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LotR - Dazzling but droll
- Thread starter Krug
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LightPhoenix
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You need to be registered to see that link.Krug said:
ergeheilalt
First Post
Dazzling, Sure, but to What Effect?
By Denis Dutton
Here in New Zealand, Peter Jackson is the man of the moment. His managerial capacities and showman's instincts have allowed him, as we like to think of it, to beat Hollywood's hotshots at their own game. He has given hundreds of inventive New Zealanders worthwhile, lucrative work and enhanced our tourist industry. Personally, I think he deserves a knighthood as much as his fellow countrymen, Sir Edmund Hillary or Sir Ernest Rutherford.
So when I add that the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy is, as a work of cinematic art, ham-fisted, shallow, bombastic and laughably overrated, don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking Jackson and his hard-working team. The larger issue is Hollywood and the degraded state of big-budget movies.
Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" represents the victory of special effects over dramatic art. Of course, special effects have been with cinema since the beginning. Georges Méliès' droll 1902 "A Trip to the Moon," the first sci-fi movie, contained enchanting trick photography. Audiences were astonished by the 1932 "King Kong" (a stop-action model) and gawked at the dinosaurs (live lizards) that Victor Mature battled in the 1940 "One Million B.C." Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" showed that special-effects models can be beautiful, and computer-generated effects entered film in a big way with "Jurassic Park, "Titanic" and "The Matrix."
But the sense of amazement that special effects can induce tends to be short-lived. Filmgoers grow tired of the same kinds of effects, and then want more. The space travel shots of "Stars Wars" now seem trite, and the dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park," particularly in the final sequences of that movie, look creaky and artificial.
Audience habituation means that effects wizards are locked in the upward spiral of an endless special-effects arms race, with demands for bigger explosions, uglier villains, more frenzied and realistic violence, ear-splitting noises and ever-expanding battle scenes. A computer-generated crowd, according to the rule, must not be smaller than the crowds in last month's blockbusters.
The "Rings" trilogy is a case in point. Take away the frenetic effects from this unremarkable action-adventure fantasy and there is not enough on screen to keep even a subnormal human mind alive.
The narrative drags for long stretches. Acting? Elijah Wood plays Frodo with a repertoire of two wide-eyed expressions: his shocked-happy face and his shocked-hurt face. Women, as we'd expect from a geek epic, are merely an annoyance. As Clive James remarked, Middle-Earth is "a place where even Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler come to be boring." And the good, stout men of this movie are not much better, strutting around sententiously as they intone J.R.R. Tolkien's pseudo-Shakespearean inversions ("This way lies danger," etc.).
Next month we'll get yet another remake of Homer's "Iliad," this time with Brad Pitt as Achilles. Expect the computer-generated bone-crunching, flesh-slicing battle scenes to exceed in quantity of pixel-soldiers and pints of fake blood those in either "Gladiator" or "Rings." That's what the special-effects arms race is all about. And that's why the upward spiral of special effects has yielded a downward spiral in the story-telling quality of big-budget movies.
Talking about the theater of his own time, Aristotle listed the elements that go into a good drama. The least important, he argued, was "spectacle" — the staging, fancy costumes and special stage effects (such as the deus ex machina) the Greeks used in their theaters. Most crucial for intense dramatic experience was an effective plot and interesting characters. Except for the technology escalation, not much has changed in 2,500 years. Ignore Aristotle's advice, push spectacle to the top of the list, and you end up with such over-computerized, incoherent drivel as the recent versions of "The Hulk" or "Charlie's Angels."
Time was when celluloid images captured in the initial shoot formed the basic, intractable material from which a film editor worked. No more. Borrowing from the pumped-up visual rhetoric of TV commercials and video games, editors now recolor images, alter motion and add or delete whole objects, including characters, from scenes.
This has enabled a move toward cartoonish intensification. Thus in "Pirates of the Caribbean," the pirate ship is required to be portrayed as the blackest, most humongous ship ever seen. Sword fights must be tweaked so sparks and flashes accompany the clanging of blades. A treasure in a cave is not a chest of coins but an underground mountain of gold and jewels, and so forth. The computer, which had offered directors and editors creative freedom, has ended up delivering juvenile fantasy to audiences.
Films promise so much. Yet what have they delivered? Between 1939 and 1942, barely a decade after the advent of sound, Hollywood was able to produce "Citizen Kane," "Gone With the Wind," "The Wizard of Oz," "His Girl Friday," "Casablanca," "Fantasia" and "The Maltese Falcon." Ask yourself, how much better have movies gotten since then?
