The rest I agree with, but not this. Gandalf being swept aside so easily is just playing on the Worf Effect - Gandalf’s badass status is established by the scenes showing his victory over the Balrog, and his leading the Rohirrim charge. Having him flung about shows the viewers how badass the Witch King really is, which is a point that kinda needs to be made considering the last time we’ve seen him fight he was being driven away by a hippie waving a torch around, after failing to kill a goddamn midget.
Had their confrontation lasted longer, your average unastute viewer could have thought “well, of course Eowyn did him in - Gandalf had loosened the top”.
Overall I think that everything I would have said has been said, especially by DSYoungEsq.
The very short summary for me is:
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too much new stuff written by Jackson et al. Jackson, you aren’t a great writer, you are at best a competent movie director. You are making a movie based on a great writer’s book. Get the fuck over yourself and use what you are privileged enough to be given, instead of kidding yourself you are good enough to insert your own material without showing up your own inadequacies.
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too Hollywood ie standard cliches used at every turn, action scenes over the top to the point of utter ridiculousness, trite use of trendy current styles (eg Hong Kong action movie fighting) despite being totally inappropriate to the period of the piece, spoon feeding of emotional content, and relentless dumbing down overall.
Basically the movies were never going to suit my taste unless Jackson decided to make an “independent” style film rather than a “hollywood” style film, because the second broad criticism above is one that I would make of the latter style in every case.
Why the hatin’ on the prophecy loophole? If it’s good enough for Macbeth…
The problem with the use of the trope is how to present it. The prophecy can’t just be some random insertion into the plot - the existence of the prophecy in the first place has to be a significant and credible plot point in its own right, or else the whole effect comes across as contrived. In Macbeth, the prophecy of invincibility was a trigger which drove Macbeth to kill Macduff’s family in the first place, thus setting him up for the prophecy failure at the end in a neat closing of the circle. (Those witches were just plain mean to poor old Macca.)
The big reveal is also a problem for the trope. In an ideal world, I suppose, it might be possible to do a reveal of the prophecy’s failure that had something like the impact of the revelation in Sixth Sense, but we are all so trained now to look for prophecy, foreshadowing etc, that it would be almost impossible to pull off. (I know 6th Sense was not a prophecy thing - the power of the revelation is what I am addressing.) The best that is possible, I suspect, is a conspiracy between author and reader/viewer in which we (but not the villain) are flattered with the insight to see in advance the failure of the villain to recognise the inevitability of his downfall as one more character flaw.
Shakespeare (cunning bastard) did it well by having two prophecy points - perambulating trees, and C-sections. The revelation of the coming to pass of the first triggers vertigo and a degree of self-doubt in Macbeth which legitimately drives the characterisation and plot further. The walking of the wood is also a legitimate military tactic, so the “failure” of the first prophecy seems less contrived,which helps paper over the somewhat contrived “not of woman born” thing. The march of the trees builds tension and anticipation towards the Macduff reveal so that one doesn’t get a sense of Deus Ex about the whole affair, but of building betrayal, horror and inevitable catastrophe.
In LOTR, the invincibility of the Witch King was only a plot point to the extent that it explained some of his capacity to invoke fear, and to explain why he was not killed off earlier in the piece. Not as compellingly clever as Shakespeare, but who is? However, it allowed of some suspense (who will kill him? An Ent? An Elf? A King? A Wizard? A Hobbit?)
In the book, the false resolution of the issue brought about by the initial stabbing by a hobbit was well done. The reader is left in doubt about the resolution until the last.
But the movie, for mine, telegraphed the punch by giving prominence to Eowyn’s disobedience too close to the climactic battle. This was unfortunate, but may have been inevitable, given the time limitations of the medium.
I am grateful, however, that Jackson did not contrive a Reaction Shot - the Mask of Horror face pulled by the villain in the moment between his recognition of his utter failure and his hideous demise. That was a cliche that Jackson avoided for the Witch King and Sauron.
I too would have loved to have seen a scouring of the shire. The idea of a minor character becoming ennobled and matured without knowing it by his exposure to greatness can be well done. Would Jackson have been able to pull it off without it being an ugly triumphalist cliche? Dunno. But I like to think so, and I would have liked to have seen him try.
This this has been Thissed by the Thisser!
Indeedy. You can see the light bulb go on over Eowyn’s head and the Witch-King’s doubt swaying him for a moment, until he goes “Naah, fuck it, I’ll kill her anyway” and fells her with one blow of his mace, and then gets it in the back of the knee from Merry’s barrow-blade - until then looking like a serviceable but unspectacular weapon next to Sting and Anduril; whereupon Eowyn gets to hand out the coup de grace as no-one dies from knee-stabbing even if they have had their spell of invulnerability broken.
Hmmm…interesting point. My first reaction is that PJ could have shown how badass the WK is by having him single-handedly wipe out a platoon of soldiers, but perhaps that’s my lingering anger of PJ not doing things “by the book”.
