Ghan-Buri-Ghan, Where Are You?
Read the article this discussion is about
- AGoblyn
- StoneDragon
- SSJPabs
- Morgarven
- elendil112
- Lymish
- RichardLender
- EvilChihuahua
- lawnboy101
- lawnboy101
This archived discussion is "read only".
For the corresponding "live" discussions, post in the active topic forum here.
« Previous 1 2 Next »
» AGoblyn - Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to message posted by StoneDragon:Pardon my geekiness:
Recall the shaft of light was indeed the book. Balin's tomb is inside the mountain, but higher up than the entrance hall (they go down stairs to that hall). The window is very high above the floor, and is a long small shaft to the outside. The sun was at JUST the right angle to shine down the shaft. Likely only the hobbits could have fit, and that would take too long, anyway.
I recall Moria as seeming fairly dark in the film, so I was confused why PJ made Shelob's tunnel SOO bright. Ah well; enough about the lighting.
;)
-- posted by AGoblyn
» StoneDragon - Re: Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to message posted by AGoblyn: Oh ok. It's been a while since I read the book. I don't remember the light in the book but I'll take your word for it. I'll look it up.
Don't worry about being geeky. I'm a huge geek. After all I love Star Wars.
PJ tried so I'll give him that. BTW The Lord of the Rings is the best novel I've ever read.
-- posted by StoneDragon
» SSJPabs - Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to message posted by AGoblyn:Hey now, I thought the Pippin Palantir thing was overdone and then I went back and re-read the scene. I realised that while it was embellished it wasn't NEARLY as over-done as I had thought. It would have been nice to see Aragorn wrench the Palantir to his will, or least have it be brought up again later.
I really think losing the Palantir sub-thread was a huge blow and would have gladly lost time at Pelennor Fields or the Paths of Dead for it. But honestly, I can't think of too many places where you could cut for time on the finished film.
-- posted by SSJPabs
» Morgarven - The Witch-King
There's one thing no-one else has mentioned - the Witch-King of Angmar. Apparently Sauron's most terrible servant, yet he didn't seem that terrible at all. I think it was the helmet. It was probably meant to be scary but it just looked ridiculous. The void over the face reminded me of the killer's mask in Scream and what was with the excessive number of spikes? And why didn't he have the power to paralyse with fear like he did in the books? That being said, however, I did love the other Nazgul. All that swooping and shrieking was as horrific as anything I could have imagined.There was a blunder in there too: If the horses bolted and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were left on foot, how did they make it to Pelargir in time to seize the corsairs' fleet?
-- posted by Morgarven
» elendil112 - Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to message posted by StoneDragon:there are really many scenes missing and no accurate. for example, Theoden at the battle of Helm's Deep should have 1000 men of his own, and 1000 men under Gamling the Old. also no ELVES aided them. Only Erkenbrand, Gandalf and 1000 men helped Theoden. The Battle of Pelennor fields had three errors. Firstly, Theoden could have led 10000 riders and wiped out the enemy host but chose to leave 4000 men for defence. In the movie he and Eomer and the other UNKNOWN marshal of the mark(which should be Elfhelm) led just some 3000-4000 riders. Secondly there should be quite a number of Gondorian Knights and Swan-Knights of Dol-Amroth issuing from the gate, not just defend the gate. I estimated the number to be some 3000.
Also, Aragorn and co. did not lead the Army of the Dead and assault the host of Minas Morgul. He instead led the Army of the Dead and some 2000 men
who came from a city and captured the fleet of Pelagir.
Lastly, the battle at the Morannon proved also to be very wrong. There should be at least 5000 men to attack some 50,000 orcs and allies of Mordor. And when Sauron had passed away from Middle-Earth, the Orcs and spell-enslaved beasts should either slay themselves, or hide in holes. Only the remmants of the Easterlings and Haradrim fought the Host of the West.
They actually also the not show the assault on Dol-Gurdur by the host of Lorien led by Celeborn and Galadriel, and the battle fought by the Dwarves, Orcs and some men.
