Different view on LoTR movies

[themuzicman]

Aarogorn could have been cast better, but I thought the actor did the best he could with the part. I liked how he played the reluctant king, in part because of the shame of his line.

But they could have picked an actor with more presence.

I thought the Witch of Endor was ok...

I think the accents, especially among the hobbits, was a play on our view of Celtic folk.

Michael

[Lostdog]

To quote William Shatner on SNL (apply it to people who have cast off all vestiges of reality to reside in Middle-Earth as this author has...)

"Get a life."

The muzikman said it best:

"This review is just a purile attempt to garner attention, and it has gotten more of mine than I should have given it."

I, for one, have read the trilogy...twice since the movies came out and three times totally. Jackson captures the feel of the books. I saw FOTR then went back and re-read the trilogy. Nice work Jackson!

Eric ;)

[Seasanctuary]

Aarogorn could have been cast better, but I thought the actor did the best he could with the part.

I don't think Aragorn could have possibly been cast better. Perfect!

Honestly, though, complaints about LoTR are just like complaints about The Passion. You HAVE to put it on film and if you put it on film, people will complain no matter how good a job you do. (Don't worry, I'm not ranting at you muzicman.)

I'd read the books eight times, had a personal investment in Middle Earth's imagination, and am still in shock at how surprising WELL the movies turned out.

I can totally understand if someone else's personal imagining of LoTR was sufficiently at odds with the movies that they don't like the films, but the article's type of all-around bashing on such silly matters as Pippin having red hair and Viggo having once played a surfer make it pretty plain to me that it's a play at attention by running against the crowd just to run against the crowd.

Regards,
Seasanctuary

[The Creep]

I love Inigo Montoya and I suggest people spend their time re-watching "The Princess Bride" than the odious Jackson films. But as for the phrase - as much as I love the vengeful spaniard - it DOES mean what I think it means.
sincerely, The Creep

[billy_pilgrim]

I liked the first two LOTR movies, but have mixed feelings about Return of the King. I've been watching the theatrical version on DVD, and I perceive some flaws in it. The writer of the review that headed off this thread is off the mark in his criticisms, though. I think he gets caught up in his own rhetoric. Jackson "envenoms" the films through miscasting? He makes it sound as if Jackson set out to deliberately insult the "true" Tolkien fan. The review is so consistently negative and rhetorically extreme, I wonder if it is not some kind of hoax. I don't know of anyone who felt this strongly about the films, though every Tolkien follower has his/her thoughts about how the films could have been better.

True Tolkien fans are often no feast for the eyes--because ugliness, sexual ineligibility, is one of the most-traveled paths leading people to reject the actual world for Middle Earth. I should know.

What exactly is "sexual ineligibility?" I don't know of anyone so ugly they are completely ineligible for sex. And why is this somehow a mark of a true Tolkien fan? That's pretty insulting. I've read the books many times, and as recently as Sunday my wife still found me sexually eligible.

[kafka]

Purist schmurist.

I liked the books. I liked the movies.

This review writer may need to get out more.

[Technomancer]

I liked both the books and the movies, but am forced to admit that this reviewer did have a few good points. Viggo made a good Strider, but a poor Aragorn for example (I personally preferred the actor who did him in the animated film). The films did mangle the elves, and omitted some things that were important to Tolkien's work. However, a lot of this has to do with the difficulty of translating Tolkien's prose, and sometimes subtle ideas onto the screen, rather than any malice on Jackson's part.

[Mujibur]

One thing that the reviewer forgot to critique was the ring itself. I mean, come on. That was nothing like it was portrayed in the book.


Seriously, I can understand the disappointment that can come when your favourite book is made into a film and is not quite the way you pictured it. I felt that way about my favourite book, the "Bourne Identity", and the recent movie they made, but I still enjoyed the movie. This reviewer needs to chill out.

[billy_pilgrim]

I liked both the books and the movies, but am forced to admit that this reviewer did have a few good points. Viggo made a good Strider, but a poor Aragorn for example (I personally preferred the actor who did him in the animated film). The films did mangle the elves, and omitted some things that were important to Tolkien's work. However, a lot of this has to do with the difficulty of translating Tolkien's prose, and sometimes subtle ideas onto the screen, rather than any malice on Jackson's part.

Sometimes when a person says an actor is "miscast," what they really mean is, "they don't live up to the image of this character I had in my mind." I feel that is what this reviewer was doing, judging the movies as a whole against his own particular preconceptions. Some of his criticisms I just plain don't understand. For example his criticism of the films for emphasizing the "low" (Hobbits) versus the "high" (Elves); he makes some passing reference to Alexander Pope in this regard (perhaps to show off just how much esoteric knowledge he possesses). I'm sure he would regard me as being too "low" to understand his important idea, but I don't think it takes a genius to detect that (shocker!) the protagonists of Tolkien's two best works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings really are Hobbits--not Elves, but Hobbits. Tolkien loved the Hobbits. The Shire is depicted as a kind of pre-industrial English Utopia that never was, a place in which Tolkien himself would have felt at home. There is nothing wrong with Jackson keeping the focus on the Hobbits; after all, all the human/orc fighting that preoccupies so much of LOTR is merely a diversion from the main story, which is Frodo's march towards Mount Doom. One more quote from the review I'd like to comment on:

Tolkien's generation was so far superior to us that even now we feel it, and hate them for it.

This is a common refrain in the review; at one point the writer even comments ignorantly that Tolkien came from a generation that would walk into machine gun fire unflinchingly (apparently referring to English soldiers in World War I). A professor of mine in college called this the fallacy of the Golden Age, defined as the belief that a former era was vastly superior to our own morally and culturally. The writer amply illustrates this fallacy throughout the latter half of the review.

[kiwimac]

Peter Jackson did a damn fine job, IMO, of taking three of the most difficult books it has EVER been a director's task to make into movies. My God, how do you transfer the wealth of detail that any book can hold onto a medium as ephemeral as celluloid or its magnetic equivalent?

As for the 'high-ness' of the Elves being opposed to the 'low-ness' of the hobbits, methinks the reviewer has not even read the books. The entire focus of the three books is on that torturous journey from the Shire to Mt. Doom. Everything else in the book is the attempt at the other members of the Band of the Ring to misdirect Sauron ansd Saruman's attention.

Kiwimac

[kafka]

My suspicion is that the reviewer has a special place in his hearts for elves because he has played D and D since high school and his best and favorite character is an elf "with like a jillion hit points." <strong bad voice>

foor soothe I verily rolled a 6 :geek:

[brother vinny]

My suspicion is that the reviewer has a special place in his hearts for elves because he has played D and D since high school and his best and favorite character is an elf "with like a jillion hit points." <strong bad voice>

foor soothe I verily rolled a 6 :geek:

Hey! Quit ragging!