The J.R.R. Tolkien Topic (publications and adaptations)

[Mosh]

Mosh is in production school. I'm sure he'll know something about editing by then. I volunteer him.

I second the motion on spoiler tags, but we should add a warning to the thread title then.

I actually did a film project this year! So I could possibly lend a hand if y'all are serious about doing a fan edit.

 

[LooseCannon]

I'm decently serious.

 

[Mosh]

It could be fun. And hopefully by then I'll have read the book so I can watch the films too.

 

[LooseCannon]

Well, I'd say get your butt on that!

 

[mckindog]

I am incredibly late to this party, but I just saw it last night and my two cents:
Fun movie, worth watching
Not up to the standards of LotR, which were great movies
I have no idea why Cried even went

 

[SixesAlltheway]

Seeing the movie this Monday

 

[Cornfed Hick]

I just saw it yesterday too. It was OK, maybe a 5 or 6 out of 10. The acting was still very good, but the battle scenes were tired and uninspired, I'd seen it all before in the LotR films, when they were jaw-dropping, original and genuinely scary and tactical. I think it's fair to say that splitting the relatively short and crisp novel into three bloated movies was an artistic failure, though financially I'm sure they will do very well. This was Peter Jackson's opportunity to really cash in after a big contract dispute over the royalties to the LotR films, and I think he mailed it in and cashed the big checks. I'm now curious to see what whets his creative appetite next, as he's obviously a gifted filmmaker. But this was nowhere near his best work. I'm now a bit wistful about what might have been, had Guillermo del Toro directed two films as originally planned.

 

[mckindog]

There was definitely some repetition going on there from the original trilogy.
The way some scenes were set up and shot, as well as some snippets of dialogue were more than familiar.

As for some of the Jackson-isms that may have been at odds with the source material, Legolas on the collapsing bridge stones was terrible, but Thorin stepping off the ice flow was awesome. The love triangle was forced (even though I liked Evangeline Lilly's character), as was the smarmy Laketown dude. The sandworms were eye-rolling. Dain Ironfoot (and his pig) were awesome. And I really liked being able to see the cleansing of Dol Guldur.

Overall, I thought the picture relied a bit too much on CGI. Too many scenes lacked the realness that made the original so breathtaking. But it still was amazing to look at.

 

[Forostar]

I think these films never had a real chance to score high, because it's had some difficult "opponents" to beat:

Lord of the Rings - the film
A large chunk of people were ultimely satisfied by Jackson's LOTR. "Lord of the Rings was fantastic, nothing else can match this". With such an attitude, it's going to be hard to be satisfied indeed by a second Jackson production. Lord of the Rings was a first in many ways, when it comes to techniques, but also epic proportions.

Lord of the Rings - the book (A + B )
This works two ways: The LOTR books are much more popular and they are more suited for film.
So, it's 3-0 for LOTR already before Jackson recorded the first Hobbit film scene. Jackson tried to make The Hobbit a more darker film, and he added lots of drama and epicness, but also storylines that do not appear in the Hobbit book, to make an exciting film. But it works against him: A critic that's often heard: "Too much, it's not like the book".

For years, we have known that Jackson would make three films. Still not used to that idea?

Then what were the expectations? Of course we couldn't expect one film anymore. How (on earth?) could this film be better? Let's for now, purely speak about this last one. I can go with most of the critics on the first two but how on earth were these scenes uninspired? How else should they have been done? The "I've seen it all before" is not correct. This battle added some new and better aspects. Better duels, there was more suspense, some parts were unexpected, also partly because some of the fights took place on different, separated terrain. (Tolkien purists would hate this originality, so it's never good enough for everybody). But in all honesty, the techniques have also become better. Personally, I thought it again looked better too.

I read a complaint about the diversity of orcs. In LOTR there are more different orcs than in the Hobbit. This time I thought some of the orcs looked rather large, but I never missed anything in particular. At times, I even thought there were too many trolls and such.

.. the battle scenes were tired and uninspired, I'd seen it all before in the LotR films, when they were jaw-dropping, original and genuinely scary and tactical. .

This battle is in another story, with its own haunting plot. It was a battle with a different background. I can feel empathy for it, especially its build-up made the whole thing different. How was this one less tactical? Why less scary? Perhaps, in the LOTR books more scary things happened (e.g. Eowyn's fight, but outside the LOTR battle, there were countless of more scary moments in the LOTR book). How can we blame this Hobbit film for a lack of scary things in the book?

I mean, I am honestly curious for your argumentation but at the same time I think this also has to do with the ability of getting into a film (to get sucked in totally and try to erase all the other factors; during the whole moving I did not think a second about LOTR), understanding the choices that were made, and the material that it was based on.

