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And you think Tolkien fans have complaints? - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

June 10, 2000 at 18:54:30

CBS News (among other organizations) is reporting on widespread British complaints about the misrepresentation of history in the popular action/adventure film, "U-571".

As more and more Tolkien fans become alarmed at the mounting number of changes Peter Jackson is making to the base storyline in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", it is always good to remember that the film industry has committed far greater acts of sacrilege.

British citizens who take pride in the fact that one of their own, David Balme (formerly of the British Royal Navy), captured a top secret Enigma encoding device from a German submarine in 1941, before the United States entered World War II. The popular movie, "U-571" (reviewed on Xenite.Org by Dean Kish), retells the story with American sailors taking the German submarine and capturing the prized encryption machine.

The changes Peter Jackson has made to "The Lord of the Rings", even to the extent of making Arwen a warrior and adding plate-armor to Saruman's Uruk-hai, just don't seem to be quite so bad after all. But if Sauron turns out to a man behind a curtain....