I also find Serkis' versions of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings very well done: he is really capable of giving a unique voice to each of the characters he is impersonating. Furthermore for me, Serkis movie actor and Serkis audiobook reader are two separate things (connected maybe by marketing and by, clearly, the same rapresentation of Gollum!
My problem, though, with Serkis's LOTR readings, is that he really messed some things up.
Like in choosing catholic-style hymns for the Rohan (Anglo-saxon stand-in) songs and poems instead of Beowulfian or Poetic Edda style readings.
The metres in some of those poems are precisely Anglo-saxon poetry style, and there are some well-placed alliterating syllables and stresses, where if we read and say it out loud we really hear what Tolkien was going for...
but it's all lost in the Serkis readings as hymns: he draws out and stresses on the wrong points because he's trying to perform it in a different metre and style :/
It's particularly disappointing because he definitely has the skill to have pulled it off well
Like in choosing catholic-style hymns for the Rohan (Anglo-saxon stand-in) songs and poems instead of Beowulfian or Poetic Edda style readings.
The metres in some of those poems are precisely Anglo-saxon poetry style, and there are some well-placed alliterating syllables and stresses, where if we read and say it out loud we really hear what Tolkien was going for...
but it's all lost in the Serkis readings as hymns: he draws out and stresses on the wrong points because he's trying to perform it in a different metre and style :/
It's particularly disappointing because he definitely has the skill to have pulled it off well
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