Recently, an article came up on Salon.com, in which Stephanie Zackarek complained about one reviewer’s tarring of the Lord of the Rings as boy’s movies. Then a few days ago, I was at a dinner in which a woman mentioned, as though it were obvious, that women found all those battle sequences boring.
This is all news to me. Since the whole thing started until now, I have never heard anybody suggest that women don’t like Lord of the Rings. My wife loved it.
There is a great deal of action in the films, but it hadn’t ever occurred to me that anybody would have lumped it in with a lot of action-for-action’s-sake films.
I was terrified by the sight of the orc muster at Helm’s Deep. Am I supposed to believe that women weren’t, because they were women?
I was awed by the valor of Eowyn’s perilous charge to hamstring the oliphant – on all four legs. Is this just because I’m a male?
I just can’t quite feature it. Women are unmoved by the death and redemption of Boromir? The confident strut of Aragorn on Weathertop? Only men are wonderstruck when the plummeting Gandalf snatches up Glamdring and proceeds to whale on the Balrog in mid tumble?
I can only speak definitively for my wife, but she loved it, action sequences and all. She had never read the books before, but fell in love with the first film and was awed by the third.
I think there’s a lot there for women to like, even if they don’t particularly like the battle scenes.
Haven’t been to a pron theatre recently, but I am a woman and a proud Tolkien geek. I loved everything about the books and most of what’s in the movies–the battle scenes too.
However, I am also a teacher, and a lot of my students have been reading the trilogy since it came out-- all boys. Not one single girl. And now that I think about it, I don’t know any other women who have read and loved the books. I’ve only discussed them with my guy geek friends and on this forum. So maybe there is something to this gender thing, but I don’t think LotR is for boys per se. Tolkien did write the books for his son though, so it’s not surprising that the majority of the readers are boys.
I’d be interested to see what other folks think of this.
I’m a chick. I loved it. Of course, I also loved Kill Bill, and that really was action for action’s sake, so maybe I’m just a freak. Or, hey, maybe different women like different things. Who knows?
My mother and my sisters don’t like them, They only saw the first one and refused to see the others. They say its because of the action sequences. They did however like Gladiator, apparently the story was good enough to trump the action. I’m stll trying to convince them that LOTR’s story can do that too.
I liked the first one best because it had the most character and plot development. The other two weren’t bad as movies go, but the battle scenes were wearying. Generally speaking, I like “action” scenes, but battle scenes do not do anything for me. Shootouts, car-chases, running away from scary creatures, things blowing up, sure, that’s fun. (I love hitmen movies and action-thrillers) Big chaotic scenes with things happening- mostly to characters you don’t even know their names- so fast you can barely follow them…boring. How many orcs do you have to see killed to get the point? That, and there wasn’t enough fire. The really neat fireballs in Timeline made me prefer the battle scenes in that one to ROTK. (I know, shock, dismay, outrage)
The only really interesting parts of the battle at all were the things Eowyn did, because they actually focused on one character for a bit. Now, she rocked. Why couldn’t they have spent more of the movie developing her character? And giving Legolas more lines/screen time?
My two sisters, three of my girlfriends, and I (I’m a girl too) all love the movies. My sisters and I have also read the books and were completely engrossed in the story. I’ve also overheard plenty of other women excited about the movies. Of course, sometimes they were only excited because of the attractive actors, but they’re still there cheering on and getting involved in the tale.
Count another female LOTR fan. I’ve still got the four paperbacks (including The Hobbit) I bought back in 1969, and am rereading the series for the umpteenth time (Pippin and Merry have just met Treebeard) before I go see ROTK.
I was wowed by the first movie. I thought the second was too heavy on battle and didn’t spend enough time with Frodo and Samwise. But that’s because Frodo’s quest is the heart of the story, after all. The battle scenes as battle scenes were superb.
By the way, I loved both of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan movies, so maybe I’m weird. Or an adolescent boy at heart?
I have lots of women friends who love LotR, books and movies. But my own girlfriend, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to grok them at all. Hi ho. In general, I’d have to disagree with the “for boys” theory…Timmy
Mmm, I think movies with lots of swordfighting, cavalry charges, and so on would be classed as “Boys movies”, since they’re not the things women stereotypically like (which would be chick flicks).
I love LotR and just finished my annual re-read of the books. I have a number of female friends who also love the books, and the ones who haven’t read it yet loved the movies. I do find the battle scenes somewhat tiresome, both in the books and on screen, but the story as a whole overcomes that.
Plus the movies are full of hot actors. What’s not to like?
I love the LOTR movies; I’ve seen the first one more than 80 times, the second 30 (the third only 4 so far). I’ve been a Tolkein geek for 25 years–30 years if I go all the way back to the first time I read The Hobbit.
I am definitely not a boy.
But it’s not the action scenes that appeal to me in the movies. In repeated rewatchings, I find I pay less attention to the big battle sequences, and more to the little moments, the details, the personal interactions between the characters.
I was worried that my girlfriend wouldn’t want to see Fellowship of the Rings. She’s pretty “girly” and basically Julia Roberts or Sandra Bulluck movies are more her speed. She basically liked it a lot but didn’t realize it was a three part story. She was a little alarmed that she would need to wait two more years and six more hours to find out what happens.
Really the movies have everything - massive battles for the guys and the whole Aragorn/Aeowyn Sam/Frodo romances for the hos.
My wife didn’t like either of the first two, and won’t see the third (way too long for something she probably won’t like).
Anyway, there was an article in the New York Times a couple weeks ago that made the claim that its more of a guy’s movie. That’s probably what the Salon article referred to.
FWIW, I think its true. There are certainly plenty of women who like it – it doesn’t make you a freak, a nerd, or weird – but I think the audience is much more male, maybe 70-30.
I went to an 8:00 showing on Monday night this week. The audience was several solo guys (like me, prolly with wives sitting at home), many couples, and then several groups of 2-4 guys who were there together (and I suspected NOT seeing it for the first time).
I saw one solo woman there.
Wait until its been out a month and go check out some tuesday night showing and see if you think that it’s not a “guy movie”.
And guys, if you bring the lady-friend thinking that the 10 minutes of peripheral love story during a three-and-a-half hour movie will satisfy her “Sandra Bullock jones”, you’re crazy. Either she likes what you like or she she won’t like it.
