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skasion posted:Elves, giving a guy a gift of rope that will untie itself but only when you want it to: “yeah it’s just really good rope. Wtf is magic” If they could give me an oven that would turn itself off when I'm worried about it, well, now you've got my attention
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Dec 29, 2021 23:50
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Imagined posted:The worst is movie Treebeard having to be tricked into doing anything by the hobbits, as if he didn't know what was happening to his own forest. yeah i hated this, they made him look like a complete boob
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Dec 30, 2021 05:05
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The whole Treebeard/Entmoot sequence is the absolute nadir of the first two movies. Why is the oldest creature in Middle-earth suddenly a complete moron? Why are all the other Ents right there when they get to Isengard? Did they follow Treebeard just in case? Treebeard already knows the orcs are destroying the forest anyway! Why didn't he care before? He even knows that Saruman is up to no good! The actual assault on Isengard is really well done, but the part leading up to it is so incredibly stupid. I get that they want to give the hobbits more agency, rather than being literal passengers on Treebeard's shoulder, but yikes.
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Dec 30, 2021 10:34
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Pham Nuwen posted:If they could give me an oven that would turn itself off when I'm worried about it, well, now you've got my attention how would you know it worked without checking it though?
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Dec 30, 2021 14:39
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webmeister posted:The whole Treebeard/Entmoot sequence is the absolute nadir of the first two movies. Why is the oldest creature in Middle-earth suddenly a complete moron? Why are all the other Ents right there when they get to Isengard? Did they follow Treebeard just in case? Treebeard already knows the orcs are destroying the forest anyway! Why didn't he care before? He even knows that Saruman is up to no good! Yeah, otherwise Merry and Pippin do nothing for an entire movie besides get carried by some orcs, and then get carried by a tree. That would mean important and arguably Main Characters literally have almost no lines and 3 scenes for an entire installment and audiences who have never read the books get confused when they show back up again in the third movie. They needed something for them to do, and having them be the catalyst for the Ents being roused, vs making something up, sticks closer to the books. And they correctly assumed that only book nerds like us would notice, let alone care.
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Dec 30, 2021 15:57
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Yeah, Merry and Pippin are basically furniture (who get taller) in The Book. Did Treebeard have to be so oblivious? Probably not, but it's still an adaptation choice I can defend. That being said, I am a movie defender and will even go to bat for Movie Towers Faramir, at least for the theory behind the adaptation changes made to him. I'll own that it's not entirely successful, but I can see what they were trying to do. It's just kind of mushy.
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Dec 30, 2021 17:21
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Fighting Trousers posted:Yeah, Merry and Pippin are basically furniture (who get taller) in The Book. Did Treebeard have to be so oblivious? Probably not, but it's still an adaptation choice I can defend. yeah, they went too far with movie Faramir. Moving the scene of him refusing the ring and giving that to Aragorn at the end of FOTR was entirely the right call. Having him move the hobbits and then have a change of heart, reverting back to book Faramir, was a waste of effort that seemed forced in order to get the Sam speech in. Like they wrote that, and felt it would not fit anywhere else so they forced a situation in wherein the hobbits are at a battle scene. They could have had him initially consider bringing the hobbits, relent and then just track him as he goes to Osgiliath without the hobbits.
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Dec 30, 2021 17:38
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Here’s a question, wtf did the barrow wights do with the hobbits’ clothes that even Tom was like “yeah you’re not gonna get those back”
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Dec 30, 2021 19:04
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skasion posted:Here’s a question, wtf did the barrow wights do with the hobbits’ clothes that even Tom was like “yeah you’re not gonna get those back” Maybe Tom just fancied an eyeful of hobbits running around starkers.
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Dec 30, 2021 19:17
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skasion posted:Here’s a question, wtf did the barrow wights do with the hobbits’ clothes that even Tom was like “yeah you’re not gonna get those back” Put them on and had roleplay sex as Hobbits.
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Dec 30, 2021 19:22
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skasion posted:Here’s a question, wtf did the barrow wights do with the hobbits’ clothes that even Tom was like “yeah you’re not gonna get those back” I assumed the clothing had been cut off rather than carefully removed, but then I used to be an EMT so that's what we did to patients we needed to assess in a hurry*. If the Barrow-Wight didn't care about having the clothes afterwards, it might have been easier to just take a knife to them rather than deal with four Hobbits' bullshit 10-buttoned waistcoats and all that English country squire nonsense. *Better to lose a pair of pants than to bleed out because somebody didn't spot an injury.
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Dec 30, 2021 19:54
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Hey do you guys think they had pretzels in lotr?
