Chen G.

If you look at the other cinematic universes - Star Wars, Marvel and the Wizarding World - they are already growning longer than the Middle Earth universe currently is. And Tolkien's universe is the grand-dady of at least two of those!

If you want to go by the strictly narrative route, than The Silmarillion. If you want something character-driven like those two pieces, than undeniably The Children of Hurin is the way to go.

For my money, Rey comes to study some of the Jedi texts and learns that the struggle with the Dark Side is, by definition, infinite. Only by the end of the film, in a climactic duel with Kylo, does she come to realize and, more importantly, accept that the only way to create true balance is to cut off the Galaxy from The Force, doing away with both the light and The Dark Side, much to Ren's dismay. A place for a great callback, too: "it is time to let old things die." It probably won't be anywhere near what Abrams will actually come up with, but its what he should do.

I don't see the need either, but if weren't for it we probably never will have heard the NZ take on the Breaking of the Fellowship. The expanded end-credits suite really works like a round-up of the main themes of the film you just watched.

Its just as long as it needed to be. And the fan credits list members of the official Tolkien fan club (look for John Howe) which lengthens the credits by about twenty minutes. There’s an excellent suite of various pieces of the score playing over those. Credits included, Fellowship is just shy of four hours.

I will never, never hate on a film if all that's wrong with it is just production value. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has plenty of narrative issues, along with production woes and is just an unnecesary movie.

Exactly. The most exact and correct statement in the history of JWFan, probably.

I'm not very hopeful. Indiana Jones as a trilogy had such a good ending in The Last Crusade. Now, you can always make another one and say "well, that was a prank ending, now here's the real one." But when that movie is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull... And now another one? Nope. I just don't need another Indy film.

I think part of the issue with the Temple of Doom incident is that its quite an extended shot, and then they slide down the hill with it, and then they fall down the gorge. Its not impossible to include such a ridiculous beat, if your editing is such that its completely "drowned" in the energy of the film, but here its like a setpiece all by itself. Again, not trying to make a right out of two wrongs: I really don't care for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Not to justify one wrong with another, but was Indy's escape from the plane in Temple of Doom really any better?

Yeah, the film proper is about that length. You didn't sit through the fan credits? And there is no extended edition. There's the actual movie, and there's an abridged version meant for the cinema.

Nope. That's a crime thriller.

and The Godfather, which we touched upon, is just that.

Yeah, but there's escapism and there's escapism.

We still get plenty of escapist stuff. Just look at Marvel. So, in between more serious works, you can have the occasional palette cleanser, as well... Yeah, but the convention in media studies is to refer to Jaws as the first blockbuster. There were certainly large-scale, high-concept, effects-ridden films with big grosses prior, but they are more of the stepping stones to Jaws (from a commercial standpoint) than they are, in and of themselves, "blockbusters" by the most strict definition. The term is crime drama. And while it is an established genre, the term genre film is used colloquially and more specifically to describe action films, fantasy/science-fiction films and horror movies. Y'know, the kinds of movies that we always bicker should have won Best Picture.

Didn't The Godfather predate the blockbuster era? Anyway, I'll rephrase it: it popularized big genre films being profound and dramatic.

It popularized big blockbusters being profound and dramatic, rather than escapist and jouvenile, yes.

Its not. Its called good drama. The Lord of the Rings didn't invent drama. Why should we gloss over elements of tragedy? Even in Batman Begins, we spend a good five minutes with Bruce wallowing in his grief. That's good drama.

I think this point-of-view, while interesting, would hold more water were Ben's death to be completely random, which it isn't. There's clear build-up to it, and some aftermath. Upon my first rewatch I was actually suprised to find that the film called-back to Ben's demise a bit more frequently than I recalled. I really think George Lucas was thinking "well, its a kids' movie, and kids have a low capacity for tragedy, so I'll numb it down with action." Again, just like Walt Disney would do.

Really? At no point does Luke burst into tears in that film. He does in Empire Strikes Back, but there it works. If anything, Lucas is - in the films he directed - stifling the emotion of his characters. One of the main drawbacks I find in that film from a dramatic standpoint is the way in which Ben's death is nestled between two action setpieces, so the film doesn't grant the characters and the audience any time to mourn him. Its kind of like the way old Disney cartoons (Bambi especially) depicted death: they would immediately cut away to something happy to "drown out" the sadness and not let it linger.

But he did leave the Lay of The Children of Hurin in a much more complete form, and in one that is far more consistent with the prose version compared to the Lay of Leithian, which again proves to me that the former was his favorite story out of the two, and certainly the one he was most proud of.

The Children of Hurin especially just has this operatic quality. You can just imagine the slaying of Glaurung put to music.

I love sentimental cinema, but it has to be a) earned, b) built-up to and c) in-character. Again, I won't be judging E.T on that issue until I've got around to see it again.

Again, this is all on very, very vague memory on my part, so I can't agree or disagree untill I get around to rewatch the damn thing, preferably a couple of times. You'll also need to add polish to some of the special effects. They looked better in The Force Awakens. And you'll need to go back in time and give the actors of the baddies (Gleeson, Christie, Serkis) to be less deliciously evil. And you'll need to add a death scene for Finn because when Rose intervenes its, its...well, its...uh...dramatically inept. Yes, that's how we'll put it, dramatically inept! And you'll need to find a way to keep the film coherent in spite of cutting it down: how do you get Rose to make an impression on the audience or convey the significance of her locket, if you were to cut her sister's overlong heroic death scene? what do you do to remove Canto Bight and how do you get around it? Fan edits are an uphil battle.