Top Five Most Annoying Things with PJs LOTR

Cafe Society
1

Reading the PJ/Hobbit thread, I was once again curious if there is a consensus in what was not so good with the film adaption of The Lord of the Rings.

Threrefore, I beg all you who have seen the movies, to list the top five worst things with it, perhaps mainly disappointments. Please list’em even if your specific complaints has been listed before, making this somewhat of a poll.

Note that I myself enjoyed the movies greatly, it still happens that me and the wifey loads one up for a couple of hours of good entertainment; this is not intended as a LOTR-bashing thread.
Army of the dead. Anticlimax of a great battle. Hard to forgive.

Gimli. Grim warrior dwarf in novel turned clown in movie.

Legolas bouncing around on monsters. The main problem with this is that the illusion’s gone, since it looks strange and you realize that the monster is animated.

The Ford Scene. My favourite in the novel, a dark and mighty scene in the book, turns a bit “if you want him, come and claim him”-silly in the movie.

**Hobbits’ ninja skills with stones. **Another illusion-breaker: Powerful uruk-hai falls dead when hobbits throws little stones at them.
There are a few others I can think of, but these are the ones which bugs me the most, I think.

So, “what say thee”? (repeat)

/W

(If this has been done before, please let me know, and if possible, hint at where I can find the thread. I have done some fruitless searching, but that doesn’t mean, has it been proven, that it doesn’t exists.)

2

The hard part is keeping this down to five, but let’s see:

Pippin and Merry. In the books they are smart cookies, who figure out what Frodo is up to in plenty of time to provision for his expedition and volunteer to help him. They’re occasionally guilty of fool-of-a-Tookishness and so on, but reducing them to a pair of Irish clowns was a travesty.

Denethor. A king among hardasses who is as much on top of the war as anyone can be in a hopeless case, until he is finally ground down by the visions he has seen in the palantir thanks to Sauron, despair at seeing his last son mortally wounded, and the belief that Sauron has recovered the Ring and all is lost… turned into a senile, drooling glutton who makes Pippin sing for his enjoyment while Faramir and the last of Gondor’s heavy cavalry goes on a hopeless and stupid mission.

Frodo, Sam, Gollum and the lembas. Right. Suddenly Frodo is to be swayed against Sam because the most notorious liar and snivelling conniver East of the Sea manages to plant a few breadcrumbs on him. A totally unnecessary subplot that added nothing and took up valuable time better spent on something written by a real storysmith.

Elrond. Horribly executed throughout. Impossible to understand his contempt for Men given his own ancestry, or his refusal to have Narsil reforged until for some bizarre reason Sauron casts a spell on Arwen. So the final overthrow of the free peoples and Sauron’s impending recovery of the Ring wasn’t important enough, not until Elrond had a personal stake? Cretinous.

Strategy of the war in Rohan. Theoden leads out his army only to drag along with his tail between his legs over to Helm’s Deep over Gandalf’s strenuous objections, all the while complaining about his unhelpful Gondorian allies. A marked contrast with the book, in which the Rohirrim hastily set out to reinforce the border garrison, only to learn en route that they are too late, and retire to Helm’s Deep out of necessity and with the general agreement of all the key decision-makers.
And I’ll toss in The Rohirrim using their tow-cables against the Mu-mâk Walkers. :rolleyes:

3

The Council of Elrond Frodo’s great moment of decision (“I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way”) turns into a way to shut up the pointless bicker-fest that’s going on all around him

I second Gimli (“nobody tosses a dwarf”), Denethor and Merry and Pippin

My last one is silly and petty, but how come Pippin and Merry are up there with Frodo and Sam being lauded by all at the end of ROTK? Either honour ALL the companions of the ringbearer(s) or just Frodo and Sam - all the other Hobbits have done is share racial characteristics with the two heros

4

[David Letterman]
Top 5 Most Annoying Things with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Number 5:
Expanded role for Arwen.

Number 4:
Legolas versus the Elephant

Number 3:
Galadriel and The Mirror (let the actors act, Peter)

Number 2:
Gimli as comedic relief

and finally, the Number 1 Most Annoying Thing with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy:The incessant whining of the fanboys and fangirls. If left in their hands, LotR would never have been made; instead we got three immensely enjoyable films, whose minor annoyances in no way detract from the overall spectacle.

5

Oh yes.

I can see how PJ wanted to focus on Minas Tirith and the battle of the Pelennor Fields in RotK, but I think it took away from some other events in the story. The portrayal of the battle at the Black Gate was anticlimatic and did not convey the scale properly. This combined with the fact that the other theaters of war weren’t shown blew the battle of the Pelennor Fields out of proportion. Of course the fact that Gondor escaped destruction was crucial, but in the movie it almost looks like men gained the upper hand militarily in the overall conflict.

I think his Sauron was just pathetic. The worst offence was that he took the “Eye of Sauron” metaphor far too literally. Sauron isn’t supposed to be a searchlight. The more we saw of Sauron, the less threatening he got. This also took away from the scene inside Mount Doom. In the book I got the feeling that Frodo was in immediate danger as soon as Sauron noticed that he had claimed the ring, and not just because the Nazgul were on their way.

6
  1. Nitpickers who keep whining about it.
    2-5: See 1.
7

Oh, nice thread. :slight_smile:

Yep

I cannot accept the fact that this army is invincible.

