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Rewatching the LOTR EEs


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@Marian Schedenig, I hope you do not mind, but I broke this post out of the Last Film You Watched thread, as it seemingly got completely passed by, in the midst of a bunch of Mission Impossible and Lost World talk. (Feel free to pick a better thread title)

 

I really enjoyed reading this, thank you very much for posting it!

 

I agree with most everything you say.  I really love these films, but I always think about the footage that exists that never made it into any cut (like the missing explanation for the Arwen storyline, or Sam with the statues, etc), and the original versions of things that likely got changed in later reshoots once the first film was a success.  It'd be so neat if original rough cuts could be released as a bonus feature one day, or even if a new cut could be crafted (without PJ's... "help") that puts back in interesting stuff and maybe cuts back on some of his excess.

 

In short, I think these films are great and fantastic, but still flawed, but the elements exist to smooth over some of the flaws, some day, if someone is so inclined.

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Indeed, @Marian Schedenig. You hold some great views and perspective. I always disliked the moments that stray from the Tolkien novels, but it's not as bad as The Hobbit. Many things are done well in these movies, and they have aged brilliantly. They are not over reliant on CG, and any animation is not poorly done, unlike the CG obsessed Hobbit films. That was always a big point for me. Otherwise, you've hit all the orcs on the head. Well put, well said.

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20 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

they're actually too short for everything that's been crammed into them!

 

Tolkien came to much the same conclusion about his books.

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

In short, I think these films are great and fantastic, but still flawed, but the elements exist to smooth over some of the flaws, some day, if someone is so inclined.

 

I don’t see the need. I see technical flaws in these films, but I like them better than other films which I consider to be effectively perfect, from a technical point of view.

 

At most, I’d edit out about a minute or so of Treebeard and Gimli from The Two Towers and shift the other pieces of the edit accordingly.

 

There’s unused material in these films that I find interesting, but I wouldn’t add anything substantial from that to the films themselves. That’s what I like about the Extended Editions: they still are a coherent edit, not just the entire rough cut dumped on the audience. A rough cut is in no shape or form a palatable movie.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

@Marian Schedenig, I hope you do not mind, but I broke this post out of the Last Film You Watched thread, as it seemingly got completely passed by, in the midst of a bunch of Mission Impossible and Lost World talk. (Feel free to pick a better thread title)

 

Makes sense I guess. I kinda avoided ever looking into the Tolkien subforum (I always figured, if I'd want to read a whole forum about Tolkien, I'd go to a Tolkien website instead of a film music community, and I'd better not waste time with that on top of everything else), so it's sort of funny that I've now (indirectly) started a thread here.

 

Might be interesting to collect others' thoughts of rewatches here over time!

 

1 hour ago, Jay said:

Sam with the statues

 

Do you mean the watchers at Cirith Ungol? I'd always assumed they might have shot something with them, because there's such a sharp cut when Sam passes them, but then the EE left that exactly the same.

 

1 hour ago, Jerry said:

I always disliked the moments that stray from the Tolkien novels, but it's not as bad as The Hobbit.

 

After the disastrous third film, I've never seen any of the Hobbit films more than once at their initial theatrical screening. I've always been meaning to revisit them once the EEs become cheap (and I mean seriously cheap, so not yet). I'm especially afraid of that now.

 

51 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

Tolkien came to much the same conclusion about his books.

 

 

Ha, true, in that he mentioned that. And also true in a way that he put too much butter on too little bread (forgive me). Not so much that it hurts the story, though (I imagine it wouldn't have been nearly so successful otherwise), and I've always found that one of the most fascinating things about the LOTR book(s) is that while, to the Tolkien novice, its seem like this huge epic story, when in fact it's only the conclusion and final focal point of numerous far more epic stories that are told elsewhere. How lucky we are that Christopher Tolkien put together The Silmarillion (and all the rest)!

 

Revisiting the films has made me even more excited about re-reading the book though. I've read it numerous times, but my last full read-through was around the time FOTR came out (partly before the film's release, partly afterwards). I started again a couple of years later but got distracted at some point during TTT and never picked it up again. I've been meaning to re-read it for a while, and visiting the Tolkien exhibition in Oxford was already a big boost of excitement.

 

I should also (as I've been thinking for some 20 years) read Tolkien's letters. I've read a few, in German and a long time ago, in a Tolkien compilation book, and I still fondly remember one where he replied to a writer who'd sent him a draft for a planned film version of LOTR, listing I think about 50 individual points that didn't make sense in the frame of his stories and should absolutely be changed. I remember at least some of them also applied to the later Bakshi animated version, and I imagine some are still valid for the PJs as well.

