Tell Me Why You Liked The LOTR Movies

halfwise wrote:The Mummy was good, the sequels were lame.  Then the Scorpion King take-off was actually fun.

I thought The Mummy was pretty dull, but dat Rachel Weisz...

I'm writing a paper for my film class about Return of the King. As a film, it's fantastic. I have to analyze Cinematography, Scenography, Editing, Sound, and Storytelling in five different scenes, one scene for each element. What I've found is that each scene has incredible amounts of all five elements done well in them. I see now why it won so many awards. The film making that went behind this was a masterpiece, and in analyzing just a few scenes deeply I'm pulling out little things I'd never have noticed before. For example, the climax of the film is an amazing editing job, showing a parallel between Frodo's story and Aragorn's while also showing that the two scenes have a cause and effect relationship and showing that they are happening at the same time. It amazes me how fantastically everything fits together.

And then there's the hobbit, which is cinematic garbage, especially in the editing department. There is no cause and effect relationship between anything, at least not yet, and there's no coherent chronology in which the story takes place. Bits and pieces are thrown in everywhere just for the sake of them needing to be in there.

Tinuviel wrote:I'm writing a paper for my film class about Return of the King. As a film, it's fantastic. I have to analyze Cinematography, Scenography, Editing, Sound, and Storytelling in five different scenes, one scene for each element. What I've found is that each scene has incredible amounts of all five elements done well in them. I see now why it won so many awards. The film making that went behind this was a masterpiece, and in analyzing just a few scenes deeply I'm pulling out little things I'd never have noticed before. For example, the climax of the film is an amazing editing job, showing a  parallel between Frodo's story and Aragorn's while also showing that the two scenes have a cause and effect relationship and showing that they are happening at the same time. It amazes me how fantastically everything fits together.

And then there's the hobbit, which is cinematic garbage, especially in the editing department. There is no cause and effect relationship between anything, at least not yet, and there's no coherent chronology in which the story takes place. Bits and pieces are thrown in everywhere just for the sake of them needing to be in there.

  I   U

My guess is our Queen has been temporarily forced off the rasberry buckie by Beren and she is therefore delusional- only explanation.   

I'm not talking about it in terms of story. I'm talking about it as a film. Take away the fact that it's been adapted and just look at it for what it is. It's a pretty damn good movie. I know you don't separate the two Petty (or you just can't bring yourself to) so I will let you believe it's the Buckie. But man, it does a lot of things right. Particularly his use of bigatures and minatures. Those were what really rocked. And did he use them in the Hobbit? Nope.

I agree with you on the technical side of things, but I dont think the technical side counts for much if its in the service of that script. Its not enough to save it.
Its not that PJ cant use a camera, I have always rated him precisely for his skill with a camera, it was that which originally drew me into being a fan back in his budget gore/comedy days.
In fact I can still remember the exact scene that blew me away, it a simple but hugely inventive pan shot on the blue shirted zombie type bloke, on a beach, involving having the camera up a pole, it was ridiculously simple, but it was the perfect shot for that moment and genuinely inventive in how he shot it.

The problem lies in his own personal taste being opposite of that of Tolkien who he is trying to convey, Tolkien likes word play, PJ likes fart jokes, Tolkien does character and world building, PJ prefers action sequences and over the top spectacle, he doesn't know when to stop having bright ideas, when to stop altering, when not to add yet another addition that he has suddenly thought up onto an already over-long and over the top action sequences.
And he seems to have become more enamoured with the filming techniques than he is with the end product. The benefits of super HD and 3D seem to me heavily outweighed by the restrictions it has put on the film- the huge amount of work indoors in a green screen stage, having to ditch the models for all cgi, the problems with the colour grading.

That he is skilled as a director I still have no doubt of, there are plenty of individual moments in the LotR's films that are excellent examples of his skill as a director, but taking the entire end product in the round, for me, the technical merits are outweighed by all the underlying problems. Its gloss over a disaster.

I will say it has been a real struggle not talking about the books in terms of the storytelling element, because that to me is most important in all films. I can't stand bland stories. Now I'm just being forced to look at everything else, too. I'm convinced the only reason it won best adapted screen-play were for the Tolkien parts they used.

