…penile implant surgery?
I’m with you here. I did watch them all when the first came out, and I thought the first movie was a really good adaptation of that material. But after that… not so much.
I really, REALLY hate Gimli the Comic Relief Dwarf and The Amazing Adventures of Legolas. I’ll never forgive Jackson for that crap.
I have no great hopes for the Hobbit. I just hope it doesn’t suck too bad. The Tolkien Professor makes a case for considering the movies as a separate work only loosely connected with the books. I can’t quite go that far, but I commend him for his fairness in saying something like that.
Oh hell yes.
Yeah, those fellated with the utmost alacrity.
I think the LOTR trilogy is pretty well faithful to the books.
I also think that the LOTR trilogy consists of three pretty bad movies. The first one’s alright, not great. They get progressively worse.
In a word, it is hilariously campy, but doesn’t mean to be. It does not (and the books do) convince me it’s to be taken seriously.
Schlocky and glurgy to boot.
Visually stunning? Okay. But otherwise pretty dumb.
This is an example of an objectively incorrect aesthetic opinion. 
The stuff “restored” to the extended editions is very poorly edited in, some of it hardly making any narrative sense. The scene in the rowboat where they’re remembering the gifts, for example–cinematographic nonsense. The mouth of Sauron–each little bit looks neat, but the way they’re put together you can hardly tell what’s happening. AH SUDDENLY THERE"S A MOUTHFACE TAKING UP THE SCREEN GRIMACING AT SOMEONE I DON"T KNOW WHO OR WHY! AND THERE IT IS AGAIN OVER AND OVER! WTF IS HAPPENING?
Like you, I ultimately don’t find the movies convincing, and that’s the bottomline problem. Although I have my own unique set of issues with the films.
They’re not (to me) visually stunning; they’re high quality, special effect blockbusters, but the art direction is mundane. There’s no sense of artistic vision, like you might get from Cameron, Ridley Scott, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Tarantino, even the Pirates of the Caribbean guy…not that I’d necessarily prefer all of those to Jackson.
To me there was a lack of differentiation among the elves, humans, and dwarves. Yeah, you could generally tell which was supposed to be which, but it was more superficial than the difference between a Boston Brahmin and a Louisiana Cajun. No mystery to the elves.
Sidebar: My vision of Middle Earth probably requires some hyper-realism… a sense of a more real and intense world than our own.
If we can go by Tolkien’s preference for Arthur Rackham style illustrations, I assume that he didn’t envision Middle Earth as an absolutely literal place himself. (My opinion here is absolutely non-expert) However, I do not picture Middle Earth in Arthur Rackham style (too twee) so I’m at odds with both Tolkien and Jackson. My own vision is closer to the Brothers Hildebrandt, but I wasn’t demanding that from the films. Just a more singular art style.
You know a little? :eek:
Seeing people fawning over real-life personalities is pretty pathetic too.
I had no problem with Aragorn being a man who has doubts about whether he can fulfill his destiny (if he survives the war, of course). He’d be kind of an entitled idiot if he were completely confident. Any problems I have with movie-Aragorn I (dare I say it) have to blame on Viggo Mortensen. Not even sure if it’s his performance or his appearance or what: he’s beautiful, but he’s also a little too fine-boned pretty and slight for me. He’s a Ranger and has been alone in the wild for a long time. He needs to be a little less of a hippie and a little more of a state trooper, if you see what I mean.
I’m just hoping that, next year, we will not have Annoying Comic Relief Dwarf X13.
Wishing I had someone on my Death List is fawning?
You realize that the two most famous Tolkien artists of all time (Alan Lee and John Howe, tho you did mention Arthur Rackham) had their styles integrated into the movie all over the place, right?
I can grok that (I am a sucker for the highest of high fantasy); Jackson made the deliberate choice to have ME look as “realistic” as possible (yes everybody’s MMV on that point).
Bombur is probably the default odds-on favorite there-do you wish the comic relief didn’t exist at all, and if you don’t how would you have done it? I LOL every time at Gimli keeling over during the drinking game, BTW.
Shoot, even the entrance to Moria is identical to that depicted in the book.
The scripts, languages, etc. we’re all incorporated into the film, right down to Howard Shore incorporating choral chanting and singing in elvish and the Black Speech.
Personally, I thought Weta did an incredible job on the art direction and production. And yes, Jackson mentioned he didn’t want it to look hyper-stylized or filled with too much wizardy effects. He felt it should evoke a sense of culture and history for every race and city.
There’s far more freedom for art direction for a movie set in the future, and with no real pre-existing concepts as seen in Blade Runner or Alien. Syd Mead and H. R. Giger were inspired choices by Ridley Scott to bring on on the conception of those films (respectively). I’d say the same for Alan Lee and John Howe.
Whoa.
Jackson used Arthur Rackham illustrations?
The Scouring was Tolkien basically screaming “technology bad, idyllic pastoral nature good !” at the top of his lungs. Which would have been ironic to include in a film where 90% of what you see is generated by hyper advanced computers.
I don’t know, just was acknowledging that the poster I quoted mentioned him.
Dammit.
Question: have you seen the “Making Of…” dvd extras? I doubt it, from this:
as that was something they went to great lengths to do (completely different art styles, all with an evolution of style over time, esp. for the humans)