"The Wizard of Oz," like "Rings," is a fantasy-adventure plotted around a quest. It has Munchkins for its Hobbits, flying monkeys for its Orcs, a malevolent witch who lives in a castle, even humanoid trees. Its 1939 special effects are not there to astonish so much as to push the action along. "The Wizard of Oz" possesses an eternal freshness, its witty, beautifully paced tale told with singing and dancing actors of phenomenal talent: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr. Who can remember anything out of Howard Shore's vapid, overblown score for "Lord of the Rings"? Who can forget Harold Arlen's for "The Wizard of Oz"?
Add it all up — acting talent, script, pacing, humor — and you have in "The Wizard of Oz" an essential feature completely missing in "Lord of the Rings": charm.
Frankly, I have never looked at my watch as often during a movie as I did in "The Return of the King." Toward the end, I found myself desperately cheering on the giant spider in hope of getting home early. Eat Frodo! Eat him!
If the obsession with expensive technology and shallow effects is to ruin Hollywood film as an art form, by all means let the deed be carried out with the help of talented New Zealanders. The visual effects, costumes and makeup Oscars for "Lord of the Rings" are richly deserved. But beyond that, are these movies, or any of the over-technologized films of our epoch, of lasting value? Let's get a grip.
By Denis Dutton
Here in New Zealand, Peter Jackson is the man of the moment. His managerial capacities and showman's instincts have allowed him, as we like to think of it, to beat Hollywood's hotshots at their own game. He has given hundreds of inventive New Zealanders worthwhile, lucrative work and enhanced our tourist industry. Personally, I think he deserves a knighthood as much as his fellow countrymen, Sir Edmund Hillary or Sir Ernest Rutherford.
So when I add that the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy is, as a work of cinematic art, ham-fisted, shallow, bombastic and laughably overrated, don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking Jackson and his hard-working team. The larger issue is Hollywood and the degraded state of big-budget movies.
Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" represents the victory of special effects over dramatic art. Of course, special effects have been with cinema since the beginning. Georges Méliès' droll 1902 "A Trip to the Moon," the first sci-fi movie, contained enchanting trick photography. Audiences were astonished by the 1932 "King Kong" (a stop-action model) and gawked at the dinosaurs (live lizards) that Victor Mature battled in the 1940 "One Million B.C." Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" showed that special-effects models can be beautiful, and computer-generated effects entered film in a big way with "Jurassic Park, "Titanic" and "The Matrix."
But the sense of amazement that special effects can induce tends to be short-lived. Filmgoers grow tired of the same kinds of effects, and then want more. The space travel shots of "Stars Wars" now seem trite, and the dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park," particularly in the final sequences of that movie, look creaky and artificial.
Audience habituation means that effects wizards are locked in the upward spiral of an endless special-effects arms race, with demands for bigger explosions, uglier villains, more frenzied and realistic violence, ear-splitting noises and ever-expanding battle scenes. A computer-generated crowd, according to the rule, must not be smaller than the crowds in last month's blockbusters.
The "Rings" trilogy is a case in point. Take away the frenetic effects from this unremarkable action-adventure fantasy and there is not enough on screen to keep even a subnormal human mind alive.
The narrative drags for long stretches. Acting? Elijah Wood plays Frodo with a repertoire of two wide-eyed expressions: his shocked-happy face and his shocked-hurt face. Women, as we'd expect from a geek epic, are merely an annoyance. As Clive James remarked, Middle-Earth is "a place where even Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler come to be boring." And the good, stout men of this movie are not much better, strutting around sententiously as they intone J.R.R. Tolkien's pseudo-Shakespearean inversions ("This way lies danger," etc.).
Next month we'll get yet another remake of Homer's "Iliad," this time with Brad Pitt as Achilles. Expect the computer-generated bone-crunching, flesh-slicing battle scenes to exceed in quantity of pixel-soldiers and pints of fake blood those in either "Gladiator" or "Rings." That's what the special-effects arms race is all about. And that's why the upward spiral of special effects has yielded a downward spiral in the story-telling quality of big-budget movies.
Talking about the theater of his own time, Aristotle listed the elements that go into a good drama. The least important, he argued, was "spectacle" — the staging, fancy costumes and special stage effects (such as the deus ex machina) the Greeks used in their theaters. Most crucial for intense dramatic experience was an effective plot and interesting characters. Except for the technology escalation, not much has changed in 2,500 years. Ignore Aristotle's advice, push spectacle to the top of the list, and you end up with such over-computerized, incoherent drivel as the recent versions of "The Hulk" or "Charlie's Angels."
Time was when celluloid images captured in the initial shoot formed the basic, intractable material from which a film editor worked. No more. Borrowing from the pumped-up visual rhetoric of TV commercials and video games, editors now recolor images, alter motion and add or delete whole objects, including characters, from scenes.
