It was more in his hair than on his face…
As Joe5859 indicated it was more in his hair than his face, but since the hair tended to fall over his face, the effect was the same.
It’s a very minor element in the overall story, so apart from being mildly disgusting, it wasn’t that bad.Yeah, I can totally imagine Jackson’s train of thought: Radagast is an animal-loving kind of character. His original name meant “Bird-friend”. How can we demonstrate that? I know, we’ll put a nest on his head! And, of course, if a person had a nest on their head, you know they’re going to get pooped on. So let’s add some of that to the costume. Fantastic!As Joe5859 indicated it was more in his hair than his face, but since the hair tended to fall over his face, the effect was the same.
Tolkien never gave a full description of Radagast, like he did for Gandalf, so Jackson was free to use his imagination. His imagination doesn’t jive with mine, but then I wasn’t given millions of dollars to make a movie, so I can hardly complain.
Yeah, that bugged me too. I haven’t seen the movie, but I have seen photos and I watched the first trailer. As soon as I saw Thorin onscreen for the first time, I knew this movie was not for me. I can accept a lot of changes in terms of plot and so forth, but that showed me that the filmmakers were not really working inside of Tolkien’s world anymore, they were creating their own world with Tolkien’s ideas as a point of departure. Nothing objectively wrong with that, I guess, but as a Tolkien lover I just couldn’t get interested in it.Honestly, though, I was more offended by the dwarves with minimal facial hair. I mean, c’mon! Dwarves don’t have stubble!
Well, I think the “answer” to the dwarves lack of facial hair is the same as your insight into why Radagast has a bird’s nest in his hair–to make them stand out as an individual characters. Jackson had 13 characters to create that the audience has to be able to identify as individuals, so how do you do that? By making each one’s look very different from one another. He may have been a bit influenced, perhaps unconsiously, by the difficulty some people had telling Pippin from Merry in LOTR. I knew people who couldn’t tell one from the other. So, having 13 characters, all of the same race/species to portray in film that an audience can identify is quite the challenge. I can sympathize with him.Yeah, I can totally imagine Jackson’s train of thought: Radagast is an animal-loving kind of character. His original name meant “Bird-friend”. How can we demonstrate that? I know, we’ll put a nest on his head! And, of course, if a person had a nest on their head, you know they’re going to get pooped on. So let’s add some of that to the costume. Fantastic!
From a movie perspecitve, I can understand it, too. Jackson is trying to juggle a great number of characters and make them memorable to even the casual movie-goer who is completely unfamiliar with Tolkien. Such a trait makes him stand out a bit more.
Honestly, though, I was more offended by the dwarves with minimal facial hair. I mean, c’mon! Dwarves don’t have stubble!
Again, I understand why Jackson would have chosen to do that. 13 guys decked out like Gimli would be more difficult for movie-goers to differentiate between. But it was irksome.
I agree. I do understand why he would have chosen to do those things even while still being annoyed.
I hear ya. Jackson’s modernist psyhological treatment of Faramir truly irked me. I can take a lot of “fudging” in a film adaptation, but radically changing a fundamental character’s MO isn’t one of them. Faramir came off as a “daddy’s boy”, trying to please him all the time instead of what Tolkien had in mind–a son who loved his father but couldn’t violate his conscience to try to please him. Now that would have made a great and memorable character in the films, but Jackson took the easy route and spoiled the character of Faramir all the while trying to redeem him, when he needed no redeeming in the first place. Gak!I agree. I do understand why he would have chosen to do those things even while still being annoyed.
But it was the same with the original trilogy. They are my favorite movies by far, but there are still things about them that irked me. Such is life. I got over it. I’ll get over this, too.
So true. Tolkien’s stories are rich because he presented the realities of who we are and what we need. He showed us loyality to one’s homeland without being overly nationalistic, he gave us sacrifices worth making and for the right reasons, he understood the true strengths of women, our need for something beyond ourselves that are worth livining and dying for, and on and on. What modern works of fiction compare to them?
You and I are on the same page. If I had to choose the one thing that bugged me the most about the LotR films, it was Jackson’s treatment of Faramir.
True enough, and that’s one of the main reasons I’ve always thought that making a live-action movie version of this book just won’t really work. With the old Rankin-Bass animated version, for some reason it didn’t bother me. Maybe because animated characters don’t make the same claims on an audience that live actors do. I don’t know if that makes any sense, it’s the best explanation I can think of.
Watch out - I know you’re not the one who brought up the original trilogy first, I’m just making a general observation. This thread (or another similar one) got into a lengthy discussion of Jackson’s earlier films and the moderator deleted a large number of posts, saying they were off-topic.
When I read the book, I always visualized Radagast as a St. Francis type of character, since St. Francis was always pictured with birds.Yeah, I can totally imagine Jackson’s train of thought: Radagast is an animal-loving kind of character. His original name meant “Bird-friend”. How can we demonstrate that? I know, we’ll put a nest on his head! And, of course, if a person had a nest on their head, you know they’re going to get pooped on. So let’s add some of that to the costume. Fantastic!
From a movie perspecitve, I can understand it, too. Jackson is trying to juggle a great number of characters and make them memorable to even the casual movie-goer who is completely unfamiliar with Tolkien. Such a trait makes him stand out a bit more.
Honestly, though, I was more offended by the dwarves with minimal facial hair. I mean, c’mon! Dwarves don’t have stubble!