TOPICS:
AUG 26, 2007 11:22 PM
AUG 26, 2007 11:29 PM
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
People can talk up the Two Towers all they want, but it's clearly the second best movie. Clearly.
It is clearly the second best of the trilogy.
A diversion!
I can't help it. I've read the books like a dozen times, so to me, Fellowship wins because it takes the least liberties -- because it has the smallest story to tell. But it also nails the mood and the ambience of Tolkien the best, to me, as well. The movies get worse as they go along, in my opinion, because the small changes made earlier start to become cumulative, until you've got Faramir taking the hobbits to Osgiliath(??!) and no scouring of the Shire.
Well, there's that and the fact that the focus of the books is the journey of the Fellowship (well, Frodo and Sam for most of it) and Fellowship is unsurprisingly pretty much that. The next movies spend way too much time on Hollywood action sequences and not nearly enough time on the focus of the story. All the fighting is pretty much to buy time and it's 90% of the screen time, if not more, on the theatrical releases. I mean, I get that. Because it's easily the more cinematic part of the story. But it's relatively unimportant.
I didn't really care for either of the followup movies for those and other reasons. At least, until I watched the extended editions, and those were awesome. (But still not as good as extended FotR.)
AUG 27, 2007 01:00 AM
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
People can talk up the Two Towers all they want, but it's clearly the second best movie. Clearly.
It is clearly the second best of the trilogy.
A diversion!
I can't help it. I've read the books like a dozen times, so to me, Fellowship wins because it takes the least liberties -- because it has the smallest story to tell. But it also nails the mood and the ambience of Tolkien the best, to me, as well. The movies get worse as they go along, in my opinion, because the small changes made earlier start to become cumulative, until you've got Faramir taking the hobbits to Osgiliath(??!) and no scouring of the Shire.
Agreed on all points . Also , don't tell me you don't have time to show the scouring when you do have time to make shit up that wasn't in the books . And I don't mean the " love story " . I can live with the fact that it's a big budget movie & you had to get something in it to appeal to women . I mean the other things Peter put in , in what simply seems a move to make the story his instead of Tolkien's .
AUG 27, 2007 01:23 AM
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
People can talk up the Two Towers all they want, but it's clearly the second best movie. Clearly.
It is clearly the second best of the trilogy.
A diversion!
I can't help it. I've read the books like a dozen times, so to me, Fellowship wins because it takes the least liberties -- because it has the smallest story to tell. But it also nails the mood and the ambience of Tolkien the best, to me, as well. The movies get worse as they go along, in my opinion, because the small changes made earlier start to become cumulative, until you've got Faramir taking the hobbits to Osgiliath(??!) and no scouring of the Shire.
What exactly did you want? Tom Bombadil and all the ridiculously long almost Vogon like poems?
AUG 27, 2007 06:34 AM
AUG 27, 2007 06:55 AM
joker_ said:
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
Keith said:
Subrosa said:
People can talk up the Two Towers all they want, but it's clearly the second best movie. Clearly.
It is clearly the second best of the trilogy.
A diversion!
I can't help it. I've read the books like a dozen times, so to me, Fellowship wins because it takes the least liberties -- because it has the smallest story to tell. But it also nails the mood and the ambience of Tolkien the best, to me, as well. The movies get worse as they go along, in my opinion, because the small changes made earlier start to become cumulative, until you've got Faramir taking the hobbits to Osgiliath(??!) and no scouring of the Shire.
What exactly did you want? Tom Bombadil and all the ridiculously long almost Vogon like poems?
Hey. Tom Bombadil ruled. 
I think it was Instapundit, actually, who said that if fictional characters could sue for defamation of character, Denethor would have a case against Peter Jackson. Peter Jackson turns Denethor into an entirely unsympathetic, disgusting madman. Faramir too, in my opinion. Jackson wastes time adding an extra scene where Faramir decides to give the Ring to his father as a "mighty gift" when he discovers Frodo and Sam in the wild, when in the book Faramir was wise and just enough to understand the hobbit's mission, and earned Denethor's disdain for that.
So things like that. I understand you can't include everything, but don't go changing shit just because. Arwen in the film is basically created from whole cloth by Jackson from parts taken from Glorfindel and others -- in the books it's like:
[Really Early: "Hi, I'm Elrond's super hot daughter. I'll just be over here in Rivendell then."]
[Everything else in between ----------- no Arwen here ----------- ]
[The End: She shows up and gets married off to Aragorn after Sauron is defeated.]
But I guess we need X-Treme!!! Arwen 2000 in the modern world.
So there's no time for the Scouring of the Shire (which Tolkien thought was practically the most important part of the books, and the thing toward which the entire thing was foreshadowing), but there's time for all the scenes that tie up the loose ends created by that omission? (Saruman getting impaled on his own machinery, instead of Gandalf and the Ents mercifully imprisoning him in his tower -- by the way the scene in the books where Gandalf orders Saruman to appear before him -- and Saruman is powerless to resist -- breaks Saruman's staff and then dismisses him like an errant pupil dramatically showed the change in Gandalf's power after his "resurrection".
Also, while we're on the subject of changes that go against huge themes of Tolkien -- one of the biggest was the "fading of the Elves from Middle Earth". Yet Jackson has large numbers of Elven warriors showing up to battle at Helms Deep AND at the Black Gate -- when in the books only Legolas (in the former) and Elrond's sons (in the latter) were present.
Anyway, they're good action flicks, but the ripples from earlier changes just disturb the waters too much for my taste in the later films.
AUG 27, 2007 07:38 AM
AUG 27, 2007 11:26 AM
dammit 'Brosa, I was swooping in here to post Ogre!
Subrosa
San Francisco, CA
July 2004
AUG 26, 2007 11:21 PM