The Hornburg is supposed to scare off the Orcs. The scene in the book where the blast of horns reverberating and echoing, becoming louder and louder, would have make such a majestic scene; imagine the horn blast sounding out, the battle paused, and then come the echoes…
Was it just me, or the final charge led by Theoden kind of cheesy? Did he only have 3 riders for his royal guard? And how could four (or seven, if you count Aragorn, Legolas and Glimi) stand against such a number with being shot off by a crossbow or something?
The Path of the Dead is totally butchered. Not to mention that the shades only made it as far as to drive away the Corsairs. Other dopers have already mentioned this, so I wouldn’t ramble anymore.
No Knights of Amon Sul
Galadriel’s presence is really wasted in the first movie and it is an uneven execution. First, there is no reason in the theatrical release for her to be around (she gave no advice, she gave no gifts, only the boats and some pep talk to Frodo). In the extend edition, she bounced around like a little girl while giving away the gifts, making me wonder if she was on drugs.
Likes
Gandalf’s little visual tour of Minas Tirith was breath-taking.
The last fight at the Fellowship of the Ring. (What little nitpick - Bormoir, where’s your shield?)
The siege engines and methods of siege warfare are rather unrealistic, but exciting.
King Theoden leading the charge at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. PJ, keep it to the book, would you? The movie shines whenever he uses line from the book and sticks to. His battle speech is more or less the same as it is from the book.
Aragorn notices that Boromir’s shield is stacked next to some of their supplies. It’s the reason he goes looking for Frodo. Boromir does not have the shield when he confronts Frodo and never gets back to where he left it.
Sean Bean still does the best death scene.
Cate Blanchett is nice looking and all, but I’ve never felt the glory and awe that Galadriel seems to evoke in people-not in the movies, anyway. Her nails look so fake, and I dislike her makeup–they went too pale, IMO.
One regret is that the books give every character their own favorite song. This is pretty well gone in the movie.
One thing I enjoyed was the scene in Moria where the party find Balin’s chronicle of their reconquest of Moria. Against all common sense the party immediately stop and read it. I’m sure Tolkien never thought twice about whether that made sense or not. I’m glad it was in the movie.
I once saw an interview with one of the artists who designed the overall look of the film. (I think it was Alan Lee, but I am not certain.) He was talking about the design philosophy of the Dwarves. (Gimli’s costume and props, the architecture in Moria, etc.) He thought it should all be straight lines and angles, with no curves.
That bothered me. Dwarves live underground, where preventing cave-ins is a major concern. Arches and domes should be revered in such a culture.
I keep remembering more and more…
pleased with so many of the little things that were true to the books, like Legolas walking on the snow. or Sam saying to the apparently dead Frodo “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” [sob]
Sam always carrying those pans, and being so excited to see the Oliphant.
Eowyn and Eomer were beautifully portrayed - believable as brother and sister.
Irk: I’ve said it before - Sam was supposed to find Frodo beaten and naked in the orcs’ tower, not just tied up.
A little thing that I dig is the different fighting styles. I heard the guy who did the fight choreography talk at my school while I think he was running a short seminar style course.
It was neat having him talk about the design philosophy for the fight scenes, with the elves economizing every motion, goblins and orcs cannibalizing weapons and styles, and the minor differences between the more regimented Gondorians and the Rohan.
I’m kinda skipping over the rest of the thread, but I had a big issue with the size of Edoras and to a lesser extent Minas Tirith. I know the Rohirim kind of live on a steppe-like plain, but Edoras didn’t look like it could fit 200 people or support the operations of a small band of nomads, let alone a powerful kingdom. Same thing with Minis Tirith except to a lesser extent. It’s the main city of Gondor in the major population center of ME. There should have been surrounding farms and towns on the plain (forget its name).
Yes, in the book*. Those lines aren’t in the movie but I re-watched that part yesterday and it does look better than I remember. They use a lot of quick cuts but even so Eomer’s band (eored, if you must) looks to be between 50 and 100, so more than I thought at first.
(Oh, and it is definitely Arwen’s fingers moving on the sword. Viggo is an intense enough actor that he apparently walked around for weeks wearing the heavy Anduril replica on his belt, I would think he could lie still for the few seconds it took to shoot that scene).
*Don’t even try to out-geek me on the LOTR books, dude. You will lose.
I can assure you arches and domes are in very short supply in real deep mines. It’s all straight lines, actually.
I like Galadriel’s temptation scene, it leads into what is, for me, the most emotional statement in the whole movie (“I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel”), given her history. I also like: the bucolic hobbits, I like Eowyn as she is portrayed by MO, love everything about the production design except…
Didn’t like the design of the Ents. Not in the slightest. I’ve only seen one artist who gets it right, and Alan Lee, as much as I am a fan, is not him. Ents shouldn’t look just like trees. They should look like Giants who suggest trees. At least, I think so.