Now he's trying to re-do what he did with the Hobbit while trying to change it, too. And that's why we end up with a steaming pile of orc crap.

this is genuine. Its not for the press or marketing or any other reason other than they all respected Viggo and Bernard. This is a thousand miles away from the staged Hobbit stuff. This is why LOTR was magical and special.

I think it speaks volumes for Viggo and Bernard in terms of them as people, but I dont think it has any reflection on the film- whose script remains abysmal no matter how nice everyone involved is to each other or how committed they are to the project.

that is just your opinion, not fact.

I think the poorness of the script as an adaptation of the original is more than just opinion, not entirely more than, but not entirely just opinion either.
I do think it is so some degree quantifiable.

my opinion is the script is great.

Yet you express a different opinion of TH script- by the same people, and with the same sort of problems in it, albeit even more evidently.
I dont understand how someone can see the obvious problems in TH script without seeing the similar ones in their LotR's script.

because they are totally different. Anyway we have walked in this particular circle of Dante's inferno quite a few times, and we always end up in the same spot. The spot where you agree with me totally cos you know I am right.   

Yes, there is a difference in that the Hobbit (especially DoS) goes so far off base in every aspect that it's nearly unrecognizable. RotK remains recognizable in most aspects.  It's moderate distortion as opposed to outright torture of the material.

RotK remains recognizable in most aspects.- Halfy

All thats left is the barest outline of the skeleton of the story. The same named people more or less go to the same places, but thats about it.

nope

Well if you set aside it containing half of TT badly squashed, all but dropping the secondary characters from the plot (Gimli and Legolas in particular but also Pippin and Merry- no sea longing, no great friendship and leaving to travel together no relationship with Theoden for Merry, no Beregrond and son for Pippin), rewriting the characters changing their motivations, actions and personalities (Denethor, Aragorn, Arwen, Elrond, Frodo, Eowyn) missing the books major theme (death and the ending of things and their fading), leaving off the entire ending (Scouring/Saurman/Frodo's pain inflicted by continued desire for the Ring) and filling it full of cheap spectacle like Denethor on fire and Legolas surfing along Mumakil, then maybe you are right.

you know I am.   

Problem is I cant just set aside all those problems and pretend they dont exist when they are unfolding right in front of my eyes   

  put your Buckie goggles on then

I didnt know they came off!   

Pettytyrant101 wrote:The same named people more or less go to the same places, but thats about it.

That's all most people ask of the films, though.  It's telling that the most common complaints about LOTR -- no Tom Bombadil, no Glorfindel, the excursion to Osgiliath, "go home Sam", etc. -- all involve characters physically going to different places (or not going anywhere) than in the book.  More fundamental changes to motivation or the shift in focus from Hobbits to Aragorn after the middle of FOTR attract much less attention, even from most self-described purists.  The main exception is when there are really obvious changes to personality, like Faramir or Denethor.

Agreed. Mostly LOTR looks and feels like ME, it only rings strangely when characters you know so well do the 'wrong' things or go to the 'wrong' places. Thats why some people dont like Elves in Helms Deep, or Faramir. But Elves in Helms Deep dont damage the story in my opinion, they dont fundamentally change any outcome, and are largely there just for an emotional punch, ie the Death of Haldir. Faramir however is probably the most problematic of all the changes to LOTR. The changes to Faramir dont ultimately change anything important, but it does fundamentally change his character for the worst and they do go to the 'wrong' place, ie Osgiliath and the Whole daft showing the Ring to the Nazgul sillyness. But apart from that its full on ME. The Hobbit is a completely different matter. From start to finish theres constant and cringemaking twisting and deforming of the characters and the story, very little remains wholesome. maybe 2%. Theres a Hobbit, a wizard and some Dwarves and they go on a quest to a mountain and thats about it.

For me they follow the same basic methods- TH film has an unexpected party at Bag end, Trollshaws, Rivendell and Moon Runes, Misty Mountains, Goblin caves, Gollum, ect in it- all the key points are there.
Just as FotR had the party, Shadows of the Past, the Black Riders, Bree, Weathertop the Ford ect.

The skeleton remains the same, but everything hung on it is different.