 

[Brigantium]

There was definitely some repetition going on there from the original trilogy.
The way some scenes were set up and shot, as well as some snippets of dialogue were more than familiar.

I just saw it yesterday too. It was OK, maybe a 5 or 6 out of 10. The acting was still very good, but the battle scenes were tired and uninspired, I'd seen it all before in the LotR films, when they were jaw-dropping, original and genuinely scary and tactical.

I've yet to see Hobbit III, but I found the filming of battle scenes within the LOTR films had a certain formula to it which became more and more noticeable as the trilogy progressed. I had hoped there'd be a fresh approach to this one. The first couple of battles they did in LOTR, with the camera swooping into the action, or drawing back to show the enormous scale of the action, was very new and impressive, but once you've set yourself up to dazzle the audience, you have to keep pulling new tricks out of the bag.

 

[Forostar]

Jackson did. But being aware of them is something else.

 

[Brigantium]

Evidently not sufficiently dazzling ones, then!

 

[Forostar]

Another thing:

If people really wanted to have one movie, they surely would have a less interesting battle. 100%, for sure. So, something is not right here people.

 

[CriedWhenBrucieLeft]

I'm genuinely curious as to why you guys think these battle scenes are worthy of this kind of analysis. Is this the summit of what the medium can deliver; epic CGI? Believe it or not (despite my previous comments), I am actually interested in film/cinema. I'm not, however, particularly interested in whether epic battle scenes are pulled off or not. The Hobbit, the book, is not about this; and Jackson would have done better had he focused on something else.

 

[SixesAlltheway]

Man, I can't even remember what happened in the second one (which I saw last Christmas) but I'm just going into the last one looking for entertainment

 

[Forostar]

Cried, I am still genuinely curious for the answers to some basic questions I have asked you. If you don't answer them, then I find it hard to have a dialogue with you on the content of this film.

- - - - - - -

May I remind everybody that this film was called The Battle of the Five Armies.

How can you guys be serious and say "this was too much". The LOTR battle had a more one dimensional approach: Get every evil creature here and conquer Gondor. Now, there were at least as many aspects to it. E.g. the Arcenstone, the discord between the Elves and Dwarves, Bilbo's inner conflict which had a major direct connection with the almost-start of the battle.

By the way: has anyone clocked the lengths of the battles (from the clash)? Perhaps the difference in time between ROTK and TBOTA isn't that big.

 

[mckindog]

I'm genuinely curious as to why you guys think these battle scenes are worthy of this kind of analysis. Is this the summit of what the medium can deliver; epic CGI? Believe it or not (despite my previous comments), I am actually interested in film/cinema. I'm not, however, particularly interested in whether epic battle scenes are pulled off or not. The Hobbit, the book, is not about this; and Jackson would have done better had he focused on something else.

The medium is about delivering a story visually. Whatever the book is, or is not, about is not the be-all-and-end-all in discussing the film.
When a movie is dominated by a battle scene (come on, like Foro says, it's the title of the freakin' movie), then it would seem to natural to discuss the effectiveness of the way the battle was portrayed. This is the story Jackson chose to tell. It is a story I am in interested in. And it is a story that I thought he told effectively on many levels. More on the bold in a moment.

How can you guys be serious and say "this was too much". The LOTR battle had a more one dimensional approach: Get every evil creature here and conquer Gondor. Now, there were at least as many aspects to it. E.g. the Arcenstone, the discord between the Elves and Dwarves, Bilbo's inner conflict which had a major direct connection with the almost-start of the battle.

I won't speak for everybody, but I did not think the battle was too much. I thought certain elements were over-the-top, but in terms of being visually interesting and capturing the scope and the spectacle it was excellent.

As visually stimulating entertainment it was very successful.

Where this film trilogy falls down, at least in comparison to the Lord of the Rings movies was how he told the human stories being played out against the backdrop of the epic spectacle. At its most basic level, the book is about an everyman taking the risk of stepping outside his safe cocoon, the challenges that brings, and how his character is shaped and revealed by the way he deals with those challenges. The filmmakers did an excellent job with this, aided and abetted by a top-notch performance from Martin Freeman. Bilbo was real and I cared.

Of course Tolkien being the genius he is, that is just one of many stories being played out. In LotR, Jackson also masterfully portrayed the stories of Sam, Eowyn, Faramir, Boromir and Aragorn. Jackson's Hobbit focused on two other secondary stories: the discord between the elves and dwarves and the quest of Thorin to reclaim his birthright.

