Do any non-Tolkien fans hate the Lord of the Rings movies?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been watching the Peter Jackson films lately, and reflecting about how people reacted to them…and come to think of it, I can’t remember any person who said they HATED the films, or said they weren’t very good, except for that small percentage of hard-core Tolkien fans who likely wouldn’t have been satisfied by any movie version.

So basically this is a poll…do you, or does anyone you know, think the recent LOTR films were a big pile of crap, having never read the books before? (Or, if they read 'em, didn’t think much of them?)

2

Me! I’ve flipped through the books, and while I appreciate Tolkien’s contribution to the world of fantasy fiction and acknowledge his importance and originality blah blah blah, I found the prose itself to be unreadable. I saw all three movies because my ex is a fan of the books, but I found them to also be interminably boring. Battle scenes that went on WAY too long, eye-candy shots that I’m not aesthetic enough to appreciate, horribly overdramatized dialogue, and did I mention the battle scenes? It MIGHT have been good if they’d compressed it all into one three-hour movie, but probably not. And then they came out with those extended DVDs–WHY? The people who would watch that must have the longest attention spans in existence.

Basically, if it’s LOTR-related, I’ll probably hate it.

3

My friend and I are diehard Tolkien nuts, and the whole idea of “there would be no movie that could please them” is complete bullshit. I enjoy the movies fine, but just three things could have made them perfect in the mind of this LOTR fan:

  1. No elves at Helm’s Deep. Completely unnecessary to the story not to mention the logistics of them being able to get their before the orcs is laughable.

  2. Don’t make Treebeard incompetent. Why have the ents decide against war only to have them change their minds 5 minutes later? Just go with the way it was in the book, the decided from the beginning to go to war.

  3. Don’t make Faramir into Boromir pt. 2, nuff said.

Those three things are by no means unreasonable demands, and they would have made the movies perfect in my mind. I’m really fucking sick of people saying “oh, its not possible to fit a whole book into a movie.” I KNOW it’s not, it’s got nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the things that Peter Jackson either got completely wrong or intentionally contradicted for idiotic and (in my mind) unnecessary reasons.

4

I agree davenportavenger and I have a friend who is the same way (and he also hated the books.) Those movies were just way too long and way too heavy-handed. I’ll add that I didn’t like how everyone was crying all the time. You’d think if you were the King of Whatever you’d be able to bury your emotions inside like a normal person.

5

I find the movies just a tad less tedious than the books. It would cost quite a bit to get me to watch any of the movies again.

6

Honestly, this is one of the geekiest things I’ve ever read.This is hope to trekkies!

7

Question for davenportavenger, Palooka, everyone else, and your friends (if you know) – are you fans of fantasy fiction at all, either books or movies? What about epic and/or historical (non-fantasy) fiction? Just looking for a profile of those who wouldn’t touch LOTR with a ten-foot pole…

Well, I didn’t expect commentary from the hardcore Tolkien fans…oh who am I kidding, of course I did. :slight_smile: So I gotta say:

  1. The Elves. THE BLOODY ELVES. Why is always about the elves?!? Yes, the book has no Elves at Helm’s Deep, and how they got there so fast in the movie raises many questions…but as with all changes, I ask myself: “Does this scene look really cool, no matter how inaccurate it is?” And the Elves looked totally freakin’ COOL. Plus, we get to see Haldir again, and we get a heroic death! It’s also a shorthand way of including Elves in the battle vs. Saruman, as they were (in the books) under attack in Lorien and other places. I’m eternally puzzled by the way this is constantly derided like Greedo Shooting First.

  2. Yeah, Treebeard’s scene bothered me too. Jackson said he had a reason for this (something about “reversal” being more poignant than just deciding to kick ass, or some other kind of film school bullshit) but I agree with you, he should’ve left this part alone.

  3. Faramir. Well, I can kinda see the reasoning for this. In the book, Faramir looks at the Ring and says, “Oh I’m not interested in that, I wouldn’t pick it up even if it were lying by the side of the road.” Now, if you’ve spent 1½ movies showing how this Ring is the utmost Evil, corrupting every person who gets near it, and suddenly you’ve got a guy who’s not affected by it at all…well, you’ve just deflated all that tension. Frankly, I thought this was a major drawback of the original novel – Tolkien’s Faramir just never rang true with me.

I do agree that, in the theatrical version at least, this change seems arbitrary and unmotivated. It’s only in the Director’s Cut that you get to see WHY Faramir’s so eager to get his grubby hands on the Ring. (And I should mention that of all 3 movies, The Two Towers is most improved overall by the D.C.!)

So, how do you feel about Arwen? Or dare I ask? :cool:

8

Me.

I read the books when I was about 13. Fantasy was never my cup of tea. I was suffering from NZ overload before the movie came out. The LTR movies were the TOP story on the evening headlines more times then I feel comfortable admitting.

I have never seen the movies. The 2nd is on tv this week. I won’t be watching it. It just has no interest for me. I refuse to appear to be interested because the backdrop is NZ. When A movie (or series of) can turn a country into sychophantic dribbling morons then I vote NO.

