Fanboys, shut the hell up about LOTR!

[Yookeroo]

I have no problem with Tolkein fans who don’t like the movies. Different strokes & all. It’s the Tolkeinista harpies that are annoying. Well, they used to be annoying, now I just find them funny. I’m talking about the “Jackson is a hack” crowd. The ones who find that one change he made and have that ruin the movie for them. The ones that think PJ has no understanding of the books.

If you think Peter ultimately failed, fine. But how can you miss that Peter and everyone involved poured their hearts & souls into these movies. How can you say that he doesn’t understand the books just because he visualizes them differently? How can you miss the passion that is there on the screen? How can you not see just what a massive accomplishment it was just to get the films made?

I guess I should pity those who are missing out on one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever because they can’t see the forest for the trees.

[SkipMagic]

*Originally posted by Yookeroo *
**I guess I should pity those who are missing out on one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever because they can’t see the forest for the trees. **

Completely understandable; after all, those damn trees keep getting up in both the movies and books and moving.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I just saw ROTK this afternoon (fucking awesome!) and I had the misfortune to be sitting in front of one of those nerds who had to explain every departure from the book to his mom (he seemed like he was about 16 and he was with his mom. He must have been cutting school today). After a couple of murderous looks from me he finally shut up. As I was walking behind him out of theater he was urgently regaling his mom with everything that was different from the book. An unbelievable movie sailed right over his head.

[Miller]

What kills me about the people who complain about the changes Jackson made is that they seem to be overlooking the fact that these movies are astonishingly faithful for a cinematic adapation of a novel. My God! Have these people never seen any other movie based on a book before?

And, of course, most of them never think about what the alternative would be. Not to pick on one poster, but tdn, you complain that the journey to Bree wasn’t long enough. Well, half the movie is already aerial shots of the Fellowship wandering around various lush New Zealand scenery. You want to tack another twenty minutes of that onto the beginning of the film?

Feh. I love the books. I even love the way Tolkien writes: I think it’s quite beautiful. But I agree with almost every change PJ has made so far. The only things that haven’t worked for me so far have been the Entmoot (but since I honestly don’t know how he could have done this better, that’s a pretty toothless criticism) and “Gimli as comic relief,” which I didn’t really like just because he wasn’t particularly funny. Other than that, I got no problems. Elves at Helm’s Deep? Sure, it looked cool on the screen. Aragorn falling off the cliff? Why not? Faramir being tempted by the Ring? Short of cutting out Tom Bombadil, that’s the single smartest change in the entire trilogy.

[JeffB]

I basically agree with Truth Seeker’s categorizations of the changes, but I understand gobear’s rant. I just rewatched the first two in preparation for ROTK (tomorrow, I hope!). I think they are great movies – particularly LOTR – but I was annoyed by somethings – particularly in TTT. My main problem with the changes is what RTFirefly alluded to – what I see as the changes in character for some of the, well, characters (Elrond in particular).

The plot changes are not a big problem for me except the ones that seem pointless – like Aragorn’s fall from the cliff or the scene in Osgiliath. (Notice that both occured in TTT.)

Overall, I think Jackson did a wonderful job of bringing the books to the screen, better than I would have expected.

[cichlidiot]

*Originally posted by tdn *
**Yeah, the fact that he’s there for no better reason than comic relief is annoying. Wouldn’t have been much worse than if he had been played by Gary Coleman (“Whatchu talkin’ 'bout, Aragorn?”) or Fred Willard (“Hey, wha’ happened?”).
**

Ahhh! I’m going to think this each time I watch the movie now. I had convinced myself Gimli wasn’t that bad, and now I’m going to be thinking of Arnold! Much thanks.

[Optihut]

I am with RTFirefly on this:
Cutting away unnecessary stuff to fit in the plot of a book into 3 hours is an accomplishment.
Cutting away stuff to put in your own version of “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool, if Tolkien had written this instead!” is just annoying. And I am not talking about the Liv Tyler scenes, replacing some no-name elf with Arwen is in fact a good change.

However by warping most of the characters in the two towers he pretty much… Yes, I dare say it: Jumped the shark!

Here’s hoping part 3 will be more like the first and not like the second.

[Matchka]

yojimbo: imagine what could have been done to it don’t forget the cartoon attempts of The Hobbit & the first two boks without ROTK for no apparent reason…BLEAH!

