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An editor has without discussion moved the article from "The Lord of the Rings: film versus book" to "Differences between The Lord of the Rings book and film series", the edit comment asserting that this is more Wikipedia-like. That may well be; but it is far less like the article.
The article examines the extended debate among critics, scholars and others as to whether Peter Jackson's film series does justice to Tolkien's book. This is not a matter of making a list of differences between film and book in the style of popular websites which note that in scene 27 Frodo had his waistcoat incorrectly buttoned or whatever. Such a thing would not in any case be encyclopedic. Instead, the people cited in the article present their opinions on whether the film has captured the intention and meaning of the book, not least that the book was as Tolkien stated a Catholic work, and as critics have noted full of moral ambiguity (the opposite of a goodies-vs-baddies shoot-out movie) and focused at least as much on the small characters as the big heroes. They came to very different opinions on this question, which the article seeks to describe in all their variety. "Differences between" does not begin to capture this, the subject of the article. I'll reflect on whether I can think up a better title, but the opinions of colleagues would be much appreciated. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:41, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That was me. I moved it. Call it an attempt to be WP:BOLD that backfired. I probably should have started a discussion first for something like moving an article. As for the discussion itself, I'll include my defense of the word "Differences". It's not a straight list of all the small changes made in the adaptation process, but it does extensively address the themes, characterization, plot construction, and imagery through the adaptation process, which are differences in how Tolkien and Jackson tell the story. At the very least, I'm not sure if "film versus book" and "Differences between book and film series" conveys all that different of a meaning to the reader.
As a comparison, the Changes in Star Wars re-releases article is not a comprehensive list of the changes in that series that can be found elsewhere, but rather an overview of the most notable changes with the response they prompted from critics, which is more fitting of Wikipedia than "They made the doors to Jabba's palace bigger".
I think "comparison" might work here, but that (to me, at least) implies a more A-B comparison like one would see elsewhere, which this article isn't. I'm interested in hearing other suggestions as well. HunterAlexBrown (talk) 11:28, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This certainly isn't an A-B diff/comp article, so for me neither form of title would work. The "book and film series" manages to elide the names of both Tolkien and Jackson, as did "film vs book", though the latter had the merit of being short. I'm wondering whether something like Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings doesn't get closer to the topic. Since over 500 million copies of the book have been sold, and perhaps a billion or two people have read it, perhaps eliding Tolkien is tolerable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:32, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
