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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power


Ser Drewy

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1 minute ago, Myrddin said:

Here I thought your favorite moment in cinema history was his 5k of Flame?

It would have been better if he had stopped for a final cup of tea in the Citadel (while engulfed in flame) before finishing the last 2k’s of his flaming 5k.

:)

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7 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I cringe every time I watch that scene. Who the fuck ever ate tomatoes like that?

Like the whole intended symbolism of it as Faramir and his men are riding to their doom is clear enough, but it's laid on just sooo thickly. Jackson really just got very excessive with RotK, in a lot of areas.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Movie Denethor was a brutalization of one of the truly gray interesting characters in LoTR.  Denethor wasn’t introduced as crazy douchbag whose incompetence nearly destroyed Gondor.  Denethor was a competent leader absolutely overmatched by an incredibly powerful opponent who is winning despite all the competent and rational actions Denethor is taking who is eventually driven mad by despair over his inability to stop that enemy.

Nothing was added to the film by making Denethor into a carpet chewing madman whose big game is to see how much of an incompetent asshole he can be on any given day.

Well, thing is, film often doesn't allow for the same complexity and pathos as you'd get in a book, especially one such as LOTR that is trying to appeal to a mass audience in order to justify the budget and the risk of producing those films.

It works better for a mass audience to paint Denethor the way they did to set up the return of the rightful king.

The Denethor-Gandalf relationship also made for a nice Chamberlain-Churchill parallel, dunno if they intended that though.

I get that the character was robbed of complexity he has in the book but I get why they did it for the film version, it sometimes works to simplify things when it comes to side-characters.

 

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4 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Well, thing is, film often doesn't allow for the same complexity and pathos as you'd get in a book, especially one such as LOTR that is trying to appeal to a mass audience in order to justify the budget and the risk of producing those films.

It works better for a mass audience to paint Denethor the way they did to set up the return of the rightful king.

The Denethor-Gandalf relationship also made for a nice Chamberlain-Churchill parallel, dunno if they intended that though.

I get that the character was robbed of complexity he has in the book but I get why they did it for the film version, it sometimes works to simplify things when it comes to side-characters.

 

The film is nearly 4 hours long… explain what would have been lost is making Denethor into something other than a carpet chewing madman/asshole?  Competent leaders can’t disagree with Gandalf?  Huh?

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That damn tomato dinner really screws up Pippin's haunting dirge. They coulda simply had Denethor lost in his thoughts looking out a window, cut to Pippin's face full of grief, and the doomed charge. I'm more of an apologist than most for the fanciful scenes and sophomoric humor that Jackson inserted into the trilogy to keep teens and younger interested in 9 hours of film, but Jackson and Noble swung and missed on that scene.

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Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The film is nearly 4 hours long… explain what would have been lost is making Denethor into something other than a carpet chewing madman/asshole?  Competent leaders can’t disagree with Gandalf?  Huh?

Well I did say they should have included the Palantir so audiences understood why Denethor became what he did.

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1 minute ago, Darryk said:

Well I did say they should have included the Palantir so audiences understood why Denethor became what he did.

What would have been lost in a 4 hour film by making Denethor a competent leader who disagrees with Gandalf’s plan who goes insane from despair?

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1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What would have been lost in a 4 hour film by making Denethor a competent leader who disagrees with Gandalf’s plan who goes insane from despair?

Good grief, you're really into this.

Well the cinematic version was, what, 3 hours?

Anyway you lose the dramatic impact of Gandalf assuming command and rallying the men, as well as the the dramatic setup for the rightful king's return.

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21 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Good grief, you're really into this.

Well the cinematic version was, what, 3 hours?

Anyway you lose the dramatic impact of Gandalf assuming command and rallying the men, as well as the the dramatic setup for the rightful king's return.

No… you don’t because by then Denethor is despairing and refusing to lead… you don’t need Denethor to be a stupid one note character to get that moment.

How is Aragorn’s return screwed up by Denethor being competent?  

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31 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What would have been lost in a 4 hour film by making Denethor a competent leader who disagrees with Gandalf’s plan who goes insane from despair?

The movie focused on that end part. Even with the extended edition, there may not have been enough time to show a competent Denethor descend into madness and despair. Between Frodo's and Sam's journey into Mordor, Aragorn's journey, the Rohirrim gathering and the time devoted to the big battles, there really wasn't that much time. 

That being said, you do have a point. They didn't make any effort to show Denethor as competent. The exchange between Gandalf and (apparently) Imrahil (because there was no time for proper knights of Dol Amroth either) confirms your point - Gandalf angrily says that Denethor while he has foreseen this doom has done nothing about it. Also the Denethor we see in the Two Towers ET in the scene at Osgiliath is only a less mad ROTK Denethor.

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46 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Anyway you lose the dramatic impact of Gandalf assuming command and rallying the men, as well as the the dramatic setup for the rightful king's return.

How is that exactly?

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9 minutes ago, baxus said:

How is that exactly?

Having an incompetent leader in charge makes an audience more emotionally invested in seeing a competent leader take over.

It's no use the rightful king returning if the current ruler is actually rather good at his job.

To be honest I never thought of Denethor as a particularly important character so the changes never bothered me but apparently he's a popular guy.

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6 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Having an incompetent leader in charge makes an audience more emotionally invested in seeing a competent leader take over.

It's no use the rightful king returning if the current ruler is actually rather good at his job.

To be honest I never thought of Denethor as a particularly important character so the changes never bothered me but apparently he's a popular guy.

Denethor is interesting in that he is competent… good… and hates the plan to destroy the Ring.  I was really looking forward to Denethor and… we got the tomato skwelching weirdo.

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5 hours ago, Ran said:

Like the whole intended symbolism of it as Faramir and his men are riding to their doom is clear enough, but it's laid on just sooo thickly. Jackson really just got very excessive with RotK, in a lot of areas.

Plus we had to listen to Pippin singing.  Probably my least favorite scene of the entire trilogy.  Only other thing that comes to mind is that Aragon/Arwen sequence in Imladris that was cut from the theatrical version.  I don't remember, was the Denethor eating scene in the theatrical version or just the extended?  Because if that made the cut and confronting Saruman didn't...

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The movie focused on that end part. Even with the extended edition, there may not have been enough time to show a competent Denethor descend into madness and despair.

Yeah.  While book Denethor was an awesome character and I agree the film version is the biggest letdown, it's quite understandable they didn't want to spend that much time on him.  As mentioned though they could've at least included a scene with him and the Palantir to help explain his downfall.

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3 hours ago, Darryk said:

To be honest I never thought of Denethor as a particularly important character so the changes never bothered me but apparently he's a popular guy.

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Denethor is interesting in that he is competent… good… and hates the plan to destroy the Ring.  I was really looking forward to Denethor and… we got the tomato skwelching weirdo.

The king returning to a throne occupied by a popular and competent ruler would make for a fascinating storyline*. I always missed this type of social-political-economic aspect from lotr (even though I have come to fully understand by the age that I am now that Lotr’s merit lies in an entirely different thing and the story doesn’t actually need mundanely human, asoiaf-like, low-fantasy world building, it’s only me who is invested in that kind of stuff). 
 

*boy, could another epic fantasy story have explored this fascinating storyline instead of 15 minutes of cgi massacre? I just can’t think of any from the top of my head right now… oh well. 


 

anyway, more photos, more random thoughts: 
the group photo around the table feels like Gil-Galad is hosting human, halfling and dwarf emissaries. I just don’t understand the concept of the Harfoots. The visual impression is overall a throwback to early 2000s sparkly digital art. 

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