Is there speculation that the WK was surrounded by some sort of spell of invulnerability? Did I miss something in the movies?
Movies? No. In the book however, as Merry is left alone and unnoticed after the slaying of the Witch-King and the death of Theoden, his Barrow-blade withers as if burnt… “But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.”
He was protected by Glorfindel’s prophesy in 1975, “Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall.” Glorfindel managed to restrain Eärnur for the first time.
Just a general note of King Eärnur. He was born in 1928. He was already and old man when he accepted the Witch King’s second challenge. The Steward Mardil convinced him to refrain the first time when Eärnur became King in 2043. In 2050 Eärnur rode to Minas Morgul with a small company of knights.
The lack of heirs was a problem before he was even King. He never chose to marry and came to the Kingship late. He was not wise but a hot headed and fierce fighter that knew no fear. You might say he was Sonny Corleone and met a similar demise.
Yes and no. PJ could maybe have pulled it but in a general sense… dude, wiping hordes of mooks is what major characters do. And it’s what mooks are there for. In movieland, wars could be fought and won by the dozen blokes that really count duking it out in a barren field, but if there are no faceless goons to judo chop for the lulz before we reach that point, what’s the point ? 
Following that logic, having the WK destroy a regiment would merely establish that he’s a major villain (which we already know), it wouldn’t say anything about his relative power viz. the heroes.
This, by the way, is also the logic behind the Moria troll and Legolas’ muma-kill (ha ! a pun, or play on words !) : to show the Fellows are not just Big Damn Heroes, but Big Damn *Badass *Heroes. Cutting down swathes of orcs just wouldn’t do the trick for regular movie viewers, I’m afraid. And I’ll prove it : Gimli, relegated to comic relief, doesn’t have any impressive onscreen kill. Neither does Boromir, because he’s the “traitor”.
Who kills what, when and how is a very strict code in action flicks 
I guess I’ve always understood that the magic of the blade increased the seriousness of the wound–how else could a hobbit damage the badass WK enough to give Eowyn a chance?–rather than breaking a spell that protected him.
Neither does Aragorn. Gandalf takes on the balrog but dies in the attempt.
It seems like the badassery of the WK could have been shown just as well by an icy stand-off between Gandalf and the WK just before the horns of Rohan which is, of course, how the book does it. 
Turning Gandalf into a pussy is also inconsistent: Gandalf fights off multiple Nazgul during Faramir’s flight back to Minas Tiras by shining a bright light. I guess I’m just a bitter LOTR book geek. 
One other scene in the movies comes to mind: the standoff between Frodo and the winged Nazgul in Osgiliath. Here’s the ring of power, the ONE thing that Sauron desires more than all things, being flaunted right in front of one of his most powerful lieutenants who is then scared off by a single arrow without making any concerted effort to get it. Just dumb.
Edited for clarity.
I think had Peter Jackson gone to greater lengths to show us Frodo’s psychological perspective, then the CGI might have meant something.
Is there a suggestion that he is literally “protected” or are you being rhetorical? I don’t know Tolkien well besides reading LoTR itself.
I’d always assumed that the witch king is not literally protected, it’s just that if you assume that the prophecy is accurate he will not, as a simple statement of fact, be killed by a man.
I know you have your tongue in your cheek here, but this comment is at the heart of the problem, as far as I am concerned. Time and again I have heard Jackson’s changes defended on the basis that the way some particular part of the book was written “wouldn’t have worked as a movie”. What people really mean when they say this is merely that the relevant part wouldn’t have been sufficiently formulaic to avoid making the lowest common denominator’s brain hurt.
He was not in fact protected in a spell like way but apparently everyone including the Witch King himself believed he would never be killed by the hand of a “Man”.
What he did have was a mighty spell wove about him through a **Ring **for men that some wise Dúnedain Smith wove counter spells thousands of years before to unknit said spell and make him vulnerable. Éowyn could not slay the Witch King by herself but only after someone else, in this case the Hobbit Meriadoc stabbed him with the magic knife.
In earlier drafts apparently the Barrow Blades were reddish bronze damasked with serpent-forms. Showing some similarity to some ancient Celtic barrow findings.
We’ll never know for certain if all the blades had similar enchantments to Merry’s but the Orcs feared them and in letter #210 we learn that Tolkien thought if Sam had struck the Ringwraith on Weathertop that it would have caused said Ringwraith to fall down and presumably to then be vulnerable. He also said that Sam’s Barrow Blade would have melted away.
Based on the few clues and a note in an earlier draft that did not make the final version of FotR it seems likely that all the blades retrieved from the Barrow were like Merry’s and that the presence of these blades on Weathertop help drive off the Ringwraiths that night on Weathertop. In the earlier draft I think it was Gandalf that mentioned that the Ringwraiths actually feared these blades. It is a shame that did not come up either when Gandalf was talking to Frodo at Rivendell or at the council of Elrond. It would have satisfied many of the largest questions about the books if the blades and Eagles were discussed a bit in Rivendell.
