Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » Online fandom: Have we gone too far or not far enough? - Page 2

Online fandom: Have we gone too far or not far enough? - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

Publicly I have criticized some of the decisions which have gone into the movies. I have analyzed what we've learned about them and pointed out where the movies diverge from the books. I don't do that to play Devil's Advocate (although people who are close to me do feel I take on that role often enough). Rather, I do so because, well, some things bother me. Not that I'm against the movies, mind you. I've often enough pleaded for leniency with the fans. I think Peter Jackson should be free to tell his story however he wishes. It is his story, and I think it will be a good one. These certainly won't be my movies. Even if everything I suggested were included in the films and released as an Internet trailer, the download time would be so brief people might wonder if there was anything to download at all. Now, my record on discretion has hardly been perfect, so it is fair to say that if I start pointing fingers I'm going to look awfully silly. So this is not about finger-pointing. It's not about placing blame or declaring who is right and who is wrong. I want to discuss where we as a fannish community are going. Who could have foreseen the environment we have created today? There is occasional friction or rivalry. I play the game myself, pointing out that I have the "oldest dedicated source of LOTR movie news on the Web", blah blah blah. We all jockey for the top ranking slots on the search engines, and so on. But we have also been cooperating with each other. We report news that other sites have found, usually giving full credit and links, and several Webmasters agreed to come to Dragoncon to help with the Tolkien and Middle-earth fan programming track, and whenever the news media mentions one of us, usually most if not all of the sites carry the story in some form or another. As online fandoms go we are not unique, except in that we are the fandom for the only trilogy of movies ever to be based on the best-selling novel of the 20th century, written by arguably the most influential author of the 20th century. Online fandom is always courting trouble, it seems. Some television studios have shut down popular Web sites, or forced them to pull certain material. Some literary estates have done much the same thing. A few movie studios have also yanked some strings on occasion.

The copyright of the article Online fandom: Have we gone too far or not far enough? - Page 2 in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish Online fandom: Have we gone too far or not far enough? - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.