Posted on 12/19/2001 1:16:53 PM PST by NYS_Eric
I love the way that every time the Ring is put down, or dropped, it doesn't bounce several times like a regular ring, or make a dainty little "pinga-ping" sound, instead it lands and just STOPS with a weighty THUD, like there's eighty pounds of plutonium hidden in it. It lands like a little ring-shaped anvil.
Oh, and how about that opening battle flashback, showing Sauron at the peak of his ring-enhanced power? Whoa... He makes the Terminator look like a schoolgirl.
You know, I'm not so sure...
I know this is going to be considered sacrilege, but in a lot of ways the movie is MORE than the books.
I saw the film this afternoon (loved it), and then while Christmas shopping afterwards I ran across a display of the books for sale. I hadn't read them in 20 years, so I picked up FoTR and flipped through it while I was waiting for my wife to finish browsing.
I was astonished to see that the entire Balrog appearance was little more than one page, and not very detailed in description. The pacing was so rushed that it was over before the reader had a chance to work up any real suspense -- one paragraph of introduction talking about fire and shadow, and then Gandalf bonks his wand and it's gone into the abyss. In my memory of reading that passage, I had remembered it as being a more epic encounter, fully fleshed out. The movie brought much more to this scene than ever appeared in the book.
And in the books Boromir's death (at the start of the second book, but included in the first movie) was truly nothing more than "hey, Boromir's blowing his horn, he must be in trouble, let's run to help him -- oh look, a big pile of dead orcs and Boromir's arrow-riddled body, I guess we're too late. Damn, let's stuff him on a boat and watch him float away." The film did his final fight and send-off far more justice.
I actually checked the cover of the the editions I was browsing to see if they were some sort of abridged children's version. They weren't. Even the prose was clunky and embarrassingly simplistic compared to my memory of it. Tolkien had a wonderful imagination and could weave an epic yarn, but as a *storyteller*, he left a lot of room for improvement.
The film actually did better in that regard, in my opinion (at least in the scenes which appeared -- films are always under time constraints and have to abandon other scenes which might have been helpful to the narrative).
I read the original comment with complete disbelief!
Who are you, Joe Schem? How exactly did you 'graciously allow' Sir Ian McKellan to be cast in this film? Did you have a vote?
Legolas - steals all the battle scenes. Orland Bloom takes a small roll at this point in the trilogy and turns it into a scene stealing performance as one mega-bad-a@@ warrior and archer.
Boy, didn't he? After watching his performance, I nudged the wife and said, "Why didn't the Fellowship just clone Legolas and take 10 of him?" Pretty freaky how quick he could fire those arrows.
Did you notice that at one point, he nocked and fired *two* arrows simultaneously?
Be sure you read them in order, though, as characters appear and/or are killed off, and if you read them out of sequence it won't be as satisfying.
Well, he's an elf. He's had how many thousands of years to practice?
I think that the LOTR stands as a towering Movie amongst movies, whereas the book is merely a good book in amongst towering feats of literary achievement. The movie is a better movie than the book is a book, if that makes any sense.
Book is ALWAYS better. Impossible to satisfy the imaginative narrative when transitioning from book to movie. This is the best screen adaptation I've ever seen. Bar none.
I totally agree. This is John Howe's rendition of the Balrog. Super evil demon at its best!!! WOW!
The one I like is "It comes in pints?"
Good point. It's only my memory of the book that makes it seem that way. The book had a vaster scale, that the movie just doesn't have time to capture.
I'm not sure how it would look to my eyes If I hadn't read the book. I've heard some say the time flies by. Others say it's too long.
He is dead wrong about too much time on the Balrog/Moria scene. He is literarily wrong--while Tolkien does expend few words on the scene in the Fellowship, in Two Towers Gandalf explains what happened at the bridge. Thus, the scene is important for metaphysical reasons; it simultaneously establishes Gandalf's power and vulnerability. Ebert doesn't know this, because he just skimmed the book to write his review. (What an airhead!)
He is dead wrong about the need for a more Hobbit-centric story line. I went through the movie very concerned that life in Hobbiton wasn't sufficiently developed, that Ebert was right about Jackson failing to provide a basis for identifying with the hobbits and that this movie is merely a sword and sorcery movie with little people.
But by the end, the very end, when Sam and Frodo turn to face the bleak terrain of the Emyn Muil, you see the daunting prospect through their eyes, you are with them in their soul.
It's about the eyes, Ebert. The evil eye of Sauron, versus the pure, simple, limpid eyes of the hobbits.
Pity poor Ebert. He has viewed so many decadent productions, he only has an eye for the distorted, malformed films that pass as art today. Too bad, because he missed seeing a great, great movie.
The Nazgul are scary, in that they are straight out of every childhood nightmare. The Orcs are ugly and somewhat scary creatures. The BALROG WILL SCARE ANYONE!!!! also, Bilbo's temptation by the ring in Rivendell is a shocker scare.
But the sheer scope and wonder of the movie more than overshadows the scary parts, and while there is a lot of fighting - there is no gore or gratuitous violence. And for 3 hours you are treated to no CUSSING and NO SEXUAL INNUENDO!!!!
I say take him - he will lov it -- and to deny him the experience of this masterpiece would be more of a crime than the possibilities of him having a nightmare about the Balrog or Nazgul.
9 yes. Any younger and they will probably be disturbed, although the violence was no worse than what they would see in an episode of Xena. There was some cartoonish action at the begining when Sauron was sending a dozen elves and men flying with each smite of his club. And later we see some orcs stabbed, shot in the head with arrows, one major decapitation, and a hero shot thrice with arrows.
A younger child would probably be more disturbed by the wall crawling orcs in the mines, or the demonic balrog than anything else, but I think a nine year old would eat it up.
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