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× Talk abut Movies & TV here. Just tell us what you have been watching. Have hyper-academic discussions on visual semiotics. Whatever, it's all good.

Thoughts on Peter Jackson's LotR and Hobbit films

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29 Aug 2014 14:12 #186177 by Colorcrayons

charlest wrote: You know what I'd rather watch than Peter Jackson's version of the trilogy/Hobbit?



The effect they used for the Orcs and bad guys is excellent. These films had a surreal, otherworld feel about them that enthralled me when I was younger.


And well they should, as they are not creatures of Arda, but designs of Morgoth's (and later Sauron's) corruption.

They held more truly to the source material, had the fantastic feel which was portrayed in the novels. Golem voiced by Burgess Meredith was a vile creature whome only Frodo could truly pity, and only through true empathy of experience of enslavement through the One Ring. As merely one example.

The Jackson movies, in comparison, lack the depth of emotion the cartoon evoked from the watchers.

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29 Aug 2014 14:19 #186178 by san il defanso
The only problem with the Bakshi version is that it's an incomprehensible mess that has three failures for every success.
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29 Aug 2014 14:21 #186179 by Shellhead

San Il Defanso wrote: The only problem with the Bakshi version is that it's an incomprehensible mess that has three failures for every success.


The sequel that covered the second half of the trilogy (yes, I know what a trilogy is, and there were only two installments to the animated version) was the opposite. Animated by Rankin-Bass, it told the story reasonably well, but was ugly compared to the Bakshi half.

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29 Aug 2014 14:24 #186180 by Shellhead
I must admit that all this talk of the movies now has me jonesing to play the horribly complicated Middle-Earth CCG again. One of my friends has expressed mild interest in giving it a try sometime, and I have the ten challenge decks plus the Balrog decks.

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29 Aug 2014 14:53 #186181 by Grudunza

San Il Defanso wrote: Am I the only person who genuinely loved PJ's King Kong?


I love it, but I remember seeing it the first time and being like, eh, that was fun, and the second (and third) time really appreciating it more. The extended section in the middle where the shit really hits on the island is a pretty amazing action/peril sequence.

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29 Aug 2014 15:59 #186188 by san il defanso
I think that King Kong was one of the final times I really was anticipating a movie, and it didn't disappoint me. I watched it with my best friend the night before his wedding. We were like a couple of 11-year-olds. It only happened a couple more times after that, with The Dark Knight and the final Harry Potter movie.

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29 Aug 2014 16:15 - 29 Aug 2014 16:15 #186189 by Rafael Silva
Wow, the final Harry Potter movie manages to be even worse than the final book
Last edit: 29 Aug 2014 16:15 by Rafael Silva.
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29 Aug 2014 16:57 #186192 by RobertB
King Kong is good, but too damn long. Some of the CGI sequences are also pretty sucktastic. There are a lot of good scenes, though. The King Kong + Ann vs. the T.Rexes was good, and the end of the movie is really good.

The LotR trilogy, I think is the pinnacle of fantasy filmmaking at this time (as Mr. Barnes will attest). For me, where it is weakest is that it's too short without the missing scenes available in the extended versions. 'Too short' is something you don't normally say about 150-minute-long movies. The theatrical release is a lot of running around from plot point to plot point, without covering some background that would be nice to have. The Scouring of the Shire would have been nice to have, but I guess Jackson figured five endings to Return of the King was enough.

I haven't seen the Hobbit movies enough to judge; for some reason I just can't get excited about it. I think that the producers are taking a movie-and-a-half's worth of material and giving us three. But I'm definitely not the Hobbit movie expert.

As for the Rankin/Bass LotR, I think I might have been seriously stoned back then. I couldn't tell you much about it, except that it had some cool rotoscope scenes.

