Movies to Books, An Odd Experience

[TokingTolkien]

Just wanted to share the experience I personally had, and see if anybody felt something similar...

I was introduced to LOTR through the movies (18yo when the first released) and then read the books a few years later. I have always been a reader, more into history books than anything else. And while reading these histories, especially ancients like Herodotus or Livy, I was always aware of the fact that what I was reading and what actually happened were not necessarily the same thing, varying of course per author, subject, and time. And of course I always had the daydreams of being able to go back and see what the truth was (who really stabbed Caesar first? What did he actually say, if anything? etc etc).

So, with all that in my head somewhere, when I started reading the LOTR books a strange thing happened. I felt like the movies were actually the history book that I had read, the story as it survived through the millennia, but that the books were my trip back in time, to see what had actually, truly happened. It seems and felt counterintuitive, but that was part of the fun. Just wondering if any other movie to book fans felt something similar?

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I first read the books decades before the movies, so I can't comment, but it makes sense.