 

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4 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Do you mean the watchers at Cirith Ungol? I'd always assumed they might have shot something with them, because there's such a sharp cut when Sam passes them, but then the EE left that exactly the same.

 

Yes, they shot the entire scene, and then cut the entire scene!  It's in a vault somewhere!

 

 

4 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Revisiting the films has made me even more excited about re-reading the book though. I've read it numerous times, but my last full read-through was around the time FOTR came out (partly before the film's release, partly afterwards). I started again a couple of years later but got distracted at some point during TTT and never picked it up again. I've been meaning to re-read it for a while, and visiting the Tolkien exhibition in Oxford was already a big boost of excitement.

 

Oh snap, where is that exhibit exactly?  And yea, I've been meaning to re-read LOTR again too...

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I should also (as I've been thinking for some 20 years) read Tolkien's letters.

 

Highly recommend this.

 

I appreciate your thoughtful comments on the films, even if I can't agree with many of them. Probably because my absolute unabashed love for both the movies and source material renders me unable to judge them objectively. I feel too close to these films to start to pull away and second guess them, even after all this time.  To do so would break my heart.

 

One thing I will say I agree with is the sometimes changing character motivations to service the plot (e.g. Sam abandoning Frodo). But I think this is mostly confined to ROTK, where I believe most of the cinematic trilogy's flaws lie.

 

17 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Revisiting the films has made me even more excited about re-reading the book though. I've read it numerous times, but my last full read-through was around the time FOTR came out (partly before the film's release, partly afterwards). I started again a couple of years later but got distracted at some point during TTT and never picked it up again. 

 

Give the unabridged audiobook a try! Incredibly entertaining. Rob Inglis even sings the songs & reads the Appendices. Tell @Stefancos I said you could borrow his copy.

 

12 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

Oh snap, where is that exhibit exactly?  And yea, I've been meaning to re-read LOTR again too...

 

This one here at the Bodleian in Oxford.

 

i went on the second day. It's fantastic.

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Tolkien wrote two letters on the matter. One more general, to his publisher; the other, more thorough, to the screenwriter, Zimmerman. I believe the script Tolkien commented upon wasn’t a finished script but a story treatment, at best. He was also sent concept art.

 

Generally, his issues were with contrivance (namely, the eagles being featured much more prominently) and with aesthetic. On the one hand, the very foundation to Tolkien’s work was predicated upon the Elves being viewed as being of great stature, intelligence and morals, rather than as fairies - and yet some of Zimmerman’s descriptions were evocative of fairies. On the other, Tolkien astutely abjected to the idea of elaborating on the machanics of his world with pseudo-science.

 

He also had some more specific issues, a few of which may hold true to the Jackson films: he basically wanted the Ringwraiths to have no physical power prior to the Battle of Pelennor, which wouldn’t have worked for a film at all. So he wouldn’t quite approve of the fight on Weathertop.

 

On the other hand, he would have approved of the production design. He clearly wanted a strong visual distinction between Rivendell and Lorien, which is what we got. He wanted the Battle of Pelennor to be very grand - which was again accomplished. 

 

But really, at the end of the day, any filmmaker approaching such a source material has to make whatever changes he sees to be necessary, regardless of the book and regardless of such correspondences, as well, where they exist.

 

19 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

I should also (as I've been thinking for some 20 years) read Tolkien's letters. I've read a few, in German and a long time ago, in a Tolkien compilation book, and I still fondly remember one where he replied to a writer who'd sent him a draft for a planned film version of LOTR, listing I think about 50 individual points that didn't make sense in the frame of his stories and should absolutely be changed. I remember at least some of them also applied to the later Bakshi animated version, and I imagine some are still valid for the PJs as well.

 

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29 minutes ago, Jay said:

Yes, they shot the entire scene, and then cut the entire scene!  It's in a vault somewhere!

 

Oho! It's rather odd that with all the fantastic extras surrounding these films, they still haven't released all these unused scenes.

 

29 minutes ago, Jay said:

Oh snap, where is that exhibit exactly?  And yea, I've been meaning to re-read LOTR again too...

 

Since the exhibition, I'm set on re-reading "everything", i.e. all the major books - The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales and LOTR. I also picked up Beren and Luthien in London, so I'll incorporate that. Hopefully I'll get around to all that next year.
 

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I am in the process of (re) reading everything, and i viewed the EE's last week.

 

Many of Marian's complaints are valid, though I don't think a much closer adaptation would have worked as well as what we got. It certainly wouldn't have captured the imagination of a large audience the way these films did. 

