2 years later, LotR still boring tripe

Cafe Society
1

I saw all three of the them in the theater. I wanted to like them; I never hated them; but my overall opinion: Some decent eye candy here and there, but stories poorly told.

There are different ways to like and not to like these movies. For example, big fan of the books loved to see the characters come to life. Or big fan of the books, hated to see beloved characters distorted and poorly presented. Personally, I stopped reading The Two Towers in 1980 at age 9; it was just too boring. I guess I gave up kiddie books at an early age.

I did have some of the LotR toys based on the cartoon, though I never saw the cartoon. Golum, and the Ring Wraith doll was a true work of art.

I knew that the LotR movies would be big on spectacle, but I had hoped that there would be a little more story to them. The politics and relationships in the books are, I think, what help to raise their interest. A lot of that was abandoned in favor of Big Ole Battles.

Pros
*I liked how FotR started out. Frodo’s getting the ring, the founding of the Fellowship, and the running from the Ring Wraiths were classic movie stuff.

*The architechtural computer graphics were superb. They looked photographic. Just all-round impressive.

*There was some good acting: Ian McKellan, the guy who played Sam, others. Vigo was OK.

*Galdof vs. the Balrog was excellent visual story-telling.

*Some neato special effects, such as how the world looked to Frodo when he put on the ring. Nice.

Cons
*The Harry Potter syndrome: Books too big and complicated for movies turned into movies. Almost feels like a Readers Digest Condensed version than an organic story. For example, the relationship between Gandolf and the White Wizard was never adequately explained, even though the White Wizard’s turning evil was one of the more important aspects of the above-mentioned politics.

*Liv Tyler. Is she cute? Yes. Does she have any talent? No. Was her character in the movies pumped up to feed off her popularity? Yes.

*Battles, battles, battles! To me, TTT and RotK feel like the same movie. There’s big awful battle against the Uglies in each, and the whole damn world is at stake. Were these done pretty well? Yeah. Did they tell an interesting story, or help to tell a larger story? Not really.

*RotK: To me, just a mind-numbingly dumb movie. Over-serious, under-explained, depressing, and just plain silly (“You must now get on the boat to Eternity, Mr. Anderson!”)

I still don’t understand why these films were so mega-popular. I guess it was the sheer spectacle that did it, but it was a spectacle that put me pretty much to sleep.

Your thoughts, two years later?

2

Still love them. More than ever if possible.

3

Still the best live action fantasy movies ever made. Not likely to be surpassed any time soon, either.

4

The movies remain favorites of mine. They’ve given me insight into another person’s view of LOTR, and made me look at it from a new perspective. I don’t always agree with it, and feel parts should have been done differently, but for me it is still a big plus.

But if you consider LOTR a kiddie book, then frankly I fear we lack common ground to discuss it.

5

I didn’t see this before. I’m with QtM; if you thought it was a kiddie book, then we’re not even remotely on the same wavelength.

If you didn’t appreciate the books and didn’t see any magic in them at all, why did you even watch the movies?

6

Because movies in general are not a great burden to watch. I’ll try just about anything and hope for the best. But I found these flicks to be boring, unedifying.

7

There is a word for people who slam popular enterainments hoping to elicit negative responses. I think there were some in the books you mention.

8

I tried to read the books, never finished them. Then I tried to watch the movies several times over the last few years - mostly when friends would say “this was so great, I can’t believe you haven’t seen it!”. So I’d rent the first one, try to watch it and get bored enough by it that I’d eventually turn it off.

I’ve given up trying.

9

I guess the obvious response is you are entitled to your opinion.
My opinion is that they are great movies. Especially when compared to the remade crap that’s out there now. They truly are epic in every way possible.

That said, they aren’t perfect. Some of the comic relief of Gimli and shield surfing of Legolas seemed out of place and innappropriate. The army of the dead had a bit of a deux ex machina feel about it. And in spite of the hotness of Kate Blanchette, Liv Tylor and Miranda Otto, there is definitely an pre-teen asexualness about all the relationships - basically the guys would much rather be off playing with their toys than hanging out with the girls.

It’s also a very LONG series of movies. FOTR and TT was on a few weeks ago on TBS and with commercials, they basically lasted the entire day. Go to the gym, watch a scene, get some lunch, watch some more scenes, etc.

But for the most part, they are like Star Wars or The Matrix. No matter what technical flaws they might have, I’m going to get sucked into watching them whenever they are showing.

10

I don’t feel that LotR is a kiddie book. But I also have to say that I have never, quite literally never, come across anyone who first read the book as an adult, say, over the age of 25, who approaches it with the awe and wonder of its true fans.

Though it not kiddie literature, there’s something there that only truly speaks to wide-eyed children. I can’t quite put my finger on it, although the movie recognized it by turning Frodo from a comfortable middle-aged fixture in his community to a beardless youth stumbling into adventure.

As someone who didn’t read the book until the age of 50, I can attest that I’ve never understood the fanaticism for it. Nor did I drool over the overlong and heavy-handed, if otherwise mostly well-done, movies.

I don’t ever slam popular entertainments. I’ve been immersed in them my entire reading life. (And writing life. And critical life.) The passion for Tolkien, especially for a not-terribly-good novel, just mystifies me. (Please don’t try to explain: I’ve heard it all before, probably since before many of you were born.) Aeschines doesn’t speak for me, exactly, but he’s not that far off either.

