Waterhsip Down

I have not read the book but I was scarred for life by the movie :eek: my sister keeps telling me to read the book because it's a lot better so I think I will do that eventually
 
Loved it, loved it, loved it.

A good friend of mine, Chris Boyce, that lives on the Isle of Wight has a website with photographs of the real-life places mentioned in the book.

Visit the site here: http://www.lionking.org/~watership/

You'll be badly confused unless you realize the "Come see the Real Watership Down!" phrase is a link to the photo galleries.
 
Can anyone ever name a movie that was better than the book. The only examples I can think of is Ben Hur(1959) the movie was better than the book, only because the movie was so good. The Disney The Fox and the Hound was better than the original book, only because it was a totally different story. So the movie of Watership Down was as good as any try compared to the book.
 
I love this book so much. I've read it a million times. I used to call my little brother Fiver, actually.

The rabbit religion and language is so rich an imaginative.

The movie scared me, too, when I was little. I saw it before I read the book.
 
Smaug said:

The cartoon version is like mormon or something though...
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Eh, what?

Anyways, personally I haven't read the book, but the movie is one of my favourites, although I still find the classification questionable. (PG for Bunny disembowelment?

Another tidbit: Did you know Pauline Baynes (who illustrated the Chronicles of Narnia) also did the cover art for some of the editions of Watership down?
Well, now you know ;)

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Are you familiar with Richard Adams' other animal novel, The Plague Dogs? That one was also adapted as a cartoon movie, but with FAR WORSE revisionism than in the case of the Watership Down film. The book of The Plague Dogs has a happy ending, but the animation screenwriters decided to contradict that.

And then there's Shardik: still an animal story, but also a human story. It's hard to convey the sense of this novel in a sentence or two. Set in an imaginary country, it subjects the reader to a LOT of grimness and suffering, as the mysterious bear Shardik alternately causes bad and good fortune for humans.
 
Oh, coincidentally, I have also not read The plague dogs, but own the DVD (Quite interesting how the same animation company did the movie right after they did Watership down..).
I have read about the difference in the ending, however as I have not read the full nove I can not comment on the change itself. As I guess you have read it, what do you say about the change? Does the deus ex machina element have any significance (when does it not...)? Or do you favor the more realistic approach in the movie?

What DOES bug me about the Plague dogs DVD is that most countries only got the cut version.

Also, nope, I haven't read Shardik.
 
Mr. Adams himself did a voice-of-the-author commentary--in rhyme, no less!--when he was getting ready to bring the cavalry to the rescue of the abused and persecuted dogs. He was aware of that element of the readership which would be paranoid about sappy-happy endings. But I do not consider the ending to have been an excessively fluffy ex dei machina (which I believe is the more correct Latin). It had been established long before the end that someone was investigating the lies told about the dogs, so it was NOT outrageous for him to be able to succeed in saving them.
 
Deus ex machina. Because it means "The God out of the machine", a technique for lowering a divine portrayer from clouds in ancient Greek drama.
 
EveningStar said:
Deus ex machina. Because it means "The God out of the machine", a technique for lowering a divine portrayer from clouds in ancient Greek drama.
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The reason why I thought the other version to be more authentic is because I understood the meaning to be more like "a machine from the gods," which would require a declension of the word for a god.

At any rate, Shardik is enough by itself to show that Richard Adams is not a saccharine author; so by all means, let him HAVE a happy ending in The Plague Dogs!
 
I have read both Watership and Plague Dogs. They are both good, but PD was too sad for me to read again; I felt too bad for the doggies. They were so sweet, and so misunderstood. Watership, however, I have read bunches of times and enjoy it very much. The way Adams was able to infuse personalities into these bunny characters was simply amazing.
 
Reading "Watership Down" together was actually one of the early relationship-builders for my Mary and me, back in the Seventies.
 
After recently going though Watership Down on Audiobook I was surprise how similar this book is to C. S. Lewis' book That Hideous Strength in style.
 
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I'm more than halfway through Watership Down now, I'll come and give my opinion once I'm done
 
excellent. i am sure you will give it a big thumbs up. it's charming and moving and everything a good adventure story should be, with bunnies.
 
It is hard to explain why I feel Richard Adam's book and C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength are similar in style. Both Lewis and Adams have a military background so they both use military concepts. They both seem to like military type relations in characters. They both go into dept about describing the environment like rain hand fields. They both have a large knowledge of literature and myth.
 
I never noticed it, but next time I read WD, I will look for this. Perhaps it's just a "British" story-telling style?
 
One of the most important themes for me from Watership Down was the theme of leadership. I found it so amazing that Hazel brought no special talent like Bigwig, Fiver, or Blackberry to the group, except for the talent of recognizing and utilizing others' talents for the good of the community. And with that ability, he is eventually revered as a great leader.

I read this book in high school and created a pencil drawing of what I consider one of the most sublime scenes: Where General Woundwort confers with a henchman on how to take down Watership Down and Hazel goes out to try and arrange a truce. He is mainly ignored and limps back to muster his best defenses. That scene, where Woundwort terribly underestimates Hazel and his warren is a great teaching moment in my estimation.

This book is on my top ten list of all-time favorites.


TimmyofOz said:
Can anyone ever name a movie that was better than the book. The only examples I can think of is Ben Hur(1959) the movie was better than the book, only because the movie was so good. The Disney The Fox and the Hound was better than the original book, only because it was a totally different story. So the movie of Watership Down was as good as any try compared to the book.
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How about Mary Poppins?
 
One of the points I was trying to make about the character relationship in Watership Down being male and military is that of the lack of male-female relationships or romantic. Now this may be a British thing like inkspot said, but we see it in Lewis' work also. Lewis even keeps Mark and Jane (who are married)apart for the entire book of That Hideous Strength so he won't have to deal with male-female relationship. Lewis deals with it only by theory in THS.

I've read almost all of P.L. Travers Mary Poppins books and enjoyed them very much. I wouldn't say the Disney movie is better than the books Greensawmill, though the movie was good.
 
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