Just when I thought there might have been hope for the second D&D movie...

[barsoomcore]

Just to nail this thread hijack completely, I do think that PJ created something extraordinary with these films. I think his mobile camera (not the "hand-held" but the "drifting, swooping, flying-by" camera) is at times flabbergasting -- something you notice especially in FotR -- check the Moria battle for what I'm talking about, or the Weathertop battle -- the camera movements are like nothing I've ever seen before, and yet they work beautifully.

I don't think the series ever manages to get back to the level of FotR, and I think it's because the technique he perfects in that film is excellent for small groups (the camera darts past them, giving you their reaction on the way in and a look at what they're reacting to on the way out (or vice versa)), it doesn't work for the larger scenes, and he just never manages to come up with a consistent technique that gives us the big-canvas view we need.

Plus, he DROPS that technique in Eowyn's confrontation (which maybe explains why that one falls so flat) and goes with a much more static camera, jumping in and out on cuts rather than moving.

There are a couple of awe-inspiring big-canvas moments, to be sure -- the lining-up of the Rohirrim at Pelennor and their exodus from Dunharrow, the approach of the orcs to Helm's Deep, the explosion on the Deeping Wall (is it just me or is that the best explosion ever?) -- but if I had to pin-point a general failure in the films, it's that one.

 

[Desdichado]

My vote for best explosion ever goes to that TIE fighter that "double explodes" when they're blasting their way out of the Death Star the first time...

 

[Ranger REG]

Nah, flubs don't bug me if I don't see them first time around. Little continuity issues are no big deal. It's the outright failures of the films to generate the emotions they need to generate that hurt them.

The big failures of the films for me were:

Helm's Deep wasn't scary enough. The film failed to show me the cost that the defenders were paying.

Eowyn's stand against the Witchking. 'Nuff said.

The final stand of the West at the Black Gates. As described above.

But fixing the above, would that make it more appealing to the mainstream audience? To be brutally honest, I think you're as anti-mainstream as I am.

 

[frankthedm]

All right, time to put my D&D knowledge into useful action. Let's plan an assault on the Silver compunds and kill the evil organization trying to bring down D&D once and for all!

(not a death threat)

It is depressing no one has the convictions to deal with those corruptors who debase the game. Death is a merciful fate compared to what should be done to them.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

But fixing the above, would that make it more appealing to the mainstream audience? To be brutally honest, I think you're as anti-mainstream as I am.

Exactly. Quite a number of my non-academic, non-geek friends and family already found the movies confusing and the language stilted and archaic.

Those of us who appreciate words like "dwimmerlaik" are really, really in the minority in the real world, after all.

Keeping us geeks happy was at best secondary to making the films viable for a large audience and profitable. If they had made direct translations of the book (which would have been 6 different mistakes in one, in any case, IMO) we'd have been lucky to get the 2nd and 3rd direct-to-video, so cataclysmic would have been the failure of the first film.

 

[Desdichado]

Exactly. Quite a number of my non-academic, non-geek friends and family already found the movies confusing and the language stilted and archaic.

Those of us who appreciate words like "dwimmerlaik" are really, really in the minority in the real world, after all.

Probably true. My wife, for instance, really like the lines Eowyn did have in that scene ("I am no man!" prompting spontaneous praise, which is very unusual for her).

But that doesn't invalidate a lot of barsoomcore's complaints; I think they're quite valid. That scene should have been one of the big emotional payoffs of the movie, and it played out quite flat, IMO. And even though a strict Tolkien reproduction would undoubtably have been a poor move, replacing it with generally inferior dialogue wasn't exactly a great move either.

It's my opinion that Peter Jackson and Co. aren't really particularly gifted film-makers in a lot of ways, and the fact that the Lord of the Rings movies are as good as they are is more a testament to the strength of the source material than to their ability to adapt it. Especially as the movies went on, I noticed that the better scenes were the ones that were most like Tolkien. A particular gripe of mine is the non-Tolkien dialogue that simply rang artificial and unsatisfying. I was also particularly tired of the "slow motion emotional set pieces" as I call them; the scenes where you have a slow motion close-ups of characters seeing other characters give unnatural, posed and strained (yet very meaningful) looks to each other. Then character A, back to full screen slow motion close up, gasps and lets a single tear fall down his or her cheek. Then someone says something awkward.

Granted, I sound a bit schizophrenic in that post; I do agree that Tolkien needs some serious trimming and reshaping to be viable as a movie script. However, I also think that the Jackson adaptation, in a lot of ways, was a hack job where a more skillfull hand would have done better. Saying that Tolkien needs to be pruned to be a good movie and then turning around and saying that the best scenes in the movies were the largely untouched scenes is not contradictory, although it seems like it up front. It just means that Boyens and Walsh weren't really the best ones to write the screenplay. I think there are others who could have done a better job with the dialogue and the faux meaningful scenes.

And some of the introduced "conflicts" really felt forced and unusual. I can see what they were trying to do with the Sam and Frodo falling out, and Gollum's lembas crumbs, but that whole scene felt really hoaky to me. Of course, the slow motion falling crumbs, and slow motion stumbling Sam, and slow motion crying Sam and slow motion sneering Gollum, etc. didn't help.

