[Spoilers] Rings of Power 4: The Battle for Middle-Earth begins

[Ran]

A 360p video isn't a fair way to look at it:

 

I think it looks over-saturated and while it's not 48fps in this particular stream, it was rendered at it, and I suspect that leads to the action all feeling off. The compositing against the rendered background also looks off to me, I don't know why, but probably due to over-saturation. There's a moment around 1:55 where you get a weird HDR shimmer effect as Gandalf strides forward to talk to Dáin, too. All together, it just looks a lot mor "video game" like, and is another example of Jackson at his excessive worst.

(I have never actually seen this film, BTW. That's the longest clip I've seen from it. I don't regret not seeing it, which is sad in a way.)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I still can’t get over Shai Hulud’s cameo in TBoFAs

Edited December 29, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Ser Drewy]

19 minutes ago, Ran said:

(I have never actually seen this film, BTW. That's the longest clip I've seen from it. I don't regret not seeing it, which is sad in a way.)

Truthfully, you're not missing anything good. There's probably about 2 or 3 decent scenes in it and the rest is... yikes. Genuinely one of the dumbest films I think I've ever seen. And it's especially weird when Jackson tries to give this absolute slapstick cartoon some kind of emotional 'weight' beneath it. Especially during really really goofy cartoon imagery level parts.

[Durckad]

1 hour ago, Ser Drewy said:

The attempts I've seem to rehabilitate the Hobbit trilogy in light of ROP is very odd to me. I rewatched them not long after seeing ROP and honestly, yeah, there's some awful choices in ROP (the Mithril stuff especially) and it has some glaring problems with writing/pacing/characterisation, but it's hardly enough to make The Hobbits seem like fond mostly good efforts. There's some insanely indulgently stupid stuff in the Hobbit films that just go on for endless amounts of minutes. Legolas hanging upside down on a bat cutting off dozens of Orcs heads then dismounting on a troll that he stabs in the skull and mind-controls. Bard using his son as a crossbow to kill Smaug. The barrels sequence. Whatever in the name of God this scene is supposed to be: 

It's the Star Wars prequel effect all over again. A new entry in a beloved franchise comes out that is less than good and now the last less-than-good entry suddenly looks better thanks to nostalgia goggles and internet outrage. Which is weird because The Hobbit films aren't THAT old yet.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Cinema.

[IlyaP]

We found a fan edit of The Hobbit that is a dramatic improvement over the original, released trilogy. 

It's the only way to escape the pain.

Edited December 30, 2023 by IlyaP

[Pellert]

My two cents, trying to keep it brief; 

The LOTR movies are epics (as movies, not as 100% faithful filmatization of the books, despite I steep increase in the frequency of flaws between FotR/TT and especially TT/RotK) I very much agree with (how I interpreted) Ran that FotR is a masterpiece, TT is very close and RotK despite its many flaws is still a very good movie of an epic scale very seldom seen. 
 

The Hobbit(s) on the other hand, are much more lacking. What bothered me the most (there is much..) is the childish attempt of humour and overly exaggerated actions scenes and goofy characters. If they had managed to keep the “seriousness” of the LOTR I could have forgiven much more. But despite all of its flaws, the movies still managed to bring me back into middle earth with the setting and really feeling I was back into the universe, and that I am forever grateful for (yes they score some free points such as same actors carrying the movies, Howard Shore etc, but end result is the same). 
 

Rings of Power on the other hand, lacks (almost) everything. There is no epic scenes, no new stars born or excellent performances (some are better than others, but no-one is really shining IMO), no-one bringing a beloved character to life and level he/she deserves, no depth, no (good) plots, no anything. Basically all the show managed was a few good landscape shots. Same as with the Hobbit, if they at least managed to bring me back into the Tolkien Universe, I could have forgiven much, but I have no feeling whatsoever that I am Middle Earth, I feel like I am in a low-budget adaption of a 6th tier fantasy series. Don’t want to bring on a WoT discussion, but I have heard people claiming the TV show to be “a new turning of the wheel” and on a good day I can be inclined to accept that reluctantly, but with RoP I can’t even do that.
 

