Imagination, my butt

Whenever someone adapts a beloved book filled with fantastic locales and scenarios (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc.) you always hear someone else decry the adaptation because "No filmmaker can match the power of a child's imagination." In other words, the images the filmmaker creates can't compete with the awesome images created in a person's mind when they read the material.

This is complete bullcrap.

I have a pretty good imagination, but when I envision literature as I read it, the scale is not particularly impressive. The Battle of the Pellenor Fields invariably doesn't include more than a few hundred soldiers and they all tend to look alike. Hogwarts in my mind never had moving staircases, many different styles of architecture, and magic flitting in the corners of my vision. Frankly, my imagination, as good as it is, is limited in scope. I can't compete with the visual artists, conceptual artists, costumers, set decorators, and directors who create whole worlds on film.

Imagination is fantastic and is necessary for all these worlds to exist. But an individual's imagination just can't compete. So if I never hear any more of that "power of a child's imagination" claptrap, it will be soon enough!

Peter Jackson's "Return of the King"

The same scene in my imagination.