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I've never been a fan of Elijah Wood as Frodo. Wood tends to play up the uncertain, young, vulnerable aspect of Frodo (which he does in all of his films), whereas I would prefer him to be more balanced. Frodo in the novels is uncertain, young and vulnerable, but he is also the eldest of the hobbits, deeply strong and dedicated at the core, and has something of a noble spirit. I don't see any of that in Wood's performance.
Viggo Mortensen was good as far as that goes, but Aragorn as a character has many of the same problems as Gandalf. He's not very complex, not very subtle. He's certainly not an accessible character; the very qualities that make him regal are what keeps us from getting close to him. Add that to the fact that Jackson decided to change the character and it makes for a movie experience that I just can't get excited about.
In general I think Jackson's weakness is the way in which he changed the story. Obviously, it is necessary to make cuts to a story the size of LotR in order to fit it into even 12 hours of film, but cuts and changes are very different. When you cut, you remove things that you can't fit in. It's lamentable, but inevitable. When you change the story, you are saying that you can do it better than the original author, that his story was weak and needs to be different.
You see this in his explanations for what he did with Aragorn, Arwen and Faramir. He made Aragorn less noble, less confident, less of a king in order to make him more accessible to the audience. That's the same reason he made Arwen into a fighting woman, and expanded the presence of her romance with Aragorn (which is relegated to an appendix in the book). And changing Aragorn meant that he had to also change Faramir, since it is crucial that Faramir not seem more noble and fair than Aragorn.
To me, changes like that show a profound disrespect to both the author and the audience. On the one hand, he claims that the author was not a good enough writer to create characters that people will care about. And on the other hand he doesn't think the audience will be patient enough to believe in or want to watch the characters as written. I firmly believe that if he had been more true to the characters, people would have been just as interested and involved, if not more so.
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again I really enjoyed his role. I think i like the fact that he is such a huge fan of the novel and is able to live out a dream by playing a roile in the movies. He definately gives his all in the role. Although this has been ranted about in other threads I am definately bummed his scenes were cut from RotK.
Edit: for brain fart (put down sauron instead of saruman)
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I was disappointed by the changes in the character of Saruman. In the books, Saruman (apparently rather egomaniacal) believes he can rival Sauron himself. He creates his orcs to be his own army, not the Dark Lord's. He is trying to forge his own One Ring. Though not a good guy, he is by no means on Sauron's side.
But in the movie, Saruman becomes just another lackey cowed by Sauron's power. Though Lee played his role well, the role itself could have been better.
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posted
Hmmm - as I recall from the books, Saruman (according to Gandalf) thought he was acting on his own, but in actuality had given over to despair at the lies Sauron was telling. So, perhaps unwittingly, he really did work for Sauron - plus, as was pointed out in the books (and I thin the extended version at one brief point) - anything dividing the defenders in their attempts to thwart Sauron was a plus for Sauron.
Saruman? Does that jive with your recollection, baby?
Boromir - sigh. Nummy. What else has he been in? (Stop gasping with shock ) And he definitely brought depth to the character that simply wasn't made plain in the books although much could be inferred.
I, too, was a wee distressed at the re-making of Arwen - and finally passed it off as a filmmaking ploy/necessity.
As far as some of the "unfamiliar" parts that might be considered a remake, read both The Silmarrilion and the ROTK Appendixes. I remember reading somewhere that both Jackson and cast really steeped themselves in the overall picture.
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quote:Hmmm - as I recall from the books, Saruman (according to Gandalf) thought he was acting on his own, but in actuality had given over to despair at the lies Sauron was telling. So, perhaps unwittingly, he really did work for Sauron - plus, as was pointed out in the books (and I thin the extended version at one brief point) - anything dividing the defenders in their attempts to thwart Sauron was a plus for Sauron.
My point is that the character of Saruman in the books is far more complex than the character in the films, and I think that the fact that Jackson "dumbed down" yet another important character is just another example of how little trust he has in either Tolkien or the audience.
quote:As far as some of the "unfamiliar" parts that might be considered a remake, read both The Silmarrilion and the ROTK Appendixes. I remember reading somewhere that both Jackson and cast really steeped themselves in the overall picture.
I've read both multiple times. Are you talking about the Arwen/Aragorn thing? See, to me it seems quite telling that Tolkien did not include that story as part of the main body of LotR, but rather, as an appendix. The Silmarillion was never meant to be published, and in fact was only published after J.R.R. had died. Many Tolkien scholars(?) don't even consider it to be canon, though that's really neither here nor there. The story did exist, insofar as Tolkien had thought it up, but he apparently did not think it, along with quite a lot of backstory, was important enough to include in his published work. I think that's an important point.
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Sean Bean (the actor who plays Boromir) has also been in Goldeneye, the first James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head.
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Back to Aragorn, Sci Fi Channel just anounced the actor who plays Aragorn is up for a main part in the next Batman movie--as the villian.
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I certainly agree with you saxon, on the "dumbing down" of Saruman's role in the movie - and yes, I know the The Sil was published posthumously (along with numerous other works), but my point on that was that the director/actors were relying heavily on those items to fill in spots for moviegoers not familiar with the written works - whether we take it as gospel truth or not, THEY did and I think you need to take it into account when you critically review (critically meant in the analytical sense, not the negative sense) the movie and the cast/director presentation of various roles! Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I know there are a lot of ent lovers out there and I certainly enjoyed them in the books but... the scenes with treebeard are my least favorite, visually, in the entire movie. I though the voice work done by John Rhys-Davies was good. It was very much as I had imagined it should be but the actually Ents themselves just looked way different then I had thought. The first time I watched TTT and every time since I have thought the Ents just don't flow very well. To me it just looks like blue screene work. I mean you can tell and it bugged me. Plus I was unhappy about the way they moved. I know it would have been very difficult to show the way Tolkien described them, with their legs unbending and stiff but because they don't look that way in the movies they have always just looked wrong. I know I'm kind of nit-picking here but this was one of the very few elements of the movies I didn't like very much.
