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***** The Lord of the Rings: Official Thread *****
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Last: 9 days ago by Brian Earl Spilner
My History of Middle Earth is the three volume special edition. It was easier and ultimately cheaper than trying to dig up all 12 as individual books. Heavy though.
Upon a rewatch of the hobbit trilogy, it is not as bad as I remember. I think I may have even turned off the battle of five armies the first time I attempted to watch it. Some things in the trilogy were done artfully and some were hot garbage.
Dol Guldur fills a huge void even if it is a little hokey at times with the over the top acting by the white council.
Along the same lines, the flashback of thorin and galdalf meeting in Bree bridges the two trilogies nicely.
The mountain's inner visual is very satisfying as well.
The parts of the LOTR appendix and unfinished tales pertaining to the quest for erebor are some of my favorite contextual stories showing important it was for Sauron to not have a stronghold in the north.
The worm drillers, Alfred, overly long terrible cgi and tauriel can almost be forgiven. The elf/dwarf love triangle still cannot be forgiven.
Dol Guldur fills a huge void even if it is a little hokey at times with the over the top acting by the white council.
Along the same lines, the flashback of thorin and galdalf meeting in Bree bridges the two trilogies nicely.
The mountain's inner visual is very satisfying as well.
The parts of the LOTR appendix and unfinished tales pertaining to the quest for erebor are some of my favorite contextual stories showing important it was for Sauron to not have a stronghold in the north.
The worm drillers, Alfred, overly long terrible cgi and tauriel can almost be forgiven. The elf/dwarf love triangle still cannot be forgiven.
I never got the abject hatred. I remember the Tolkien Professor bringing up on a podcast that making The Hobbit into a movie(s) was always going to be tough because of how different the book is tonally from LOTR. Make it consistent with a book and the movie fans are likely to dislike it. Make it consistent with the tone of the other movies and the book fans were going to hate it. Now, for me I'm both. The movies brought me to the books. The move from using more practical effects to an abundance of CGI and the elf romance were silly. The CGI is distracting a good portion of the time unfortunately. Overall, I wanted them to be better but I can still sit down and enjoy them.
I honestly had no problem with expanding the story to include Dol Guldur, or the other stuff that was included.
My main issues were more cinematic based.
1. Having an incredible practical design for the pale orc, the prosthetics DONE, and all that tossed out to make him fully CGI. Absolutely no reason for this, and now he'll always look like a character in an Xbox game.
2. The decision to cut the last movie in two, which gave us one of the weirdest endings in history. They threw in a last minute action scene as a climax for the second movie, which felt rushed and unnecessary, and then end the movie literally in the middle of a scene and right before the thing everyone wanted to see, which was the attack on Laketown.
3. The third movie starts with what SHOULD'VE been the climax for part two, wrapping it up in a few minutes, and then moving on to a two hour battle. All the air was taken out of that scene and nobody ever really remembers it because it's drowned out by the rest of the movie.
4. Reusing/repurposing parts of the LOTR score. Now, let me explain. Normally I would be all for this, since I'm a big movie score buff and the LOTR score is one of the best scores of all time. But, Howard Shore is on the record saying he was getting stuff thrown at him last minute and didn't have enough time to do a "proper" score, and thus ended up reusing some older themes just to finish on time. Example: using the Ringwraith theme for the pale orc attack at the end of the first movie. Admittedly this complaint is a bit esoteric but it's a big one for me. That theme feels completely out of place there and there's no thematic ties between those two characters. I will say that the original music for this trilogy was pretty incredible at times. (And using the Mordor theme for the appearance of Sauron WAS awesome, and gave me chills.)
There's other smaller complaints, but those are the biggest ones for me. There is plenty of good in the trilogy for sure, but if you cut it down to maybe two 2-hour movies instead, you could have two great movies instead of one pretty good one, and two bloated messes.
I think I've heard of a fan edit that cuts it down to a single movie, which I haven't checked out, but I want to watch that some day.
My main issues were more cinematic based.
1. Having an incredible practical design for the pale orc, the prosthetics DONE, and all that tossed out to make him fully CGI. Absolutely no reason for this, and now he'll always look like a character in an Xbox game.
2. The decision to cut the last movie in two, which gave us one of the weirdest endings in history. They threw in a last minute action scene as a climax for the second movie, which felt rushed and unnecessary, and then end the movie literally in the middle of a scene and right before the thing everyone wanted to see, which was the attack on Laketown.