-- posted by elendil112
» RichardLender - Problems of going from book to movie underrated
Hello Douglas,Sounds like you're scarce now, but I thought I would post a comment after having viewed the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings.
I count myself as something of a Tolkien fanatic as well. I've read the books at least once a year for the last 20 years or so. Like Tolkien himself I long felt that LOTR was unfilmable - and like you was pleased to see just how much of Tolkien's vision made it onto the screen.
Yet we come to the inevitable difficulties of book adaptation. I recognized even before some of Jackson's early comments (including a few questions I was able to ask him myself) that compressions and excissions were inevitable. The rule of thumb is that one page of script equals a minute of screen time. Obviously a good deal of the 1,000+ pages of LOTR simply can't make it to screen if there's too be any realistic limit on running time. The theatrical runs add up to nearly 10 hours of screen time - a staggering amount by Hollywood standards - as it is. You have to work with what the studio gives you.
The second difficulty is that film is a different medium which has different requirements than the written page. What works in the one doesn't always work in the other. Film is more unforgiving in terms of its demands for taut dramatic arc. For Jackson, that meant, rightly, that anything which did not drive the main story forward had to be considered expendable - not least because even pared down, Jackson would still be presenting to the audience with a veritable horde of characters to keep track of and come to know: by my count, excluding the Nazgul, about 27 characters spread over three films. It's inevitable that minor charatcers not truly essential to the main storyline - like Imrahil, Beregond, Quickbeam, Glorfindel, Gildor, Nob, Fredegar Bolger - will get cut. I honestly did not mind Arwen's absorption of Glorfindel's role once I recovered from the shock of it; it's a reasonably valid way of working her into the story, certainly far more so than the original Jackson idea of having join the Fellowship.
With these factors in mind it was obvious from the start that certain sequences like Bombadil would have to be axed. I love the entire Old Forest chapter and Bombadil in particular as a pure delight of classic Tolkien imagination. Yet he essentially stops the story in its tracks, even in the book. On the screen you can't get away with that so easily. The Scouring quickly became another early candidate for omission for reasons already noted by others: it's simply anticlimactic. The climax is the fulfillment of Frodo's quest and not, as some suggest, the final growth of the hobbits characters (save for Frodo's, which is already finished - which helps underline my argument) as they come into their own in defeating Sharkey's thugs. When you consider the considerable criticism ROTK received for its drawn out "multiple endings" as it was, one can only shudder at the fire Jackson would have drawn for the extra half hour or so of post-climax screen time that would have been required by the Scouring - to say nothing of how long of a film you're going to end up with. Jackson, Walsh and Boyens explain their reasons on the DVD commentaries and it's hard to fault their logic. However much we book fanatics would have loved to see Merry rallying the hobbits at the Battle of Bywater, it simply would not have been feasible for an effective movie.
Likewise the Mouth of Sauron, whose excision from the theatrical run makes sense after viewing the commentaries. In the book it's a powerful moment because each storyline is done seperately rather than intercut as in the movies; and last we heard of Frodo in The Two Towers, he was held captive in Cirith Ungol with Sam despairing. In the movie we know they've escaped and are working their way across the plain of Gorgoroth. So the Mouth of Sauron parley (added back in for the extended release) loses a lot of dramatic impact - and having said that, the decision by Jackson to have Aragorn strike his head off was egregiously out of character.
On the other hand, I think you make some fair criticisms, ones which are not fixed by the extended edition. And these points are valid because they relate precisely to the effectiveness of the movie, not fealty to the book: 1) The constant and excessive cutaways to the Arwen storyline, which quickly become apparent as the contrivances they clearly are and fail by Jackson's own announced standards of sticking to what drives the main story forward - one or two quick flashbacks might be tolerable to make clear how central she is in Aragorn's thoughts and hopes, but after that it gets tedious; 2) the Voice of Saruman, now restored to the extended edition, was cut amidst complaints from fans and Christopher Lee because Jackson felt at the last minute that it felt to much like a "wrap" from the previous movie, but on reflection ends up leaving what is really the major villain of the first two movies with an unresolved fate; 3) Character deformations added in to build up character development and dramatic tension: Aragorn's self doubts on screen seem overdone even by the requirements of good scriptwriting, and Denethor's madness is simultaneously overdone and left largely inexplicable without the breaking strain of the palantir.