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Dec 30, 2021 21:45
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SHISHKABOB posted:Hey do you guys think they had pretzels in lotr? Don’t see why not, you certainly don’t need modern tech to make them
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Dec 30, 2021 21:52
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SHISHKABOB posted:Hey do you guys think they had pretzels in lotr? You could definitely get pretzels at inns in the Shire. I can't really see elves making/eating them though... just imagine fuckin Glorfindel tearing into a soft pretzel and dipping it in nacho cheese sauce. Speaking of hobbits in the Shire, give me a movie that's just 3 hours of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin wandering through the Shire just like the very start of Frodo's journey in Fellowship.
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Dec 30, 2021 21:55
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Pham Nuwen posted:You could definitely get pretzels at inns in the Shire. I can't really see elves making/eating them though... just imagine fuckin Glorfindel tearing into a soft pretzel and dipping it in nacho cheese sauce. The whole beginning of Frodo's plan to leave the shire was pretty good. Selling his house, packing up, moving, and then walking to his new house was a nice slice of what the Shire is like. Its really good at making you wish they could just stay at that new house, and feel Frodo's anxiety about having to leave immediately. When the other Hobbits all admit that they knew what was going on, it was a really well done scene that I kind of wish was in the movies.
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Dec 30, 2021 22:03
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If Hobbits treated Hard Tack as a chewing exercise, a hobbit pretzel could probably be used as a throwing star.
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Dec 30, 2021 22:14
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Pham Nuwen posted:Speaking of hobbits in the Shire, give me a movie that's just 3 hours of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin wandering through the Shire just like the very start of Frodo's journey in Fellowship.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:55
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Pham Nuwen posted:Speaking of hobbits in the Shire, give me a movie that's just 3 hours of Frodo, Sam,  and this time the smiley's name is appropriate because he's a huge Tolkien nerd
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Dec 31, 2021 02:00
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Merry gets to do some good wandering with the lads in the Old Forest
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Dec 31, 2021 02:05
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What really doesn't make sense in the movie is why Gandalf would let Frodo leave the Shire without Gandalf if they're both running out the door more-or-less simultaneously, and both heading east. Especially if Gandalf feels that Frodo's in such imminent danger that he needs to go right that second. Even if Gandalf only went with him to Bree to hand him off to Aragorn and then turned southeast toward Isengard from there, it would be six one way and half-a-dozen the other compared to going directly southeast from Hobbiton. This is, of course, explained in the book by Gandalf leaving months and months before Frodo does.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:07
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Yeah, the movie has no convincing reason why Gandalf has to leave right then to see Saruman. In the books it's because he encounters Radagast and even then he takes the time to make arrangements.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:21
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I’m not saying that it would have been at all a better product but I’m really curious what would have happened if the LoTR movies were never made and the property was adopted like a decade later as a prestige television series with 8-10 episodes a book. What would that have looked like?
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Dec 31, 2021 04:09
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Find out when Amazon releases theirs.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:27
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Zopotantor posted:
When I said "just like the very start of Frodo's journey in Fellowship", I meant "in a visual style similar to what we see in the early parts of the Fellowship movie" although I guess the arrival of Merry & Pippin coincides with the party's first encounter with a Black Rider, which isn't the vibe I want in my hobbit backpacking documentary
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Dec 31, 2021 04:41
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Arc Hammer posted:Find out when Amazon releases theirs. They’re not going off a giant already written book though, there’s basically nothing written about the 2nd age outside of like 50 pages of the Silmarillion and Appendices.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:55
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I’m not saying that it would have been at all a better product but I’m really curious what would have happened if the LoTR movies were never made and the property was adopted like a decade later as a prestige television series with 8-10 episodes a book. What would that have looked like? I’ve been of the opinion that this is the ultimate format for a LOTR adaptation. These days it could be a pretty faithful adaptation. Then again, there are still some things that don’t translate well to the screen that could possibly still be changed or cut. The reason the Ent sequence sucks so back in the film is because it’s just a weird thing to adapt to screen. Tom Bombadil too. Not saying it can’t be done but it’s just a very narratively weird thing for screen writers to wrap their brain around. Though a tv adaptation would give plenty of breathing room for something like The Scouring of the Shire that totally makes sense to cut from an already bloated film but could def exist in a tv series. Also, in love with the idea of a “Frodo is dead” season ending cliffhanger after he gets stung by Shelob. Not something you could pull off now but had the films not existed it would absolutely be a thing.