3. The third movie starts with what SHOULD'VE been the climax for part two, wrapping it up in a few minutes, and then moving on to a two hour battle. All the air was taken out of that scene and nobody ever really remembers it because it's drowned out by the rest of the movie.
4. Reusing/repurposing parts of the LOTR score. Now, let me explain. Normally I would be all for this, since I'm a big movie score buff and the LOTR score is one of the best scores of all time. But, Howard Shore is on the record saying he was getting stuff thrown at him last minute and didn't have enough time to do a "proper" score, and thus ended up reusing some older themes just to finish on time. Example: using the Ringwraith theme for the pale orc attack at the end of the first movie. Admittedly this complaint is a bit esoteric but it's a big one for me. That theme feels completely out of place there and there's no thematic ties between those two characters. I will say that the original music for this trilogy was pretty incredible at times. (And using the Mordor theme for the appearance of Sauron WAS awesome, and gave me chills.)
There's other smaller complaints, but those are the biggest ones for me. There is plenty of good in the trilogy for sure, but if you cut it down to maybe two 2-hour movies instead, you could have two great movies instead of one pretty good one, and two bloated messes.
I think I've heard of a fan edit that cuts it down to a single movie, which I haven't checked out, but I want to watch that some day.
I imagine if Jackson (or anyone else) had made a fairly faithful and acclaimed Hobbit adaptation first the pressure would be to make a LOTR film(s) that were very stylistically and tonally in line.Quincey P. Morris said:
I never got the abject hatred. I remember the Tolkien Professor bringing up on a podcast that making The Hobbit into a movie(s) was always going to be tough because of how different the book is tonally from LOTR. Make it consistent with a book and the movie fans are likely to dislike it. Make it consistent with the tone of the other movies and the book fans were going to hate it. Now, for me I'm both. The movies brought me to the books. The move from using more practical effects to an abundance of CGI and the elf romance were silly. The CGI is distracting a good portion of the time unfortunately. Overall, I wanted them to be better but I can still sit down and enjoy them.
However, the fault I see in The Hobbit movies is that they can't seem to decide if they are an adaptation of the lighthearted and charming book of the same name, or a direct prequel to the mature, somber, and serious LOTR narrative (film and books). By and large these films try to be both and succeed at neither, in my opinion.
Nailed it.
Brian Earl Spilner said:
There's other smaller complaints, but those are the biggest ones for me. There is plenty of good in the trilogy for sure, but if you cut it down to maybe two 2-hour movies instead, you could have two great movies instead of one pretty good one, and two bloated messes.
That's my issue with the Hobbit films. I think there was 4 hours worth of filmable, interesting story. Padding it out made it a slog to get through, and with the lighter toned source material, it wasn't a good combination.
Younger kids aren't going to enjoy sitting through 9 hours worth of this stretched out story, and adults aren't going to enjoy 9 hours worth of hobbits splashing down the Disney river ride in barrels either.
I downloaded some re-edited version someone put together that combined all 3 movies to around 3.5 hours of scenes only from the book, and it was actually a fun movie.
They could have done 2 2-hour movies, and it would have been much better. Not to mention, more practical effects would have looked better.
They could have done 2 2-hour movies, and it would have been much better. Not to mention, more practical effects would have looked better.
Here's how I would do it.
An Unexpected Journey:
Trim the fat a bit in the Shire scenes, and basically in every action setpiece.
Cut the stone giants scene.
Lose the Tauriel love story.
Ends with the dwarfs reaching the Lonely Mountain and Sauron revealing himself to Gandalf at Dol Guldur.
Desolation of Smaug:
Obviously cut the entire "chase" scene with Smaug and all the gold.
Have the Attack on Laketown be a climax to Act 1 rather than in the opening 5 minutes.
Lose about 60% of the bloat from the Battle of Five Armies. (There is a LOT of it.)
You might only get down to about 2.5 hours each, but they'll feel pretty lean and mean at that point.
An Unexpected Journey:
Trim the fat a bit in the Shire scenes, and basically in every action setpiece.
Cut the stone giants scene.
Lose the Tauriel love story.
Ends with the dwarfs reaching the Lonely Mountain and Sauron revealing himself to Gandalf at Dol Guldur.