Damn, while I never thought about much before, I wish at least one of Elrond’s advisers was a Elf Woman and they spoke to a maid or fleeing mother in Rohan. Maybe Legolas could have chatted up one of the Lothlórien Babes or something.
I don’t want to get caught up in either-or dualisms. Certainly there are parts of the novel which are timeless, and must need be included in any adaptation, and those that would throw a modern day audience right out of the film, lowering it to the level of unintentional self-parody in their eyes at the worst (and all that lies in between). If someone were to adapt Bored of the Rings to the screen, it would help display just how fine the line can be between cinematic art and absurdism/triteness in this genre. I certainly don’t think everything that JRRT wrote is Holy Writ and must be preserved unaltered at all costs, but nor do I excuse PJ’s sins either on those occasions when he did indeed cross that threshold.
Arwen.
Granted, in the book the whole love story nearly appears out of thin air at the end…and you need some explaination for the whole Eowyn thing. But kickass Arwyn leaves you with the whole “well, why didn’t she join the Fellowship” (which would have been horrible). Arwen the petulant teenager ("But Daddy, I LUUUUVVVV him!) was unappealing. And Arwen whose fate is tied to the ring was terrible. The whole thing made you wish that Aragorn would just marry Eowyn (even worse than the books, where you at least don’t see Arwen as anything other than ideal).
Let Aragorn leave with his sword to save Middle Earth. Do not let Elrond come off as a racist bastard. And leave Arwen completely out of the second movie and in the third for the wedding at the end.
Well, now you know. All those years of immortality and invulnerability, and all of a sudden the WK’s back to being susceptible to normal weapons wielded by a mere human. Eowyn was not in her own person any more dangerous to the WK than anyone else on the battlefield, prophecy loopholes or not - it’s just that those prophecies have the darnedest way of fulfilling themselves.
I don’t understand this sort of analysis. Where is there ANY indication that the book has lost popularity over the years? If anything, it continues to grow in popularity, so much so that Hollywood finally got around to making a blockbuster movie version of it.
Modern readers/audiences are no more or less willing to accept what the Professor wrote than audiences in the fifties/sixties were. Peter Jackson didn’t need to change a damn thing in the story (other than necessary elisions for length), and he would have had exactly the same level of blockbuster hit that he did.
Hmf.
You realize that ultimately we are talking about two different art forms, with their own requirements, limitations, facets, etc. etc.? Of course PJ had to change certain things, if for no other reason than to get things to fit into the time limits imposed on/chosen by him, just for starters. How would you present the story in a 10-11 hour format? You damned sure would have a whole host of dilemmas as to what to include, what to exclude, what to alter, and so on, and not just because of how much time you have to work with. That most certainly was not an easy task and isn’t something you can just shrug your shoulders about and say “Oh >I’ll< keep everything the same, it won’t be any problem at all!” Afterwards, let me count the new grey hairs you would undoubtedly acquire.
What works in a book format may not work on the screen so well. Sure PJ f*cked up in some respects, I don’t doubt that-I am just questioning the mindset that says we can translate the book in it’s whole, (reasonably) pure, unsullied and unaltered, into another art form. The changes are inherent in the attempt. I personally feel that any attempt to slavishly recreate the book’s story, unshackled by time constraints, would be a mostly dull boring 20+ hour slog, unintentionally funny in spots and ripe for parody and/or ridicule. Pace is most certainly something which must be considered, be it a film or TV miniseries.
I’m not too terribly convinced by arguments by popularity, even when appropriate When I last read it I was entranced by certain things, nonplussed by others, and thrown out of the story completely in some cases. The book’s popularity says very little about what must be done to make it a reasonable artistic success on the screen.
Agreed, each year a new crop of kids, teens and tweens* discover Middle Earth and fall in love with it. The movies only add to this though. My son had the Hobbit read to him but his favorite movies of all time are the 3 LotR movies. It was sometime in the 90s that “The Lord of the Rings” was picked as the #1 book of all time in England in a BBC survey and some other survey.
BTW: A must read for readers of this thread: 50 Reasons Lord of the Rings Sucks
- Used in the same sense as Tolkien did for the Hobbits as those in their twenties.
I don’t think anyone’s disagreeing with you about how some things needed to be cut out. The biggest problems people are bring up are the places where Jackson needlessly ADDED to the source material and ended up making the movies much longer than they needed to be.
Aragorn didn’t need to go over that cliff, it was stupid and pointless.
Faramir didn’t need to drag Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath. This segment alone added 30 minutes to the movie - time which could have been spent getting Frodo and Sam to Shelob’s Lair, which was the written conclusion to the Two Towers. Because of this change, Shelob had to be moved to the middle of the third film, and as a result Frodo and Sam’s long trek across Mordor had to be condensed into 5 minutes. There was WAY too much crammed into the last hour of RotK.
If Jackson had stuck to the source material in The Two Towers, the Return of the King would have not only been a shorter movie, it would not have felt as rushed.