I think it’s assumed Baromir’s badass even if the nature of his badassness is unknown.
That said, his father’s death in the final movie is a bit much. Granted he kind of lost it, but Gandalf really could have chased him down and helped put him out during his 200 yard flaming dash to the edge of Minas Tirith.
Am I really the first person to bring up Viktor’s ridiculous death scene in Underworld? So. Unbelievably. Stupid. I was so mad I nearly threw my roommate’s popcorn at the movie screen.
They do try to tell Romeo, but the messenge never gets to him. One of the few things I liked about Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet was how they showed this: Romeo has been exiled to a dusty trailer in the middle of a windy desert. A FedEx guy shows up, tapes the message to the door, and it immediatly blows off and vanishes into the wilderness.
As for the rest, you can’t blame the poor plotting on Shakespeare, because just about every plot he wrote he stole from a dead Italian.
I’ll also disagree with Boromir’s death being lame. The people in the Fellowship are supposed to be epic heroes in the mold of Beowulf. The first arrow that hits Boromir is fatal, but he’s such a tough, driven SOB that he keeps fighting, trying to protect his friends. Very awesome. His dad’s incendiary impression of Greg Louganis, on the other hand, was ridiculous. I figure PJ had to light him on fire before he jumped because otherwise, everyone would have expected him to still be alive. Afterall, virtually every other character in the movie falls from a great height at some point, and then pops back up later on, right as rain. I think Middle Earth has a lower specific gravity, or something. I suspect people at the top of Minas Tirith who need to get to the bottom in a hurry just leap over the wall, and float gently to the ground.
I’d nominate the Zyang Zyi character from House of Flying Daggers. She takes a dagger to the chest and dies…and dies… and dies. Summer turns to autumn, the leaves turn brown and fall from the trees, the first snow begins to fall and still she stands there, moaning, pleading, weeping, blood gushing from her chest. It’s so incredibly over the top that were it played for laughs I’d consider the film a classic.
You can get most of this from a close viewing of the film. From the moment he first shows up he’s clearly a very high level noble who’s been fighting the orcs for years and knows exactly how dangerous Mordor is. We know from the introduction that guys like him were once tough enough to stand toe-to-toe with Sauron himself. Even though everyone else treats Aragorn as a major bad-ass, Boromir doesn’t. He treats him as an equal or an inferior.
Yes, Peter Jackson doesn’t beat you over the head with it, but throughout the first movie Boromir is consistently portrayed as an extremely tough and dangerous individual. The movie is actually much better than the book in this regard.
I agree. I liked the movies, but I felt that Boromir’s death, which is one of the most moving parts of the book, fell very flat in the movie.
I’ll box this just in case I was not the last person on the planet to see The Ladykillers (the Hanks one.)
There were a few “convenient” deaths in this one, but the falling gargoyle that conked Hanks at the end was just too “hand of God” for my liking.
The original had an almost-identical ending. Besides, you’ve got a movie where the facial expression on a painting changes to suit the mood of a scene. A little deus ex ain’t that shocking.
A nitpick I’ve always had was about Tony’s death in Scarface. He had just been shot and falls into his pool–why are the walls of water that plume up blood-colored?
For the thread, I think I’d have to go with Samuel L. Jackson being chomped by the shark in Deep Blue Sea.
I thought Boromir’s death was beautiful and touching. But I had read the books and had all of it behind me, so can’t really say.
And add me to another who is shocked that they killed Gurgi in the movie. He was annoying sure, but in the books, he got better.
There are 3…maybe 4…scenes in all 11 hours of LOTR that I think would’ve been *much * better if they’d been written & shot more faithfully to the book. This was one of them.
Having read the book, I knew he was toast but I was being kind of clinical during the process.
First arrow: Bad shot; too high for a lung. Doesn’t seem to effect the use of that arm, though. Me, I’d be curled up whimpering.
Second arrow: Spleen. Three, maybe five minutes before he bleeds to death.
Third arrow: Ouch! Descending aorta. Surprised it didn’t sever his spine. Aragorn better hurry up 'cause this guy’s gone in about thirty seconds.
Color me weird.
DD
Naw, here’s the REALLY stupid part…he comes back to life. He died “heroicly” sacrificing himself at the climax of the movie, and when all’s finished and the evil is defeated, he revives for no apparent reason.
Forgive the spoilers, but that movie is already spoiled. Like a piece of overripe fruit.
The movie SUCKED, no question. I was horrified when I went to see it. Gurgi may have been annoying, but I remember CARING about what happened to him in the book, not so in the movie. What a way to ruin a perfectly good story. I would never sit through it again, nor recommend it to anyone. Read the books and be happy.
I thought I remembered him lighting himself on fire in the book. I remember thinking, “whoah, that’s messed up”.
That’s partly because ‘badass’ is not a concept that Tolkein was familiar with. In the books, none of the Fellowship are written as being capable of doing the stuff they do in the movies (take on 2 dozen Orcs alone, etc.). I mean, at one point a mere Orc Chief knocks both Aragorn and Boromir on their pins and skewers Frodo! Peter Jackson gave all the fighting characters a serious upgrade in his films.
Didn’t Gimli and Legolas kill about 40 orcs each at the battle of Helm’s Deep? (In the book, I mean.)
Whooooooosh.
Denethor lights himself on fire (and Faramir, who gets saved in time by Gandalf and co.) in both book and movie. Miller was making a funny about how people in PJ’s adaptation tend to fall off very high, very sheer cliffs and survive quite nicely.
Oh really?
- The Silmarillion: Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure Boromir was wearing armor. A high-quality, double-layered mail shirt over thick quilting can take a lot of the sting out of an arrow.
Am I the first to mention Moulin Rouge?
Ok, it was a fantasy film (as much as *The Matrix * or LOTR), so I wasn’t expecting a realistic portrayal of tuberculosis, but really. When you’re dying of TB, singing loud enough to be heard at the far end of a large theater (in the days before microphones) is not really an option. If you’ve got enough lung power left to do that, you’re not going to immediately hawk up a bit of blood and die. It might have worked if Satine’s vocal efforts had brought on a lung hemorrhage, but she’d have had to bring up a lot more blood to make that convincing.