This has enabled a move toward cartoonish intensification. Thus in "Pirates of the Caribbean," the pirate ship is required to be portrayed as the blackest, most humongous ship ever seen. Sword fights must be tweaked so sparks and flashes accompany the clanging of blades. A treasure in a cave is not a chest of coins but an underground mountain of gold and jewels, and so forth. The computer, which had offered directors and editors creative freedom, has ended up delivering juvenile fantasy to audiences.
Films promise so much. Yet what have they delivered? Between 1939 and 1942, barely a decade after the advent of sound, Hollywood was able to produce "Citizen Kane," "Gone With the Wind," "The Wizard of Oz," "His Girl Friday," "Casablanca," "Fantasia" and "The Maltese Falcon." Ask yourself, how much better have movies gotten since then?
"The Wizard of Oz," like "Rings," is a fantasy-adventure plotted around a quest. It has Munchkins for its Hobbits, flying monkeys for its Orcs, a malevolent witch who lives in a castle, even humanoid trees. Its 1939 special effects are not there to astonish so much as to push the action along. "The Wizard of Oz" possesses an eternal freshness, its witty, beautifully paced tale told with singing and dancing actors of phenomenal talent: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr. Who can remember anything out of Howard Shore's vapid, overblown score for "Lord of the Rings"? Who can forget Harold Arlen's for "The Wizard of Oz"?
Add it all up — acting talent, script, pacing, humor — and you have in "The Wizard of Oz" an essential feature completely missing in "Lord of the Rings": charm.
Frankly, I have never looked at my watch as often during a movie as I did in "The Return of the King." Toward the end, I found myself desperately cheering on the giant spider in hope of getting home early. Eat Frodo! Eat him!
If the obsession with expensive technology and shallow effects is to ruin Hollywood film as an art form, by all means let the deed be carried out with the help of talented New Zealanders. The visual effects, costumes and makeup Oscars for "Lord of the Rings" are richly deserved. But beyond that, are these movies, or any of the over-technologized films of our epoch, of lasting value? Let's get a grip.
BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
You know what I think is really ironic? The column is about how full of fluff RotK is, but there's only one paragraph critiquing the movie.
So, let's recap.
He doesn't like Elijah Wood's acting.
He has some issue with the female actresses, I'm not clear what.
He doesn't like the dialogue.
Well, I'll grant him the last point. Nobody ever read Tolkien for the dialogue. Tolkien's greatest strength was setting, with which he spearheaded an entire genre of fiction. Wood's acting wasn't as bad as the author is making out. Elijah Wood's eyes are freaking unreal and it's only common sense that he uses them to emote. And as for his unclear point about the female leads, all I can say is "whatever". As far as I can tell, he's ticked that the trilogy didn't have more elf pr0n.
The author also ignores the depth of the setting and the use of theme instead of alegory to convey an artistic message. Probably because the author is a prat, although there may be other reasons.
It's amazing. Pure drivel is being showcased in art galleries across the country as people flock to some faux-artist who literally splashes paint on canvas, but get a talented compter graphic designer and have him or her spend hundreds of hours defining the movement of a creature that could never exist and it's just "special effects".
ergeheilalt said:
So, let's recap.
He doesn't like Elijah Wood's acting.
He has some issue with the female actresses, I'm not clear what.
He doesn't like the dialogue.
Well, I'll grant him the last point. Nobody ever read Tolkien for the dialogue. Tolkien's greatest strength was setting, with which he spearheaded an entire genre of fiction. Wood's acting wasn't as bad as the author is making out. Elijah Wood's eyes are freaking unreal and it's only common sense that he uses them to emote. And as for his unclear point about the female leads, all I can say is "whatever". As far as I can tell, he's ticked that the trilogy didn't have more elf pr0n.
The author also ignores the depth of the setting and the use of theme instead of alegory to convey an artistic message. Probably because the author is a prat, although there may be other reasons.
It's amazing. Pure drivel is being showcased in art galleries across the country as people flock to some faux-artist who literally splashes paint on canvas, but get a talented compter graphic designer and have him or her spend hundreds of hours defining the movement of a creature that could never exist and it's just "special effects".
Ankh-Morpork Guard
First Post
ergeheilalt said:
Is he trying to imply the treasure was CG? Wow. Could have sworn it was a bunch of actual props...
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Obviously the problems with this point of view are myriad, not the least of which is that it tries to pretend that movies are novels.
Why can't spectacle be a virtue in and of itself? What's wrong with comparing movies to, say, fireworks displays? BOOM! BANG! KAPOW! There's artistic merit in that, surely. Or not, some would say.
I'll contest with ANYONE the point that Tolkien isn't a great writer. He is. The best lines in all the films are the ones he wrote. The clunkers are invariably the ones PJ and his gang wrote. Not that they didn't create some great ones, but whenever they relied on Tolkien's dialogue they struck paydirt.
Compare Theoden's pre-battle speech ("Ride now to ruin, the world's ending, and a red dawn!") with Aragorn's (um, whatever it was he said). I'm getting goosebumps just THINKING about Tolkien's dialogue.
