I was a big fan of Ralph Bakshi, but I was severely disappointed by his Lord of the Rings movie. Its very literal rotoscoping really killed it. The film is pretty decent when it’s pure animation with little or no rotoscoping (the Hobbiton Birthday Party. The Flying Nazgul, Fangorn), but it’s pretty awful when it looks more like a colorized black and white film than animation. What’s the point? Particularly annoying was the Balrog – a scene I’d really wanted to see. They gave us a painfully obvious Guy in a Balrog Suit, rotoscoped! GaaaaaH! It’s the Worst of All Possible Worlds.
They recut the film between the first and second times I saw it (I’m a masochist) – the orders of the scenes were different between its first showing i n New York and the version I saw later.
For some reason, Rank and Base, who made the TV version of The Hobbit, felt compelled to take up the slack, and made a TV-movie version of The Return of the King that pretty much took up where Bakshi had left it, giving you the whole story in animation. Yecch.
Which Oz? There’ve been a number of film adaptations, including one from 1910 that spawned a few sequels. MGM never to the best of my knowledge had any intention of making a sequel to its Oz film, although it was involved in the eventual sequel (1985’s Return to Oz) by Disney.
Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments stopped, jarringly, in the middle of the Book of Exodus. Come on, man, there’s a lot of Old Testament left! I’m still waiting for Charleton Heston to star in an epic film adaptation of the Book of Numbers, complete with two hours of begats and detailed counts of oxen and donkeys.
The worst was Saruman’s army of Uruk-Hai. They looked like a bunch of leftover Sand People from Star Wars and Sleestaks from Land of the Lost…with a heavy red filter added. Triple lame.
The Stargate series was supposed to continue with what then became Independence Day, so I’m guessing we might not see another.
A TV series spin-off is still possible, but it always seemed liked they’d milked that one a bit too much for anyone to stump up money to see more of it in the cinema.
There has been an adaption of “Fletch Won” in the works for years with everyone from Kevin Smith to Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence attached. Zach Braff had been attached to star, but has dropped out. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s going on with it from Wiki.
I’m with you, it seems to require a special type of geek to enjoy that movie. You have to like classic Sci-Fi from the 30s and 40s. Love little tidbits like the story about the Empire State Building being used for Dirigibles and all the other dated Sci-Fi themes reminiscent of EE Doc Smith, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs mixed up.
I was about the only one I know that really enjoyed the film. Even liking the film, I still hated Gwyneth Paltrow’s character.
Yes, it sucked but I want to grab the mike and just say something right now.
Ralph Bakshi’s Aragorn as voiced by John Hurt was twice the man and ten times the ranger than the Aragorn Vigo Mortensen managed to portray. On a recent comparison viewing, it may be the only superiority between the films, but I will stand by it.
I really liked it, but I think that it spent far too little time on those actual elements that made it cool. Instead, about 80% of the movie consisted of them crawling around in the jungle and so on, with a mere 20% devoted to the amazing art deco stuff. It felt like a sequel where they feel like they have to shake things up and break the formula.
Sequel? What about prequels? By my count, there are seven dimensions across which the titular hero presumably had adventures on his way to the 8th, and AFAIK we have no movies to show for it.
I wonder, honestly, if we’re going to get all seven “Narnia” movies. The first one was good, but a bit uninspired, and I have a feeling it’ll run out of steam.
Depends on how this one does. I think the promos of the “adult hero” might help sell more tickets than Narnia did. I enjoyed the first movie far more than I expected, I thought they did a good job. Maybe Prince Caspian will help them tap more into the giant Lord of the Rings movie going base then the 4 kids and a talking lion did. I am basing this on the previews I have seen. I think this is the marketing hope.
Yes, see them also indeed. Why did we not see more of this wonderful family? The end of the film seemed to suggest a franchise or at least a sequel, but here we are 3-4 years later and nothing is apparent.
