Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chain Lightning" data-source="post: 544913" data-attributes="member: 6791">Saw the movie opening day and loved it. I can't wait to go see it again. Going to try Sunday night. Like others, I have my nit-picks too. But, they are relatively small flaws in my eyes. Some of these small mistakes I can understand how they might've happened. Others, I think seemed rather easy to correct, but were not. Which is odd. But I understand that LotR is a huge juggling of hundreds upon hundreds of tasks. Things are bound to get overlooked. I felt the storytelling ability was a bit better in FotR.Here are my list of things I disliked:1.) I didn't get a sense as to how Faramir came to the knowledge that his brother was dead. In the book it explains how he knows. But not in the movie. Unless my head spaced out during the scene where they explain that.2.) The gift giving scene in FotR was trimmed down to only include Frodo's gift. Obviously for time. Editing FotR I imagine being a battle for mere seconds even. However, I would've still fought hard to find a way to include all the gifts each member of the fellowship recieved. We can skip Celeborn's warning to Aragorn and also some of Galadriel's longer conversation with Aragorn. Just keep it to the bare minimum for audiences to register each gift. I don't think it would've hurt the movie to be a minute or two longer.However, now....if you haven't seen the extended DVD version, certain things don't make sense. Why does Frodo's cloak change color and texture to match the rocks? Where did those daggers come from that were found in the pile of burnt Orc remains? When did Samwise pack his bags full of Lembas? (ok, the Lembas is no biggie....but the humor tied to his dialogue concerning them in TTT isn't as solid as it would be without seeing the extra scene in the extended version)Of course, if I wanted to play the game of being super ultra nit-picky I could bring out the whole thing with the Moria goblins/orcs.Which is: Why wouldn't Saruman send a large detachment of these wall climbers to the siege of Helm's Deep?  Now, its been a while since I've read the books. But I remember having the sense that those orcs were not a part of Saruman's army. They were just there. So that could be used as a reason. But in the movie, none of the storytelling makes it clear where those Moria goblins/orcs stand. To the casual viewer, it is assumed that Sauron and Saruman have leadership over all goblins, orcs, and uruk-hai. Its a fuzzy area. I don't like to see many fuzzy areas.3.) A lot of the editing. Mostly in the first act. The segues between the different characters were often times very abrupt. Not very smooth. The ending too, I felt, could use some smoothing out as well. Its like all of a sudden the Helm's Deep threat kinda vanishes and you got Gandalf and friends riding heroic like to a rise that looks out to Mordor. Hey...don't they got to go to Isengard first before facing east to Gondor? I figure these will smooth out when the special extended DVD arrives. But that doesn't excuse the theatrical release from this flaw.4.) Why did Elrond send Haldir and his elves to Helm's Deep? He doesn't have his own guys?Now let me tell you what I do love about this movie:1.) Yes, as was stated earlier. Mirando Otto is very charismatic and attractive as Eowyn. I can stare at her scenes over and over. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> 2.) Gandalf's battle with the Balrog was truly awesome. Now that's fantasy!3.) Oddly, there were moments where I got rather misty eyed. I'm usually immune to such pulling of heart strings. However, TTT got me a few times. Can't remember all the moments. But one I do remember was when Theoden was at his son's grave with Gandalf. Another was when Gandalf, Eomer, and the other riders charged in the front ranks of the orcs as the light hit them from behind. That imagery, to me......just personifies what I think of when I think of fantasy stories.4.) Gollum is was truly a great cgi character. Never did I lose the illusion that he was who he suppose to be.5.) The Easterlings. I can't say how much respect I give to Jackson for allowing/guiding the art dept. to do this awesome job they've done on LotR. The Easterlings is yet another fine example of their work. Yet another outfit from LotR I'd love to have as a costume come Halloween. *sigh*6.) Oliphants!I don't have any problems with some of the other things being discussed. I was fine with Faramir. I liked him. I thought the change was warranted. And it made sense to me. I don't mind the Warg scene either. Wargs look good to me. Nothing wrong with the Fangorn forest in my eyes. I think people think it looks off because its a fantastical forest. Not a real location. I know of no Earth forest that looks like this, thus why it seems odd to us. It only exists on Middle-Earth.Great movie. Loads of enjoyment. A must for us D&D guys. IMHOAnd like others have said, where else can we get our fantasy movie fix? I've watched Conan so many times that I can't take it no more. Its like eating pizza for a year. LotR is the Kwisatz Haderach to the Dune planet that is the fantasy film wasteland.</blockquote>

Verification