I will not be seeing King Kong. No matter how much the NZ element is pumped up giant apes just don’t appeal.

Peter Jackson is a clever bloke who is creating movies in his genre well, that genre does not appeal to me…no matter how often the Kiwi boasting machine tells me it will.

9

I’m a non-Tolkien fan. I haven’t read the books. Well, not really. I started to read The Hobbit when I was around 13 years old, but I got bored rather quickly.

I saw the animated Lord of the Rings when it came out and enjoyed it. I was really into animation at the time so this movie with all the rotoscope animation sucked me in. Thinking back, I’m not really sure how much into the story I was.

So, here comes the new movie. Everyone is talking about it. It’s all over television. It’s a big hit. When it comes out on DVD I pick up a copy. It took me three of four sittings to make it though the whole movie. I fell asleep at least once watching it. That’s something as I almost never fall asleep during a movie. I was bored silly waiting for the good scenes to appear. They never did.

My dauther left the room 20 minutes into the movie. My wife started reading about 15-20 minutes in.

Over the next few days I managed to make it though the entire thing. I really wanted to like this movie because I heard so many good things about it. But I wasn’t interested in any of the players. I didn’t care what they were doing. I didn’t care if they died or not. In fact, I can’t think of a single thing in the movie I found interesting and I remember very little about it.

I think it’s fair to say I didn’t bother with any other LoTR movies. I don’t even know how many more were made. I don’t care. I’m not watching them.

10

As per usual, I read the books in college. Thought they were nice, but not great.

Hated the first movie. Some of the worst acting ever. (Makes Russ Meyer films seem like Oscar caliber.) Incredibly slow pacing. Really cheesey special effects one minute then over-the-top the next.

So I never watched the other two.

I cannot fathom how anyone could possibly enjoy them.

11

[QUOTE=KGS]

  1. The Elves. THE BLOODY ELVES. Why is always about the elves?!? Yes, the book has no Elves at Helm’s Deep, and how they got there so fast in the movie raises many questions…but as with all changes, I ask myself: “Does this scene look really cool, no matter how inaccurate it is?” And the Elves looked totally freakin’ COOL. Plus, we get to see Haldir again, and we get a heroic death! It’s also a shorthand way of including Elves in the battle vs. Saruman, as they were (in the books) under attack in Lorien and other places. I’m eternally puzzled by the way this is constantly derided like Greedo Shooting First.

[QUOTE=KGS]

The problem with the Elves is that once Peter Jackson got them there, he was simply incapable of deciding what to do with them. This was his thought process:

“Oooh, Elves would really spice up Helm’s Deep. But in the book there were already 3000 Rohan soldiers there. Eh, I’ll just make their army a pathetic force of 300, despite the fact that for hundreds of years they have been more than capable of defending their own lands from all sides while also finding time to help Gondor on occasion. Oh shit, and what am I going to do with the Elves after the battle? They aren’t there in the book. Eh, I guess I’ll just kill them all.”

If anything, Peter Jackson’s flaw in this movies is showing that Men are downright incapable of defending themselves, which contradicts one of the MAIN THEMES OF THE FUCKING BOOK. Elves are leaving, it is the time of Men, and the Elves can no longer stay to help. It’s about Men finding their own strength to fight the Darkness. But nooooo, poor little weak Peter Jackson’s race of men still need their hands held. It’s the same problem with the Siege of Gondor. The Undead Army never set foot on the Pelenor, they only helped Aragorn capture the ships, then it was ALL men fighting to the bitter end against the Orcs.

Because of Elves at Helm’s Deep, Peter Jackson needed to kill off all of the ones that showed up, simply because they had nothing to do with the story AFTER Helm’s deep. And that included killing off a character who gasp DOESN’T DIE IN THE BOOKS (Haldir).

You know what would have been much MUCH better than the Elves showing up? And something that I would have accepted with glee? Have the Rangers show up instead. PJ pretty much ignored them after the first movie, and they show up at the beginning of ROTK (book) anyway, so why not just have them show up at Helm’s Deep if he thinks they need help? That way he wouldn’t have to kill them all off either.

[QUOTE=KGS]

So, how do you feel about Arwen? Or dare I ask? :cool

[QUOTE=KGS]

How do I feel about her? Fine. Her being the one to take Frodo to Rivendell was fine with me, because it would have been too much trouble to introduce a brand new character (Glorfindel) into the movie if he was only going to be in that one scene.

Peter Jackson apparently had plans about having Arwen in Helm’s Deep too as some kind of warrior princess (even though she spends most of the rest of the series crying :rolleyes: ) but thankfully even he realized what a horrid, horrid idea that would have been.

12

After reading my long explanation, I…I think I need help. :frowning:

Acceptance is the first step…

13

Fantasy fiction, yes. Historical and/or epic fantasy, no. I don’t think I’ve seen enough “fantasy” movies to judge either way, but I’m leaning towards no.

And how about I didn’t even know there were Elves at Helm’s Deep? How about I’m not even sure which movie that refers to? How about I couldn’t tell the difference between Boromir and Faramir if you held a gun to my head? I spent most of the movies watching old Simpsons episodes in my head. That Homer is one crazy character.