LORD OF THE RINGS poll (film version)

reminds me I've been meaning to watch these again... first is the best by a fairly wide margin methinks. I like all that preamble-y stuff.

Two Towers, because I like all of the Rohan stuff.

first by a seriously wide margin indeed. the others have too much peter jackson in them.

the first is the twee-est, the second is the most grungy and battle-heavy, the third is the most "epic". i choose the second.

yeah lolz maybe I like the first the most because its very Bakshi

the third one is the only one with real problems... all those goodbyes...

the second one has that shit where blomps was about to shoot that arrow then grabbed hold of that horse as it was going by and swung himself on DAMN

i feel like the last one maybe?

x-post -- That was easily the biggest 'whoa dude!' moment of all three first time through in the theater.

For all that there's so much of the story to tell after it, the first one builds up to a really stellar climax, the last few minutes just all come together on each front (editing, camera work, acting, music, etc.). So probably that if forced to choose but all of it flows together in my head.

Thought the second one was really boring, and the first one really is just a preamble...so I'll go for the third, despite the neverending endings.

o ya the endings. that was not for me.

the only problem i have with the third are the 2 or 3 scenes where the narrative pauses to recap events via a one-sided dialogue scene or a monologue but i loved the rohan shit too, + miranda otto and brad dourif and bernard hill.

sorry with the second, rather

though maybe it's a problem in the third too, i forget now

The third one because it has bad ass Gandalf and the sweeping shots of the charging Rohan are awesome

I like all the endings but I would.

From China Mieville's recent thoughts on Tolkien, a good argument I hadn't heard before on Jackson leaving out the Scouring of the Shire at the end:

The magic goes west, of course, but there's also the peculiar abjuring of narrative form, in the strange echo after the final battle, the Lord of the Rings's post-end end, the Harrowing of the Shire--so criminally neglected by Jackson. In an alternate reality, this piece of scripting would have earned talented young tattooed hipster video-game designer Johnno Tolkien a slapped wrist from his studio: since when do you put a lesser villain straight after the final Boss Battle? But that's the point. The episode concludes 'well', of course, so far as it goes, but in its very pettiness relative to what's just been, it is brilliantly unsatisfying, ushering in an era of degraded parodies of epics, where it's not just the elves that are going: you can't even get a proper Dark Lord any more.

I think they strained to do that more in the second one because they were truncating a lot of events and jumping around constantly - they felt (perhaps wrongly) that they needed to constantly be reminding the audience of the sequence of events, what was happening concurrently, etc. Which seems really stupid - that's something you can just SHOW, no narration required.

x-posts

Fellowship. I like all the sneaking around.

I was totally pissed that they opted for all those tearful goodbye scenes rather than the Scouring of the Shire, which is a great counterpoint/coda to the central story

The first takes more than an hour to get started, and if you're not a part of the cult (as I am proudly not) it's a serious drag. Then the Black Riders appear, and my heart starts to beat. They're in these films far too infrequently.

I voted for The Return of the King because even a non-cultist like me felt his jaw tremble when the Ring finally melted and during 12 of the 16 resolutions. Also: the big battle in which Ornaldo Bloomps kills those elephant things real good damn is awesome.

i think the presentation of those scenes was okay and while i watch them i feel like it plays more along the lines of one of those "and this is how heavy the burden now is" moments, but their intent is still obvious.

the first one focused a lot more on establishing the atmosphere and showed them walking around the NZ countryside a lot. i find myself putting it on just for the ambiance.

i'm just gonna say this- fuck orlando bloomps surfing down an elephant. fuck him real hard.

mmm yes

Second bcz Frodo was just a statue with giant eye pools in the third and it srsly stresses me out to see Samwise have to deal w/the whole situation.

i ageee with everyone that the scouring of the shire should've been included -- it ends the book's main narrative on such a powerful, creepy, bitter note.

the first one had a way bigger effect on me than any of the others because it totally brought back that heady feeling of reading the books as a pre-teen, when they seemed like the most awesome books ever -- and i still remember sitting in the theater when it suddenly hit me, 'wow, they're really gonna do this RIGHT.' but i'd have to watch these again before i could say which was really 'best.'

mark s (who doesn't seem to post here anymore, sadly) has a great theory about how gollum is the secret hero of the saga, since all the action necessarily revolves around him (hence making him the actual, ahem, "lord of the rings").

