> I think, for me, it has more to do with my feelings about the original book. I loved Victor Hugo's "Hunchback", so, even though I also loved Disney's "Hunchback", the incompatibility of the two makes my brain fuse. Both of them are masterpieces in their own medium. Maybe that's why it drives me nuts trying to think of the book and the movie at the same time -- and because, no matter how good the movie was, I don't like thinking that it supersedes the original in the minds of a generation and becomes the "real" story. Even writing this thought makes me question it -- what makes one story realler than another, unless it's being more widely known and more popular? -- but whatever. That's how it made me feel.

Okay. I totally see that. That's a good way of thinking about the weird feelings I still get thinking about Peter Jackson's (as yet unseen by me) adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm a big fan of Tolkien, and something of a "purist." And so it puts me totally off to hear about all of the "changes" made in the movie. Omissions I don't have a problem with - you can't put *everything* from the book into the movie, or the movie would be really long and goofy. It's when things are changed - particularly gratuitously - that I have trouble. It honestly bothers me that Gandalf's big scene at the Ford of Rivendell was rewritten to be Arwen. It would also bother me if Jackson followed Bakshi's lead and pronounced all of the Sindarin names beginning with C (Celeborn, Círdan, etc.) with a soft C sound (e.g., Sell-e-born). Why? Does that make the movie any "less good?" No. But, you're right; even if it were a fantastic, amazing movie, things like that would still bother me. And I think you've established why - because of how much I care for the source material.

> Even if the movie [The Scarlet Letter] ends with the Reverend Dimmesdale becoming a male stripper and Hester becoming the first Puritan in outer space, I won't *care*, because I didn't care about the book.

Heh. It may as well have. And that's *all* I have to say about *that* movie. ;-}

-Daritari