 

As cinematic as some parts of the book are, a large amount of it simply is not, and required radical change and adaptation. In participating the long long scenes of dialogue, there is a hell of a lot of exposition in the books, far more than the films. PJ did an excellent job in translating Tolkien's story visually.

 

But yeah, the films aren't close to flawless. Though FOTR is imo a flawless adaptation. (The theatrical more than the EE)

 

PJ's and co's endles rewrites really begin to show in ROTK. A film that at parts feels more assembled than edited.

I also always forget how much of TTT is in ROTK. In the EE two hours in we're still watching stuff from the previous book.

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I thought Fellowship Extended was the best adaptation and the best film. Not only did the additions make it more true to the book, as I recall, they also improved the pacing of the movie. I saw it in an IMAX theater on the eve of the TTT release.

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4 hours ago, Stefancos said:

PJ's and co's endles rewrites really begin to show in ROTK. A film that at parts feels more assembled than edited.

 

Absolutely false.

 

That film won best editing for a reason: even though it’s the longest, it has the shortest first act; the least nonlinearity/flashbacks; It’s finale comes down to two subplots rather than three as in The Two Towers, and the intercutting of the two is a work of art.

 

There’s better juxtaposition between scenes: I love that it cuts from Merry and Pippin’s friendship (when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield) to a sequence that culminates in reaffirming Frodo and Sam’s friendship, and later the same happens again when we cut from Gimli and Legolas’ friendship (“aye, I could do that”) to the ultimate culmination of San and Frodo’s relationship.

 

There are even more impressive transitions: when Frodo is rescued from Mount Doom we essentially crossfade from the background of Mordor to that of his room in Minas Tirith, with Frodo’s head staying in the same spot.

 

Really, all this “pick the best out of the three” business is silly when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, because it’s essentially one film in three parts.

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Not to me. Feels like a culmination of what we saw in the previous film. People may not like the introduction of Arwen dying but, contrived or not, it: a) isn’t an editorial choice but a screenwriting one and b) pushes the story and characters forward, so who cares?

 

And really, you’re going to consider the film the least well edited based on the handling of its briefest subplot - maybe ten minutes in a four hour movie? To me, the worst editing choice in the entire sextet is in The Two Towers: the Battle of Helm’s Deep begins, and suddenly we cut...to a quiet scene with Treebeard.

 

Return of the King is also the least egregious when it comes to fake deaths of characters, whether it’s visual or editorial. It happens at least seven times in Fellowship of the Ring, and three or four in The Two Towers (and once or twice in An Unexpected Journey).

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5 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Not to me. Feels like a culmination of what we saw in the previous film. People may not like the introduction of Arwen dying but, contrived or not, it: a) isn’t an editorial choice but a screenwriting one and b) pushes the story and characters forward, so who cares?

 

Well a spaceship coming down and flying Frodo to Mt. Doom would move the story forward as well.  What makes a movie good is not just does something push the story and character forward, but how does it do it?   Since this point has been well argued before, I won't rehash it here, but it there's more to judging how Arwen's story in ROTK works than "does it push the story forward?"

 

In any event, you're correct that's a story choice not an editing one (though a late story choice created by editing). But repeating Aragorn's "this army" gag twice in the EE is bad editing choice, as is extending the Path's of the Dead scene to include the skulls...completely unnecessary and ruins the (two time) reveal of the Army of the Dead later.  

 

I think Steef's right that ROTK doesn't feel as cohesive as the other two. And it definitely begins to reveal some of Jackson's excess that would come back in The Hobbit.  That doesn't mean ROTK isn't a brilliant film and a classic...I think everyone here loves it and agrees that it is. But there's nothing wrong with pointing out that it's the least (or best, if that's your opinion) of three great films.

 

6 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Really, all this “pick the best out of the three” business is silly when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, because it’s essentially one film in three parts.

 

Mate, this is the same thing you did when you dismissed criticism of The Hobbit as book purism...somehow invalidating other people's arguments not based on the merits, but by dismissing them as "silly" because they don't meet some standard you've created. We can all assume that LOTR is one long movie, but the fact is it was edited, and released, as three films, and there's nothing wrong with discussing the merits of each.  Indeed, you've just compared the editing in ROTK favourably to the other movies. You've criticised Fellowship for its "fake deaths" and praised ROTK for its lack thereof.  That doesn't sound like regarding them as "one movie".  

 

And given the change in Jackson's sensibilities between assembling FOTR and ROTK, the difference in tone, grading, the numerous pickups, etc...I'm not even sure the "one movie" argument (and I've made it myself) makes much sense now that I think about it. I'm sure Jackson would tell you they're one movie, but in fact they are three distinct, though strongly interconnected movies. The connective tissue is stronger than say, Star Wars, but the films all have their own feel. Its not as if Jackson edited LOTR as one long film, finished the whole job and chopped it up into three. I frankly think ROTK would be a much different film had that been the case....probably tighter and closer to FOTR.

 

I think you could make a stronger argument that The Hobbit feels like one film than LOTR.

 

People disagreeing with you doesn't make them ignorant of how films works.  People in this forum and thread are fairly astute about such things actually. You're a very fine person, Chen G. And I'm very fond of you. But you're only quite a little fellow... in a wide forum after all. 

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Besides the whole "one movie" thing isn't a binary argument: it both is one and isn't. But I definitely think its more one movie than it isn't (and the same is true of The Hobbit). In a way, its better that it isn't truly one film through and through. While I'm a huge fan of this strategy as a way to construct a multi-entry narrative, there's also something to be said for ingenuity and for coming up with new solutions under duress. So doing post-production on each film separately allows for new ideas to sprout with each new film.

 

If one is attentive enough, one could also spot differences between material from different blocks of principal photography: Block One produced much tighter photography than the other two. But on the whole its inconsequential.

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I've always sort of liked to consider them as one film, but the more I think about it, the more they're really not. 

 

They're written as three films. The character arcs, plot arcs, climaxes, beats, etc. are all paid out as three films. Each film has exposition that wouldn't be present if it were one film. Each film has a different look and tone.  Certainly, there would be many different choices in editing and story if this were just one movie divided into three parts. Entire sequences would either be missing or placed differently if it were one film divided into three.  

 

That said, I agree with you that by doing it the way they did it did allow for new ideas to be incorporated as post and editing went along. But that's just another argument in favour of it being three films.  Legolas' antics and Gimli's humour, for example, we amped up in later films because of the reaction to them in FOTR.  And as mentioned previously, Arwen's story in ROTK was decided fairly late in the game.

 

It's really a moot argument anyway....they are, in fact, three films, no matter how we choose to think of them. If someone came along and edited them together as one film, they'd have to make a lot of changes for it to flow as one film. And if someone did do that (and I'm sure someone has), we'd call it what it was...a fan edit.

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Oh, you mean that they're three films in the sense that each film offers its own temporary conclusions and beginnings. Sure. You can't make three films (much less six) that all have cliffhanger endings and in medias res beginnings: its just too much.

 

But than, even a single film will often have little conflicts, subplots, characters and stages of character development that are confined to a particular sequence or one act. Different parts of a film, particularly a long film, will often correspond with different genre elements and a different tone or even style of filmmaking. Older movies that had a intermission, in particular, were often made with the intermission in mind, such that each half can work very much like a separate film.

 

To my mind, that is how the individual films in this seris function. You can think about the end-credits of these films as an intermission and the opening logos as an entr'acte. Yes, they each have a defined narrative structure, but you don't need to do a lot of thinking to find a clear, overarching narrative structure, in a way that you just don't have in trilogies that are episodic or where all (or even just one) of the films were produced separately and/or by a different filmmaker.

 

Its important to say however, that the three films don't squarely corespond to three acts (which is a good thing!). For instance, the end of Act I of the trilogy is around halfway through Fellowship of the Ring. Act I of the sextet ends about two-thirds of the way into The Desolation of Smaug, etc..

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9 hours ago, Chen G. said:

That film won best editing for a reason: even though it’s the longest, it has the shortest first act; the least nonlinearity/flashbacks; It’s finale comes down to two subplots rather than three as in The Two Towers, and the intercutting of the two is a work of art.

 

With regards to the presentation of parallel storylines, ROTK is probably the most non-linear of the lot. Partly caused by the fact that there are so many parallel plot strains at this point, of course. But the arbitrary stretching of pace between different parts of different storylines results in a rather wobbly overall sense of time.

 

9 hours ago, Chen G. said:

There’s better juxtaposition between scenes: I love that it cuts from Merry and Pippin’s friendship (when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield) to a sequence that culminates in reaffirming Frodo and Sam’s friendship, and later the same happens again when we cut from Gimli and Legolas’ friendship (“aye, I could do that”) to the ultimate culmination of San and Frodo’s relationship.

 

Of course there's beauty and structure in having storylines converge emotionally. But with so many lengthy plot strains that all have their individual ups and downs, I don't really see the need to synchronise them, especially at the expense of their own impact or the overall pacing. That's not to say that it never succeeds - it often does. But there are instances, as I said above, where I feel that the films' intercutting vs the book's sequential structure lessens the impact of several plot points.

 

Case in point: The ROTK climax. Hectic cuts between the highly dramatic and emotional Mount Doom confrontation and the Morannon battle, which is nothing but "looks bad", "looks very bad", "they're fucked", "they're really fucked", "they're totally fucked" in succession, but without much emotional impact. Which it hardly could have at that point - they're there as a diversion (as Legolas so aptly put it in one of the stupidest near-4th wall moment of the films), to die if necessary. The only question is if they're lucky enough to have Frodo actually complete his quest before they're all dead. The book perfectly exploits that as a cliffhanger. In the film, it mostly just interrupts the drama of the Mount Doom climax. (And the only reason not to hate that troll attacking Aragorn is that he isn't Sauron).

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Not to me. Feels like a culmination of what we saw in the previous film. People may not like the introduction of Arwen dying but, contrived or not, it: a) isn’t an editorial choice but a screenwriting one and b) pushes the story and characters forward, so who cares?

 

Only it doesn't move the plot forward. Why is Arwen dying? How is Arwen dying? When is Arwen dying? What does it depend on? Can it be prevented? Why is this happening, and why didn't anyone expect it? And how does it affect the story? It doesn't, of course. It would if Aragorn wrote Arwen off as dead and started something with Eowyn, but then we'd really have lost the spirit of Tolkien completely. And it has no notable emotional benefit either - in fact, because it's so absurd, it drains the inherent emotion of the Arwen storyline even more. And Elrond apparently galloped all the way from Rivendell to Dunharrow, alone and in secret, to bring Aragorn the newly forged Narsil (apparently everyone but Elrond has already left Rivendell for the Grey Havens, except for a couple of blacksmiths, just in case), tell him that Arwen is dying, and tell him to take the mountain pass to the Army of the Dead (another case of an, in the book, uninvolved character taking authority and commanding a character to do something which in the book was that character's own choice, and in fact one more stepping stone on Aragorn's way to Kingliness)

 

4 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

And given the change in Jackson's sensibilities between assembling FOTR and ROTK, the difference in tone, grading, the numerous pickups, etc...I'm not even sure the "one movie" argument (and I've made it myself) makes much sense now that I think about it.

 

I've also made that argument, and I think it's true to an extent (not to the same extent that the books are in fact one book). But clearly things changed from one film to the next, probably partly due to audience feedback. Also, Philippa Boyens came aboard with TTT, and as a friend told me (from the Hobbit extras, I think, which I haven't seen), it was apparently her who pushed PJ to get more and more excessive in the Hobbit films. Apparently he would often doubt if a gag he came up with wouldn't be too much or too out of place, but Boyens convinced him to go with it. Before that, I'd always thought it was Boyens who kept TTT and ROTK (somewhat) grounded against the increasingly whacky PJ, but perhaps it's in fact her contribution that makes TTT and ROTK more uneven and troubled than LOTR.

 

35 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Oh, you mean that they're three films in the sense that each film offers its own temporarly conclusions and beginnings. Sure. You can't make three films that all have cliffhanger endings and in medias res beginnings: its just too much.

 

But than, even a single film will often have little conflicts, subplots, characters and stages of character development that are confined to one sequence or one act. Different parts of a film, particularly a long film, will often correspond with different genre elements and a different tone or style of filmmaking. Older movies that had a intermission were often made with the intermission in mind, such that each half can work very much like a separate film.

 

I actually wish that they'd officially planned an intermission for each of these films. Every theatrical screening I've seen had an intermission (simple by stopping the film at one point, and resuming it afterwards - and because it was still actual film, the cutoff wasn't even clean, but abruptly a few frames into a new sequence). And all the EE home releases had an intermission because they've been split across two discs; slightly less abrupt, but still with a bit of a "right in the middle of something" feel.

 

In general though, I do believe (as I think I already said earlier) that the films needlessly change certain things because of a blind adherence the common "things don't work like that in a film, nobody would watch a film like that, you have to make it three distinct stories etc." argument. There's truth in that argument. There are similar arguments for books, and Tolkien has been criticised for breaking lots of them. It works in the books, an in fact those often are the things that work better in the books than they do in the films.

 

When adapting a book for the screen, you have to change certain things to make it work for the screen. But perhaps, especially in the case of such an unconventional, not-by-the-rules book, you also have to break certain screen rules to keep the spirit of the book. And perhaps it would turn out that the film rules weren't that set in stone to begin with.

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I really love the crosscutting at the action climax of Return of the King. They put it in the documentaries as "drawing the emotion of one scene with the other" and I agree. That's the true magic of film: that - through editing more than anything else - is where 1+1 suddenly equals 3. I think that's the aspect of the film that garnered the "Best Editing" award. Had it been more than two threads, it wouldn't have worked.

 

As for making an unconventional film in order to adhere to an unconventional book - The Middle Earth films are all but conventional, certainly in regards to the genre films of the late ninties to early 2000s. They're long, they're much more serious than genre films of the era were, they feature a much bigger cast, they were all shot concurrently, they have a very distinct style of photography, they have a lot of nonlinear elements - so no. What was changed needed to be changed, and I appreciate those changes if only on the level of admiring the audacity of the filmmakers.

 

The Arwen stuff - some people mind it, some don't. It was never the main strain of this series, thematically. Its very much an exploration of same-sex friendship, first and foremost. The romantic aspects are always on the periphery, bordering on the disposable.

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18 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Philippa Boyens came aboard with TTT, and as a friend told me (from the Hobbit extras, I think, which I haven't seen), it was apparently her who pushed PJ to get more and more excessive in the Hobbit films. Apparently he would often doubt if a gag he came up with wouldn't be too much or too out of place, but Boyens convinced him to go with it. Before that, I'd always thought it was Boyens who kept TTT and ROTK (somewhat) grounded against the increasingly whacky PJ, but perhaps it's in fact her contribution that makes TTT and ROTK more uneven and troubled than LOTR.

 

Hmmmm. Not sure where this is coming from? Boyens was brought on by Walsh (via a friend) very early on in scripting.

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Yeah, she is Peter and Fran's neighboor and was, I believe, the partner of Stephen Sinclair who helped them with the story treatment. After she read the treatment (and we're talking 90 pages, so its still a very rudimentary stage), she got involved somewhere in 1997 or 1998 - all still in the two-film stage.

 

Personally, I don't like all these narratives as far as behind-the-scenes stuff goes: who got whacky and who didn't, and who is responsible for which flaw or which achievement. Even with all the documentaries and books about the matter, the production of these films (all six) was so gargantuan and sprawling that to pretend to have a narrative that distills it down to any one weakness of strength is going to be inherently simplistic. Its true of other films, as well.

 

 

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Odd, I thought I'd remembered that Boyens came on board only after FOTR.

 

41 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

As for making an unconventional film in order to adhere to an unconventional book - The Middle Earth films are all but conventional, certainly in regards to the genre films of the late ninties to early 2000s.

 

Well yes... and no.

 

41 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

they're much more serious than genre films of the era were

 

They have lots of goofy gags and one liners to make them "not too serious" as deemed appropriate for genre films, as opposed to the book.

 

41 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

The Arwen stuff - some people mind it, some don't. It was never the main strain of this series, thematically.

 

Just because it's not centrally important to the main plot doesn't mean it's not in part poorly handled. And Tolkien obviously considered it central to Aragorn's motivation and character arc.

 

They used Arwen for good things. She was generally well handled in FOTR, she did (partially) drive Aragorn's motivation, and she offered a welcome glimpse into the future of Aragorn's kingdom - which simultaneously serves as payoff for the mortal/immortal relationship theme and thus the overall theme of transitoriness which I consider *the* central pillar of Tolkien's creation.

 

The thing is, they could have easily accomplished all that without Elrond convincing Arwen to give up her (apparently not so) undying love for fear of death and leave with all the others (why are they all leaving so suddenly at the same time, anyway? One thing the films have always failed at is to convey longer processes - Saruman's and Denethor's slow decay into madness, the Elves by and by giving up on Middle-earth and leaving. And also, it wasn't the last ship, why couldn't she simply have left with her father?), only to have a vision of a child to suddenly completely change her mind (which is such a blunt plot device that I've always sensed unrest and amusement in the audience whenever I've watched it).

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11 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Tolkien obviously considered it central to Aragorn's motivation and character arc.

 

What character arc?

 

I've grown to dislike this term because its used all too often coloquially to describe the character's path through the plot of the film, rather than what it should be which is to describe a certain change of personality in the character. "Character transformation" puts the message across better.

 

Well, as it turns out, Tolkien didn't write a character transformation for Aragorn. The idea that he begins as a reluctant heir to the throne and transforms into the king is strictly in the screenplay. That he is compelled to do so in part in order to rescue Arwen from death - is fine for me.

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Almost none of the characters go through any kind of character transformation or have much of an arc in the books.

 

Samwise, I guess. Smeagol maybe. I can see why PJ and co added arcs to many of "their" characters though. And for the most part it worked well. Especially for Theoden.

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Théoden actually got a bit of development taken away from him in the movie - In the book, he's an old man too late to step out of the shadow of his forefathers (or so he believes) who puts his trust in the wrong person and wallows in his self-pity, and it takes The Grey Company to convince him to walk outside, see his country's state and make decisions for the first time in years. In the movie, he's directly mind-controlled and aged up by Saruman or something - point is, it's out of his hand, unlike in the book. Would the book version have been hard to portray convincingly on film? Hell yes.

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Untrue. Tolkien comments somewhere (in The Unfinished Tales, I think) that Theoden was indeed being poisoned/bewitched.

 

The filmmakers couldn't use texts outside of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but that doesn't mean they weren't drawing inspiration from them in general, vague ways.

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16 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Untrue. Tolkien comments somewhere (in The Unfinished Tales, I think) that Theoden was indeed being poisoned/bewitched.

 

Poisoned/bewitched yes. But not mind controlled. Poisoned by Saruman through Grima, which resulted in him being weak, doubtful and basically generally depressed and without hope. Which is something he overcomes with the help of Gandalf, but not through any kind of exorcism.

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36 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Almost none of the characters go through any kind of character transformation or have much of an arc in the books.

 

Indeed. Character development wasn't Tolkien's strong suit. Nor was it the point. The characters are more or less archetypes. 

 

They absolutely needed fleshing out and given arcs for the films.

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35 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Almost none of the characters go through any kind of character transformation or have much of an arc in the books.

 

Samwise, I guess. Smeagol maybe. I can see why PJ and co added arcs to many of "their" characters though. And for the most part it worked well. Especially for Theoden.

 

Frodo to an extent, starting out as an easy going Hobbit, going through a heavy addiction and left saved but broken. Smeagol definitely, only most of his character arc is in the backstory. And that goes for many other characters: Saruman definitely has an important arc (especially when you contrast it with Gandalf and Radagast). Theoden has one, Denethor has a major one. Legolas and Gimli overcome their racial prejudices to become BFFs.

 

In fact, this ties into something else that I've always been aware of, but thought about again in connection with the films: The usual claim that Tolkien only deals in black and whites, with no shades and therefore only has cardboard characters and is pure escapism with nothing relevant to say. I think nothing could be further from the truth. "Good" and "evil" are specific concepts in Tolkien's writings (and personal philosophy/religion, I suppose). But the characters (both protagonists and peoples as a whole) are mostly in between. What is the Ring if not a power that corrupts "good" people and turns them to evil, except those few that are very strong and pure of heart (Frodo and Faramir, to an extent). Boromir is corrupted more easily than many, not because he is evil, but because his character has enough seeds for the Ring to twist. Denethor (and initially Theoden) are fallen "good" characters, with external powers only as a catalyst. Saruman, through the long range power of the Ring and Sauron's influence via the Palantir goes from the original White wizard to a small would-be Sauron - and remains broken, petty and malignant to the end, even after the destruction of the Ring.

 

The monsters are inherently evil, because they were deliberately made that way. Not necessarily so the wild men commanded by Saruman and Sauron - see Sam's speech, given to Faramir in the TTT movie. And the peoples of Middle-earth as a whole are anything but pure good. Elves are aloof and have become entirely unsupportive of the other races, not mention their general hatred of the Dwarves (and vice versa). Dwarves are greedy and value gold and gems over anything else. Men especially are easily seduced by lies and populism. Hobbits are inherently xenophobic. And yet all these are clearly portrayed as cultural stereotypes which can be overcome - and are, mostly by the protagonists of the Fellowship.

 

The whole Scouring only makes sense because the world isn't just divided into Good and Evil, and even if Evil incarnate is beaten, there's still enough mistrust, ignorance and pettiness left. As such, I find Tolkien's concept anything but black and white, and in fact perfectly *applicable* and, dare I say, philosophically relevant.

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Many of the characters do go through changes, but so do the heroes who populate the Icelandic Sagas, but I wouldn't say the have character arcs as we think of them in film and literature today.

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4 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Why is Arwen dying? How is Arwen dying? When is Arwen dying? What does it depend on? Can it be prevented?

 

lotr3-movie-screencaps.com-11912.jpg?str

 

"Arwen's storyline has now been merged with the other storylines. The details are unimportant."

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14 hours ago, Chen G. said:

To me, the worst editing choice in the entire sextet is in The Two Towers: the Battle of Helm’s Deep begins, and suddenly we cut...to a quiet scene with Treebeard.

 

Yes!  The Entmoot should have began BEFORE the battle, so when we finally return to it later, it actually feels like significant time has passed.

 

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Besides the whole "one movie" thing isn't a binary argument: it both is one and isn't.

 

Yes!

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

But I definitely think its more one movie than it isn't (and the same is true of The Hobbit). In a way, its better that it isn't truly one film through and through. While I'm a huge fan of this strategy as a way to construct a multi-entry narrative, there's also something to be said for ingenuity and for coming up with new solutions under duress. So doing post-production on each film separately allows for new ideas to sprout with each new film.

 

Nice in theory, but the problem is that all evidence points to things being better before the reshoots and final editing decisions!

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

If one is attentive enough, one could also spot differences between material from different blocks of principal photography: Block One produced much tighter photography than the other two. 

 

I am intrigued: Tell me more!

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26 minutes ago, Jay said:

Nice in theory, but the problem is that all evidence points to things being better before the reshoots and final editing decisions!

 

 

I am intrigued: Tell me more!

 

If you’re in the “Fellowship of the Ring is the best and it just went downhill from there” camp, sure. I certainly don’t think so: a lot of people don’t. I do think it would have benefited these trilogies to have a significantly longer post-production period between wrapping up principal photography and finishing the first film, in which they can work on all three films to lighten the burden of post-production on the later two, when they eventually get to it.

 

As for the differences in photography: notice the abundance of extreme close-ups in the first half of Fellowship of the Ring and a few segments in Return of the King. Those were clearly photographed in the first block of prinicipal photography. As time passed, Jackson started to favor less... extreme forms of camerawork.

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I think extreme close-ups are typical of indie directors: it helps get around all kinds of limitations (who needs a set when all we can see in the frame is the actor’s iris?) and it’s the type of shot that’s most imbued with character: it’s perceived as very artsy and stylized.

 

As he got his taste for more mainstream film-making (by the end of block one he will have shot about two Hollywood-movies-worth amount of footage) he dialed it back. For the better, I should add.

 

There’s still a lot of extreme close-ups throughout the series, and Jackson’s filmography in general: it’s used to great effect in the approach to Skull Island. There’s a shot in The Two Towers that always gives me a chuckle (in a good way). I always look at it and think “this is the closest we’ve ever been to Cate Blanchett.”

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I'm trying to think of movies that are genuine "single films" that were split into multiple parts.  I'm sure there are more than a few, but among major releases? Kill Bill comes to mind. The international version of the spectacular Red Cliff. I think there was a Che bio pic a while ago that did this.

 

On the other hand, despite having been filmed simultaneously, I don't think many people would regard Matrix II & III, or BTTF II & III to be single films.  Nor the last Harry Potter or Hunger Games films.  Few would regard those are single films, despite each being drawn from one book respectively.

 

Kill Bill on the other hand feels like what it is...a movie conceived, shot and largely edited as a single film, simply split into two parts. I don't think either LOTR or The Hobbit has that feel.  Indeed, if you listen to the commentaries, etc. on these movies, it's clear from the start they were thinking of them as three distinct films (that would nonetheless flow nicely together).

 

It's purely an academic discussion, of course.  But I think there is a distinction.

 

58 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

There’s still a lot of extreme close-ups throughout the series, and Jackson’s filmography in general: it’s used to great effect in the approach to Skull Island. There’s a shot in The Two Towers that always gives me a chuckle (in a good way). I always look at it and think “this is the closest we’ve ever been to Cate Blanchett.”

 

Yes, I noticed this as well...as the series went on, Jackson relied less and less on this technique (it's pretty noticeable in FOTR once you start looking for it).

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Also look for one my least favorite things in serialized films: recycled footage (outside of flashback). The village destroyed in the prologue? One and the same as the one destroyed in the Two Towers. A lot of the shots in the montage immediately preceding that is from the early Isengard scenes of Fellowship.

 

Oh well...

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Oh yea, the reused Isengard tree falling, etc footage is pretty obvious!  I think it might even be mentioned in the commentary

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2 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Also look for one my least favorite things in serialized films: recycled footage (outside of flashback). The village destroyed in the prologue? One and the same as the one destroyed in the Two Towers. A lot of the shots in the montage immediately preceding that is from the early Isengard scenes of Fellowship.

 

That was intentional! That village has been burned down and rebuilt countless times! Those villagers are survivors. ;)

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26 minutes ago, Jay said:

Oh yea, the reused Isengard tree falling, etc footage is pretty obvious!  I think it might even be mentioned in the commentary

 

It’s really more common in serialized films than one might think: Michael Bay does it in some of his Transformers films, it happens in Return of the Jedi (and in the special edition of Empire Strikes Back), Rogue One, and we just now learned it’s going to happen for Carrie Fisher in IX.

 

I’m not a fan, but here it’s infrequent enough that I can look past it. This series also uses much more nonlinear editing (try rearranging the farewell to Lorien sequence chronologically, I dare you) so you can defend it on that grounds, too.

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