Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 67

‘Lord of the Rings’ and that entire series and world were books written in a very interesting way and order. Almost reversed engineered in parts to fit others.

 

It helps when you are adapting previously existing material lol

As opposed to, you know, crafting entirely new stories based on existing characters.

 

I sure don’t love the current online bullshit around most movies. It’s endless pointless shit built from clickbait or what some review said and hardly any actual discussions about the movies and characters. If I have to read one more fan movie version or theory it’ll be too soon.

 

True, but the same crew and team tried to tackle the Hobbit and where as Lord of the Rings had the whole story and film structure laid out before filming and succeeded, the Hobbit script and structure was constantly being written and re-written during filming and you could tell.

 

I mean, that's just not true:

Even after the filming began, the script was still under constant revision. Scenes would be changed around, dropped, or new dialogue added on virtually a daily basis. The actors would often visit the Jackson-Walsh home and read through the latest script, and make their own suggestions on dialogue or bits of stage business to add to their characterisation. Copies of Lord of the Rings were frequently consulted by all involved.

The process has been described by many of the people involved as frenetic, enthusiastic and exhausting. Fran Walsh described it as being like "furiously laying the tracks in front of the train as it was rumbling up behind you".

 

agreeed 1,000%

 

I'd like to know where that person on quora got that answer because in the special features for fellowship on the ring Peter Jackson states that he had the story treatment planned out and when New Line told him he could turn it into a trilogy instead of two films that he knew exactly what he wanted and how to approach it.

 

The YouTuber Lindsay Ellis has a really good 3-part series on the Hobbit movies that, taken together, are basically an hour and a half long documentary on what went wrong with those films. (The last part actually gets into some interesting workers rights stuff.) That whole Tolkien/Jackson thing is its own beast.

 

Principal photography of The Lord of the Rings film series - Wikipedia

The quotes are from those DVD appendices. More come from various sources:

TheOneRing.net™ | Features | NZ Exclusives | One Year of Principal Photography | Page 01
20 Epic Facts About <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> Trilogy

Brian Sibley's book is a good source too.

(A treatment ain't a script. They often don't resemble each other.
Hell, there's plenty of scripts I've read that don't end up much like the movie itself. Entire scenes cut, changed, moved around in weird order.)

 

To present the idea "just do it like Lord of the Rings" no more promises a great movie that feels cohesive than not and that filming process was far more chaotic and not nearly as 'planned out' as one would think.

(And, I'll always argue we got a great movie that feels cohesive.)

 

You can change parts of a script while still sticking to an overall story for a set of films, unless the script was re-written from scratch and changed the trajectory of the story.

 

Read up on what they started with and what they ended up with. There's lots of links and books on this. It was not as "we've got a story and it's gonna be easy to follow" as you're presenting it is all I'm saying.

All the stuff is right there, all about changing massive parts of the story and script:

At various points in the scripting process, Arwen, not Éowyn, was the one to dress up as a man, ride into the Battle of Pelennor Fields, and kill the Witch-king; and Rohan and Gondor were combined into one kingdom. Miramax also suggested that the one-movie version be presented as a flashback, with an older Frodo “covering [the entire Mines of Moria sequence in Fellowship] by saying something like, ‘So then we went on a dangerous journey through the Mines of Moria and lost Gandalf!,’” recalled Jackson.

 

The final confrontation between Frodo and Gollum in The Return of the King was originally going to end with Frodo pushing Gollum off the ledge into Mount Doom; “straight-out murder,” Jackson admitted, “but at the time we were OK with it because we felt everyone wanted Frodo to kill Gollum. But, of course, it was very un-Tolkien, because it flew in the face of everything that he wanted his heroes to be.” Years later, the scene was re-shot as it ended up in the film.

Still funny.

 

I kinda wish this would have been included as an alternate scene for the blu ray.

 

At least George Lucas gave us a scene of R2D2 trying to murder C3PO.

 

I’m not sure how much mapping everything out would’ve helped with the fact that Carrie died. There would need to be some new casting...and there’s no way that would’ve gone over well.

I read some fun metas that were on Tumblr back in early 2016, discussing that Rey was a nobody, Kylo’s act of killing Han would lead to his ultimate redemption (we shall see about this one), Rey and Kylo had a forcebond, etc. Wish I could find them but with all the Tumblr changes, I don’t think they are on there anymore.

There were clearly people within the SW fandom who were picking up on the same things from TFA as Rian.

 

I liked it. Was surprised nobody else beat me to it haha

 

I think of all the dumb complaints about TLJ, the one about how it's bad/stupid that Rey is a nobody annoys me the most.

 

I like this description.


Also describes my life lol

 

The idea that Rian "tossed the script aside" needs to go away. From the article posted earlier and everything else I've read, he read JJ's treatments, then presented Lucasfilm with a different way to do it and then collaborated with JJ as much as he could to link the two movies. If Lucasfilm liked the original version more, they uh... would have stuck with that. Having a general plan of where you want to go is a good idea, but that doesn't mean you have to stick to it if a better idea presents itself.

It seems like no one is considering the possibility that the trilogy still has the same endgame, but the way we arrive there was altered. Once again, that article even suggests as much:

 

I mean, I appreciate when their is a vision and it comes together and works out.

But man, those fucking hacks that did HIMYM kept to their original vision despite the show growing well beyond that kind of ending. To this day it’s one of the absolute worst series finales I have ever seen, maybe even the worst.

As long as I can enjoy each movie and there is some type of narrative that connects them, that’s cool with me.

I do wish Mark would realize the influence he has and keep his negative views to himself. He is more than entitled to have wanted it to go differently, it’s certainly not what I envisioned either, so I get it. But one negative comment, even casually, fans the flames of oh so many fuckheads. The latest article makes it sound like he kind of gets that, so the people writing the interviews and titles need to calm down.

 

I think we need to remember Rian wrote this movie as TFA was being shot. Its been reported multiple times JJ wanted more time to make TFA and release it a half year later and was denied because Disney wanted it out 2015. JJ probably had an idea where it was going but people act like he had full scripts for each movie that Rian threw out and theres very little chance thats the case. Theres no way he had time to go that deep into a script when he was already pressed for time

 

I did know all of the stuff Jason was saying about the Lord of the Rings movies changing a ton all during production - it is one of the major things I don't like about Peter Jackson's style of filmmaking - but I still do think they stuck to the main overarching story beats right from the beginning much moreso than the 3 Hobbit films. The story they were telling with the LOTR movies did not change by the end, and with the Hobbit films I really feel like it did. I admit Peter Jackson's LOTR movies were not a good example to use when saying you should write a story and script ahead of time and stick to it - I only meant as compared to his later 3 Hobbit films.

 

The Last Jedi was essentially a two-hour tribute to Luke. It felt made for and around Mark Hamill.

It's the best thing he's ever been in by far, his best acting and most memorable performances.

I don't see how he can still shed a negative light?

 

LOTR had absolutely no right to turn out the way it did. That they pulled it off is nothing short of a miracle and is even more reason to hold the trilogy as one of the greatest filmmaking feats of all time.