the battle in the second one is the most memorable part of any of the three, but yeah probably the first one has more charm.

the third is great too but jesus christ I can remember shifting in my seat through interminable "this feels like the end" scenes, about 20 in a row.

i was always confused with sauron's relationship to the other rings shown in the first film's preamble, maybe a LOTR stan can shed some light?

one ring to rule them all dude. it was a trap.

is it that he made them and gave them to the "MEN" and then he was able to control them as a result with the one ring? that's how I remember it but could be wrong.

x-post yeah

all of these films are incredible. i downloaded the first one on vcd (!) from some ftp site. it was 4 discs and i used to fall asleep with the first disk playing in the background pretty much every night during 2002. so that.

including the scouring of the shire would have been awful.

he created them to bind the leaders of men, dwarfs & elves to him using the secret and powerful 'one ring'? quick recollection.

i still remember sitting in the theater when it suddenly hit me, 'wow, they're really gonna do this RIGHT.'

^^^this. it is very very rare for me to get that rush from any film adaptation.

(particularly one I had always fantasized about as a young'un)

i figured that was the case, just needed to confirm!

Ha yes -- when Sauron's helmet crashed to the ground in the first prologue was when I was fully sold. What a start.

coming on the heels of the star wars prequel it looked even better. and then it kinda made the subsequent matrix flicks look even worse in comparison.

as far as fanboy fodder went

I hate to say it but this thread is missing a little bit of Morbz' haterade

i could make up a batch, tbh

;_;

i was going to say "i don't think morbs has seen these films" but then i remembered it never stopped him before.

Ha yes -- when Sauron's helmet crashed to the ground in the first prologue was when I was fully sold

i mean, this feeling lasted all the way up until the council of elrond, fully halfway through the first of three movies! what an achievement!

Well, I don't give a shit about the mythology, but as far as these kinds of films go they're the best of their kind.

only cos willow doesn't have any sequels, tbh

i keep thinking about the bullet dodged w/r/t the stuart townsend as aragorn casting.

well we still got agent johnson as elrond, to be fair.

yeah Viggo's some perfect casting, they lucked out with him. Actually they lucked out with most of the casting really, I can't recall anyone who's certifiably bad. John Rhys Davies maybe.

blanchett!

i don't think there's a single bad performance in the trilogy. gimli could have been played as more than what he mostly was (comic relief) but considering everything he was fine.

aragorn in the rankin/bass 'return of the king'

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/ROTKTVAragorn.jpg

Gollum should have been more reminiscent of a cave salamander.

xxp The whole Cirith Ungol section of the Rankin/Bass cartoon was traumatizing to me as a kid.

Seems kinda unfair to pick on Gollum for those qualities, the effects work was so astonishing at the time and he worked as a fully vested character thanks to Serkis. The tech was so cutting edge that he improves noticeably between films 2 and 3.
Also he looks so much like a hated ex prime minister of Aus that I get a little joy from his otherwise tragic death.

his death is good and gandalf as usual was wrong to hedge

the CGI bonus treatment they gave gollum misled a bunch of industry types about the capabilities of motion capture technology and is directly responsible for later atrocities like the polar express

these films are a bunch of guys with swords doing hero's journey for 12 hours, the scenery looks nice and I like all the gay stuff but the fight scenes are sooo boring and there are way too many of them and aragorn loses all his hotness when he takes the crown. at least they're better than the prequels

Nobody is ever gonna be given the money to make a tonally interesting Tolkien movie, if such a thing was possible

tho tbf Jackson kind of had a go, in places, before the business ate him up maybe

As far as epic power metal fantasy, this is the tone largely done right imo. I think it has its flaws in specific individual moments, and I think there was a missed opportunity with how the army of the dead was depicted (absolutely spooky leading up to the first encounter with them, and it dissipated into a Looney tunes cartoon once they were on the battlefield), but this series overall was absolutely well done. Do agree that aragorn was better suited as a character to be an unkempt solitary warrior versus being a king, but Gondor was severely lacking in a good second option.

how about a republic or is that against the rules of high epic fantasy bullshit

how's your mousse

the stollen is a little stale but still good

currently in a totally jacksoned confrontation with the army of the dead

its awful, easily the worst sequence in any of the movies and possibly in any movie

That line was broken!

an entire jackson sequence where frodo and gollum get into a fistfight

jfc

The army of the dead stuff should have been absolutely terrifying, like just a genuinely make them a horrific nightmare fuel force on the battlefield. making them the ghost equivalent of fast zombies was a mistake. Better if they were a slow lurching practical effects beast vs green CGI.

otm

Jackson did right by the Nazgul in the first film, not sure why he fucked this up.

otm

Bringing the invincible undead army all the way to Pelennor Fields somewhat devalues the battle, imo. If only they'd arrived a couple hours earlier.