11

I happen to have watched again the long versions of the three movies over christmas. And I enjoyed them a lot (again).

I think Jackson made a very good work. Better than I expected originally. Of course I’ve some reservations. Like, as you mentionned, way too much time devoted to battle scenes, but I can easily understand why he chose to do so. Generally speaking I loved the first movie more than the second, the second more than the third.

I’m not going to explain now what I liked or disliked exactly, but since you mentionned it, in particular I thought the director had made a poor job of Saruman (the white wizard), oversimplified him, gave him the wrong motivations, downplayed his capacities, hence made him a much less interesting character than he should have been. For instance, he’s supposed to arguably be the most charismatic character in middle-earth, so before the release of the third movie I had a great expectation for the speech scene, wondering how they would render the power of his voice…and he fails to convince even the clown they made of the dwarf when he speaks! The blandness of this scene stays as one of my major dissapointments (not that I had not already noticed Saruman’s character had been sacrified to create an easy to understand villain since the first scene where he appears in the first movie).

For the fans : after watching it again, what I still regret the most (though the reason why it was discarded is obvious) and is a very unusual complaint : the absence of Radagast the brown (the third wizard appearing in the books).
And, to balance this, what I found was done the best : making the ring itself a “character” of the movie, making apparent its will and its ability to corrupt. Oh! and my personnal best actor award would go to the steward of Gondor.

12

I’m actually in the opposite group. I never read the books and never had an interest in them even though I do like fantasy sci-fi. The first one just sucked me right in. I thought it suceeded on a lot of levels.
When the Two Towers came out I saw it and it still remains my favorite. The battle at Helm’s deep was so powerful because you actually felt the dread. As if there was no way out and they were fighting not to win but to just survive. Great stuff. Good vs. evil, man vs. beast.
Still, not ever reading the books I didn’t know how the story wrapped when going to see Return of the King. I was a bit disappointed. Not in Peter Jackson’s telling of the story, but of Tolkien’s story itself. I felt the ghost army was a total cop-out for a plausible win of the battle. Here we had a world of flesh and blood creatures of humans, elfs, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, goblins, etc. and some wizards with some extra powers but still very flesh and blood. Adding some ghosts that can fight in battles just seemed lame. But that’s just me. Rest of the movie was good but felt somewhat rushed to wrap up the story and fit everyhing in even with a 3+ hour running time.

13

I found myself getting bored midway through the first one, and downright eye-rollingly contemptful of Sean Bean’s extended death scene, so I never bothered with parts two and three.

Life’s too short for endless trudging, man.

14

Why “hoping to elicit negative responses”? There are two very popular movies mentionned in this thread I find completely uninteristing and boring (Star Wars and The Matrix). Should I not say so? Should I only be allowed to criticize “elitist” movies or else risk being accused of trolling?

15

As Terry Pratchett (of all people) once said: “There’s something wrong with you if you don’t think The Lord of the Rings is the greatest book ever written when your’re 15. There’s something wrong with you if you still think it is when you’re 25.”

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brownie55, accusing other posters of trolling is against the rules. If you feel that someone is trolling for responses, report the post to a moderator or e-mail one of us.

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Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you read them too young? Have you tried reading them since? Sometimes I think this trend of younger and younger kids reading classics that were originally targeted for adults is going too far. The kids can actually be too young to fully appreciate them. I know there were books I read too young and found them boring. Then a few years later I reread them and loved them. I needed that extra maturity.

I first read LoTR in junior high at the same time my oldest brother (senior in high school). I fell in love with them at first read and have averaged reading them once a year since then. (Won’t say how many times that’s been, but it’s a lot.)

As for the movies, they were all right. I could have done without them, but I’m not going to pitch a fit over them either. (At least not at this point in the thread) They might have bothered me more if I had read the books fewer times. After as many rereads of LoTR that I’ve done, no movie is going to disturb the vision of LoTR that I have in my head, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the important one. I do appreciate the fact that they’ve brought a lot of people to the world of LoTR, now if only those people read the books.

BTW, as a guest on this board I can’t search. Has anyone done a previous thread on people who saw the movies first and then read the books? I’d love to hear what their reactions were.

18

I happen to think that the Peter Jackson films aren’t very good adaptations of the novel, which I think is great. I’m not interested in discussing this any further though. In several previous threads on this subject, whenever I express this opinion, certain posters feel it necessary to say that not only is my opinion wrong, but I and everyone else who believes so is garbage not worthy of even having an opinion.

19

I was over 25 years of age when I read the LOTR books before the movie was released and here’s what it did to me. First, I can honestly say that it bored the hell out of me and I couldn’t figure out what the hell Tom Bombadil had to do with anything. Second, it ruined every other fantasy book I had ever read and I gave up the genre entirely*. It’s a well written book, but like many other popular things, I just can’t understand why some people love it so much. That’s ok, I do recognize it for a well written book even though it wasn’t to my taste.

Marc

*I say mostly because I am determined to finish the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. Yeah, it ain’t Shakespeare but I have so much time and money invested that I will finish if it kills me or Jordan.

20

:wink:

There’s no wrong in me… :wink: