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The Lord Of The Rings General Discussion Thread


Faleel

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Has anyone noticed that the pitcher that sits on the side at Minas Tirith, as Pippin and Gandalf talk, on the balcony the night before the great battle, is the same one that is substituted for the Palantir, at Rohan? Just thought I'd mention it :lol:

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  • 10 months later...

Since I just listened to the finale of ROTK - the Minas Ritith theme is AMAZING - I realised I had never posted this question before:

 

I have this theory, purely based on personal opinion, that the extended LOTR cuts are the intended versions everyone should watch and that the theatrical cuts were made purely for cinema purposes, in other words, that their shorter running time was a necessary evil imposed by third parties.

 

For The Hobbit, I have the complete opposite feeling: that the EE's were made to sell a few more copies, but no one really needed any of the added stuff. Maybe that's just because the theatrical cuts are already too long as far as I'm concerned, but can anyone back this theory up or am I imagining things?

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My feeling has always been that The Two Towers is actually harmed by the theatrical cut, and FotR generally also benefits from the added material, but RotK just ends up a bit bloated. Those multiple endings should've been kept back for the DVD.

 

I have little desire to see any of the Hobbit films again and I've never seen the extended cuts of any of them. To be honest, I can't even remember whether I saw BoFA in the cinema, but based on my reaction to DoS (not good), I can't think what would've drawn me to do so.

 

Surely the EE phenomenon was mainly an opportunity welcomed by New Line to be able to maintain hype for each film months after release and sell double the usual number of DVDs.

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1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

For The Hobbit, I have the complete opposite feeling: that the EE's were made to sell a few more copies, but no one really needed any of the added stuff. Maybe that's just because the theatrical cuts are already too long as far as I'm concerned, but can anyone back this theory up or am I imagining things?

 

I mean, that's how you feel.

 

In terms of the logic behind the making of the movies, no, that's not it.

 

The idea of an extended cut was actually concieved of before the films went into production. Jackson had always felt (rightly) that we experience the pace of a film different on our TV set as compared to the sensory-overload of the cinema screen: the extended editions of all six films are essentially TV cuts of the movies.

 

Plus, he thought he could add back whatever violence he would be forced to cut out to meet the PG-13 criteria for theaters: while only The Battle of the Five Armies extended only got an R, you will notice that across all extended editions, some of what got cut was violence: see Smeagol choking Deagol in The Return of the King. It was much longer in the extended, and its really pushing the boundries of PG-13.

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The EE's of the LOTR are across the board the superior versions. FOTR and TTT are damn near perfect, though a couple changes/additions to ROTK (that have nothing to do with the ending) unfortunately screw up the pacing in some bits and even detract from the story in a couple places. But even then, it's still superior to the (also excellent) theatrical version. And both represent Jackson's "true" vision for the films.

 

I've only seen the EE's of The Hobbit once, and the theatricals twice each, so I really can't comment much on those, except that I remember thinking that the EE's really didn't add that much. At least to the extent the LOTR EE's did. Probably because The Hobbit was a bloated affair to start with.  There is a good film in there, but for The Hobbit, IMO less is more, which is why I stick with M4's excellent one-film "book" edit.  It's not the only Hobbit fan edit out there, but I think it's the most professionally done, and in any event mostly reflects my own sensibilities on what a Hobbit film should be. Or, rather, the best version of what can be extracted from what Jackson did.

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5 minutes ago, Holko said:

Not PJ LotR but as far as I can tell this thread is not that specific. An excellent video from Folding Ideas, as always.

 

For those of us who don't have an hour to watch this video just now, what's the upshot of his comments?

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2 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

For those of us who don't have an hour to watch this video just now, what's the upshot of his comments?

Establishes a lot of background and context on who Bakhsi is and what he was doing, the state of LotR adaptations, then reviews the movie, acknowledging and highlighting the good like the voice acting and the faithfulness of the adaptation, in some select moments possibly even better solutions than PJ (for example explaining the Moria password better), but also (in a civil way) deriding the technical and pacing shortcomings or the messy vision. So about what you'd expect but assembled and delivered very well.

 

Oh, and also a detour into the classic "do balrogs have wings?" rabbit-hole that sent me into a laughing fit for its entire duration.

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He seemed to have taken a lot of his information from the wikipedia page I mostly edited and sourced. That's nice.

 

What he neglects to say - probably because someone edited it out of Wikipedia - is that the real reason Part Two never happened is because UA were only willing to front half the budget for it.

 

It does go into depth on actually assesing the level fo the animation itself than any review of the film that I've ever seen.

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  • 6 months later...
On 22/08/2021 at 10:18 PM, bollemanneke said:

Since I just listened to the finale of ROTK - the Minas Ritith theme is AMAZING - I realised I had never posted this question before:

 

I have this theory, purely based on personal opinion, that the extended LOTR cuts are the intended versions everyone should watch and that the theatrical cuts were made purely for cinema purposes, in other words, that their shorter running time was a necessary evil imposed by third parties.

 

 

No, and Jackson has reiterated that the theatricals are the preferred versions more than once. I agree with him, especially in regards to the the first film. 

 

I own the 4K EEs (Apple streaming), and I thoroughly enjoy a great deal of the additional content (certain parts I even consider essential), but on balance I still think the original cuts are the best overall presentation of the story in cinematic form. Those "essential" moments I refer to... they're really just indulges, when it boils down to it. Years later, The Hobbit movies would be entirely designed around such indulgent excesses. To their detriment. 

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He said contradictory things on the matter. And ultimately, I've always held that you don't look at what artists say about their work - you look at the work itself to see what they've done, and what Jackson had done is craft excellent films for theater, and even better extended cuts which are effectivelly TV-movie versions of the films.

 

The premise of the extended cut is that, being less sensory-overwhelming, TV allows for longer sittings and a slower pace. The theatrical editions are indeed Jackson's preferred cut...for the theater. The extended is his preferred cut for TV, and its all the better for it. The >3 hour runtime and the addition of an intermission really give the films an air of undertaking in a way that the theatrical cuts do not. Its also easily forgotten nowadays that one of the initial incentives to make the extended cut was to reincorporate violence that wouldn't get past the MPAA for a PG-13 theatrical release, and that's always good in a movie like this. The extended also works better as a series, because each extended cut was being worked-on concurrently with the next film's theatrical cut and so they had overlapping editing schedules that allowed the filmmakers to build from movie to movie more organically than in the theatrical.

 

And, again, as for Jackson's treatment, the proof is not in what he says but in what he does: the extended editions have always gotten the more lavish treatment in terms of home release: prior to the recent 4K remaster, they also had superior mastering to the theatricals. Jackson's commentary track is on the extended. And when Jackson and Del Toro were about to make The Lord of the Rings, they watched The Lord of the Rings...extended editions!

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I think the most damning evidence against the idea that the extended edition is the intended one that got trimmed down, is that most extended scenes were filmed after the premier. They describe the process in the Appendices more like a chance to add some fanservice than to include vital parts of the story (Saruman's final scene probably being the most obvious exception).

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The only things filmed for RotK for its EE after the theatrical premiere for example were closeups of the skulls falling down in the Path of the Dead.

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2 hours ago, Monoverantus said:

I think the most damning evidence against the idea that the extended edition is the intended one that got trimmed down, is that most extended scenes were filmed after the premier.

 

And that inherently makes it a worst film...how?

 

In the arts, we can become so obsessed with authorial intent and what was the original intention and the original cut and so forth that we forget to just look at the end-result.

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6 hours ago, Holko said:

Where the hell do you get that from?

As I said, the Appendices. But as you point out, I might have it confused with pick-up shots.

4 hours ago, Chen G. said:

And that inherently makes it a worst film...how?

Never said it did though? I like both versions for different reasons.

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I'm not sure that there were pickups specifically for the extended edition, at least not for The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

I think pickups get a bad rep, precisely because of this "its not the original version as initially shot!" line of thinking. But the climax of The Fellowship of the Ring was a pickup: as originally shot, Frodo and Sam's boat was top-sided by an Orc emerging from the water.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi, all, I have a QQ regarding THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.

When they get to the entrance to the mines of Moria, The Nine are, initially, unable to decipher the Elven riddle.

My question(s) is:

A/ wouldn't Gimli be able to decipher it,              after all, he is a Dwarf?

B/ what business it is of Elves to put a 

    riddle, at the entrance to a Dwarf mine?

     I am aware of the animosity between           the Elves, and the Dwarves, but it's               been a long time since I read either THE       HOBBIT, or THE LORD OF THE RINGS,         so please forgive my ignorance.

 

 

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47 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Hi, all, I have a QQ regarding THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.

When they get to the entrance to the mines of Moria, The Nine are, initially, unable to decipher the Elven riddle.

My question(s) is:

A/ wouldn't Gimli be able to decipher it,              after all, he is a Dwarf?

 

What does Gimli being a dwarf have to do with an ability to read elven language?

 

47 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

B/ what business it is of Elves to put a 

    riddle, at the entrance to a Dwarf mine?

 

Dwarrowdelf is in the eastern part of the Misty Mountains.  The Fellowship came upon the West Gate, a gate in the western part of the Misty Mountains.  The tunnel that the gate acts as the entrance to can be used to arrive in Dwarrowdelf eventually, which Gandalf knew about and recommended using. 

 

Dwarrowdelf was established in the First Age and this tunnel and its West Gate didn't come along until thousands of years later during the Second Age.  There is a long-running animosity between Elves and Dwarfs but this tunnel was never a problem.

 

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When that entrance with the riddle was built, it was a sign of the friendship between the two races, a gate between the elf-inhabited Eregion and the dwarf-inhabited Dwarrowdelf. Then animosity grew, both places abandoned, the riddle forgotten.

 

5 minutes ago, Jay said:

What does Gimli being a dwarf have to do with an ability to read elven language?

Not read the text, solve the riddle. But Gimli's not from Moria, and even the descendants of its inhabitants wouldn't remember it.

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39 minutes ago, Holko said:

When that entrance with the riddle was built, it was a sign of the friendship between the two races, a gate between the elf-inhabited Eregion and the dwarf-inhabited Dwarrowdelf. Then animosity grew, both places abandoned, the riddle forgotten.

And then there's the popular theory that the Elves were just dicking around with the Dwarves

http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/cannibal.htm

(note the date)

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Bilbo said:

I thought Warner Bros still had them?

 

My understanding is they're going to continue working with Warners, so on the movie front not much needs change except maybe a fervor to put more movies out.

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I have no opinion about this. Middle-earth Enterprises is just some company owned by some company, being sold to a company that will eventually get bought by another company, etc. They don’t do anything themselves other than own+license the movie+merch rights for Hob+LR. They used to be Saul Zaentz, but he’s dead, so they can be anyone. I guess the fact that the new owner make games themselves will mean they will crank out games more easily since there will be no licensing negotiation there. Hopefully they will not cancel other licenses and will still be open to new licensees. I expect they will.

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From their announcement:

Quote

Other opportunities include exploring additional movies based on iconic characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn and other characters from the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and continue to provide new opportunities for fans to explore this fictive world through merchandising and other experiences.

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-enters-into-agreement-to-acquire-ip-rights-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-and-the-hobbit-literary-works-by-j-r-r-tolkien/#_ftn1

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On 18/08/2022 at 6:14 PM, Holko said:

continue to provide new opportunities for fans to explore this fictive world through merchandising and other experiences.

 

This may be the most dishonest and most thinly veiled announcement of monetary exploitation in the history of Tolkien media.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Crowe also recalls hearing in the tone of the conversation - he remembers it being with Jackson but it was actually with executive producer Mark Ordesky - that he was their choice for the part.

 

This is true: Crowe (who came to mind because he had previously read for Boromir) was the backup in case Mortesen said no. They also thought of other alternatives, including Jason Patric, but didn't approach them.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 months later...

ROTK is being re-released in cinemas in April, but this time it's the extended cut! Apparently, it's just the US so far. Not heard anything about the rest of the world. 

 

It bloody better be a worldwide release.

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  • 2 months later...

Who thought Gollum would be a good subject for a game?
 

What’s next? The Adventures of Dobby the House Elf? Who wants to play a first person game where you clean house all day and get beat by your master, and you’re only free if they throw your clothes at you. Why not just get married?

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30 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Who thought Gollum would be a good subject for a game?

Gollum escaping Mordor avoiding orcs and trying to survive isn't the worst of concepts I guess. But this game is about Gollum, Gollum doing chores, making friends and breeding cute bird companions in the pits of Barad-Dúr.

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There's also a blind elf that communicates with him in what could only be described as telephatic ASMR. Sounded sexy though. :D

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