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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.

LotR vs MCU (NOT CinemaDome)

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02 Dec 2016 22:09 #239700 by Michael Barnes
Those are EXCELLENT points John, and that is absolutely true that one of LOTR's primary assets is that Jackson and co. had the utmost faith in the material as literature and they were committed to delivering an adaptation that would do justice to the serious themes and motifs from the novel. It's easy for folks to say that it's "slavish" or whatever, but it is among the greatest adaptations ever not because of its fidelity, but because of its success in presenting the best of the book WITHOUT extraneous material and WITH new material that supports the original work while also making it, well, actually work as a film.

I've never thought of the Nolan films or other superhero movies as "defensive" but I think that is a really insightful perspective on them...I can totally see that, this sort of subtle and not so subtle straining to "justify" the genre elements so that those not so inclined toward them will accept them and regard them seriously.

Maybe this is why the MCU films tend to lack lack a sense of WONDER.
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03 Dec 2016 00:31 #239705 by OldHippy
Oh Barnes... slagging me for the slavish comment... I didn't mean it too harshly, it was simply because I liked Conan a little more and for the sake of a trashdome because people were saying much worse things about Conan. Which I still stand by as a good film.

In any case I do agree that John makes a lot of great point. But the MCU owes much more to the first X-Men film than LOTR. X-Men predates LOTR by a year and it sets the tone for Marvel in a lot of ways. It also allowed us to take the ridiculous seriously and it mostly worked. I think it is a much more important film that is generally recognized. X2 still remains my favourite of all the supers movies (other than Incredibles if that counts). The only wink in the first film is a brief mention of the yellow costumes. Otherwise it's a reasonably serious take on supers. I especially like the Batman movie comments as well, a franchise which I've accused of being embarrassed of it's roots... defensive is probably a better word though.
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03 Dec 2016 00:58 #239706 by Mr. White
Hmmm... I thought John's point about the Nolan films also applied to those early x-man flicks. They were good, but they were ashamed of their source as well...which is why the yellow spandex joke and the all black leather uniforms.

It wasn't until Jackson's unabashed Middle Earth depiction of the LotR books that allowed the MCU to later let fly with all the colors and outlandishness. Maybe the Raimi Spider-man flicks were a test by marvel in a post LotR world, but yeah LotR put an unironic, straight up fantasy world out there for consumption allowing latter genre adaptations to be a bit more faithful.

It's a great point.
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03 Dec 2016 01:26 #239707 by OldHippy
It's a great point, but I generally reject absolutes like that. LOTR wasn't what made it possible in my mind... it was a culmination of many things and LOTR plays a part but so do many other films including X-Men. It's a great point, but I think it puts LOTR on too much of a pedestal as if it's the only thing responsible for what transpired. That's just too much in my mind. It's too absolute. Still a great point though.

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03 Dec 2016 01:32 #239709 by Mr. White
I also like Mike's MCU/pizza analogy because that's how I feel. I'm rarely going to suggest watching one myself, but don't mind going in if someone else brings it up.

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03 Dec 2016 14:14 - 05 Dec 2016 09:37 #239720 by Jackwraith
I think it's an excellent point, but I think JJ's point about a combination of factors is salient, as well. Think about it: How many of us are in our 30s, 40s, or beyond? All of us grew up as geeks/nerds/whathaveyou, but all of us are all adults, some with children, and with money to spend. Why the hell wouldn't we go see a faithful depiction of the Lord of the Rings or the X-Men? That's what we've been waiting for our whole lives. That stuff is popular now because the nerds grew up and become a substantial part of the economy, weaned their kids on it, and they've now become a substantial part of the economy. That stuff sells.

Look at videogames. Wall St. raves about how gamers have created a multi-billion dollar industry. People play games professionally now, to the tune of millions of dollars (the last Dota2 tournament had a prize pool of almost $30 million, with the winning team walking away with $9 million of that. For one tournament.) They do that because there are millions of other people out there that play those games and are willing to pay money to see them played by the best, just like football (both kinds), basketball, baseball, and so on.