Desolation of Smaug:
Obviously cut the entire "chase" scene with Smaug and all the gold.
Have the Attack on Laketown be a climax to Act 1 rather than in the opening 5 minutes.
Lose about 60% of the bloat from the Battle of Five Armies. (There is a LOT of it.)
You might only get down to about 2.5 hours each, but they'll feel pretty lean and mean at that point.
I want to say Topher Grace gave this one of his edits, but Im not sure.Brian Earl Spilner said:
I honestly had no problem with expanding the story to include Dol Guldur, or the other stuff that was included.
My main issues were more cinematic based.
1. Having an incredible practical design for the pale orc, the prosthetics DONE, and all that tossed out to make him fully CGI. Absolutely no reason for this, and now he'll always look like a character in an Xbox game.
2. The decision to cut the last movie in two, which gave us one of the weirdest endings in history. They threw in a last minute action scene as a climax for the second movie, which felt rushed and unnecessary, and then end the movie literally in the middle of a scene and right before the thing everyone wanted to see, which was the attack on Laketown.
3. The third movie starts with what SHOULD'VE been the climax for part two, wrapping it up in a few minutes, and then moving on to a two hour battle. All the air was taken out of that scene and nobody ever really remembers it because it's drowned out by the rest of the movie.
4. Reusing/repurposing parts of the LOTR score. Now, let me explain. Normally I would be all for this, since I'm a big movie score buff and the LOTR score is one of the best scores of all time. But, Howard Shore is on the record saying he was getting stuff thrown at him last minute and didn't have enough time to do a "proper" score, and thus ended up reusing some older themes just to finish on time. Example: using the Ringwraith theme for the pale orc attack at the end of the first movie. Admittedly this complaint is a bit esoteric but it's a big one for me. That theme feels completely out of place there and there's no thematic ties between those two characters. I will say that the original music for this trilogy was pretty incredible at times. (And using the Mordor theme for the appearance of Sauron WAS awesome, and gave me chills.)
There's other smaller complaints, but those are the biggest ones for me. There is plenty of good in the trilogy for sure, but if you cut it down to maybe two 2-hour movies instead, you could have two great movies instead of one pretty good one, and two bloated messes.
I think I've heard of a fan edit that cuts it down to a single movie, which I haven't checked out, but I want to watch that some day.
I think you hit on the thing that is just apparenty the moment you start watching, which is that the effects aren't up to level of the trilogy. Now maybe technically they were better, but it didnt work as well in the movie imo.
So you're saying all 5 million of these elves are not identical twins?Quincey P. Morris said:
The move from using more practical effects to an abundance of CGI and the elf romance were silly. The CGI is distracting a good portion of the time unfortunately. Overall, I wanted them to be better but I can still sit down and enjoy them.
My understanding is that there are several pretty solid fan cuts in the 2-4 hour range.
I think they worked backwards from an epic trilogy and it led to a lot of bad decisions. LOTR spent years in preproduction, more than a year shooting, and more years in editing, reshoots, and music. You can do epic practical effects in that amount of time; when you bring in a new director at the last minute he has to fall back on CGI.
To be a trilogy, they needed to fill time because the book isn't that long. So you get bloated scenes, especially action scenes. They aren't portraying character, emotion, and plot, it's just 20 minutes at a time of CGI orcs trying to whack green screen actors.
One or two movies could have several iconic scenes each in relatively close proximity, but spread across three movies it's a slog getting from one to the other - like they are doing by accident what LOTR did on purpose.
They did get mixed up on the tone, which is understandable given the conflicting demands of the source material and fan base, but still a flaw.
Epic fantasies apparently have to have a love story and strong female characters, so Tauriel gets two birds with one stone. A love story when the options are twelve dwarves, a wizard, a hobbit, and a bear man seems… well, let's just say the complaints about the log ride from THAT movie would be even louder.
When they mined real story stuff I didn't mind it, as others have said.
I think they worked backwards from an epic trilogy and it led to a lot of bad decisions. LOTR spent years in preproduction, more than a year shooting, and more years in editing, reshoots, and music. You can do epic practical effects in that amount of time; when you bring in a new director at the last minute he has to fall back on CGI.
To be a trilogy, they needed to fill time because the book isn't that long. So you get bloated scenes, especially action scenes. They aren't portraying character, emotion, and plot, it's just 20 minutes at a time of CGI orcs trying to whack green screen actors.
