The official thread for Lord Of The Rings - The Return Of The King [LOTR ROTK TROTK ROK] (NOW CONTAINS SPOILERS)

THAT is a LIE. I'm weary of your malcontent.

Wait, only twice? Tsk. (Two times through as it is, four further times through for each of the commentaries.)

Haha yes, without makeup he looks like Pete Burns.

"AND I!"

I'm not very cool about multiple DVD releases myself. Particularly not when they're carefully timed so that people desperate for it will buy the regular version first. Cynical cynical cynical.

I still think it's a bit shambolic.

To my mind, cynical would have been not telling anyone there was going to be an extended version and then releasing one later.

If you got wise after Fellowship, you knew patience is your friend. (And no, I STILL don't have the Extended Edition yet. I'm thinking of my own solo marathon before the 17th)

Hm, couldn't imagine what you mean...

i'll let you know how it is, ned :)

Yes, you will.

Not if they just rent it.

I bought extended boxes for FOTR for $25.99 (which included a free pass to see T2T) and T2T for $26.99.

That's 8 DVDs for $50.98 at a cost of $6.37-ish per. Not sure how much cheaper it can get frankly.

I'm actually not convinced Jackson himself has much to offer as a director, really. Sure, this was a tremendously ambitious project, but beyond getting the project supported and having a decent cast, who could go wrong? The cast are mostly great. Otherwise, it lives on the back of the FX (which are brilliant) and the scenery.

I realised watching The Two Towers how repetitious and banal the directing actually was. I got thinking, 'This has a lot of great things in spite of the direction, not because of it.' Those bloody endless, interminable fight scenes... incredibly boring, drawn-out stuff, in spite of the excelent visual quality. So they (originally) cut a seven-minute scene that was probably quite interesting so we can have more SLASH! CUT! THRUST! WAM! BAM! It could stand to lose more than seven minutes of that junk.

I think it was after the 3,000th identical tracking shot that I started feeling that, beautiful scenery or not, this is a director with a small bag or tricks and not much imagination. Lose the cast. Lose the locations. Lose the FX. What remains is actually kinda crap, and that's PJ's contribution.

He ain't no Orson Welles. [cue abuse!]

WELL DUH.

And as to renting: who wants to rent stuff these days?

The book was great just on story and characters. The film has those things too. It practically doesn't need anything else to be good if a good director's making it happen. Really. I'm not convinced these films have a particularly good director. I know, this is rocket science. Never mind, eh.

I'm up for reinventing rocket science. If Jackson didn't float you, Chrissie, name someone you think could have directed it better? Twist: also say why?

Sorta find it hard to think it would work if it didn't have one -- arguing that the film would somehow film itself because of the source material is an astonishingly slippery slope, and we can all point to adaptations that fail badly despite exquisite source material.

but if they're the things that actually make it, then obviously there are other factors that are failing somehow (i.e. the direction).

Nothing is 'obvious' in a realm of (yes, here I go again) subjective opinion. Concluding that people responded to the film solely because of casting and FX is not an argument I would be prepared to make.

I can't think of anyone else, Nichole. There aren't that many directors around doing interesting stuff in the mainstream. I'm not saying Jackson is BAD -- but I am saying his contribution to what's on the screen is, oddly, not that important. He's done it in formulaic fashion. The cast, the FX people, I think they deserve the bows ahead of him (and behind Mr. Tolkien). He didn't invest anything in it that struck me as positive or distinctive. (The film looks distinctive as hell, but that's because of the locations, the FX, the costumes, etc.) The direction is passive, more than anything. 'What shall we do now? Another swooping shot over the landscape! YEAH!'

I like these films a lot. But I guess my point is, I'm not going to hail PJ as a great director because he did them. Any decent director could have done the same job with those resources, crew, cast, etc.

Oh, I might have suggested Sam Raimi a few years ago. But it appears he has wilted into safe, journeyman work himself.

also he did that edit-cut between arwen and aragorn's horse kissing aragorn!! i larfed non-stop and so did dr vick

I find this baffling. You can stick to your guns (and should), but I think you are arguing from a fairly untenable position of "Clearly anyone else can and should have done this and therefore they would have and it would have the same effect." This is a bit like saying that all interpretations of Shakespeare are the same.