Agreed. Why did he do this? Does he think his character is more interesting? Grr.

Yep. In the movie they defeat a force more than 10 times their size by using the defensive advantage of the fort. If Gandalf and Aragorns ridiculous advice had been followed they would’ve been slaughtered.

As a fifth annoyance I would nominate Treebeard not having any idea what goes on in his own forest.

8

Yikes. Some of the scenes mentioned so far are some of my absolute favorites (particularly the Army of the Dead and the Frodo/Sam lembas confrontation). Why do Jackson’s movies take such a beating on these boards anyway? Do people really think a word-for-word adaptation of the book would have been preferable? To each their own I guess.

9

I’ve just been watching the Extended Edition commentaries.

What struck me about the seven years Jackson spent on it was the incredible difficulty of bringing the book to the screen. (The main villain has no body; there are characters like Bombadil who make only brief appearances, despite being immune to the Ring; and there is a devoted fanbase who will inspect the film closely.)
There are many moments in the film that are just breathtaking, especially reinforced by the music.

Having said that I agree that the two references to dwarf tossing are annoying.

And that Legolas taking out the Mumakil was over the top.
(‘Legolas moments’ were very popular in the first two films, e.g. when he mounts a horse to face the Wargs.)

P.S.
I don’t agree there was a problem with hobbits throwing stones to stun Uruk-Hai. Tolkien states that hobbits are dextrous and can hit rabbits or squirrels.

I think that Frodo turns easily on Sam because the Ring is gnawing at him. He has been carrying it a long time.

Pippin saves Faramir’s life, while Merry helps kill the Witch-King. Given they were quiet country folk who become members of the Fellowship, I think it’s fine to honour them.

Arwen’s story in the Appendices is wonderful. Both Bakshi’s earlier film and Jackson’s write Glorfindel out. I think it’s fine that Arwen rescues Frodo from Weathertop (and has an extended role elsewhere), because her romance with Aragorn is important to the story.

Saruman’s army overwhelm the defenders in the fortress. Only Gandalf bringing the rest of the Rohirrim, Gandalf using magic and the Ents killing the thousands fleeing bring victory.

I think it’s reasonable that Treebeard doesn’t know everything that goes on in the massive forest. No doubt he too has been lulled by the magical power of Saruman.

10

Pretty much have to agree with all the points above, and will add:

Orcs with cockney accents.

Dwarves with Scottish accents…

On a side note, does anyone else expect Elrond to finish a sentence with “Mr Anderson”?

Note: none of this detracted sufficiently to stop me absolutely loving the films.

11

Well said.

12

The movies are wonderful and I can watch them over and over, unlike the books, which felt plodding and tedious, with little humor or humanity.

13

I couldn’t stand that fake-ass “Aragorn falls into a river” crap in the middle of the Two Towers. If I’d known, I could have gone to the bathroom then. In fact, generally when things were added (as opposed to being edited out or brought in from the appendices) it was generally for the worse. I don’t mind Arwen’s larger role, but I do mind bringing the movie to a screeching halt.

14

It’s funny you should say that, because I have read the books over and over since the 1970s, whereas the films, though spectacular, have done nothing to prompt me to re-watch them, even for free.

15

Yep, I know. What are you arguing here? Do you think Gandalfs advise, to fight them on open field, is good advise?

Treebeard can talk with the trees. He is the guardian of the forest. He is aware of Saruman, and that he don’t like him. He is able to communicate with the other ents, and call them to the meeting in one day. And yet he hasn’t noticed the killing of his friends that have been going on for several years?

What kind of spell would that be, making him deaf and blind? What about all the other ents, are they enchanted by Saruman too? If Saruman can put such a powerful spell on all the ents, why cannot he not prevent them from attacking him also.

16

1. Aragorn falling into a river, presumed dead - I cannot see the point of this no matter how I squint. Was there anybody in the entire world, whether or not they’d read the books, who didn’t understand from second one that he’d turn up unharmed?

2. Faramir taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath - Why? Did Peter Jackson just want to show us Osgiliath? If so, why? It’s not particularly interesting.

3. Frodo offering nazgûl the Ring - or whatever the hell he was doing in Osgiliath when he holds it up to the nazgûl on the winged beast.

4. The entmoot coming to the wrong decision - completely changes that whole plotline.

5. The ents (Treebeard specifically) not being aware of Saruman’s destruction of the forest - this is just wrong on so many levels. Especially that Treebeard apparently knows that Saruman has a “mind of metal and wheels”, without knowing that the trees he’s there to protect are being killed en masse.

Huh, all of mine are from The Two Towers. Never mind, I loved all three of the movies anyway. But there were too many damn endings in Return of the King. The Grey Havens scene should have been in the extended edition to satisfy us fanboys and not in the cinema version to confuse the people who hadn’t read the books.

17

How about the fact that of the nine or so main characters, four or five of which have no fighting skills at all, all of them are able to surivive several large scale battles without dying?

18

All the crying.

All the slow-motion.

Hobbits jumping on the bed. (Weren’t they pillowfighting too?)

The treatment of Gollum’s “schizophrenia.”

The Extended Edition cuts.

-FrL-

19

To my recollection, that’s from the book. Not that this makes it right, I suppose…

-FrL-

20

Well, as Sam said, “We aren’t even supposed to be here…”