My Big Beef With the LOTR movies
- Thread starter dontpunkme
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Pants
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Heh, then PJ will be accused of not following the story as the dwarves in 'The Hobbit' are pretty much just comic relief.Orius said:Well, I've said before that PJ comes off as kind of an elf fanboy. I mean, look at the dwarf tossing cracks, Legolas catching Gimli by the beard (blasphemy!), and Legolas fighting like some unbeatable invincible uber elf. Perhaps if PJ does The Hobbit as rumored, he'll redress the wrongs done to the dwarves in these movies.
Vigilance
Explorer
KenM said:If PJ does the Hobbit, will he change all the Dwarves that go with Bilbo to elves?
A) I thought Gimli kicked ass in the fights. Its not like he was JUST there to be laughed at. In the cave troll fight and in TTT Gimli kicks as much orc butt as anyone else.
B) Those movies really needed some humor... I mean... was anyone else a source of comic relief? Not really. Without gimli those movies are dark dark dark. So I appreciated having something humorous.
Chuck
John Q. Mayhem
Explorer
Keep in mind the wood Elf guard and butler drinking themselves to sleep in The Hobbit, shilsen. Third Age Elves aren't really very uber at all.
Why aren't dwarves better than elves?
Because this is Tolkien, not d20. Dwarven special abilities are not roughly twice that of elves and elves are not racially disposed to being faint-hearted waifs. Get Over It. And watch the end of TTT EE where Gimli is sitting on his last kill which puts him at one kill better than Legolas for the battle.
Where is Tom Bombadil? Why so many changes?
Tom Bombadil is off on the island of random linguistic side-plots with minimal relation to the core of the story. You may also find some wizards of other colors and other sort of rangers and whatnot out there. If Peter Jackson had done to LotR what Chris Columbus did to Harry Potter -- imaculately perfect and strangely devoid of vision -- you wouldn't be able to watch the whole thing through more than once anyway. And the rest of us would hate it. Really. Do you remember how much of RotK is described "It was dark. Pitch black. Couldn't see a thing. Really. I mean it. May have been some boring stone walls somewhere, but it was too dark to see 'em."? C'mon, what kind of cinema is that?
On a related note, Tolkien's characterization and character capabilities was really shoddy -- re-read the scene on the mountain from FotR and note who can hear the voice of Saruman. It's not the elf, despite having keen elven senses.
Return of the King was sloppy with way too many mistakes.
Yes it was. Let's hope that Peter Jackson was able to get a bit of a holiday before going after the DVDs so that his eyes are a bit fresher for fixing some mistakes and cleaning up some cuts.
That said, even after Extended Editions, there are some problems.
1) Arwen is too superflouous-yet-present in TTT and RotK. Jackson did a good job of making her fit in FotR -- far better than the original "and then this elf-chick shows up and he marries her, the end" that was in the core storyline (not appendicies) of LotR. It was disappointing to have her practically relegated to being off-topic window dressing for the other two movies.
2) The random arrival of elves at Helm's Deep. Good to see you guys, but how did you get here before the advancing horde? Shouldn't you have run into Eomyr or something? Tolkien didn't have them there because they were supposed to be off fighting evil elsewhere (discussion between Gimli & Legolas in the book-version of RotK iirc), but they really couldn't have been there because of the two other armies converging on the peasant caravan into that stronghold with only one way in -- there was nowhere for them to come from.
3) Aragorn falling of the cliff. Yes, it gives Liv Tyler more screen time and allows some scouting to go on. But it feels like the sort of cheesy distration that was deemed a bad use of time (and hence no Bombadil et all). We either fast-forward of MST3K this scene every time...
4) Every orc with speaking lines having no genetic strands in common with any other orc. The elves look like a species. The uruks look like a species. The orcs look like leftover attempts at making uruk costumes. Compare the orc that picks up Frodo after Shelob to the orc general (RotK) to the orc whining about not being able to keep the fires of Orthanc going to the orcs wanting to eat Merry & Pippen (TTT EE).
