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

[Spockydog]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DENETHOR!!! Why????

 

FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, LET IT GO. 

[Zorral]

40 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DENETHOR!!! Why????

 

Why Frodo and Sam breakup coz Frodo loves Gollum not Sam!!!! WHYWHYWHY??????????????????????????????? It broke one, if not THE, major theme of LotR.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Why Frodo and Sam breakup coz Frodo loves Gollum not Sam!!!! WHYWHYWHY??????????????????????????????? It broke one, if not THE, major theme of LotR.

Theoden forgets he never asked Gondor for help… then forgets he was pissed and immediately says he will send aid to Gondor… what was the point of the first scene?

[Ser Drewy]

Never let Denethor go @Ser Scot A Ellison Never! 

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Theoden forgets he never asked Gondor for help… then forgets he was pissed and immediately says he will send aid to Gondor… what was the point of the first scene?

I honestly really dislike almost everything in the script with Rohan in TTT. Gandalf impressing for the first half that 'freeing' Theoden from Saruman's 'spell' is essential. So he does so, only for Theoden to basically make the same choices. The incoherent military advice Theoden is given, the timeline incoherency with the wargs/Wormtongue/arriving at the deep, Aragorn falling off a cliff, Aragorn snipping at Theoden to ask for aid from somebody (Gondor) who cannot possibly help, the teleporting elves. 

Suffice to say, TTT did not survive my rewatch the other year. I think it's actually a pretty poor adaptation. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

The entire landscape of the fantasy genre changed in Hollywood after the LOTR films…they’re definitely masterpieces. Even the oscars started taking fantasy seriously. 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

49 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The entire landscape of the fantasy genre changed in Hollywood after the LOTR films…they’re definitely masterpieces 

Uh huh…

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

@Ser Scot A Ellison Have you watched the fantasy films they made pre 2001 ? Are any of them even close to the quality of LOTR ? Even after LOTR few films came close , and not due to lack of imitators. It took 10 years after LOTR for us to get a similar quality in the GoT show. 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

@Ser Scot A Ellison Have you watched the crap fantasy films they made pre 2001 ? Are any of them even close to the quality of LOTR ? Even after LOTR few films came close , and not due to lack of imitators. It took 10 years after LOTR for us to get a similar quality in the GoT show. 

Yes.  And LOTR being better than “crap fantasy films” doesn’t make them “masterpieces”.  You’ve set the bar pretty low if that is the case.

[IlyaP]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  And LOTR being better than “crap fantasy films” doesn’t make them “masterpieces”.  You’ve set the bar pretty low if that is the case.

I think by masterpiece, at the very least, Rod means "they're competently made and gained a lot of public love from people who might not otherwise enjoy fantasy movies". 

At a guess. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

I think by masterpiece, at the very least, Rod means "they're competently made and gained a lot of public love from people who might not otherwise enjoy fantasy movies". 

At a guess. 

So… by that standard the Saw films are “masterpieces”?

[sifth]

51 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So… by that standard the Saw films are “masterpieces”?

I don't recall the Saw films winning any Oscars, but I could be mistaken. I really hate the Oscars, but I've heard winning one means you made a good movie, lol

Edited December 27, 2023 by sifth

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

I think a good comparison for the LOTR films are movies like The Godfather or the original Star Wars - watershed films in that particular genre which can be interpreted as masterpieces. I never said they don’t have flaws by the way but you seem to be giving them way too little credit for what they achieved  @Ser Scot A Ellison

Edited December 27, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

I think by masterpiece, at the very least, Rod means "they're competently made and gained a lot of public love from people who might not otherwise enjoy fantasy movies". 

At a guess. 

And they were better than anything else in that genre before them and they changed the landscape and bar for quality forever for future films in that genre 

[IlyaP]

13 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

And they were better than anything else in that genre before them and they changed the landscape and bar for quality forever for future films in that genre 

In fairness - it's also a question of where your tastes lie. Me personally? I like low fantasy stuff - like Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, so movies like Courtney Solomon's Dungeons and Dragons from 2001 (which has an absolute slapper of a score courtesy of Justin Cain Burnett) is always going to rank quite highly on my list. The two sequels, which I absolutely, strongly, and with As Much Seriousness and Import As I Can Convey In Title Case Text, do not recommend unless you're on a wicked bender, as they're absolutely dreadful, are an altogether different matter. 