But regardless, anyone who says that at the END of the film they were cheering for the spider makes me wonder if they've even SEEN the film. I mean, Shelob's been gone for HOURS by the time we get to the end of the film. Not exactly a vote of confidence in this fellow's judgement.
Why can't spectacle be a virtue in and of itself? What's wrong with comparing movies to, say, fireworks displays? BOOM! BANG! KAPOW! There's artistic merit in that, surely. Or not, some would say.
I'll contest with ANYONE the point that Tolkien isn't a great writer. He is. The best lines in all the films are the ones he wrote. The clunkers are invariably the ones PJ and his gang wrote. Not that they didn't create some great ones, but whenever they relied on Tolkien's dialogue they struck paydirt.
Compare Theoden's pre-battle speech ("Ride now to ruin, the world's ending, and a red dawn!") with Aragorn's (um, whatever it was he said). I'm getting goosebumps just THINKING about Tolkien's dialogue.
But regardless, anyone who says that at the END of the film they were cheering for the spider makes me wonder if they've even SEEN the film. I mean, Shelob's been gone for HOURS by the time we get to the end of the film. Not exactly a vote of confidence in this fellow's judgement.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Sounds like someone just wants to bash CGI and found a way to do it in an eyecatching manner; I've seen 'reviews' of Shrek and Finding Nemo that mine that same vein. I'm pretty sure similar reviews were floating around when sound was introduced, then when movies went to color.
Particle_Man
Explorer
I think there seems to be an implied contradiction here. On the one hand he seems to be saying that special effects without good storyline/acting will be so bad that even the audience will be able to tell:
{Ignore Aristotle's advice, push spectacle to the top of the list, and you end up with such over-computerized, incoherent drivel as the recent versions of "The Hulk" or "Charlie's Angels."}
On the other hand, he seems to be saying that Lord of the Rings is in the same category:
{The "Rings" trilogy is a case in point. Take away the frenetic effects from this unremarkable action-adventure fantasy and there is not enough on screen to keep even a subnormal human mind alive.}
Yet surely there is a difference between Lord of the Rings and the other two movies in audience appreciation (=$), (most) critics reviews, oscars, etc. Or is he saying that the effects in the "rings" were so good that they overruled Aristotle? Anyhow, I think that Lord of the Rings will have a place in the canon, alongside of The Wizard of Oz, but only time will tell if either I or the reviewer am correct.
{Ignore Aristotle's advice, push spectacle to the top of the list, and you end up with such over-computerized, incoherent drivel as the recent versions of "The Hulk" or "Charlie's Angels."}
On the other hand, he seems to be saying that Lord of the Rings is in the same category:
{The "Rings" trilogy is a case in point. Take away the frenetic effects from this unremarkable action-adventure fantasy and there is not enough on screen to keep even a subnormal human mind alive.}
Yet surely there is a difference between Lord of the Rings and the other two movies in audience appreciation (=$), (most) critics reviews, oscars, etc. Or is he saying that the effects in the "rings" were so good that they overruled Aristotle? Anyhow, I think that Lord of the Rings will have a place in the canon, alongside of The Wizard of Oz, but only time will tell if either I or the reviewer am correct.
barsoomcore said:
I must disagree. IMO JRRT is long winded and boring. He spends way too much time describing the travels and songs then the major plot points of the story. You have to do both to have a good story. He has the characters break into songs that have nothing to do with the plot of the story. Some of that is fine, but JRRT does it way too much. I understand JRRT did not like to talk about violent acts, but when you are telling a stroy about a war, you need to describe the action more.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Well, this is not the thread for it, but if you want to take up that argument, I have no end of things to say about it. Feel free to start up a new thread (or look up one of the existing -- I'm sure ENWorld has (like every other discussion board on the web) had numerous er, discussions on this point).
There are certainly plenty of online resources to help you consider more appreciative views of Tolkien's writing. Not saying they'll change your mind, but if you want to consider him in a light other than "long winded and boring" there's lots of material out there to think about. If you don't want to, then perhaps a discussion on that point won't be very productive, anyway. And I would rather spare readers of this thread such a hijack.
Because when the topic is the literary merit of JRR Tolkien, I have a LOT to say. And I'm not usually shy (or terse) about saying it.
There are certainly plenty of online resources to help you consider more appreciative views of Tolkien's writing. Not saying they'll change your mind, but if you want to consider him in a light other than "long winded and boring" there's lots of material out there to think about. If you don't want to, then perhaps a discussion on that point won't be very productive, anyway. And I would rather spare readers of this thread such a hijack.
Because when the topic is the literary merit of JRR Tolkien, I have a LOT to say. And I'm not usually shy (or terse) about saying it.
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