LORD OF THE RINGS poll (film version)

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