Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CrusadeDave" data-source="post: 1896335" data-attributes="member: 6716">Not to nitpick but...Heaven knows I was one of the people emailing and calling studios when Peter and Fran were doing their whirlwind tour of Hollywood trying to get someone to buy the rights away from Miramax, and the ill-fated 2 movie deal.I'll always love Bob Shaye for suggesting to Peter, "Why 2 movies? Aren't there 3 books?"Looking back, I think this was a bad idea. Where the movies tend to crumble is where Peter, Fran, and Phillipa try to cram each book into a movie with a definite ending. What they should have done, is find the "natural" cliffhangers, and endings in the Novel, and structured the films that way.For me, there are three natural breaks in the chronological story that make sense to craft movies around.Movie 1: Starts at the beginning and ends with Gandalf falling into the chasm with the Balrog. You could move the idea of the Warg attack from TTT to before entering the Mines to better correlate with the book.Movie 2: Starts with Frodo's Dream of Gandalf falling, proceeds to Rivendell, the river, the breaking of the fellowship (shortened a bit), and ends just After Helm's Deep (No Elves), and Frodo turning away from the Black Gate, agreeing to trust Golumn. This would be the longest of the 4 movies, probably by far.Movie 3: Starts with the fall of Isengard from the Ents perspective, progresses through a tightened Faramir story (No Osgiliath kidknapping), Aragorn on Paths of Dead, Gandalf and Pippen in Minas Tirith, and ending with  the worst series of clifhangers: The Gate of Minas Tirith Breaking, and Frodo kidknapped by Orcs, with Sam all alone.Movie 4: Starts with Sam assaulting Tower and Pelennor Fields, and focuses more on the long march to death of Sam and Frodo.Each of these four films then has it's own pace leading up to either a resolution (Rohan saved, Sam and Frodo make peace with Golumn, Aragorn King, Ring Destroyed), or a Cliffhanger (Gandalf Dead? What do they do now? Minas Tirith Falls? Frodo Captured? Wow!)The end of Fellowship and Two Towers just don't seem to work. In fact, whenever Peter, Fran, and Phillipa invent something to add to the story in order to get the pacing and buildup right, it doesn't seem to work as well as what came before.I'm not asking for 4 films the lengths of the EE DVD's. Instead, film necessitates telling this story as Appendix B does, chronologically. While I appreciate the creators desire to stay true to the book, by giving us three movies called Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King,  I think they would have better served the telling of the story by focusing not so much as where Professor Tolkien decided to switch perspectives, but by what natural climaxes would work best building toward in each phase of the story.Of course, noone would have ever, EVER thought to have done this in four parts before the fact. Heck, what would you have titled the second film: The Breaking of the Fellowship? The Ring goes South? The Riders of Rohan? Maybe you title the second film, Fellowship of the Ring, and call the first movie: Hunt for the Ring?No Idea.I'm very very greatful for my 11+ hours of Extended Edition movies. I never thought it would have been this good when the film was finally approved by New Line. I just feel that if Peter, Fran and Phillipa would have been able to look outside the box a bit, and look for the natural breaks in the story, the film as a whole could have been structured in a stronger way.</blockquote>

Verification