Re: Who would you cast?- A fun thread to discuss alternate casting, no limitations.

[halfwise]

It had definite moments.  The main thing is you don't want to miss Minas Tirith on film.  That justifies its existence right there, in my book. Despite Petty's grumps about the Pelennor fields, the city itself is....spectacular. More than you could have wished for in fact.

[Forest Shepherd]

To be honest, I don't have too much of a problem with casting - it's the script that is rubbish.... Though Movie 3 might be brilliant... don't know... still haven't seen it.....

Oh, I thought you meant RotK for a second there!

[azriel]

Orwell, ALL the movies sucked ! I thought they were shit by the barrel load. No one could redeem that film, never, not in a 1000 years. Whether it was fresh new talent or, exceptional actors, The Hobbit was the smelliest sock of the century !! Ive bought some silly stuff when Ive been shopping & wondered why & moaned about wasting money but The Hobbit ??? Doesn't it wake Peejers up in a cold sweat at night over it ? A blind man with the lights turned off would still be traumatised by The Hobbit !

[halfwise]

To be honest, I don't have too much of a problem with casting - it's the script that is rubbish.... Though Movie 3 might be brilliant... don't know... still haven't seen it.....

Oh, I thought you meant RotK for a second there!

That's what I thought and responded to...

[Pettytyrant101]

Despite Petty's grumps about the Pelennor fields, the city itself is....spectacular. More than you could have wished for in fact.- Halfy

{{OI! Those are not grumps!    Those are legitimate crabbit criticisms   Its not just the Pellanor Fields I complain about regards Minas Tirith!- yes the city looks nice but absolutely everything all around it is wrong- the fauna, the climate, the landscape, the rest of Gondor in fact which in the films consists of one big city with no food and one ruined city with no food! No wonder everyone is no bloody miserable there- and thats another thing! Nowhere in PJ's Minas Tirith do I see the spirit of the people represented as Tolkien does via Beregrond- that will to fight to the very last in the belief that some good will survive if good people defend it to the very last, somewhere, somehow a spring will come again. Think of when the Nazgul passes overhead and they despair until Pippin in typical hobbit fashion shakes it off first and rouses Beregrond- thats the spirit of the people of Minas Tirith right there- not what we see in the films- a miserable place with scurrying nameless people and an insane Lord with no Councillors or advisors and who gives so little a fuck about his own people he doesn't not evacuate them- he leaves the women in children in the first circle in the most immediate danger on the front line!! And no one objects- not that there appears to be anyone else of import in PJ's Minas Tirith too object  

Or to be short about- yeah looks nice- everything else, absolutely everything: places, climate, characters, mood, meaning, themes -all fucking wrong!!!!!!!   }}}

[Mrs Figg]

It had definite moments.  The main thing is you don't want to miss Minas Tirith on film.  That justifies its existence right there, in my book.  Despite Petty's grumps about the Pelennor fields, the city itself is....spectacular.  More than you could have wished for in fact.

Gandalf charging out to save Faramir on Shadowfax, the charge of the Rohirrim. They are my all time favourite scenes of all films I have ever seen. and that's in one film.

but there are so many many wondrous things in that film. Eagles, volcanos, Far Green Countries, Arwens with banners, mountains with torches, its endless.....joy.  

fake edit. I thought you meant ROTK too.

oh The Hobbit 3rd film. don't bother.

[Mrs Figg]

Despite Petty's grumps about the Pelennor fields, the city itself is....spectacular. More than you could have wished for in fact.- Halfy

{{OI! Those are not grumps!    Those are legitimate crabbit criticisms    Its not just the Pellanor Fields I complain about regards Minas Tirith!- yes the city looks nice but absolutely everything all around it is wrong- the fauna, the climate, the landscape, the rest of Gondor in fact which in the films consists of one big city with no food and one ruined city with no food! No wonder everyone is no bloody miserable there- and thats another thing! Nowhere in PJ's Minas Tirith do I see the spirit of the people represented as Tolkien does via Beregrond- that will to fight to the very last in the belief that some good will survive if good people defend it to the very last, somewhere, somehow a spring will come again. Think of when the Nazgul passes overhead and they despair until Pippin in typical hobbit fashion shakes it off first and rouses Beregrond- thats the spirit of the people of Minas Tirith right there- not what we see in the films- a miserable place with scurrying nameless people and an insane Lord with no Councillors or advisors and who gives so little a fuck about his own people he doesn't not evacuate them- he leaves the women in children in the first circle in the most immediate danger on the front line!! And no one objects- not that there appears to be anyone else of import in PJ's Minas Tirith too object  

Or to be short about- yeah looks nice- everything else, absolutely everything: places, climate, characters, mood, meaning, themes -all fucking wrong!!!!!!!   }}}

yeaaaaaaah......nope.

[azriel]

Hee hee, do I smell cross fire ?