They're a cheap device in the novel too but at least they have more limited utility.

In retrospect it was a warning sign w/r/t the hobbit films. I'm not saying practical effects would have saved those movies but damn those orcs looked absolutely awful.

and their smell! and their eating habits!

Tolkien is notably short on description. I have no recollection of him ever describing the appearance of an orc.

Fell something-or-other

Seems kinda unfair to pick on Gollum for those qualities, the effects work was so astonishing at the time and he worked as a fully vested character thanks to Serkis. The tech was so cutting edge that he improves noticeably between films 2 and 3.
Also he looks so much like a hated ex prime minister of Aus that I get a little joy from his otherwise tragic death.

― assert (matttkkkk)

god damn i had to re-read this, i thought andy serkis tragically died

how about a republic or is that against the rules of high epic fantasy bullshit

― Left

i mean personally i'd be in favor of an anarchosyndicalist collective but nobody who's ever seen "holy grail" is going to take _that_ seriously

The opening of The Two Towers is just... so incredibly good. Something perfect about the way the camera takes an extra second before deciding to follow Gandalf.

xp Even they had to take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

The Théoden-Éowyn relationship is the heart of the film for me

It's something we remarked upon in our ROTK rewatch. Arguably how it plays out over the two films it's featured in is the best outright addition, or at least elaboration on fairly bare bones, to the adaptation in general.

Nobody is ever gonna be given the money to make a tonally interesting Tolkien movie, if such a thing was possible

Mm, well, we'll have to see -- in a year's time this debuts (and it will be a theatrical effort):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_War_of_the_Rohirrim

Without pretending to be expert in his work, what I've seen of Kenji Kamiyama's efforts in general has been pretty striking, and there's something much more immediately interesting visually about going this route than the attempt to clone Jackson's approach in large part in Rings of Power. Jason deMarco, who is one of the executive producers and is the key connection point between Warner's and Kamiyama and team, has been a casual online friend for many years and while he's of course not going into detail, he's mentioned that's been a heck of a lot of work on his part but that he's loved both the process and what's happened so far, and he's never struck me as the type of guy interested in hype for hype's sake. Even though it's going to be inline with the Jackson movies by default on various levels, there's room to try something more here.

fair play, that sounds interesting at least

and an anime sensibility is something i overlooked tbh

the celebration after the crowning looks *awful*

The Lord of the Gripes

The army of the dead flowing over Minas Tirith looks way too much like a Listerine ad.

My comparison for years, as redone in the podcast, was Scrubbing Bubbles.

https://x.com/JessZafarris/status/1741700613413515476

Wait lemme try that again

Denmark's Queen Margrethe II, who announced her abdication on TV just hours ago, is also known for having done these illustrations for Danish '70s editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. pic.twitter.com/1F2vcwQuB1

— Jess Zafarris 📚 (@JessZafarris) January 1, 2024

OMG those are sick as hell

They're fantastic, thanks for sharing.

If you Google you can find some other ones

thought of a new line for the two towers posters

a little from gollum a, a little from gollum b

That's pretty awesome - also imagine if you're another fan indulging in the Tolkien fantasy of being Aragorn, except you're actually royalty.

a little from gollum a, a little from gollum b

We loves it

Seriously good one

Lol yes I lolled

Top tier, can we move this thread to 77 so it doesn't get plagiarised and reposted to reddit for 9.7 billion upvotes by some hack lurker

That puts it out of reach for some of us.

If you Google you can find some other ones

I have the full Folio Tolkien set and yep, her illustrations are pretty great.

I think its interesting that Tolkien was this language fanatic yet somehow out of that came this rich treasury of advanture tales. Make me wonder what CHomsky has in him waiting to become high fantasy -

Manufacturing Ents

Lectures on Government and Binding, co- author Sauron

Rings as a System of Power