| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Wednesday 19 December 2001: |
Just saw Lord of the Rings. It wasn't the disappointment I was expecting; rather it was pretty good. A fantastic job has been done with making even the annoying characters from the book (such as Sam) not annoying. I suspect it's a facet of the casting, more than anything. The voices and accents capture certain essences; make bumbling a virtue, and arrogance a right. Many things are true to the book - too many things. The length, extended through drawn out scenes that seemingly served no purpose other than to allow pieces of music to finish, and lengthy near-static shots of expressions in case the audience are too slow to read a face. The stupidity of every bad-guy; five times, the baddies needed only to not stop and they would have won; true to the book, but more obviously stupid in movie form - scenes could have done with a little editing for sense. I had heard that it was supposed to have little in the way of extraneous special effects; it's not so. People who were looking forward to a few-special-effects thing will be disappointed. For me, it was good. I like extraneous special effects. Bits of mist, things exploding, and blurry wavy things are good, even if they are obviously merely the Photoshop smudge tool applied randomly to every frame using two layers. Hm, many of the minor characters weren't very good - Legolas, Galadriel and Arwen were the only elves that looked and acted elven. Elrond aged between flashback and present, thus ruining the immortality deal. The dwarf was a little too stereotyped. The uruk-hai looked like a live-roleplaying monster; a human with paint and some crummy fangs. In that instance they held true to the limited special effects idea, I suppose. Collapsing bridges, as seen in the trailer, look like somewhat clumsy CGI. Of course, I dwell on the bad things - I always dwell on the bad things. The scenery was nice, the acting was good, the story was... well, if you like the book, you'll like the story. Unfortunately, it's not possible to skim-read the tedious bits with the movie, and the director didn't do it for you. Probably worth seeing on a big screen anyway - an unusual acclamation from me.
[05:25] |
| Eperdu |
| I would be interested to know why the Dickens you like extraneous special effects in films. I take it that you mean special effects for the sake of it, the kind that turn it from a film into a demonstration of the computer technology available at the time. So um, why do you like that? You're wrong, incidentally, to like them. Mmmhmm, very wrong. *beams disarmingly* |
| RavenBlack |
| Mm. Actually I'd forgotten what it was that you were being pleased that it didn't do. I suppose the special effects aren't extraneous in that sense then - when they're unnecessary, they're far from demonstrating technology. The Photoshop smudge tool being not a particularly modern device. Actually, many of the effects that are required by the plot are far from being cutting-edge too. As mentioned, the poor CGI bridge and the SCA uruk-hai. |
| wyndenai |
| I quite agree with you about the elves bit. While Elrond made a good surly Kyrin-type elf in the beginning, cleaning him up just made him look like Angent Smith with a wierd haircut. I rather appreciated all the other stuff, though, but I easily get lost in a movie. Either that or because I appreciated it relative to how the sound messed up at the theater we saw it at towards the end, and the fact that badly dubbed Ian McKellen is hilarious but not conducive to being caught up in the story. |
| bv728 |
| A note: Tolkien Elves do age, physically. Very slowly, mind you, but they do. They're not technically immortal, because they leave their physical bodies behind eventually and move on to the Far Shores as a soul or spirit. The whole immortality kick came out of faerie legends later. |
| Kat |
| Overall I found only one scene to be really disappointing: Galadriel's test, where Frodo offers her the Ring. She's supposed to look awesome and terrifying; I thought it was a little cheesy. Maybe it's just me. ::shrug, relurk:: |
| RavenBlack |
| One of my favourite scenes, that was - it was cheesy in such a fantastic way; "All will love me and despair!" Except, of course, a tomato. |
| ToRy |
| Well now I'm going to see the movie, I can't really be a critic. I'm in love with Tolkien and everything that is him. So nothing that came from or was inspired by him can do wrong..Silly wistful me. Dance like a monkey! |
| Tabbie |
| wyndenai - maybe we saw the same showing then, as whilst I was being happily introduced to all things Tolkien, (No, I have never read any of the books or anything) the end bit was dreadfully marred by bad audio. Grrrrr...... I was really it it at that point too. (Which might not have been a good thing - bad drowning issues & it was at that bit where it started going down hill) All round. I liked it. But then again, I'm easily distracted by nice shiny things. >^..^< |
| mahonri |
| "Elrond aged between flashback and present, thus ruining the immortality deal" Not only are Tolkien elves not immortal, but Elrond was only half-elven. |