cut him some slack

[macmico]

being a massive fan of tolkien i too was abit dissapointed to see certain add-ins and cut-outs during the movies. i understand the anger many lotr fans feel towards pj for example
WHO THE HELL IS HE TO CHANGE THE GREAT WORKS OF THE MASTER OF LORE

but i dont think it was purely his decision to make such sacreligeous.

1. feature films can only be a certain length

2. money

3. audience appeal

i dont think that any conversion of lotr could ever meet fans expectations. the problem is that the company fronting the money for production have only one agenda,
MAKING MORE MONEY

therefor he has to make a movie that appeals to everyone(those who havent read lotr especially)hence before mentioned add-ins and cut-outs.

if he had unlimited resourses, and feature length and didnt have to make any profit then he could please the die-hards and make a tribute instead of a movie.

so with all these in mind i dont think that he did that badly.

tell me what you think........................ be nice

[brownjenkins]

i agree... many changes were necessary for audience appeal (more emphasis on female characters, making each movie have a certain degree of climax at it's end, condensation of time and distance in many places)... there are a few minor things that i think could have been done differently that would not have compromised time or audience appeal, and not necessarily more like the book either, and a few casting choices that didn't quite fit with my vision of LoTR... but these are far outweighed by the good parts (i'm a glass half-full kinda guy)

i also think there were a few spots... like the long elrond/galadriel reflective passage in TTT... that could have been left out entirely and replaced by better material from the EE

in retrospect, if anything, i think new line should have considered making four or even five movies and not felt so restricted to conforming with the trilogy aspect of the book... after all, PJs idea was originally presented as two movies, and NL suggested expanding it to three... i think they may have been better served starting with a script that covered the entire series then splitting it as seemed fit

all that said, i think the movies have taken the fantasy genre up a notch... i've said before that i believe they are among the best fantasy movies made to date... this doesn't mean that better may not come along, but much like star wars did for scifi... they have made fantasy a viable subject for a mainstream audience (moreso even then Harry Potter, which is very good, but does not have quite the same overall age-range appeal)

[macmico]

cheers brownjenkns i was expecting abuse. good point you raised about making the trilogy larger. i agree although lotr is presented as a trilogy, the books are split into sub-books i.e (book 2 begins with many meetings) i think if pj converted these sub-books instead of the three main ones then he would have been able to convert them alot better..............

[jerseydevil]

I think overalll the movies could have been much better, stayed closer to the books and not have been longer than 3 hours each.

Why should I cut him some slack for making a+Arwen dying and having her fate tied to the Ring or cutting out Saruman.

[jellyfishannah]

You are absolutely right, macmico. But they still coud have made it a lot better. Everyone, surely, must at least agree with me a little.Anyone who has any respect for the book, that is. :confused. Instead of always saying *most annoying voice you can possibly imagine* "It coulda been worse" Argh! yeah? Well....It coulda been a lot better.

[brownjenkins]

they could have been better... they could have been a lot worse... i can accept your view, but i'd prefer stay away from the "anyone who has any respect for the book" talk... i have tremendous respect for the book... and i think the posts in this forum show that even true tolkien scholars can stand with both camps

i think it's a great movie (a little short of a classic though)... i think it's a fairly good adaptation

[scurtis]

The thing is that with each book you could easily do two movies for each, but it's also a matter of keeping interest in movies. If you are releasing a film every year that's six years that your doing LoTR. That's a long time to hold people's intrest. I think that PJ did the best job that he could. The books contain a lot of talking and not much action. That's death on the screen.

[Melko Belcha]

Originally posted by scurtis
The books contain a lot of talking and not much action. That's death on the screen.

Then please explain why Titanic did so well in the theater, it must have been all the action scenes.

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Melko Belcha
Then please explain why Titanic did so well in the theater, it must have been all the action scenes.

or a classics like Gone with the Wind or Dr Zhivago - which are both 3 hours long.

[Elfhelm]

Oh man, I more than "cut him slack". I praise Peter Jackson for what this does for all fantasy films. Like most people over forty here, I've been to the openings of all the other Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, etc. movies whether Bakshi, Rankin Bass, and many of the rip-off pseudo-Tolkienesque fantasy films that tried to bring what we love about fantasy to the screen.

The way I see it, these movies "lower the limbo bar" for all future fantasy movies. I'm glad they were made using Tolkien's books, but they could as well have been Donaldson's or Zelazny's and I would still feel the same. Jackson and all the hard working people over the last seven years in New Zealand will always have my gratitude. I notice they pay homage here and there through the films with film angles and character positions from Kurasawa or Bakshi or Lucas. To me that says he sees himself as part of a tradition, and I can't think of a better way to be about tradition than to give it homage while proposing improvements.

So for me it isn't about what I give PJ but what I receive from him, which is to my mind an awesome gift.

[Dúnedain]

Originally posted by jerseydevil
or a classics like Gone with the Wind or Dr Zhivago - which are both 3 hours long.

Actually Gone with the Wind is 238 minutes (3 hours 58 minutes) and Doctor Zhivago is just under 3 hours 20 minutes

[brownjenkins]

well said elfhelm... not quite over-40 ... but i did wait in line for Bakshi's film

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Dúnedain
Actually Gone with the Wind is 238 minutes (3 hours 58 minutes) and Doctor Zhivago is just under 3 hours 20 minutes

I didn't know I would have to look up the exact times on my DVDs.