Okay, did EE TTT last night with #2 son (who said to me, and it hurt, “there are books?” :eek: ). Xmas is coming…
Anyway, I had never noticed the Aragorn’s hand on the sword stuff, so I looked for it. It is Arwen’s hand–unless Aragorn’s hand is waaaay double jointed and he likes long nails with a French manicure.
Irk: I find myself FFing through the Treebeard stuff. I can’t help it. I loved Treebeard in the books; on film, he is too slow. I wish they had made a way for him to talk normal, but allude to the deliberateness and slowness. The timber of the voice is good–but I can hear Gimli in it. Ditto the scenes with Frodo and Sam and Gollum. I get it–Sam doesn’t trust Gollum and Frodo is weakening.
Like the flashback of Faramir’s.
Much more pleases than irks: Andy Whatshisname does such a good job as Wormtongue. And to take Tolkien’s own words and twist them out of Gandalf’s mouth into Wormtongue’s was genius and creepy as hell.
Irk–I still don’t like the way Eowyn hesitates when Wormtongue goes into his “but you are alone. Who knows what etc”–I would have thought an immediate recoil would have been more likely. Is it to show how persuasive WT can be?
Love the flashback between Aragorn and Arwen–this is the scene she does the best, IMO. She redeems herself here with her reaction and her expressions.
Love Chris Lee’s eyebrows when “women and children” are mentioned. As I watch more (and learn tons from these threads), I see more–the ring and its references. I mean Aragorn’s ring–it’s such a small thing and easy to overlook.
Still find the battles tiresome–there are only so many ways to die in battle. Love the Theoden poem and his doubting and Aragorn putting heart back into him.
EE ROTK tonight, if #2 son finishes his homework and practices his clarinet.
Given that Theoden is explicitly under a Saruman’s magic spell in the movie, and that Grima is presumably the instrument by which Saruman is working the magic (otherwise, why would Saruman need him at all?), I always took it that Grima was applying whatever juju he ahd been given by Saruam to manipulate Eowyn in that scene, in the interests of seducing her (to put the nicest possible spin on it) or making it easier to rape her (to put the nastiest). That would explain the positively odd look on her face during the scene, the fact that she seemed to be made weaker by his very words, and her failure to immediately kick the crap out of him once she made the effort to free herself.
(I think we can all agree that a Grima-Eowyn fight is very brief and ends with him screaming “My balls! My balls! You’ve RIPPED OFF MY BALLS!”)
:eek: I never realized that. I thought Andy Serkis WAS Grima and Gollum. <dies of embarrassment> Oh, wait–he’s the guy who had to stay in character the whole time (long time to fake an accent, no?). :smack:
Yes, any struggle between Grima and Eowyn would have had her adjusting her clothing afterward* and walking away, and him lying on the floor, sobbing to be killed.
I also love the stable scene where we see Aragorn calm Brago (and the RL story is so good and adds to my enjoyment). I hope Viggo gets to see his horse often.
Oh, and Eowyn’s impetuous cry to Aragorn about “because they love you!” and her abashed expression and fleeing the scene… I wish we had more of her grief over that relationship that can never be and her change of heart to Faramir… (I’m such a girl when it comes to Tolkien).
I mean straightening her top and shaking out her skirts and patting down her hair, you dirty minded people, you!
Well, that’s not quite right. She’d have been adjusting a single hair, perhaps, but otherwise her post-fight ablutions would have consisted of taking a bath to wash off his blood.
Oh, it’s okay. I’m a guy, and I want more Eowyn-Faramir too. But I hate the scene you allude to–not because Mirando Otto and Viggo Mortenson don’t do perfectly wondeful jobs (they do) but because the scene is the climax of movie-Aragorn’s wankery. I loved and admired him in the first movie and much of the second; by the third I utterly despise him.
When the movies came out - I had yet to read either the Hobbit or the LOTR, I knew the ‘gist’ of the story, and had memories of the earlier animated tries.
I loved the movies - thougth that many of the complaints (there were no Elves at Helms Deep!) were trivial complaints by the purists, that I understood, but was willing to give PJ plenty of room for his telling of the story.
After all, anytime a book is made into movie form, there are sacrifices.
I still love the movies - the direction, the score, the look and feel, the actors, the immense attention to details, etc.
But now I’ve read the books.
And I just about can’t watch them anymore… I’m sure that my specific complaints have already been covered. Many of the things PJ got right - its the subtleys in the things he got wrong (or left out) that bug me.
I think that scene is doomed to be confusing. It’s an important scene in establishing the interaction between the Fellowship and Saruman, but there’s simply now way to communicate the background info without destroying the pacing and mood.