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29 Aug 2014 19:59 #186201 by Jackwraith
I thought the first Hobbit movie was quite bad and only saw the second one because I was on a date and she wanted to see it. They took a 200-page book and turned it into three 3-hour-long films. They're incredibly bloated, completely lacking in tension or suspense, bereft of decent acting other than the superb Martin Freeman, and really pretty boring. When I first heard that they were going to 2, I was like "OK", mostly because they said that they were going to include the scenes of the White Council against the Necromancer. That's completely off-screen in the book and I figured it'd be cool to see. But then I heard "trilogy" (almost certainly because some idiot executive said: "We made millions on the first set! This calls for another one!", as reportedly Jackson was pissed about having to stretch the story that far) and almost knew it was doomed.

So, in the first film, you add in the White Council sitting around talking about the Necrommancer. And talking. And talking. It's 10 minutes of nothing but exposition and obvious playing to roles that they've all done before! Christopher Lee sits there and chews scenery as Saruman because you can him thinking: "I have to pretend to play this straight because the audience knows I'm already corrupt! So, here I am! Playing it straight!" It's fucking awful. And, just like Attack of the Clones, you can see the video games being made as the film is being made. The slapstick routine through the goblin halls and with the Laurel and Hardy Goblin King is tedious unless you have an Xbox controller in your hand. Plus, since we know Hollywood can't do a film without a Noble Hero™, we have to have all kinds of melodramatic setup whenever Thorin sees Azog (or whoever the orc nemesis is supposed to be.) Azog arrives! Close up on Thorin, rage rising. Back to Azog as his lip curls in a combination of bloodlust and disdain! Back to Thorin, rage rising! Back to Azog... Save me, jeebus.

The only good part of the entire first film was, of course, the best part of the book: the riddle game. Then, of course, they butchered what would have been the, likewise, best part of the second film when he tries to play the game with Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch in the most obvious marketing ploy ever, since you can't even hear his voice under all the draconic distortion.) They're contemptibly bad.

The LotR films, OTOH, are fine. They're a big, sprawling epic that have weak points like a lot of other sprawling epics, but they do their job and keep a massive story relatively contained and moving along. Fellowship is, by far, the best simply for the sense of majesty and wonder that it creates as we see the first good visuals of Middle-Earth made since John Howe and it's the best paced of the three. Both Towers and Return drag in spots, but they're still good fantasy films, especially for fans. I agree that there are more interesting stories to be derived from the Silmarillion or times after (like the fall of Arnor) but you go with what (most) people can identify. I think there was great dramatic presentation in Fellowship where he took the time to let the moment sink in and a lot of it had to do with that history, like in the entrance to the great hall in Moria, the music of which is excellent:


Even there, you can see Jackson's bad tendency to keep talking when Sam utters a completely throwaway line that steps on the majesty of the moment. Thankfully, he (mostly) restrains himself and his characters at the Argonath:


Both of those moments would have been just another minute or two for some kind of roller coaster ride or endless blabbing about bullshit in the Hobbit films.

I own The Beastmaster and it's a hilariously schlocky film which, nevertheless, moves at a far better pace than the Hobbit films and, to some degree, keeps the mystery which is an essential part of good fantasy. One of the keys to the entrancing effect of Tolkien's world is that massive amount of history that still resonates through the "current" stories and the mystery inherent to that. These people are all in awe of something that took place thousands of years ago. Furthermore, the magic of the world is a kind of lore that no one but a few (Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, Sauron) really understand. How did Sauron use the ring to restore his power and dominate the others that he helped forge? No one really knows. That's the appeal. In the Hobbit, it's like a D&D adventure. Everything is broken down to its basic elements and everything is explained or direct. There's no magic there. In Beastmaster, we still don't know who the acidic eagle people are or why they're there. You don't have to know. It's a clear deus ex machina, but it's still weird enough to be interesting. We can spend hours watching runaway barrels or listen to Gandalf and Saruman bicker about whether the Necromancer is really a threat, but we can't take a few seconds to add some genuine atmosphere to the story? Fail.
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