Elfhelm -

As for Bakshi - he didn't have the budget. There were many things that I didn't like about his movies, but the first half of the story line was not one of them. I think if someone with the love for the books, and the money of Jackson, then the TRUE Lord of the Rings could be brought to the screen.

[Elfhelm]

Here's a little gem of writing from Sean Astin that says only a tiny bit of how cool these movies are! He starts with a three paragraph backdrop, which I am not including, then gets into the whole point he wants to say:

...

So…now I’m going up the top of the mountain in Lord of the Rings. And it’s years later, and I’ve done lots of movies and I’ve gone to college, and I’ve been nominated for an Oscar for my short film, and I’ve had kids, or a kid and we’ve experienced death in our family and we’ve traveled the world over and it’s like I’m a different human being at this point now. Not to mention having put on all this weight and having worked harder than I could ever possibly imagine having to work at a movie in my entire life. Just in terms of the hours, getting the feet and the ears and the hair on every day at 4 in the morning and just, you know, the tops of the mountains and working with such incredible people and the bigatures and the size and everything else… Well now we arrive at this moment where we’ve been in the kind of drudging mode of getting a movie made. And they - right before we go back up to the top of the volcano, after lunch, I get the new pages for the language, because they were constantly rewriting all the time. I looked at the pages…and it’s the most beautiful poetry I’ve ever read. I mean, I’ve read the books three times at this point, and some how every time I read the books – I don’t know whether I was just reading it for the plot or just reading it for the – but every time I read it, I get this feeling like, this wasn’t in here the first time I read – I don’t remember reading that. And then, different things are meaningful based on where I’m at in my life or something like that. But here’s this poetry that I didn’t even remember from the books – that I’d read three times – and it is just gorgeous.

So I’m working with Elijah and with the dialect coaches and with the WETA people and I’m – I just remember this little chateau kind of off to the side and I’m memorizing this stuff and I’m learning it, we’re just doing it over and over and over and over again just the poem you know, just this dialogue. And Elijah and I are doing it back and forth. And finally, I mean we did it probably a hundred and fifty times, and we’re walking in our big feet and our green robes along this muddy path and then up and the vehicles and along another path and climbing up the thing and you know it’s - it’s a trek to get up there. And again here we are, the lights, you know, the sun’s starting to go down, we do this scene and everything else and I’ve got Elijah cradled in my arms and we start doing it and it’s just…there is a level of…(pause)…technique or sophistication…with me…knowing kind of my own emotional instrument. It was like I had graduated, it was like…this was my graduate school moment that – as an actor, where I had total command, like I didn’t have when I did Rudy - of myself and the language – there’s something about being on that volcano which was like a – it was a sacred space, it was a ‘god moment’, it was something that you can’t – it was, it was transcended.

And we did the scene and I’m so crying but I’m owning it and, um, it was a moment of coalescence with the character and everything else. And Peter comes over to give a note, and Peter’s been very stoic up to this point with me, very kind of reserved and matter-of-fact and let’s do this and let’s do that and doesn’t lose his cool but also doesn’t seem to – you know, he’ll get kind of excited if you talk about WWII movies or zombies or something like that… So he comes over to give us a note and there are tears streaming down his face and he’s sobbing and I look at that and I got this combination of like a lightening bolt hitting my soul, where it just started making me cry and then also the sense of kind of confidence that ‘I’ve done it, I’ve gotten through to this guy’ and then we just kept doing it and we did it like…15, 20 more times and every time we did it – we could’ve kept doing it all night long, ‘cause it was just so much fun – it was! And I remember, I had been so kind of…morose and kind of somber or bummed out in the days leading up to that when we were working, just ‘cause of the drudgery of it. And I just remember going down to this parking lot afterwards with the sun just setting behind the volcano and just like jumping up and down and cheering and everyone was like “wow, you had a good time today?” I’m like, “Yeah! It rocked, it was so good.” So it was a once-in-a-lifetime, never-forget-that-moment kind of experience and it was, in a word…sacred.

[LuthienTinuviel]

being an (amatuer -sp?) director, i can most definitly see and understand why Pj made most of the suts and rearrangements that he did.
i, like everyoine have my nitpicks, because everyone's imagination is it's own, and nothing is perfect yada flabadia. but really.. i genuinly like those movies and i respect PJ for stepping up to the plate and actually going for it.
haha there's my semi- officail statement.


i just hope you guys are ready in 15 or 20 years for another take.. my take... on LotR.. and the sil... and the HoME....

[brownjenkins]

i just hope you guys are ready in 15 or 20 years for another take.. my take... on LotR.. and the sil... and the HoME....

the more the better... i hope you get the chance

[Starr Polish]

I cut him plenty of slack, since I understand this is a cinematic adaptation, and it will NOT be exactly like the book, and can never be AS good as the book.

I, however, will NOT forgive PJ for having Sam actually LEAVE Frodo! AAAUUUUGH!

LoL...actually, I did quite enjoy the movie.