JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Other Middle-Earth Stories Book • Page 5

I guess mine would be

Fellowship>King>Towers

I was disappointed in my initial viewing of Two Towers and that has always clouded subsequent viewings of it as a result. It's the one film in the series that makes some pretty big changes that genuinely bother me. I just hate the whole Aragorn falls over the cliff and everyone thinks he's dead unless you've read the books and know this never happened and therefore know he's definitely not dead and then yeah he's not dead and he shows up at Helms Deep and everyone's like hey great you're not dead and he's like yup and then after a while everyone just forgets the whole thing ever happened because it never really mattered anyway but hey at least they found a way to give Liv Tyler some screen time...thing.

I think the extended edition makes it better though and of course I love Helms Deep.

 

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis thought Snow White sucked

 

I love that so much.

 

So I somehow never noticed that while Aragon and the hobbits are waiting around for Arwen to come save Frodo, they're standing amongst the stone remnants of what is presumably the same 3 trolls that Bilbo and the Dwarves encountered during The Hobbit. Pretty cool touch that I'm sad I missed for so many years lol.

 

Has anyone read the newly-released "Beren and Luthien" yet? I'm a few chapters in, you can definitely tell a lot of it was written prior to LOTR was completed but it's still a fun read and it's nice to have all the Beren/Luthien stuff in one place. I might have to revisit the trilogy again after this since it's been over a decade since I last read it.

 

need to check that out. the Children of Hurin book is probably my favorite from middle earth.

 

Here’s Andy Serkis Reading Trump’s Tweets In Character As Gollum

 

I've got a patient who is a librarian. He's been with us a couple months so we talk about whatever and he was like I know you love LOTR and have read the books several times but I wanted you to have your own copy. He gave me a hardcover copy from his library that he has wanted to give a good home bc they're closing down. I cried. I'm a crier but this deserved it lol

 

The books are incredible and are easily my favorite books ever written. As far as the movies go I have to say that they definitely get worse as the trilogy goes along, so my ranking goes FOTR > TTT > ROTK. I can't find the article or link right now but there is an interview out there where Viggo Mortensen has the same criticism of the films and of Peter Jackson's later Hobbit films.

I know they are fairly faithful adaptions as far as books translated to the screen are concerned, but I really feel like Peter Jackson loses a grasp on the story as the films go along and gets far too carried away with CGI and action and silliness. When I watch the films now I am constantly frustrated by the filmmakers not trusting the story to be dramatic enough on its own and injecting weird forced drama into it. The aforementioned 'Aragorn falling off a cliff' thing is a perfect example. It's a pretty dramatic story on it's own with everything going on at that point, having him fall off a cliff and fake die is pretty silly. And they repeat the fake dying thing a few more times.

My personal example where the films let me down the most is always Gandalf barring the gates of Minas Tirith from the Witch King. Every time I read the books I am struck by how dramatic the scene is, and it would have been so easy to film with the resources the filmmakers had. You really only needed the actors and a doorway to get the heart of the scene. (I know the WK in the films only rides around on the giant Fell Beast and not a horse.). The two characters do meet in the film but only in the extended edition and it's a much different scene - everything that makes the scene so compelling is gone.

It makes me really wish Peter Jackson would hire someone else to write screenplays for him and then at least somewhat try to stick to them.

 

I have the extended edition and you're totally right. I will say I was very pleased with the battle in Return of the King.

 

The battle in the Return of the King film is really good, but I definitely think the Helm's Deep battle from the previous film is better. The tension and hopelessness at Helm's Deep is palpable in TTT, whereas I feel like some of the drama and emotion of the battle in ROTK gets lost amid the CGI spectacle. It really feels like CGI overload to me. I know both battles were a mix of practical and CGI but as the trilogy goes on I feel like Peter Jackson's answer to every creative question that arose was just throw more CGI at it, and something definitely gets lost along the way. I really feel like the pressure was on during the making / post-production of the first film and I usually find that is when filmmakers are most creative.

There's a good example of what I am trying to say in the bonus material for the third film. It shows what I believe ended up being Viggo Mortensen's last day of filming on the entire production as Aragorn, reshoots and everything included. They are shooting a scene for the Paths of the Dead sequence and, as it turns out, it is a scene that ended up only being featured in the extended edition. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are walking in the cavern and they start getting sort of buried by this avalanche of skulls, presumably from the dead the path gets its name from. This sequence in the book is actually kind of scary and it has a real atmosphere of dread about it, with the dead following them and everyone starting to lose it but Aragorn's leadership and strength getting them through. Now there has to be dozens of different ways to present these ideas on the screen and get them across to the viewer. Having the characters literally get slammed by an avalanche of thousands if not millions of skulls is not only silly and stupid but really pointless too. To me that seems like the kind of idea that would have been shot down for a variety of reasons during the making of the first film, but it is the kind of thing that happens a lot in the third film.

 

I definitely agree that the films get progressively worse, even if I love each one dearly. However I will say that ROTK, though not as evenly perfect as FOTR or TTT, still has the most stunning and beautiful individual sequences of any of the three films (the lighting of the beacons scene and Pippin's song to Denethor, for instance).

 

Interested to see what you guys think about this. The game is making Shelob into a woman for the game.

 

Amazon to Adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s Globally Renowned Fantasy Novels, The Lord of the Rings, for Television with a Multi Season Production Commitment

It's a multi-season show, not an adaption of LotR but "new storylines preceding Fellowship." Deal includes rights for more spinoffs.

 

$200 million just for the rights seems so absurd.

That being said, certainly interested to see where this goes. But I'd also be interested if they were just doing a generic high fantasy series they poured $200 million into the production budget for so...

 

I'm excited tbh. I have no idea what it will be like or if amazon can push out something good but I fucking love LotR

 

I'm really happy they're not going to be redoing the trilogy, I'm definitely interested in seeing the other stories of Middle Earth

 

Ppl being mad is like..why don't you wait until you watch it to pass judgement.

 

I'm really excited to see what they do with it - glad they're not covering LotR, despite the gaps in the movies' adaptions. All in on any big budget fantasy, especially so when it's more Tolkien lore on screen.

 

FALL OF GONDOLIN OR GTFO


Totally see this being Beren and Luthien first.

 

Pumped about this. Just played Shadows of Mordor and it reawakened my love for the series.

Also that price tag is ridiculous.

 

Children of Hurin or I’ll riot