But I can't disagree with you there. They have become a common point of filmic reference in terms of how to convey information, geography, character information, and lore in a careful, fine line manner. That it worked at all is something of a Hail Mary as far as I'm concerned. 

But there's much that's lost in the translation between text and screen, unfortunately. Had they not existed, and someone had decided in our current 2023 to make an adaptation, I'd hope it'd be a long-form series, that could capture the weird, meandering tone of all six books. 

In any event, as with all art - de gustibus non est disputandum, y'know? 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So… by that standard the Saw films are “masterpieces”?

Couldn't tell you. I don't go in for body horror, so I've refused to watch them. I'm absolutely the worst person to ever, ever consult when it comes to horror movies - aside from the Scream trilogy, which I quite enjoyed. 

[polishgenius]

I don't think being competent and popular would take them into masterpiece territory but I do think that just labelling them as 'competent' is a disservice. The thing is, almost every problem people are pointing out here - quite a lot of which I agree with- are problems with the adaptation, not with the film taken as itself. Dethenor being how he is, Frodo abandoning Sam, Faramir having doubts, Aragorn killing a messenger- you could certainly argue that it makes the movies more cynical, less loving than the book. And it's understandable to dislike that. But it isn't a flaw, in itself. Same with the stuff I mentioned my dad hated about the prologue infodumping all the worldbuilding - it's a storytelling choice I understand why he dislikes, but for the movie Jackson was making, it's not inherently a worse choice.

Like I say, there are flaws other than that. Jackson tried to box each film into a fairly traditional three-act structure, which worked for Fellowship, was difficult for TTT and made RotK's pacing at the end laughable. The book never bothered either for the individual volumes nor for the book as a whole, so even though the pacing was weird at times there too it didn't stick out as much. 

 

 

 

But as well as the stuff about the delivery of lore and information, and presentation of the world (which it unquestionably set standards on, which most imitators never came close to matching), it's just a really well made set of films film visually, and in terms of the action. Like we've talked a lot down the years on these boards about action scenes of one type or another being best when there's an internal narrative structure to them. That can get lost in one-on-one scenes. It can really get lost in battle scenes. The way Jackson both keeps the action exciting and makes sure we can follow what is happening, keeping track of multiple characters and multiple sections of army across huge, complicated battlefields, and actually maintain plot beats both within the battle itself and more general overraching story, is next level. Even something as relatively simple as Amon Hen would have been easy to turn into a confusing mess with no clarity about who was near who and which character was doing what and going where. That Helm's Deep didn't turn out that way is frankly a miracle. Or rather, the result of incredible hard work and understanding of how to do that kind of thing.  In that sense the movies are incredible and for me, yes, definitely masterpieces. 

[Ran]

Fellowship is genuinely a masterpiece. The Two Towers is most of the way there. The Return of the King is a lesser work but reaches some of the same highs of the previous works, while also showing us Jackson at his excessive worst on occasion.

There. Argument settled!

[baxus]

 

12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DENETHOR!!! Why????

 

How about Arwen taking out a katana and going all "come at me, bro!" to all 9 Nazgul?

Also, I love how The Last Alliance of Elves and Men became The Alliance Before the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. 

9 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The entire landscape of the fantasy genre changed in Hollywood after the LOTR films…they’re definitely masterpieces. Even the oscars started taking fantasy seriously. 

To give credit where the credit is due, they are very influential films, and they helped bring the genre up to a whole new level, they are visually stunning in every possible way. But that does not make them masterpieces.

8 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I think by masterpiece, at the very least, Rod means "they're competently made and gained a lot of public love from people who might not otherwise enjoy fantasy movies". 

At a guess. 

That would be a pretty big degradation of the term "masterpiece", I'd say.

[sifth]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Fellowship is genuinely a masterpiece. The Two Towers is most of the way there. The Return of the King is a lesser work but reaches some of the same highs of the previous works, while also showing us Jackson at his excessive worst on occasion.

There. Argument settled!

I agree, Fellowship is my favorite as well. Even though the other two films, feature more of Gimili, my favorite character.

My only issue with the Jackson films, is not showing us what happened to Saruman, in the theatrical cut of Return of the King. The guy was basically the main villain of the first two films and just vanishes without a trace in the third film.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 minutes ago, sifth said:

My only issue with the Jackson films, is not showing us what happened to Saruman, in the theatrical cut of Return of the King. The guy was basically the main villain of the first two films and just vanishes without a trace in the third film.

They change, fundamentally, what happens to Saruman.