Finally, my biggest beef with ROTK: the handling of the Army of the Dead. 1) The Dead came off as over the top, leaving a Disney "Haunted House" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" feeling more than anything else. With terror, sometimes less is more. 2) In the extended edition we finally get to see the confrontation with the Corsairs but we're left wondering how the Paths of the Dead exit right at the Anduin - which admittedly solves the difficulty of losing the horses, but in a way which makes a total hash of geography. 3) The use of the Army at the Pelennor has a deus ex machina effect, rendering all human efforts of the Western forces nugatory. Once they showed up, Aragorn and Eomer might as well have sat down for a cup of tea. Jackson was clearly working at some story compression here, which I don't object to per se but in this case it ended up creating more problems than it solved.
But like you, I am on the whole astonished at how much *did* make it on to the screen, and that a coherent and reasonably faithful version of the story made it onto the screen in under 10 hours of screen time. For that, we must remain thankful to Jackson and Co. And retain inside what we always envisioned of the books themselves.
We'll always have those books.
-- posted by RichardLender
» EvilChihuahua - Re: Problems of going from book to movie underrated
In response to Problems of going from book to movie underrated posted by RichardLender:"Once they showed up, Aragorn and Eomer might as well have sat down for a cup of tea."
Actually, in the super, ultra, mega extended edition they do just that, lol.
I was pretty happy with the Army of the Dead, but I do think Jackson could of done better. I preferred the ghosts in Jackson's earlier film, The Frightners (1996), more.
Jackson did a great job with the films (even if I was disappointed with the endings for all 3), and I couldn't think of anyone else who could have done it as well, or better. Could you imagine if George Lucas made the films? I maybe a Star Wars nerd but even I think he goes overboard with his films now. If he made LotR, every scene would have been filmed in front of a blue screen, every non-human character would have been CGI (as well as some humans) and Gollum would say things like "Oooh, mesa called Gollum Binks, precious", and fall or knock over every thing he sees. Also he would make Gollum a "funny" character instead of someone we can't help feel sorry for.
Also, it's unlikely that in 10 years time Jackson will release a "special edition" with new footage (including Frodo brushing his teeth and the people of Gondor and the Orcs performing the "Can Can" across Pelennor fields instead of fighting).
Oh well, good post.
-- posted by EvilChihuahua
» lawnboy101 - Re: Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc posted by AGoblyn:I hate to point out the obvious but they can only make it so dark. Without the device of night vision goggles, as was used in Silence of The Lambs, how can a filmmaker portray darkness while filming an action sequence in which one of the participants is a CGI character. I think it was fine. I actually have more of a problem with a spider having a stinger at the end of its abdomen. They are still the best movies ever made.
-- posted by lawnboy101
» lawnboy101 - Re: Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc
In response to Re: Re: PJ RoTK etc posted by elendil112:Uh, the assault on Dol Guldur was not in the main text of the book either. If memory serves, it was in an appendix. I do know for certain that JRRT did not DESCRIBE it at all other than to say that it happened.
This business of expecting every little thing to be in the film is a little stupid. The length alone works against that. If you want to get really stupid, then why doesn't "concerning Hobbits" describe their personal waste elimination practices? For Ulmo's sake it is a STORY. Jackson is a craftsman fully worthy of his material and JRRT of all people would have appreciated how a story can change over the generations.
BTW, I know that it would have been more correct to say " for Iluvatars sake" but my favorite Vala has always been the Lord of Waters so I use him.
-- posted by lawnboy101
« Previous 1 2 Next »
Please follow the guidelines set forth in the Suite101 Posting Etiquette when adding to the discussion.