I know I am harsh, but unfortunately this is how I feel about RoP.

and Sean Bean is the King of Kings, no-one shall ever disagree with that.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Pellert

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

25 minutes ago, Pellert said:

Sean Bean is the King of Kings, no-one shall ever disagree with that.

I will always love the Sean Bean wink to LOtR in “The Martian” as well as the line “if this is Project Elrond I’d like to be called ‘Glorfindel’”.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Pellert said:

If they had managed to keep the “seriousness” of the LOTR I could have forgiven much more.

I think that would also have been a mistake of a different type. The Hobbit should not be as serious as LOTR, there are more serious moments like the Battle of the Five Armies but in general it's more of an adventure story rather than an epic about the fate of the world.  I think doing them with the same tone is not at all faithful to the books.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

On 12/29/2023 at 10:12 PM, polishgenius said:

I honestly didn't expect two people immediately defending The Hobbit trilogy but given people defend the Star Wars prequels I probably should have. 


(to be fair, the first hour of the first Hobbit movie, plus Riddles in the Dark, fucking slaps)

Star Wars Prequels >>>Hobbit Trilogy 

[Pellert]

7 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think that would also have been a mistake of a different type. The Hobbit should not be as serious as LOTR, there are more serious moments like the Battle of the Five Armies but in general it's more of an adventure story rather than an epic about the fate of the world.  I think doing them with the same tone is not at all faithful to the books.

A very fair and good point. I will try to rephrase to what I actually tried to say
 

I didn’t necessarily meant they needed bring it _all the way_ back to the “seriousness” of LotR, but there should be more of the seriousness that is in the Hobbit, and less of the silliness that is in the Hobbit, and they could still manage to keep a significantly lighter overall tone of the Hobbit than LotR, or as a bare minimum the silliness should be “less silly” and the actions scenes “less unrealistic”. 

Because it is still in the “Hobbit serious” sequences where the Hobbit are best in my opinion, so more of those please, and significantly less of / tone down on; 

Bombur being to fat, Lecolas flying upside down from a bat laying down Orcs, Legolas running upwards on falling rocks like it’s a video game, master of Oldtowns moustache twirling, silly fighting scenes in the goblin tunnels, less of Alfrid dressing like a woman and acting overly silly, silly fighting scenes on floating barrels in the river (it didn’t work in the goblin tunnels and doesn’t work here),  and for the love of god - less giant testicles in the face of the Goblin King! 

it may have been a honest attempt to recreate the tone of the book as more of a child story, but alas it didn’t work. 

And oh; I have seen a lot of praise on how RoP depicts dwarfs and this being on of the only/better parts of the show. Unfortunately I disagree, I just see silly dwarfs that  I don’t really take serious, neither characters nor their motivations/problems. But I acknowledge I may be the outcast here.

 

[Heartofice]

Trying to align The Hobbit to the LOTR movies in style and tone was a huge error IMO. Even Jackson realised the book was very different and didn’t really see much reason to adapt it. But when he did he really got excited by making it a sort of prequel.

I would have done something completely different, honed in on the whimsical, fairy tale nature of the book. It’s for children and it should feel like it. I would have stayed FAR away from anything that connected it to the LOTR movies. New actors, no style overlap, no reusing sets. That might have upset people but it would have made for a better product.

Then you can lean into the sillier bits of the book without having to turn it into some blockbuster CGI action cartoon.
 

My kids watch these Julia Donaldson movies based off books, The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom. They are animated but they capture as sort of fairy tale, warm quality that you could use for The Hobbit. As it is, the Jackson movies had no sense of magic or wonder.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Star Wars Prequels >>>Hobbit Trilogy 

[polishgenius]

Yeah I feel like the Hobbit suffered multiple catastrophes because yeah, they should never have been trying to make it epic like LotR in the first place, and they apparently forgot how to do 'epic like LotR' for the most part (no amount of prep would have made the Dol Guldur scene good). But even past that, Jackson didn't understand the kind of whimsy the Hobbit is. Seems to think the only kind of humour kids will understand is the worse kind of Dreamworks animation type. 