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Dec 31, 2021 06:10
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One big change in the movies that I remember a lot of nerds on Livejournal  bitching about back in the day, but in hindsight I totally love and completely agree with, is replacing Glorfindel with Arwen. Glorfindel is a badass character if you've read the entire legendarium, but since he doesn't have any further part in the LOTR story, it makes complete sense to instead use that bit to establish Arwen's relationship with Aragorn and make her more interesting than just a pretty lady who shows up to get married at the end.Having rewatched the movies in 4K over the holidays this year, it's so hard to hold anything against them, because they're so clearly a massive labor of love on the part of everyone involved. They were a huge risk and massively expensive at a time before geek culture ruled blockbuster movies, and the sheer scale and effort and love of the thing shows in every single frame. So while you can point to a lot of elements and quibble with this or that choice, you absolutely know they gave it their all and their hearts were in the right place. The people who made those movies weren't doing it [just] for money, but because they were also massive fans and huge dorks just like us. Imagined fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 14:01
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yeah most of the bad decisions (elfs in helm's deep, fangorn being very stupid, faramir, denethor as callously incompetent, theoden being an arsehole etc) are mostly trying for something reasonable. many changes are straightforwardly good, and most of the cast condensation was very well executed. changing from the red arrow to the beacons was imo appropriate, for instance. cutting the weirder non-critical parts like tom bombadil or ghân-buri-ghân was also probably for the best. they hit more than they missed with the adaptation, even if they made a few too many concessions to hollywood convention in my view
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Dec 31, 2021 16:15
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They didn’t replace enough things with Arwen. In addition to Glorfindel, she also should have replaced Haldir at Helm’s Deep and Halbarad’s role which they had Elrond do instead in the movies.
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Dec 31, 2021 16:44
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They filmed a bunch of Arwen at Helm's Deep but then cut it. For me the least successful part of the films is Denethor, with no disrespect to John Noble.
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Dec 31, 2021 16:55
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Just ONE shot of Denethor gazing morosely into a palantir would have helped so much.
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Dec 31, 2021 17:02
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skasion posted:They didn’t replace enough things with Arwen. In addition to Glorfindel, she also should have replaced Haldir at Helm’s Deep and Halbarad’s role which they had Elrond do instead in the movies. They had Arwen film a ton of scenes at Helms Deep but cut them all after one of the earliest examples of widespread internet nerd rage despising a female character when Fellowship came out.
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Dec 31, 2021 18:18
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I was a late teenage dork when the cast for Fellowship was announced and I was more annoyed at the absence of Glorfindel than at the expansion of Arwen. I was also more annoyed at the casting of Liv Tyler specifically (who seemed like she was in everything at that time, and unofficial promotion made it seem like she was just being cast because of who her dad was) than at the expansion of Arwen, too. I was a massive mark for Glorfindel, though.
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Dec 31, 2021 18:45
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V. Illych L. posted:yeah most of the bad decisions (elfs in helm's deep, fangorn being very stupid, faramir, denethor as callously incompetent, theoden being an arsehole etc) are mostly trying for something reasonable. many changes are straightforwardly good, and most of the cast condensation was very well executed. changing from the red arrow to the beacons was imo appropriate, for instance. cutting the weirder non-critical parts like tom bombadil or ghân-buri-ghân was also probably for the best. they hit more than they missed with the adaptation, even if they made a few too many concessions to hollywood convention in my view For some of the cut content they still put in little easily missable details, like the trolls after Weathertop, the pucel-man statues at Dunharrow, the Silent Watchers at Cirith Ungol etc. Unfortunately many of them only made it to the extended cut.
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Dec 31, 2021 23:22
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The completely invented scene of the warg ambush where Aragorn falls off the cliff always feels like the most egregious waste of time to me. Then he gets rescued by the horse he was nice to. You leave out the Grey Company, but put in that poo poo?
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Dec 31, 2021 23:34
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Imagined posted:The completely invented scene of the warg ambush where Aragorn falls off the cliff always feels like the most egregious waste of time to me. Then he gets rescued by the horse he was nice to. You leave out the Grey Company, but put in that poo poo? There’s a couple choices in Two Towers specifically that feel like they were attempts to correct for stuff that was cut from Fellowship. Treebeard getting a number of Bombadil lines is one. This is another one. Feels like they were getting in a wolf attack quota
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Jan 1, 2022 00:10
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In the bit where the ringwraiths bust into Buckland looking for Frodo and realize he's gone, they 'ride down the guards at the gate' on their way out. So do they... kill them? 
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Jan 3, 2022 04:42
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I interpret it as trampled Don’t know why he just didn’t use trample
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Jan 3, 2022 04:46
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Probably one of those new fangled words invented after 1066.
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Jan 3, 2022 04:50
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Trample sounds to me more like you actively got stepped on, possibly by a whole bunch of horses. “Ride down” is more like you just bash through them and who cares what happens to them precisely. Tolkien wasn’t allergic to the word trample, he uses it for when Shagrat is abusing Gorbag’s dead body.
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Jan 3, 2022 05:00
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