5) Sauron the Spotlight. I know Jackson had problems with "How do you make people terrified of your BBEG when he's just this flamey eyeball?" And I think he did reasonably well with TTT. But the searchlight "ooh, lookie over here!" factor in RotK nearly made me fall off of my chair laughing. And that's not an appropriate response for the ultimate symbol of evil, you know?
But I console myself on these points because $300M and oodles of awards later, I don't think we're going to get a better remake in our lifetimes.
::K
Because this is Tolkien, not d20. Dwarven special abilities are not roughly twice that of elves and elves are not racially disposed to being faint-hearted waifs. Get Over It. And watch the end of TTT EE where Gimli is sitting on his last kill which puts him at one kill better than Legolas for the battle.
Where is Tom Bombadil? Why so many changes?
Tom Bombadil is off on the island of random linguistic side-plots with minimal relation to the core of the story. You may also find some wizards of other colors and other sort of rangers and whatnot out there. If Peter Jackson had done to LotR what Chris Columbus did to Harry Potter -- imaculately perfect and strangely devoid of vision -- you wouldn't be able to watch the whole thing through more than once anyway. And the rest of us would hate it. Really. Do you remember how much of RotK is described "It was dark. Pitch black. Couldn't see a thing. Really. I mean it. May have been some boring stone walls somewhere, but it was too dark to see 'em."? C'mon, what kind of cinema is that?
On a related note, Tolkien's characterization and character capabilities was really shoddy -- re-read the scene on the mountain from FotR and note who can hear the voice of Saruman. It's not the elf, despite having keen elven senses.
Return of the King was sloppy with way too many mistakes.
Yes it was. Let's hope that Peter Jackson was able to get a bit of a holiday before going after the DVDs so that his eyes are a bit fresher for fixing some mistakes and cleaning up some cuts.
That said, even after Extended Editions, there are some problems.
1) Arwen is too superflouous-yet-present in TTT and RotK. Jackson did a good job of making her fit in FotR -- far better than the original "and then this elf-chick shows up and he marries her, the end" that was in the core storyline (not appendicies) of LotR. It was disappointing to have her practically relegated to being off-topic window dressing for the other two movies.
2) The random arrival of elves at Helm's Deep. Good to see you guys, but how did you get here before the advancing horde? Shouldn't you have run into Eomyr or something? Tolkien didn't have them there because they were supposed to be off fighting evil elsewhere (discussion between Gimli & Legolas in the book-version of RotK iirc), but they really couldn't have been there because of the two other armies converging on the peasant caravan into that stronghold with only one way in -- there was nowhere for them to come from.
3) Aragorn falling of the cliff. Yes, it gives Liv Tyler more screen time and allows some scouting to go on. But it feels like the sort of cheesy distration that was deemed a bad use of time (and hence no Bombadil et all). We either fast-forward of MST3K this scene every time...
4) Every orc with speaking lines having no genetic strands in common with any other orc. The elves look like a species. The uruks look like a species. The orcs look like leftover attempts at making uruk costumes. Compare the orc that picks up Frodo after Shelob to the orc general (RotK) to the orc whining about not being able to keep the fires of Orthanc going to the orcs wanting to eat Merry & Pippen (TTT EE).
5) Sauron the Spotlight. I know Jackson had problems with "How do you make people terrified of your BBEG when he's just this flamey eyeball?" And I think he did reasonably well with TTT. But the searchlight "ooh, lookie over here!" factor in RotK nearly made me fall off of my chair laughing. And that's not an appropriate response for the ultimate symbol of evil, you know?
But I console myself on these points because $300M and oodles of awards later, I don't think we're going to get a better remake in our lifetimes.
::K
Qlippoth
Explorer
Well, I'm sure the only "givens" will be:KenM said:If PJ does the Hobbit, will he change all the Dwarves that go with Bilbo to elves?
A) the 2 Jackson children as "Cute Lake-town Children" (or "Extremely Young and Yet Cute Hobbit Children Again");
B) the Woses come to the Dwarves' aid at the Battle of Five Armies; and
C) once Thorin's done negotiating Bilbo's contract, he goes into a study of Central Nervous System anatomy (passed down through the ages from the Neurology Department at Belegost).
EDIT: Lack-spell.
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