Maybe I just really dislike some of the dialogue and the overuse of slow motion posed scenes for "emotional impact." Trust in the emotional impact of the source material, without constantly overdoing one attempted dressed up emotional sucker punch after another, please.

 

[Ranger REG]

Granted, I sound a bit schizophrenic in that post; I do agree that Tolkien needs some serious trimming and reshaping to be viable as a movie script.

Well, I seem to recall an old interview by the late Tolkien himself about wanting to write a screenplay based on his works, but only if he could learn how to write a screenplay. Far different from writing a book of which he has no formal training other than that literature club he has with C.S. Lewis.

However, I also think that the Jackson adaptation, in a lot of ways, was a hack job where a more skillfull hand would have done better. Saying that Tolkien needs to be pruned to be a good movie and then turning around and saying that the best scenes in the movies were the largely untouched scenes is not contradictory, although it seems like it up front. It just means that Boyens and Walsh weren't really the best ones to write the screenplay. I think there are others who could have done a better job with the dialogue and the faux meaningful scenes.

Perhaps. But I still enjoy the movies. Still, I am 35 years young, so who knows? Maybe someone out there is willing to challenge Peter Jackson's films and come out with an even better and more profitable LOTR film. Of course, by then, many of the film fans of Peter Jackson's will have already read the literary masterpiece.

Any takers?

 

[barsoomcore]

But fixing the above, would that make it more appealing to the mainstream audience?

Yes. I'm talking about making the film more emotionally powerful.

Had Helm's Deep been scarier, had Eowyn's moment against the Witchking been stronger, and had the final stand at the Black Gate been bleaker, the films would have been better.

Note that I'm not saying that in all cases the answer was to follow Tolkien slavishly. I'm not upset that they altered things. But I do think that in each of those cases, what Tolkien wrote would have been more powerful, more appealing to a broader audience (okay not "dwimmerlaik", but COME ON) and simpler than what they tried to accomplish.

To be brutally honest, I think you're as anti-mainstream as I am.

I would not characterise myself as anti-mainstream. I characterize myself as anti-what-I-don't-like.

But I like plenty of popular stuff.

Quite a number of my non-academic, non-geek friends and family already found the movies confusing and the language stilted and archaic.

I'll bet you the speeches they had the most trouble with AREN'T Tolkien's. It's like JD is saying -- the stuff that sounds really archaic and "wrong" is the stuff that the writers added.

I'm not saying use every line Tolkien ever wrote. I'm saying that his good dialog is more than good enough to make a great movie out of, and many of the memorable lines in the movies (if not all of them) are his.

I'm not saying make movies that reproduce every detail in the books. I'm observing that the moments where the movies fall flat are the moments where it deviates from the books -- which is kind of interesting. It doesn't follow, and I'm not pretending that it follows, that every time they deviate from the books the movies get bad. The writers created some good moments -- I think using Arwen in the flight to the ford was a good move. I think making things a little harder for Faramir was a good move. I think not having Aragorn reveal himself until the Paths of the Dead was a good move. I don't think the latter two ideas were as well executed as they needed to be, but I don't think the ideas themselves were crazy.

But I do say that every bad moment in the movies comes at a time where Tolkien's vision is not being used to drive the story. Where his dialog is not being used, or his plotting, or his storytelling.

 

[Ranger REG]

As I said earlier, I'm 35 years young. So impress me with better LOTR films while I still breathe. But if I die after this posting, I will die content having seen Tolkien's work in live-action motion picture.

 

[Pants]

It's my opinion that Peter Jackson and Co. aren't really particularly gifted film-makers in a lot of ways, and the fact that the Lord of the Rings movies are as good as they are is more a testament to the strength of the source material than to their ability to adapt it.

Then why wasn't a certain animated LotR as popular as the current movies?

I think it has a little to do with both the adaptation and the source material.

Had Helm's Deep been scarier,

Eh, I don't know about anyone else, but I think that PJ and crew worked to make Helm's Deep much more important in the movies than it actually was in the books. In the books, Helm's Deep is defended by mostly able bodied men along with the requisite old people. In the movie, most of the defenders are those barely able to hold a sword or shoot a bow (plus the elves). In the book, Saruman seeks to conquer Rohan. In the movie, he wants to kill everybody! In the book, the women and children are mostly safe, away from the Deep. In the movie, they are being sheltered in the fortress itself, so that if the defenders fall, they will most likely die not too long after.

My knowledge of the book events is rather hazy, as everytime I've read tTT, Helm's Deep was never very gripping to me, never very consequential in the grand scheme, and never written as well as the rest of books. I much prefer the movie Helm's Deep.

As it stands, I enjoy Helm's Deep more than the Siege of Gondor in RotK, which was one of my favorite parts in the books

But yeah, aside from that, I pretty much agree. Every time I watch the movies again, I see more stuff I don't like. I find this is much more apparent when I watch RotK and tTT, FotR, to me, feels pretty damn perfect on nearly every viewing. The Balrog scene (and Moria in general) are just incredible pieces of filmmaking.