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I think each of us had in our own mind the way we personally thought Tree-ents "looked" when we read the book. I doubt the movie represented any of our imaginations very well. The book allowed us the freedom to really create that picture in our mind uniquely.
I know my oldest son is especially fond of the Ents part of the story, and although he liked them okay in the movie, he too said they "moved" differently than he had pictured it, etc.
But BEFORE the movie, if you tried to get him to explain him vision of how Tree-Ents should be portrayed, he couldn't put it into words. I think it would be very difficult. We went into the movie having already discussed the fact that as a director, that would be one of the most difficult parts of the book to portray.
I think John Rys Davies did a good job with the voice, but whatever effect they did to it later makes it hard to understand. I would have rather heard it with out a bunch of interference. I always thought Treebeard's voice was like the bass at a concert, so deep you could feel it in your chest. This just didn't do it for me.
Billy and Dom did a great job acting with it, though.
quote:I think you need to take it into account when you critically review . . . the movie and the cast/director presentation of various roles!
I disagree. The problem here is that there are two very different ways to view Tolkien's work, resulting in two very different ideas of what is important in the work.
On the one hand, the sheer volume of detail Tolkien created for his fantasy world is awe-inspiring. As you may know, Tolkien was a linguist, and LotR grew out of a linguistic experiment. This prompted him to create a whole history and pre-history for Middle-Earth. A lot of people see all of this and think, "Wow, this world is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen." And this is quite clearly how Jackson approached the project. You may not be able to tell from my responses in this thread, but I think that Jackson has done a masterful job at giving us Middle-Earth. I simply cannot imagine the world being brought to the screen in a better way.
On the other hand, the story that Tolkien wrote is moving, exciting, wise, and complex. He created a wide variety of characters, each with a distinct role and personality, giving pretty much everyone someone to be interested in or to identify with. Moreover, he was deeply familiar with the relationships between these characters, and understood how important that was for telling the story. A lot of people see all of this and say, "Wow, this is a well-constructed and important story." And this is much more how I approach the texts. I am very fascinated with the world as a phenomenon of its own, as an object of study. That's why I have bothered to read the Silmarillion and the appendices and several of the History of Middle-Earth books. But what really moves me, what really makes the novels important to me, what keeps bringing me back for more is the story.
Peter Jackson is a world-builder, not a story-teller. He looks at LotR and sees Middle-Earth, and is passionate about showing it to us. But he is so wrapped up in the technical details of the world that he never bothered to really understand the story or the characters in it. That's why he feels justified in making many of the changes he made; as long as we are getting a good sense of Middle-Earth and the sweeping scope of its history, the individual characters or events are not as important.
I strongly disagree with this approach to Tolkien's work. Tolkien knew what he was doing when he wrote LotR; he was writing a story. If all he had wanted to do was give us the world, he would have written an encyclopedia, or a history textbook, or a language reference, or maybe even a series of biographies. He wouldn't have written a novel.
So, I disagree that I need to take into consideration that Jackson and the cast consider the Silmarillion to be primary, because I disagree with the entire viewpoint from which the films were constructed.
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posted
I remember watching something on the LotR website about the making of Fanghorn and ents, and the SFX guys said it was incredibly difficult to create ents because in essence, they are trees. Fantasy creatures like Balrogs or Fell Beasts are easy because it's basically the interpretation of the artists, but EVERYONE knows what a tree looks like, so in order to convince the audience, it HAS to look like a tree. They are already limited in what they can do with it.
That said, I thought the ents were pretty well done. They're not my favorite characters visually, but I thought the voice was well done. I didn't think the actual character development was done enough in the theatrical release, but I started tearing up when Treebeard talked about entlings and enwives in the EE. I thought some parts of it just made the ents look rediculous, but there were some golden moments.
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posted
There is no single hero of LotR. The closest there is is Sam and Frodo, together.
Frodo was the once-in-an-Age hero, who by nature of the time he's in and the sacrifice required, loses the most. He gains the most too, incidentally-essentially gets to visit the Land of the Gods. While he'll never be totally whole and happy, that's not a bad perk, is it?
Sam is the everyday hero, the go-to guy like Olivet mentioned. He's the one we all can or could be, while only one in a million of us could be Frodo. Sam is also the one many of us want to be...while only a fool would *want* to be Frodo.
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quote:I think John Rys Davies did a good job with the voice, but whatever effect they did to it later makes it hard to understand. I would have rather heard it with out a bunch of interference. I always thought Treebeard's voice was like the bass at a concert, so deep you could feel it in your chest. This just didn't do it for me.
ITA.
And I didn't like the way they looked, either. The faces were okay, but the legs were way too long.
I'm too excited for Wednesday to think about anyone person or group of people. Or at least too excited to think of one to review so...
Lets review everyone, or anyone, or anything. If I've left out your favorite or you're least favorite, tells us about it. There are far too many characters left and far too few days in which to review them all. I'll just be patiently waiting for Wednesday! Thanks for everyone who wrote in and reiewed these awsome characters with me. In a small way it has helped pass the time for me so my goal was accomplished.
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posted
I'd like to put my vote for best choreography in TTT on the scene in which Faramir and his second spend a ton of time tapping the map. Tap the map!!!!
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Thursday - with a group of Beautiful People from church. Fun (cute guys), nerve-wracking (harsh girls), and irritating (one extraordinarily snobby long-timer), BUT it should be wonderful.
Friday - with a group of wonderful and geeky friends from work. Yay!
January - with the wenches. SuperYay!
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