One or two movies could have several iconic scenes each in relatively close proximity, but spread across three movies it's a slog getting from one to the other - like they are doing by accident what LOTR did on purpose.
They did get mixed up on the tone, which is understandable given the conflicting demands of the source material and fan base, but still a flaw.
Epic fantasies apparently have to have a love story and strong female characters, so Tauriel gets two birds with one stone. A love story when the options are twelve dwarves, a wizard, a hobbit, and a bear man seems… well, let's just say the complaints about the log ride from THAT movie would be even louder.
When they mined real story stuff I didn't mind it, as others have said.
They probably did the thing that squeezed the most revenue from the property, so in that respect it was a good call. But I wonder what it would be like if they had changed the medium enough to change expectations - maybe animated instead could have broken the mold enough that they could trust viewers to go in without the LOTR monkey on their backs.
It's been decades since I watched the Rankin/Bass version but did they do a pretty good job of capturing the whole story?
I feel like they left our Beorn.
I'll always have a soft spot for the Rankin/Bass animated version, especially the music. They got most of the story beats; they did leave out Beorn, and I don't think the Arkenstone was mentioned either.
The orcs in the animated LOTR still creep me out.
I watched the Last Unicorn with my kids a couple of years ago. Same animators. So cool to say that style again.
Hobbit
LOTR
The Last Unicorn
Hobbit
LOTR
The Last Unicorn
How does Last Unicorn hold up. I have a 5 year old that loves unicorns but I remember that it was kind of dark.
It is scary as ***** One of my girls bailed out in the first 30 minutes. I'd say they were 7 or 8 when we watched it. The witch Mommy Fortuna is a nightmare and she has some vulture creature that is really spooky.ChipFTAC01 said:
How does Last Unicorn hold up. I have a 5 year old that loves unicorns but I remember that it was kind of dark.
The voice talent is off the charts though - Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Angela Lansbury, Robert Klein, and Christopher Lee. Plus the band America does the music.
I remember being terrified during parts of it as a kid. And don't the vultures have boobs?
The only things I remember about The Hobbit films:
Made a really great impression.
- Inordinate amount of time at beginning in Baggin's house with a lot of stupid dwarf talk and stuff.
- Evangeline Lilly was hot as hell.
- Heroes riding straight up cliff sides on goats or boars(?)
Made a really great impression.
The Misty Mountains song is the highlight of the Hobbit movies for me. I remember seeing that trailer and getting the chills when they sung it.
This, one of my FAVORITE film musical pieces...helloimustbegoing said:
The Misty Mountains song is the highlight of the Hobbit movies for me. I remember seeing that trailer and getting the chills when they sung it.
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Misty Mountains
Riddles in the Dark
Bilbo and Smaug
All great moments. I'd have to rewatch to confirm others.
Riddles in the Dark
Bilbo and Smaug
All great moments. I'd have to rewatch to confirm others.
You mean everyone doesn't love the chase through goblintown?
Ulrich said:
Misty Mountains
Riddles in the Dark
Bilbo and Smaug
All great moments. I'd have to rewatch to confirm others.
Flying on the Eagles
Arriving at Rivendell (with the music from FOTR)
The Necromancer reveals himself as Sauron
The White Council driving Sauron out of Dol Guldur
Yeah.. you have to really **** up to make me upset about seeing Evangeline Lilly.
Dr. Olsen aka the Tolkien Professor is starting a podcast series called Other Minds and Hands about the Amazon adaptation, and I think adaptation more generally, the second age, and whatever else is relevant.
I mean, that is a fantastic trailer.SpreadsheetAg said:This, one of my FAVORITE film musical pieces...helloimustbegoing said:
The Misty Mountains song is the highlight of the Hobbit movies for me. I remember seeing that trailer and getting the chills when they sung it.
I would enjoy a fancut down to the good parts if anyone has a good link.
redline248 said:
You mean everyone doesn't love the chase through goblintown?
I love me some old animated goblin town though.
Well thanks for sending me down the damn worm hole at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning.Cromagnum said:redline248 said:
You mean everyone doesn't love the chase through goblintown?
I love me some old animated goblin town though.
I will now take suggestions for what band should remake "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way"
My vote is for Metallica.
Found Morgoth's Ring on half priced books site for $15. Got my confirmation email and then five minutes later got an email that my order was cancelled as it was no longer available.
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