The former was shown quite well in a variety of scenes that showed the cultural differences between the elves and dwarves. But Jackson choose to drive it home even further with his Tauriel/Kili creation, which just didn't ring true to me. While I liked the characters, I just didn't believe there was or could have been a deep connection there. It didn't exist organically. It existed only because the screenwriters said it should.

But the biggest hole for me was the payoff for Thorin. Armitage was excellent, and his was one of the best-realized characters in the first two films. I could see why the dwarves followed him. I could see why he was the way he was and why he made the choices he did. And then instead of succumbing to the dark side of his own obsessions, he spent the first half of this film under some spell created in a bad comic book. And then, with a magic waving of the hands, the spell was lifted and voila, he's himself again. It's been long time since I read the book, but that is not my memory of what happened in the book, and that is not what was delivered in the other LotR films. The downfall of overweening pride is a powerful story, one that Jackson is perfectly capable of delivering. To me, this was this trilogy's biggest missed opportunity.

 

[CriedWhenBrucieLeft]

Nice thoughts, & well put mckindog...

When a movie is dominated by a battle scene (come on, like Foro says, it's the title of the freakin' movie), then it would seem to natural to discuss the effectiveness of the way the battle was portrayed. This is the story Jackson chose to tell.

Indeed it is, & this is where I have a problem. I'm not interested in looking at an hour of CGI fighting anymore. And my guess is, in ten years time, you'll not be interested in it either.

It is a story I am in interested in.

Each to their own.

As visually stimulating entertainment it was very successful.

So is my cat.

Where this film trilogy falls down...

Before you go any further, I think we know where it falls down. Trilogy.

The rest of your criticism I broadly agree with!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cried, I am still genuinely curious for the answers to some basic questions I have asked you. If you don't answer them, then I find it hard to have a dialogue with you on the content of this film.

Oh, okay Foro...

May I remind everybody that this film was called The Battle of the Five Armies.

Some discussion of why three films was even necessary would be more pertinent.

We really have explained what we like about these films (and what do not like).
I am not really sure what you want with the medium film. What do you expect from film?

Atmosphere, mood, philosophical depth, etc.

Do you disqualify the medium altogether?

No.

Or do you want a nice film version of a Tolkien book?

I don't desire this particularly, no.

What are your criteria for a good film interpretation?

The interpretation &/or re-imagining &/or re-presentation of someone else's work is riddled with difficulties; particularly when you start with something which is already highly regarded. I have a fundamental problem with this, particularly for commercial ends. You want to avoid this: write your own story & screenplay e.g. in the del Toro example given below.

Which fantasy films do you like? Are there any you like?

Pan's Labyrinth was pretty decent.

Who has done something good in the fantasy genre?

As in films? Struggling to think, Foro. Hollywood "Fantasy" has been generally awful.

 

[Forostar]

The former was shown quite well in a variety of scenes that showed the cultural differences between the elves and dwarves. But Jackson choose to drive it home even further with his Tauriel/Kili creation, which just didn't ring true to me. While I liked the characters, I just didn't believe there was or could have been a deep connection there. It didn't exist organically. It existed only because the screenwriters said it should.

In my eyes the relation between Aragorn and Arwen was a much more distracting one in the film. It sometimes put everything on full stop, while in the Hobbit, the relation had a good flow with the continuation of the rest. Not unimportant: these were short parts. In both trilogies Jackson gave in to the women in the audience (or however we want to call it), but in the Hobbit, it bothered me less. Actually, some scenes really added tension and drama.

But the biggest hole for me was the payoff for Thorin. Armitage was excellent, and his was one of the best-realized characters in the first two films. I could see why the dwarves followed him. I could see why he was the way he was and why he made the choices he did. And then instead of succumbing to the dark side of his own obsessions, he spent the first half of this film under some spell created in a bad comic book. And then, with a magic waving of the hands, the spell was lifted and voila, he's himself again. It's been long time since I read the book, but that is not my memory of what happened in the book, and that is not what was delivered in the other LotR films. The downfall of overweening pride is a powerful story, one that Jackson is perfectly capable of delivering. To me, this was this trilogy's biggest missed opportunity.

Need to give this a thought (how did this happen in the book?). I can already say that I don't think he suddenly (out of nothing) changed ideas in the film. He was on the border of irreversible insanity (and destruction), but he got out of it, just in time, by the echoes of the words of his company. Not illogical, or out of the blue.

 

[LooseCannon]

My biggest problem with the battle scene is that it felt very unreal, very disjointed. I didn't get any sense of logic from it. It was disjointed, and while full of spectacle, just didn't...make sense. I mean, from a map perspective, I had trouble following the conflict.