Watching LOTR for the first time in four years

Irrelevant to some maybe!

Irrelevant from a business perspective, I mean. I like DVD extras myself tho

One of the big reasons I still get netflix DVD instead of streaming is for the extras. Watching some movies without all the extras can feel like a shallow experience in comparison.

halfwise wrote:One of the big reasons I still get netflix DVD instead of streaming is for the extras.  Watching some movies without all the extras can feel like a shallow experience in comparison.

You could make the argument watching some of Jackson's films regardless of extras is a shallow experience anyway

Actually the extras are better than the films....

as far as The Hobbit is concerned the vlogs were 100% more entertaining than the films. love all that backstage stuff.

I'v just watched all the extras from the 3 Hobbit extended films. Loved it.

I was listening to the radio & someone was giving a description of one of the Scottish Islands, Rum, & amongst all the interesting stuff she said, she mentioned the healing qualities of Sphagnum moss. Could Tolkien have known this & used it as "Athelas" ? Just a thought.......

chris63 wrote:I'v just watched all the extras from the 3 Hobbit extended films. Loved it.

How do they compare to the extras from the LotR? I'm wondering how much more there was to say after that.

azriel wrote:I was listening to the radio & someone was giving a description of one of the Scottish Islands, Rum, & amongst all the interesting stuff she said, she mentioned the healing qualities of Sphagnum moss. Could Tolkien have known this & used it as "Athelas" ? Just a thought.......

Or chamomile, or lavender, or echinacea, or ginseng, or hibiscus, or lemon balm, or .....

Mmmm, only Chamomile is like Athelas in appearance, Sphagnum moss is like Athelas & chamomile in appearance.

halfwise wrote:

chris63 wrote:I'v just watched all the extras from the 3 Hobbit extended films. Loved it.

How do they compare to the extras from the LotR?  I'm wondering how much more there was to say after that.

Just good fun to watch. Watching Andy Serkis turn from actor to director and visibly turn into a scruffy tramp in front of your eyes
with the pressure of the job. PJ talking about how he had 3 years of planning for lotr but only a couple of months for The Hobbit.
With Del Toro pulling out he was sort of pushed into the job. I think if he was given the time it would have been a lot better.

yeah they rejected a bunch of early ideas for LotR, and admitted they kept changing it closer to the book.

admitted they kept changing it closer to the book.- Halfy

{{They did! Is there a version I haven't seen? }}

Yeah, the one that didn't show up. We didn't get Arwen fighting at Helm's Deep for example. There was something else that they had tried to change but found it only worked as it came closer to the book, but I can't remember what it was.

{{{"It could've been worse " is not an excuse for what we actually got! }}

Don't knock it!  "It could be worse" is my major motivation for getting out of bed each morning!

Just love that opening music to that vid Figgy It gives you so much...hope, pain, sorrow but, don't give up, it has strength & determination. Either I'm a bit cuckoo, or psychic, a nut job OR, Howard Shore's music is much more than you realise. For me, this music is the best Ive ever heard from a film & I never seem to grow tired of it. Its uplifting & sustaining, its the haunted whispers of a time gone by that has left us only hints & echo's. A time that's still there, reached by tender finger tips. Its there in the half light of a summers dusk. When your in doubt or feeling alone that powerful music, which is 10 times more spiritual than any gospel music Ive heard, just lifts you up & soars you away, to Middle Earth, to Avalon....

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{{"It could've been worse " is not an excuse for what we actually got! }}

I've actually heard that as a defense for Brexit...

On topic Jackson apparently wanted to originally do the ringwraiths with CGI

Rewatched Fellowship. Even grabbed my beat up, yellow paged Del Rey paperback with the Ted Nasmith cover art to compare or refresh my memory on some things. Paid attention for most of the movie. Zoned out and/or rolled my eyes at the dumb stuff. Sean Bean's performance is the only thing that I would consider exceptional in the whole film, apart from maybe the production design.

'dumb stuff'  vous et kidding. its genius from start to finish. dat music, dat feels. cumon..Bilbo..SAM! its bloody gorgeous.

The wizard battle was kinda dumb. I really hated the line "you have elected...the way of PAIN".

I wasn't happy with the Council of Elrond, but that would have been difficult to film in any case and get the proper feeling across. Too much talking. But people jumping up and yelling at each other wasn't the solution. It could have been condensed and stayed dramatic, if they had a great screenwriter. They didn't.

The dump of snow in Caradhras with heads poking out was just cutesy and dumbass.

Is that enough to go on?

The wizard battle was beyond dumb. Especially the last bit where Gandalf is lifted up the spire and is, I assume, slammed into the ceiling. The whole falling staircase in Moria was dumb. Galadriel's nuclear meltdown was dumb. That was a moment where I went back to the book, and yeah they lifted some of the dialogue directly and altered some, but they completely over exaggerated or misinterpreted Galadriel's appearance in the passage "tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible, and worshipful."