I'm already sick of WOTW!

[David Coscina 3]

Who would have thought that a film about a magic ring and a dark lord could carry that much emotion and powerful messages?

there are some of us who still don't beleive it did.

I wholeheartedly concur.

[Luke Skywalker 1,794]

And WOTW looks shitty to me! Are the main sequences all night scenes? Sigh...  

Peter Jackson; THIS man will be the NEW Spielberg; the future of film. King Kong will succeed in a way WOTW never will.

You are kidding right?

I dont know why night scenes are bad, but half LOTR (And that are 6 hours) are night scenes.

Thinking it right, it may be 2/3 of it or more. The whole shire escape, weather top, moria (dark after all), saruman's scenes, gandalfs escape with gwaihir, helms deep, the caves of the dead, half minas tirith, most treebeards scenes (and the wood is dark too), complete mordor, etc....

And there are very little sunny days in there.

[gkgyver 1,645]

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[David Coscina 3]

Probably the ones who find Attack Of The Clones terrific ...

When millions of people are emotionally spent after those films, don't you think there's a chance that "some of you" might be wrong?

As for messages: man, you seriously need to learn more about Tolkien ...

Woaw fella, the last time I checked, everyone had a right to their own opinion. And please, let's not get into the "if a billion people like it it has to be great" rationale because that doesn't hold any water. When Mahler first premiered his 1st Symphony back in the late 19th century, music critics hated it, audiences couldn't understand it and the players found it too difficult. Most of Mahler's life his music was unaccepted in the mainstream. It took 50 years for "the masses" to catch up to his music vision.

I think LOTR is a mostly well put together group of films. But really, aside from the whole "good triumphs over evil" I don't see a lot of depth in either the films or books. That's my take on it. Please don't have the arrogance to suggest that I'm somehow wrong or a lesser intellect because I don't well up when Frodo sails into the horizon.

When I see a long tracking shot of Jews sorting through belongings of their fellow man to appraise their "worth" and seeing a pile of dozens of pictures of families, relatives, PEOPLE, with the knowledge that all these people were sent off to camps to die because of one man's insanity, then I get emotional.

I certainly don't think anything of any of Lucas' Star Wars franchise except its escapist fun. Films that I think have more depth are Seven Samurai (my all time favorite film BTW), Potemkin, Ran (a masterful re-working of King Lear), Shawshank Redemption, Nixon (an amazing crystallization of politics), and several others.

But listen, I wasn't dissing Jackson. The pure logistics of what he pulled off with LOTR was exceptional. I don't think IMO that ROTK was a better film than Master and Commander but that's just me (how can any film composer compete with Vaughan Williams seminal Tallis Fantasia though?). But I am totally hyped for King Kong, both film and film score. I have no doubt that Jackson has already established himself as a very good director. But I will hold out putting him in the same sentence as Spielberg, Scorsese, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Frank Schaffner, amoung others.

[gkgyver 1,645]

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[David Coscina 3]

gkgvyver, I believe we'll have to agree to disagree on this topic. I don't think LOTR isn't without its merits. I recently attended the LOTR symphony up here in Toronto and I found it to be very moving in parts. But I really don't think the trilogy is as deep as something like say Six Degree of Separation where that film posits social and sexual conventions, the nature of art and creativity, individuality opposed to conformist ideologies, racism, amoung other issues. I don't believe LOTR is the be-all end-all of filmmaking. And I wouldn't compare Tolkien's works to Steinbeck's or Hemmingway's in terms of weighty literature.

The thing with interpretting any art is that it serves a manifestation of the viewer's projected perspectives based on life experiences and such. Obviously LOTR taps into universal values like friendship, honor, sacrifice, altruism, morality, very basic ideals that are engrained into most human beings through upbringing and religion. Hence, that's why it is so successful. But I don't think it's as deep as other films or literature because it doesn't go beyond these basic ideals. Something like A.I. is largely looked upon in a negative light which startles me because there's so much there- epistomological and existential underpinnings all dressed up in a quasi-apocalyptic design. How people can think that the ending is sweet is beyond me. David dies and the only evidence of human existence is a teddy bear, a plaything of mankind. And David dies after he gets to spend one last day with his mother. If anything ever suggested that love= self-destruction I don't know what it is.

So I would urge you to re-think your position about whether Joe and myself are wrong because making such statements does smack of arrogance whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

Cheers!

[gkgyver 1,645]

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[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Now, are you praising Peter Jackson's motion picture trilogy, or J.R.R. Tolkien's pinnacle of modern fantasy literature?

[Lurker 5]

You may like it or not, but you ARE wrong. That's knowledge, not arrogance. You don't see the depth and the messages, but they're there, in every amazing detail, that's a fact

Neil - apparently wrong

[Morlock 11]

You may like it or not, but you ARE wrong. That's knowledge, not arrogance. You don't see the depth and the messages, but they're there, in every amazing detail, that's a fact

Neil - apparently wrong

Well, I'm glad we got THAT settled! I was always wondering if Neil was wrong.

[Alex_B! 0]

You all are wrong, including gkgyvealaidcpekveryzyeo about Neil being wrong. This is not a matter of opinion - it is a matter of fact! This forum is made up of simpletons.

[Lurker 5]

This forum is made up of simpletons.

Yes, you fit right in.

Neil

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

To deny emotion although it's clearly there, and to ignore messages and depth although the author of the books and the director of the films excessively wrote and talked about them ... don't you see that this is nonsense?

Not really, some of us are just slightly cynical bastards who recognise when a film is literally begging you to be sad.

[David Coscina 3]

Well put Drax!

[Luke Skywalker 1,794]

Thinking it right, it may be 2/3 of it or more. The whole shire escape, weather top, moria (dark after all), saruman's scenes, gandalfs escape with gwaihir, helms deep, the caves of the dead, half minas tirith, most treebeards scenes (and the wood is dark too), complete mordor, etc....  

And there are very little sunny days in there.

How on earth can you blame a cave for being too dark? A cave is a cave. It's like accusing the sun for being too bright.

Mordor IS dark. In fact, most Mordor scenes in ROTK are still too bright to match the descriptions in the book.

There's nothing wrong with the darkness, it's what Tolkien wrote, so don't blame PJ for that. Lord of the Rings is a dark story, sometimes even darker than PJ's films.

Sir, i think you got it wrong there.

I was just pointing that Roald said that WOTW Will be a bad movie because it has many night scenes, but he loves deeply LOTR which has many more.

Moria IS to be dark, i was just pointing that it is not night, (in the outside it is daylight) but dark scene afterall. Same with mordor, which though at day, its covered with volcano dust and ashes.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Roald is mindf*cking all of you, and when he's done he'll sigh and have a big smile on his face, while you people are left with a load of his *** in your scalps!

[Luke Skywalker 1,794]

We are simplons after all.

*The Simploooons*

add catchy Elfman tune here.

[David Coscina 3]

Roald is mindf*cking all of you, and when he's done he'll sigh and have a big smile on his face, while you people are left with a load of his *** in your scalps!

Regardless, it was a stupid thread to start.