**Sistercoyote: “Aaugh! You’re dirty! Don’t touch me!” ** The general filthiness of humans as opposed to the squaeaky clean elves was actually a running joke among the cast members. It arises again when Aragorn arrives at Helm’s Deep. Legolas: “You look terrible.”

PJ says he would like to propose The Hobbit sometime after he finishes King Kong (under way).

A fabulous set of movies has been created that doesn’t require pre-reading. That’s good. If you have done the reading, you see 3 completely different movies. That’s pretty dang neat. There is always a question if one should do a movie based on a classic piece of writing. But if it had to be done (and who here DIDN’T want it to be done?) then I think this was done well.

[Cervaise]

*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
I don’t know how much of a ‘classic’ a book or play needs to be, before it becomes bad form to do a complete rewrite in bringing it to the screen.

Complete rewrite? Complete rewrite? I mean this with all respect, because I like you tremendously, but are you freakin’ insane?

I wrote this in the other thread, mentioned by Polycarp:

Imagine the disaster these movies would be if someone like Michael Bay or James Cameron or Jan de Bont or Richard Donner or Rob Cohen or McG or Renny Harlin or any other of the studio golden boys had been handed the reins. Imagine giant orange gasoline explosions at Helm’s Deep. Imagine a big triumphant parade at the end that completely misses the point of Tolkien’s difficult-victory-bloodily-earned message. Imagine that Elvish is never spoken by anybody. Imagine Sauron as an actual guy stomping around with whom Aragorn has to have a big kung fu swordfight. Those who are horrified that there are elves at Helm’s Deep have no idea just how bad it could have been.

Link.

As Miller says above, what’s remarkable about these movies is not what Jackson & Co had to alter for the film adaptation, but how little they did, compared to what usually happens in the page-to-screen process.

[Miller]

Originally posted by RTFirefly
2) I don’t know how much of a ‘classic’ a book or play needs to be, before it becomes bad form to do a complete rewrite in bringing it to the screen. But I expect that if a director did the same amount of adding his own material in, if he was bringing a Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill play to the screen, there would be similar howls - only they wouldn’t be from Comic Book Guys, but rather from the sort of people you’d take seriously.

I would argue that no work is so sancrosact that it should be immune to re-interpretation by another artist. Any work of art that is treated as such is, by definition, dead.

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by blessedwolf *
**…but am I allowed to bitch at how Aragorn sounds like the only character who actually speaks Elvish? Everyone else sounds like they’re reading it off cue cards phoenetically, but it seems to flow fluently from Aragorn’s tongue. And he’s the only one for whom it’s not a first language. **

ESL: Elvish as a Second Language.

[look_ninjas]

Coming this December: Ron Howard’s The Lord of the Rings! Starring Russell Crowe as Frodo. Screenplay by Akiva Goldsmith.

Although at least that one would win the Oscars.

[Apollyon]

*Originally posted by tdn *
**In the movie, Frodo gets the ring, and arrives in Bree 10 minutes later. He couldn’t have arrived sooner if he’d called a cab. The general hugeness of the journey was completely lost. **

One of the nice things about the FOTR:EE is that the pacing of the journeys (not just to Bree) are restored somewhat. The hobbits’ journey to Bree feels longer and a bigger achievement – the Midgewater in particular is a nice restoration… somehow I felt bad for the actors slogging through that scene and a number of other “up hill and down dale” jaunts across our countryside to then have them cut – the Fellowships’ journey feels like a bigger deal to get to Moria, the journey down the Anduin is longer with a camp-out, etc.

It’s unfortunate that the need to remove these for theatrical release timing reduced the epic feel of the travel… but isn’t it nice to have them on the DVD?

[Apollyon]

*Originally posted by Cervaise ***As Miller says above, what’s remarkable about these movies is not what Jackson & Co had to alter for the film adaptation, but how little they did, compared to what usually happens in the page-to-screen process. **

And the changes they (wisely) dropped. We know that footage of Arwen fighting at Helm’s Deep was filmed – the TTT:EE extras discs show this clearly along with interviews with stunt performers including the woman who was Arwen’s stunt double (and an Uruk the rest of the time). The commentary discussed how this was the original plan for involving Arwen in the story at this point, but that once the writers decided to bring the appendix into the story and play up the romance angle that the fighting Arwen story element wasn’t needed anymore, so they dropped it.

Not that <teeth gritted> a fighting Arwen would have ruined the movie… but this way was truer to the original and all up a more elegant solution.