I guarantee that a healthy majority of the film critics that were asked to take Jackson's films seriously were people that had read LotR as kids or in college and enjoyed it. Why wouldn't they take those films seriously? Perhaps Batman and MCU stuff is a little edgier in that respect, but I know that a lot of those film critics were reading the Washington Post in 1985 when it carried a literary review of Return of the Dark Knight. This stuff is an accepted part of the culture now and it started happening before the LotR movies, although the latter was certainly a watershed moment for it.
Last edit: 05 Dec 2016 09:37 by Jackwraith.
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03 Dec 2016 14:50 - 03 Dec 2016 18:36 #239723 by wadenels
I think 95% of the movie-going public were only peripherally aware of what The Lord of the Rings even was before the films came out. Medieval fantasy was pretty niche outside of pen & paper RPGs and maybe King Arthur / Camelot kind of stuff, and LotR even moreso. Pile on that LotR is much more fantasy than medieval makes it an even tougher sell. They threw enough money at it, got the right people, and did the right kind of prerelease marketing to make it work.
Last edit: 03 Dec 2016 18:36 by wadenels.

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03 Dec 2016 18:57 #239726 by Hex Sinister
I think that number is way off. Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were highly successful novels. Not on the level of Hairy Pooter but very respectable. Lots of older folks were into it in the 60's-70's or at least heard of it.

LotR over 150,000,000 copies sold
Hobbit over 100,000,000 sold
Lolita 50,000,000
Shogun 25,000,000
Jaws 20,000,000
Catch-22 10,000,000

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03 Dec 2016 23:15 #239732 by wadenels
I know The Hobbit is popular but that number for LotR seems high unless you're counting all sales over the entire series. And if you're counting series then LotR was outsold by Goosebumps.

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04 Dec 2016 03:38 #239737 by Hex Sinister
I just pulled those figures from wikipedia. Lots of kids read the Hobbit though and discover there is "more". Maybe it's just my impression that Lotr had more crossover appeal than would be usual for fantasy.

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05 Dec 2016 07:40 #239808 by panzerattack

John Myers wrote:
But Jackson figure out that if he presented the Lord of the Ring trilogy as something worth taking seriously and that actors behaved the same way, the audience would go along with it.

...

And I don't think you could sell that to an audience before Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy.


Isn't that what Star Wars did in the 70s?
It wasn't until the prequels that Lucas started coming up with baloney to excuse the 'magic' elements of the story.

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05 Dec 2016 08:01 #239812 by JEM
Replied by JEM on topic LotR vs MCU (NOT CinemaDome)
I've watched most of the MCU movies but they're all hugely disappointing in general for various reasons. I was happy to see this video essay on the look of the movies, as it covers a lot of what I felt but couldn't express (not being versed in the technicalities of movie making).

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05 Dec 2016 11:33 #239838 by Gregarius
That's a really interesting perspective to call the Nolan Batman films "defensive." I always thought the explanations of genre elements were there to make it seem more grounded and realistic, to help the audience buy in to the world presented. Burton's Batman didn't care about that, and Schumacher's Batman gleefully rejected it. Nolan's take seemed more like an attempt to bring Batman into the realm of James Bond or Jason Bourne. I guess you could call that defensive, but I saw it more as a progressive move to modernize the character.
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05 Dec 2016 13:46 #239860 by mutagen
Yeah, I don't know that I would call it "defensive" either. The first generation always does the big creative stuff, the next generation dots the t's, crosses the i's, and generally put things on a firmer footing. Not sure why this is, but it isn't just film, it is every human endeavor. I figure that people who take their interests seriously have an impulse to deconstruct them, and make them more rational. I guess this makes it more "real" for them, and maybe also helps to expand their community. This is a definite plus in math/science, but not so much in art/music.

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05 Dec 2016 18:45 #239890 by Sevej
Replied by Sevej on topic LotR vs MCU (NOT CinemaDome)
Having just watched Civil War, I'm still amazed that people rank this one as one of the best MCU movies. The plot goes all over the place, the moviemakers aren't being sure what feelings they are trying to instill in viewer, and the pace is just off. It's still a great movie, but not without some head-scratching.

LotR, on the other hand, just flows perfectly. Utterly enjoyable.

Ant-man is a slow starter, but good toward the end. Guardians was good, but still got that too many plots jammed in syndrome. Dr. Strange is very nearly perfect. The levitating cloak scene is fucking blemishless.

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