Subject:
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Re: LoTR # 1 on IMDB
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Sat, 22 Dec 2001 06:53:08 GMT
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Viewed:
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453 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Richard Marchetti writes:
> One of my problems with the current LOTR movie is that I REALLY don't have a
> lot of prior knowledge of the material. Noeckel suggests that this film
> should be viewed as the first part of a much larger work
This line of argument is of course only fair when taken as "of course there
is a deficiency in its incompleteness, but the next film will turn that into
an asset." (You will probably be let down again at its ending... it too
should have the same sense of things that are just beginning.)
My view is that part 1 has to be just successful enough to guarantee part 2,
and 3. We, the die-hard core, will see the film twice on opening day no
matter what, and again on opening weekend if we liked it, and you will be
enticed in as a newcomer if the news is good, so it breaks even. It's really
a miniseries, but is too expensive to release on TV. You've been drafted to
help finance it at the box office instead.
Now, was anything really confusing in your viewing? Were you not
entertained? Did just one line of the movie make you stop and think?
> -- and I am not
> sure that's fair seeing as how the next two installments are respectively
> one and two years away. With such long gaps in between releases, I think I
> needed something a little more self-contained.
What's not self-contained here? All you complained about was that you didn't
have time to care about the characters. Yeah, it was rushed. They didn't
spend enough time walking, walking, walking, and chatting, and reciting
poetry. You want an ending? The only ending is the one Tolkien made in the
book: a climactic transition between a Fellowship of characters, and the
next phase which is the stories of their individual travails. The story of
the Fellowship of the Ring, is that the Ring shatters the Fellowship.
(Note: No Towers are shattered in 'The Two Towers'.)
> I wouldn't have used this
> criteria against the film if the releases had been one every few weeks (say
> one now in December, another in January, and the third in February) -- if
> the filmmakers want the benefits of a serial feeling they can't make us wait
> a year in between things. A year from now I may not even care about seeing
> part 2, I will have lost the thread of the plot (except that the story so
> far is staggeringly simple) and most of the names of the characters most
> likely.
Yes, these are all flaws of everything Tolkien. You had to wait forever to
get it, it required a sort of fanatical loyalty to comprehend it, and the
characters' names were impossible. And your teacher told you it was not real
literature, and you admitted it couldn't be psychoanalyzed like Faulkner.
And if you succeeded in this ritual of finishing Lord of the Rings, you had
only skimmed the surface.... you had to comprehend Ainulindale, Valaquenta,
and Quenta Silmarillion to earn your true salt. Or at least stop skipping
the poems. And then there were even more levels to it... and it still wasn't
too deep or mysterious, only strangely wonderful.
Aren't we lucky that Tolkien's publisher insisted on a nice short story
people could identify with, like Lord of the Rings?
> Let me put it this way: it was a beautiful film, but there are far
> better beautiful films that tell the story in about 2 hours and have no
> sequels.
Yeah, this is what happens when films are made from books.
Of all your favorite movies, does more than one of those bear a passing
resemblance to any book? Mostly they were meant as 2-hour movies from the
start. Hamlet doesn't count because it was even a drama. How many characters
do you expect to know well in a 2-hour script? And who connects to 'Hamlet'
on the first try?
Lord of the Rings is spread over too much ground. You're going to meet just
as many more new characters in the next installment, and the one after that.
Books make bad movies because books assume you have time to think about what
you are taking in.
Peter Jackson is crazy enough to act out a childhood fantasy.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LoTR # 1 on IMDB
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| (...) No, I was entertained. The movie is good , just perhaps not great. But no, nothing about the movie made me stop and think about anything save its obvious visual beauty. Most of the stuff passing as a plot is little more than rehashed Norse (...) (23 years ago, 22-Dec-01, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LoTR # 1 on IMDB
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| (...) I might have used a different metaphor, but I agree. One of my problems with the current LOTR movie is that I REALLY don't have a lot of prior knowledge of the material. Noeckel suggests that this film should be viewed as the first part of a (...) (23 years ago, 21-Dec-01, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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