of the book? How do your ideas of ME compare with others in this forum?

Does seeing a film constrain the imagination?

Any takers?

D.

[katya]

i saw the movie before reading the books, but it was quite a long time before, and i forgot most of it by the time i read the books or at least didnt know wht was what. however i did have images in my head, like frodo. then after i read the books and the movie came out on ppv i saw it a few more times and it puts images into my head. however i try to keep my original un-movie impressions, which can at times be difficult. i pictured orthanc kind of like a not-crooked leaning tower of pisa, but i keep seeing it as in the movie now. most of my impressions were so different they can't be the same but sometimes i picture elves like legolas, and that bothers me to death. i'm just glad i read ttt and rotk before they came out. sorry if this made no sense. i dont feel like i make much sense at all at the moment so forgive me. by the way i didnt read much of the thread you mentioned so i dont know what you would be talking about and i dont know if i answered properly.

[Erawyn]

I read the books a long time ago, then saw the movie and read them again. The characters now look like the ones from the movie to me, but when i read a book i rarely have clear images of the characters, usually just the surroundings. The movie did not alter the images of the places in ME for me at all though, i still had strong images in my head from when the book was read to me years ago and they mostly have not been changed at all.

[Millane]

i watched the film and then read the books repetedly :)
i got the books in the hope of reading them then seeing the movie but i found it a bit hard to get into.
after watching the movie i got straight into the book and it was great because one thing i hate is reading an awesome book getting it all visualised in my head and watching a movie that destroys all my visuals entirely:mad:
what was good was that i watched the film and had awesome pictures in my head for the books. it cut down on a lot of brainwork which was good. and hey it got me back into LotR again so all's good

[IronParrot]

Hi, great discussion here... perhaps you'd like to continue it in this existing thread (http://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5009) on the same subject.