[Pettytyrant101]

{{{I smell the crabbit truth   - PJ's Minas Tirith has only a very thin surface resemblance to the same section in the book- almost nothing is the same beyond the visuals of the city. The characters are all changed (some like Denethor out of all recognition) or cut, what happens is changed, why things happen is changed and as I said the themes Tolkien uses the character of Beregrond and his son to get across are entirely absent despite being crucial to the mood of that section.
The fact that everything outside the city walls is also visually wrong is a minor sin in comparison to what is done to plot, themes and characters by PJ in Minas Tirith.   }}}

[Mrs Figg]

pity it looks exactly how I imagined Minas Tirith then.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{Dunno how you can say that with a straight face Figg- the surrounds of Minas Tirith are nothing like as described in the book with fields and homesteads and farms and the hillsides covered in vineyards and stuff. None of those things are in the film- the Pelennor has no fields, no farms, no homes, its just a huge flat plain of dust in the film. And the climate should be Mediterranean. Not the same as everywhere else in the north! }}

[Mrs Figg]

Minas Tirith in the film is actually better than the description in the book.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{{{ I'm going to be generous and assume you're on the wine! }}}

[Forest Shepherd]

Pew pew, shots fired!

[Ringdrotten]

I think the grass on the Pelennor field looks about right at least.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{What as in barely present and short yellow and brown when it is? }}}

[Mrs Figg]

[halfwise]

The walls are the wrong shade of white.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{{More like PJ's script is a vivid shade of shite! }}}

[Forest Shepherd]

[Eldorion]

I never cared for how the stonework of Minas Tirith, including its vaunted walls, crumbled like sugar cubes whenever they were hit by the catapults.

Everything about Gondor, including the city of Minas Tirith and its surrounding geography, is smaller than described in the book, but it feels a little churlish to complain about matters of scale given that PJ stretched the capabilities of New Zealand's film industry well past their normal limits in order to achieve as much as he did. I still think he could've included the Captains of the Outlands, though, and had the film!Gondorians have the presence of mind to evacuate Minas Tirith of civilians (all the weirder given that the Rohirrim are shown doing this in TTT).

The walls are the wrong shade of white.

The outer wall was supposed to be black, though to be fair to PJ, this has been consistently ignored by Tolkien illustrators for decades.

[Eldorion]

None of this stops Return of the King from being a great film IMO, even though its story and setting are not as complex and well-developed as in the book. I can't really disagree with most of Petty's criticisms about it being an unfaithful adaptation (though I think Beregond was always going to be doomed in a theatrical film for reasons of length), but I think the films were mostly successful at telling the story they aimed to, Denethor's death scene notwithstanding.

[Orwell]

I must admit, I love the scene where Theoden is rousing his troops and they begin that charge down the hill....

And I actually like bits of the start of TH Movie one. I can live with the song about chipping the plates and even caverns deep. I suspect parts of Bag End were Toro's doing... But things quickly turned to a fouler shade of shite, as Petty says...

[Pettytyrant101]

it feels a little churlish to complain about matters of scale given that PJ stretched the capabilities of New Zealand's film industry well past their normal limits - Eldo

{{I dont think its churlish as all the wide shots of Minas Tirith and the surrounds are cgi. There is no reason at all they could not have had fields, farms, homesteads, vineyards on the hillsides ect and a generally more Mediterranean vibe to the climate and fauna and appearance.
The reason they don't has nothing to do with stretching New Zealand's film industry but about PJ's scripts insistence that bad =dark and grey everywhere, showing shades of grey or light- say a Minas Tirith that has a glimmer of defiant hope, a leader who is both going mad through grief and despair and making competent preparations to defend his city and people to the last none the less- would be too much for a poor viewers mind to deal with and they would become confused and wander off.

And secondly PJ needed a huge big flat area of land to recreate the Battle of Hoth with Mumakil as AT-AT's and Rohirrim as Snow Speeders- and a bunch of fields and farms would have hampered his visual spectacle (as it tramples over the script on the way by).

Just think instead we could have had cgi that looks like Gondor- too scale, with sustainable land for its population- we could have had the other Captains arriving witnessed by Pippin, even if there was no time for Bergrond and son- but it could have been used to convey both the mood of defiance in the people as well as their fears in the numbers being too little- ratcheting up tension.

We could have had the enemy arriving across the fields, ever closer, burning the farms as they come and laying the fire trenches before the siege engines roll up. After the (admittedly good in the films) charge of the Rohirrim scene we could have had instead of the Mumakil and ghosts more gritty, believable, and so more tense fighting which goes on into the night among the burning farms and fields as the army of Gondor pushing out from the gates and Aragorn and co come up form the sea and the Rohirrim fight to meet them.

Instead we got green ghost bubbles scrubbing the place clean and as they are dead already they are invincible-rendering everyone elses sacrifice to that point utterly useless- if the Rohirrim had stayed home it would not have made a blind bit of difference- if all Gondor had done was sat in the top circles and waited it out that would have worked fine- no one had to do anything in PJ's films except for Aragorn- and all he had to do was turn up- he is only fighting for fun as there is absolutely no reason otherwise to fight, he could have sat on the ship till the ghosts were done. Its ridiculous. And people love it!!!! Praise it! say its the best of the three! And thats before taking into account that he fucks the main theme of the book with Frodo on the other storyline!!!! }}}

[halfwise]

The green scrubbing bubbles were the worst of the sins (even worse than Denethor), and there is no forgiveness to be had. But I can well understand wanting a clear canvas upon which to paint a battle with charges and the like, so I forgive the blank slate of the Pelennor. I wouldn't have wanted to deal with that headache either.