The LotR Effect

In the Hobbit 3 thread there was some talk of the LotR series and how much impact it's had.

I'd argue...a lot.

Granted not many fantasy films that came out after were all that good, but the fact remains _a_ton_ have been released since LotR. Clash/Wrath of the Titans, 300, Conan, Dungeon Siege, etc. The list could go on.

Where the impact has been, IMO, is that these were all theatrical releases. Not straight to video (where there's another whole cornucopia of terribleness). LotR money was the spark that has had studios throw out all sorts of sword/magic adventure flicks. Where were these in the 90s?

I guess it could be argued that Gladiator and further back Braveheart (both still fine movies) had a hand, but I group them into the branch that have inspired all the historical fiction epics we've had over the past decade and a half.

Odd, but thinking about it now I feel like there's been a big difference in the type of films Hollywood puts out and that shift started in the early 00's...likely with LotR and Gladiator. Just a feeling.

Anyway, it's sort of easy to see that LotR, and Harry Potter, are what has driven all these damn superhero movies as well as anything else based on a book (golden compass, narnia, perry jackson, all comic films). A studio could do _any_ of these sort of flicks without paying any license or brokering any deals. Why doesn't a studio just make up a few solo superhero flicks, and then have all their heroes meet up in a team film like Marvel has done? there's no reason that only comic based superheroes should get this treatment...

...but there is. LotR has shown that if you film something with an existing fan base, the fans'll go rabid, talk it up, generate interest, etc. Lot's of free marketing and hype.

I'd put the first X-Men film into that category as well. The modern super hero film had it's birth with X-Men, which was a shockingly competent film at the time. It actually holds up pretty well too.

You can see the influence of these films in a lot of crappy genre flicks since that time, everything from 300 to John Carter. More importantly I think smaller movies like District 9, Moon, and Pan's Labyrinth got their green light because of success with these flicks. Hollywood, I doubt, saw this as.. 'let's make fantasy pictures' so much as 'geek culture is profitable, let's make more genre pictures... where's some source material'?

But it's important to note that none of this came out of the blue, they had precedents as well, of course.

LOTR also had a negative influence. Sure a lot of films got funded that may have languished on a shelf otherwise but I also blame LOTR for the modern films inability to tell a complete story in ninety minutes. Sometimes I'll watch a film simply because it sticks to that ninety minute runtime and I don't want to watch something get dragged out to over two hours. Shorter films, like shorter video games, quite often have a focus that really appeals to me. LOTR needed to be twelve hours so it made sense for it to go on and on... but a lot of films since then didn't need to be. 300, in all honesty, should have been about 40 minutes long. They added so much crap to that thing. I wish the trend went the other way...

I though Sin City was a great film and the main reason I liked it was that it ignored proper film protocol. It had three stories that were all pretty short. It didn't try to force any of the stories into a two hour time frame. I was hoping that could continue, more films that are just a series of shorts... but unfortunately that hasn't happened. We all watch TV instead.