[Splutter]

Loved the books. Loved the movies.
If you don’t like the book, take it back to the library and get out Harry Potter, or whatever else spins your wheels.

If you are a complete and devoted fan of the books who can’t abide to see any variation when they are adapted for screen, for crying out loud folks- don’t go and see the movies!

There’s no way a film is ever going to be a perfect match to the movie you had running in your head as you read the book.

Stop whinging.

Thats all.

[FilmGeek]

gobear Will you marry me?

originally posted by FilmGeek here http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=215858&highlight=tolkien I’ve tried (and tried and tried) to read the books but, in my probably reviled opinion, Tolkien just wasn’t a very good storyteller. His plot lines, linguistics and characters are fantastic and very memorable as well as borrowed, alluded to and blatently stolen by others, but 20 pages about Hobbits stopping to eat and wash their feet do not make for a good reading… and definitely should not have been in the movies.

The portion that I have read was wonderfully condensed and realized by Peter Jackson and crew (and stunningly shot by Andrew Lesnie).

[FaerieBeth]

*Originally posted by Optihut *
And I am not talking about the Liv Tyler scenes, replacing some **no-name elf **with Arwen is in fact a good change.

That would have been Glorfindel. I always kinda liked Glorfindel, but having him pop up for one scene in a 9 hour trilogy would have been just…weird? I am very happy with Jackson’s vision.

And with that being said, and having just returned from seeing ROTK, I think PJ rocks. I love Tolkien’s work, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t kiss that fat curly headed director right now for bringing such a kick ass story to film for me to revel in…and watch time and again…and just…WOW…just OMG.

FB

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I read on AICN recently that one of the first notes PJ got from the studio execs after reading a preliminary script was, “Why do you need for hobbits? Get rid of two of them.”

It could have been so much worse.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

That should have been, “Why do you need four hobbits?”

[Fish]

I couldn’t agree more. No matter how familiar Any Given Fanboy is with Tolkien’s work, the appendices at the end of Return of the King, the Lost Tales, ad nauseum, to say that the movies were “a mess” (in the words of one A.G. Fanboy) shows absolutely no perspective or objectivity when viewing these works as films.

Because that’s what they are. They are films. Based, yes, on a book; but ultimately, the storytelling devices are filmic.

Imagine if this had been filmed for television, with false and misleading “climaxes” with dramatic music inserted every seven fucking minutes so they could ratchet up the tension right before the commercial break. See? That’s a television technique.

Imagine if this had been released in comic book form first. The story would have been written with arbitrary cliffhangers every thirty-two fucking pages because that’s how serial comics work. There would have been more action sequences and less talking. There would have been more flashbacks and character-narrated panels (“by that time my lungs were aching for air…”). The characters would have had brighter colors and more distinct costumes so we could tell them apart in a small panel. Oh, yeah, we probably would have got Glorfindel and Cirdan and Elrohir and all the little characters because hey, you don’t have to pay extra cast members in a comic book, but that’s a small tradeoff. Because that’s how comic books work.

Since these are films, we see filmic techniques. We see cross-threaded storytelling. We see a definite arc and climax at the end of the film, arranged for maximum punch and minimum anticlimax (Osgiliath instead of Shelob, Boromir dies in FotR instead of TTT). We see a nicely rounded resolution at the end of the picture (eg, Sam’s inspirational speech). We see elements that give us hope (Elves at Helm’s Deep) and make us cheer (any given Legolas stunt) and frighten us (the extended Troll Fight, the Collapsing Stairway, the Watcher in the Water) without being confusing (who is Erkenbrand?) and we see a minimum of Sitting And Talking About Shit (Council of Elrond). These are filmic techniques.

Totally agree with gobear. These films, when viewed as films, are extremely well-directed, well-performed, and generally well-written, with nicely chosen color palettes and astonishing production design details, jaw-dropping effects, amazing locations, and a solid throughline of plot that a non-Tolkien-reader can easily follow. These films are not “a mess” simply because we don’t get to see Treebeard meet Wormtongue at the gates of Isengard and say “go and give him all the messages you can think of”. Jeez, fanboys, get some perspective and put aside your LOTR-as-books baggage for a sec.

If you can’t do that even for a minute, then get out of my way – because I can put it aside long enough to enjoy the films.

FISH

a longer agreement than I wanted it to be, but…