My Big Beef With the LOTR movies

[FCWesel]

Wombat, you are not in the minority. I HATE the Tom Bombadil section of the book and actively avoid it at all costs. I was SOOO happy when it wasn't in the film. Yay Mr. Jackson!

Overall, I was very happy with the films. Did I miss a few things? Sure. But hey, this wasn't MY movie. It was His movie version of the books. I am sure that if he thought he could not bore the audience to death and tears and didn't have to worry about time and making money and being able to actually pay for the movie in the first place he would have put everything in it.

The sons of Elrond simply don't bring anything to the story from a time/money "cost". Actually, do they do anything int he books worthy of note? It's easy toi throw in throw-away characters when you have unlimited everything, like Tolkien did. Jackson only had to have an audience fall for 12 "main characters" and about 2 dozen support characters.

I think Gimili does get the short shaft, myself. But then I love dwarves and hate elves.

As for the Dunedain...like Elrond's sons, they bring nothing to the table in the big picture compared to the cost they would have entailed. Rememeber, what you spend on "this" takes away from "all this other stuff".

Mouth of Sauron will be in the EE version. Frankly, I didn't miss him in the theatrical version other then to note, "okay, he's not in it." It did not even warrent a "oh well", much less a "darn."

Well, the Ents are boring for people who have not read the book, and even then they are boring for some. At least he gave us more of them in the EE version of the movie. Me, I love the ents, but they are not good movie-stuff. they are slow and don't really push the plot around too much, if you know what I mean.

Personal Opinion: Tom Bombadil BLEW, galde he wasn't in there. And I am sorry, but if I had to read/watch one more character "resist the ring that is unresistable" one more time I was just gonna puke. I did not even miss the barrow-wights...though I will say that I would have liked to see how Jackson would have filmed it.

The dead men thing...I had no problems with it. Sorry. All these guys do is two thing, show aragorn is king and make it easy to wipe out the big bad army. They are a "gun" and little more.


Frankly I think the REAL TRAGEDY was that they totally took the focus of the true hero of the story and didn't even so much as give him a nod in TTT and ROTK, and that's BILL THE PONY. He's was totally screwed over.

 

[TracerBullet42]

Frankly I think the REAL TRAGEDY was that they totally took the focus of the true hero of the story and didn't even so much as give him a nod in TTT and ROTK, and that's BILL THE PONY. He's was totally screwed over.

Amen to that...Shadowfax is a wannabe...

Yeah, there are some differences from the books, but they're great movies. And that's good enough for me.

 

[drnuncheon]

Sounds like your big beef with the LOTR movies is that they weren't 8-10 hours long each, which is what they'd need to be to fit in all the stuff that was left out...

...and they would have lost all the viewers in the first one because they would have spent two hours of Fellowship with Frodo selling Bag End and moving to his new house and nothing really happening.

J

 

[myrdden]

It's commonly called a "rant": a form of self-expression often found on messagebaords & newsgroups, wherein a person expresses one or more, often negative, opinions on a subject that they do not have another outlet for.

This post, however, is not a "rant", but is infact the written expression of the oft misunderstood speech pattern known as sarcasm

Nice explanation. I just couldn't tell if it was a serious rant or if it was sarcasm. Sarcasm just doesn't translate well in cyberspace.

 

[Sado]

Umm...elves at Helm's Deep?

 

[Truth Seeker]

Umm...elves at Helm's Deep?

Okay,okay, so some liberties were taken, PJ did gave a warning in advance, he was doing that.

 

[Onos T'oolan]

I hated:

1) the way Galadriel came off as such a witch (IMO)
2) the heavy-handed, cheap attempts at manipulating the audience by repeatedly showing babies crying, 'peasants' weeping, etc. as though we're too stupid to get it the first time, thus breaking up the rhythm of action scenes (eg. @ Helm's Deep)
3) everything involving Arwen - alone, with Aragorn, with Elrond .. the 'love' between Arwen and Aragorn was so stilted, forced, unconvincing and lacking in chemistry IMO it wasn't worth the effort
4) warg fight and Aragorn's 'death'
5) generally anytime they took out something that was in the book and inexplicably created scenes to put into the movie ??? why ???

*PHEW* I feel better now

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I hated:
1) the way Galadriel came off as such a witch (IMO)

Actually, this is arguably a good thing. She WAS an Elven witch, but one has to grasp the idea that witch is not a bad thing in those terms. If the Elves were the Welsh, then Galadriel is essentially one of the great Druids. So...she's a 'witch' in that sense, but that's in no way bad. In fact, if you problem is how dangerous and such she was, then good...that's how she should be. Kind and yet dangerously powerful.

And on the note of Gimli being comic relief. I finished my yearly re-read of the books not too long ago and discovered something. Gimli is treated as comic relief in the books. Sure, not as obviously because there isn't a visual element, but he's still very much treated light heartedly when compared with the other characters.

 

[KenM]

Umm...elves at Helm's Deep?

Have you seen The Two Towers EE bonus stuff with Arwen fighting at Helms Deep? They were orginally going to have her fighting alongside Aragorn.
Rumor is someone leaked that little info out to the net and all the diehard fans did all they could so it would be changed, too much change fromn the book, and it worked.

 

[Sado]

Oh, and the battle at the end of FotR, 100 orcs vs...Aragorn. And Aragorn is around for Movie #2 after that? A bit too heroic for me.