[Maltaran]

13 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I will always love the Sean Bean wink to LOtR in “The Martian” as well as the line “if this is Project Elrond I’d like to be called ‘Glorfindel’”.

I think that quote is direct from the book, so it was the casting rather than the scriptwriters who pulled that one off.

[Werthead]

Jackson always wanted to adapt The Hobbit, and his OG plan in 1995 was to adapt The Hobbit as one movie and Lord of the Rings as two movies. The Hobbit movie rights were a total mess, so proceeded with LotR as it was much simpler to sort the legal issues out, and went from two movies (the original plan), to a demand for one movie (from Weinstein) which they rejected, and then three movies at New Line (as Bob Shaye said they were mad for thinking of doing it in two films).

I think Rings of Power, despite myriad problems, is better than the Hobbit trilogy for the most part (it doesn't have any actors with the raw talent and firepower of Armitage, Pace and Freeman*, let alone McKellen, Lee and Blanchett). A lot of stuff and nonsense but I think its depiction of dwarves was particularly excellent and the actors involved in that storyline were all very good. I also didn't hate the hobbit/harfoot stuff as much as expected, even if the dude turning out to be Gandalf was very dubious (yeah, Tolkien was thinking of retconning the arrival of the Istari to the Second Age, but that would have also been a mistake from him, and he never got around to really plotting out what that would have looked like). The biggest and most egregious problem was the Numenor/Galadriel storyline and that did take a back seat in several episodes, which were more enjoyable as a result. RoP I think had promise in the basic idea, whilst the Hobbit was doomed from the the second they decided to go for three films.

*Freeman is a spectacular actor - and I think hugely underrated in how important he was to the success of The Office - but he has an odd thing of being underwhelming in roles that should suit him 100% down to the ground. On paper he is the best Arthur Dent it's possible to think of, but his performance in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was meh (mind you, so were Rockwell, Rickman and Deschanel, and they should have all likewise smashed it out of the park), and on paper he's a fantastic Bilbo but I think in the trilogy he's only mostly okay-to-good. There's a few scenes where he's outstanding and he vibes well with Armitage, although the pacing of the trilogy does chuck out some of the logic of their character development.

[Corvinus85]

It also boggles the mind that for so much money Amazon got few rights to the books, so RoP was always going to be limited in how much it could adapt. That, of course, doesn't excuse the dumber plot decisions the writers made.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

I wouldn't really call the depiction of the dwarves in RoP excellent. It's much less egregious than the other stuff, but Durin IV is too often the butt of the joke with how in all of their previous adventures Elrond was the one who saved him and did the heroic stuff. Even his justified anger at Elrond for not keeping in touch gets dismissed as a temper tantrum. The accent also doesn't help.

And then there is the utterly un-Tolkienian rock-smashing contest, which Durin also only won because Elrond chose to let him (which is implied I think).

[Heartofice]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Jackson always wanted to adapt The Hobbit, and his OG plan in 1995 was to adapt The Hobbit as one movie and Lord of the Rings as two movies.

After doing LOTR Jackson explicitly said he didn’t want to direct the Hobbit because he didn’t want to be competing with himself.

https://m.independent.ie/style/celebrity/jackson-didnt-want-hobbit-pressure/26629324.html

[IFR]

If people struggle to list even a few fantasy movies that are better than the LOTR trilogy, I suppose that is a commentary of fantasy movies in general, among which the trilogy, despite its numerous faults, easily reigns supreme.

I personally like Pan's Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit better. It's hard to think of anything else. 

I hate The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the books). A bit of a non sequitur, but there's joy in letting people know this.