A perfect counterargument already exists -- Jackson vs. Bakshi. If that doesn't float your boat, compare the American radio production with the BBC production. Same source material, same basic approach to the story, miles apart in terms of final end result. Insisting that everything would have been THE SAME no matter who was at the helm is sheer perversity.

A nice snippet from Jackson himself at the premiere:

Peter Jackson: "We made the movie but you guys (the public) have given us the party. These movies are made for people to enjoy them and it makes us incredibly humble and proud that so many of you have turned up today, so thank you very much." He mentioned that 23,000 New Zealanders were employed on the films, then went on to say: "I'd like to thank Mark Ordesky for the promise he made a year ago to get this premier here, so thank you very much Mark." He gave his biggest 'thank you' to his wife, Fran Walsh. "(She's my) absolute collaborator, my support - she's directed, she's written songs, she's edited ... she's my other half. Fran, thank you so much."

I don't hope for JUST those things from a film.

And Ned: I liked the film because it had a good story and characters, firstly, then a good cast and great FX and beautiful locations. They way in which it was directed, I felt, did nothing for these things. With the endless fight stuff, it almost sunk the second part, for me. I was getting decidedly bored. Try explaining great things about the direction.

Spot on. Saying he's brought a 'formulaic' approach to the films ignores what he (and Walsh and Bowens) did as screenwriters, namely look at the books not from the perspective of unchanged scripture (Bakshi had noted Tolkien fanatic Peter Beagle as a cowriter and the end result was a stumbling mishmash with no flow) but as something that could be interpreted into another medium and had to stand or fall as something in THAT medium. Then two of that team, Jackson and Walsh, were core directors of the script as evolved.

Try explaining great things about the direction.

Off the top of my head -- the tense scene between Aragorn and Theoden on the walls of Helms Deep, the concluding scene on the river between Frodo and Sam in Fellowship, Andy Serkis's performance in the Gollum/Smeagol confrontations (all scenes that were in the theatrical cuts, f'r instance). I could go on.

Er... no. It's nothing like that. You're ignoring the 'resources, cast and crew' condition. And maybe I should say an 'equally good job' rather than 'the same.' I believe this to be true.

Comparing Jackson to complete shit again (this time Bakshi) doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying. I didn't say he'd done a bad job. I just fear he's taking more credit than he deserves for ORDINARY (and rather repetitive) direction. Simple.

I remain unconvinced that the above can be credited to the genius direction of Peter Jackson, esp. the latter. Let's try the genius of Andy Serkis instead for that one.

Spot the contradiction!

One thing Jackson and his editors noted in the extended DVD commentary and documentaries was that they intentionally broke up the battle sequence at Helm's Deep precisely because they figured an audience in general would be wearied by nothing but a constant assault -- thus they various cutaways to other locales (the Entmoot, Osgiliath). Jackson also spoke about wanting to show the build-up to the battle as being as important and mood-setting as simply the battle itself. To my mind that strikes me as cogent editing skill brought to bear.

You're ignoring the 'resources, cast and crew' condition.

You are also willfully overlooking the intertwined combination of resources that revolves around Jackson's various decisions of who to work with and why -- WETA, due to his longstanding relationship with Richard Taylor/Tania Rodgers, designers John Howe and Alan Lee due to his particular response to their interpretations (it could have just as easily been Ted Naismith or -- god help us -- the Hildebrandts), Howard Shore as the scorer of the music (John Williams would have been the obvious choice for most and he would have been a boring disaster with nothing new to add that he hasn't already), the choice of locations itself [Hollywood thinking might well have tended towards the Lucas/ILM thought of visual scope and set construction, ie, take it to studio almost entirely]. I think the only person who could have worked with that exact combination would be Jackson and trying to imagine someone else able to create that specific combination in the first place is a mug's game.

Implying that all anyone had to do was set up a camera, ask him to do some takes, chose which were the best takes, edit those takes together into something for WETA to realize digitally and then make sure that WETA did exactly that. Of course, Serkis would have been the only candidate to do all that, I see.

the action in the first movie is some of the best ever filmed. (and i think the final battle in Fellowship may be my favorite ever). plus he is able to impart, with pacing and editing and camera moves, a sense of urgency and emotion--that's the real miracle of his directing.

he has a great eye for the epic i think too -- the shot of Frodo almost giving in to the ring wraith at the end of TT was BREATHTAKING to me and if i remember correctly it's not in the book at all!

(lot's of x-posts so i will just add my two cents!)