LORD OF THE RINGS poll (film version)

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

Just imagine if John Rhys Meyers instead of John Rhys-Davies had played Gimli.

blanchett!

no way she's perfect - her freakout at the magic mirror scene is awesome

Denethor kind of sucked in the third movie, he should've been more like how he is in the book

her freakout at the magic mirror scene is awesome

i defend to the death your right to say it, etc etc but this was cringeworthy overacting.

i think the cringey shit was more special effects-based.

(with that specific scene)

Denethor kind of sucked in the third movie, he should've been more like how he is in the book

Showing him already collapsed rather than on the verge of it was a telescoping for sure. (There's the bit in the extra footage of Two Towers that's as close as we'll get to that.) But John Noble did pretty well with the part as written, and the whole dismissal of Faramir/obsessive eating/"Can you sing, master Hobbit?" part is on point, as was that last defiant sneer and flinging of the torch onto the pyre. All of which was sadly undermined by the 'I can flyyyyyyyyy!' bit, admittedly.

i liked sean bean basically reprising his role from ronin

i felt there was more of his trevlyan from goldeneye in it, tbh. but he was pretty good, surprisingly.

i dunno, the whole "big man on campus in over his head" thing is straight outta ronin imo

along with the couple of scenes where he's sonned by the elder, cooler compatriot

it's straight outta sean bean in hollywood, imo

i just ambushed you with a cup of mead

The first one because it has the least egregious use of Liv Tyler and her non-acting pout.

I spent a weekend a few months ago watching the extended versions of all these, back to back, and I want to do it again. These are SO GOOD.

I think they threw in Liv Tyler to give moviegoers an opportunity for safe bathroom breaks.

I've seen Fellowship and The Two Towers a good amount and prefer Two Towers. I only saw Return of the King once...I need to see it again soon. I'm totally in the mood for a Lord of the Rings-a-thon right now!

i liked the third one the best

i think the first is the best, the riders hunting the hobbits thru the shire and its outskirts is terrifying, and also the fucking Balrog!

the second has the awesome battle but i got tired of watching the rohan dudes, looked like smelly heavy metal guys and the acting of the king was kinda lame

first one = best
second = very good
third one = those fucking pirates gahhh

No they are all garbage option?

Second is probably the least boring though.

but which one is the best

in the spirit of morbs, but without the artistry i'm afraid
xpost

xp The one I saw in Paris Christmas Eve where the entire audience was either sleeping or laughing.

like they were all having funny dreams

christmas in paris? what are you, unamerican?

i broke my vegetarianhood on christmas in paris

I don't really have much invested in LOTR and haven't seen any of these more than once, but the second was the only one I enjoyed watching.

"like they were all having funny dreams"

Possibly they were dreaming about seeing a good movie.

possibly they were trying to avoid the ugly american in the room

back when they came out i probably woulda said the third one cuz it gave me, like, emotions - NOOOO MISTER FRODO ;___; - but in retrospect the first one is the most memorable so idk. mixed feelings about the second one - omar's right in that the rohan stuff kinda owns what with brad dourif and all those cats but at the same time it feels really out of place to me, like something snipped from the fucken 13th Warrior or somethin. i never read the books so i have no attachment to any of this shit, they probably could've just made one REALLY bitchin movie out of all that material tho

d*mn sean bean owns too

btw what is the scouring of tha shire

In brief: in the book, Saruman and Wormtongue are left isolated under the watch of the Ents but eventually are let free by Treebeard. They end up going to the Shire, where Saruman's been corrupting some of the populace, and take over the place with some leftover half-orcs/hillmen/thugs, and pretty much wreck it (the bit in the movie in the Mirror of Galadriel showing that the Shire's been trashed is Jackson's nod to this). Frodo and company return and inspire an uprising against all this and win, though Frodo's pretty wearied by the war already and doesn't directly participate. Saruman and Wormtongue die kinda like in the movie (no Legolas) after Saruman tries to kill Frodo, and the Shire is eventually restored.

And yes, that was in brief.

what is going on with that hobbit movie?

scouring of the shire is like some bizarre afterward and is a total letdown dramatically, thank god it wasn't in the movie, it had enough endings as it was

what is going on with that hobbit movie?

Fully underway, Guillermo del Toro directing and Jackson producing, filming starts next year, two films being planned (it'll be the story covered over both films, but with various things supplementing it drawing on the rest of what was happening at around the same time via Tolkien's retconning of the background in later years). http://theonering.net will have everything you need to know.

i think I'm just gonna ask you about it, okay, cuz I don't want to get sucked into theonering black hole

Two Towers, easy. it really blew my mind the first time i saw it and how well they pulled off Gollum.

i think I'm just gonna ask you about it, okay, cuz I don't want to get sucked into theonering black hole

Wise man. (Even I'm not going to completely obsess over the filming this time around -- ten years back I think I was already checking the site daily.)

scouring of the shire is like some bizarre afterward and is a total letdown dramatically, thank god it wasn't in the movie, it had enough endings as it was

agreed.

I probably like Two Towers the least, for how they portrayed the Ents and Faramir (or whatever the fuck his name is)

My wife had never read the books and didn't know it was all one story in three parts. She was so pissed when we walked out of the theater after the first one, raging about how she'd been waiting for three hours for them to get rid of the damn ring and then suddenly the movie just ended.

We bought a new TV last Christmas and watched all three extended editions over a three day period of utter sloth and it was the best. I've got to go with the Two Towers, though the Moria / Balrog stuff in Fellowship was probably my favorite segment of any of them.

i think two towers, for sort of the same reasons it was my least favorite of the books. in longform, it has the shortcomings of a middle chapter -- it just feels like it's getting you from one place to another, and it doesn't have the excitement and discovery of the beginning or all the grandeur and significance of the end. but in the movie, that means it's just like wall to wall action, with minimal thomas kinkadey elfin pastoralism. and the battle of helm's deep is A+ stuff.

plus there's the great wizard of oz nod at the black gate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuhSRGYyBJU

I need to see the long versions of all of them. But only the third one brought actual tears to my eyes. It's the triumph that gets me, not the deaths.

Fellowship one is the only one that's not a travestied fucking betrayal of the books.

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