Movie Reviews 2.0

[eloic]

Yes, that should be fine. The Hobbit trilogy does the book much more justice, but it makes some extra effort to blend into the other trilogy, so clearly designed to be watchable in narrative sequence.

But although the book TLOTR takes more than 100 pages to get going, once it does, it is so much better than the films.

Only the first movie of the TLOTR movie trilogy is truly good and rewatcheable and in some ways actually an improvement on the book and, also quite rare, an improvement on my own imagination.

The other two have as many highlights as parts I just cannot bear to watch again and have to skip.

TLOTR should have been a Game of Thrones style high quality many season tv series. And with some improved direction.

Thanks for the info.

It's just I usually read things first, and watch later. In this case, I wanted to know if The Hobbit book - The Hobbit films - LOTR book - LOTR films is ok. Otherwise, I would read LOTR before watching both Hobbit and LOTR trilogies. So if you think that The Hobbit films won't spoil the following novels and films, great.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I think I would watch the movies first and then read the books later for added depth. Often movies seem worse and disappointing after the book has you expecting things to happen differently and you have a mental note on things already.

I personally think the extended edition of Two Towers is the best one from the LoTR-trilogy, but they are all great. I do recommend the extended editions with all of them. I've seen them all multiple times. Hobbits I only watched once and I think I thought the first two very enjoyable, but the final movie was weaker.

 

[wco81]

I don't even like the genre but I think I'd watch them eventually just to see the New Zealand scenery.

 

[eloic]

Often movies seem worse and disappointing after the book has you expecting things to happen differently and you have a mental note on things already.

I'm used to that, but I really can't watch a movie if a book came first.

I don't even like the genre but I think I'd watch them eventually just to see the New Zealand scenery.

Nice!

 

[Davros]

I guess it's a lot like Shakespeare, It's much better in the original Klingon

 

[wco81]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/amazon-lord-of-the-rings-series-news-cast/

BTW, Amazon is estimated to have spent $200-250 million to get rights to develop a show based on LOTR and will spend $1 billion for at least 5 seasons of this series.

 

[KimB]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/amazon-lord-of-the-rings-series-news-cast/

BTW, Amazon is estimated to have spent $200-250 million to get rights to develop a show based on LOTR and will spend $1 billion for at least 5 seasons of this series.

That definitely has potential. Honestly I think that the way the Hobbit and LoTR were written they lend themselves more to a TV series than a movie.

But five seasons seems like too much. I'm worried they'll try to add a bunch of extra stories and mess them up. It's really hard to expand upon such a well-known world in a way that won't make a lot of people upset.

 

[hoom]

There are some bits of the Hobbit movies involving The Necromancer & The White Council in a lot more detail than the book & which are sort of spoilers for LotR/may not make much sense without LotR.

Watching the movies may spoil your internal conception/visual as you read LotR.
That may be a good thing since the visual design stuff is really good (even if not necessarily compatible with Tolkien canon)
eg reading Hobbit & well into LotR I interpreted the Elves as something like Xmas Elves: little & slightly comical, so it was always hard for me to picture them as serious, powerful warriors.
Personally I still think of them as smaller, weaker, more mischevious & naive than the commonly accepted version.


Amazon series is pretty exciting.
5 Seasons of just following pre-LotR Aragorn is absolutely possible within guidelines of known canon.
It may even be a problem to cram it all in within only 5 seasons without it feeling like rushing from fan-service to fan-service.

Spoiler

Aside from the early years with his father being killed, then fostered with Elrond with hidden identity before coming of age, meeting Arwen (gratuitous human/elf sex scenes?!) & a lot of rangering in the North (presumably including visits to many ruins of Arnor & Angmar), Gandalf (himself extremely widely travelled) calls Aragorn "the greatest traveller and huntsman in this age of the world".

In canon we know he spent 20-30 years journeying around Middle Earth: fighting in the armies of Rohan & Gondor, into the South leading a successful raid on Umbar, then journeying far into the East.
Returning to the West re-meets Arwen in Lothlorien & enters Moria from East Gate at some point.
Closer to LotR after returning to the North & more rangering he is sent by Gandalf to hunt for Gollum post-Hobbit, captures him in the Dead Marshes and brings him through Mirkwood to Thranduil to be interrogated by Gandalf.

So they have legitimate canon reason to take the story through pretty much the entirety of Third Age Middle Earth locations, feature pretty much all the cultures and many of the key characters.

Additional to that is potential to run flashbacks of the exploits of his ancestry through basically the whole Legendarium from Bëor the first Human leader who came from the East & helped the First Age Elves, through Eärendil & his son Elros (brother of Elrond) first king of Numenor & his line down through the destruction of Numenor to the kings of Arnor and its break-up fighting the Witch-King then the rangers.
Or at least the Numenor & Arnor bits since I understand First Age is still verboten.

 

[eloic]

There are some bits of the Hobbit movies involving The Necromancer & The White Council in a lot more detail than the book & which are sort of spoilers for LotR/may not make much sense without LotR.

Hm... I think I will pass on the movies until I read all the books, then. Besides liking to do things in a chronological order (release date of books and movies), I like to compare the things I see in movies/series to the things I imagined while reading.

 

[Malo]

Maybe it will be like 24 and the entire journey to Mordor is in real-time! Won't that be exciting!

 

[eloic]

Maybe it will be like 24 and the entire journey to Mordor is in real-time! Won't that be exciting!

I'm not sure how that post makes me feel. 24 is a guilty pleasure of mine.

 

[Malo]

I'm not sure how that post makes me feel. 24 is a guilty pleasure of mine.

I loved 24. Imagine most of the episode them walking... walking... walking... cooking potatoes.

 

[hoom]

Episode 1: Breakfast
Episode 2: Break camp & walking
Episode 3: 2nd Breakfast
Episode 4: Walking
Episode 5: Elevenses
Episode 6: Walking
Episode 7: Lunch
Episode 8: Walking
Episode 9: Afternoon Tea
Episode 10: Walking, make camp
Episode 11: Dinner
Episode 12: Camp songs
Episode 13: Supper
Episode 14: Drunken camp songs
Episode 15: Sleeping
Episode 16: Sleeping
Episode 17: Up for a pee in the dark
...

 

[hoom]

Season 4 is just 24 episodes of Merry & Pippin pigging out and getting stoned smoking Longbottom Leaf in the pantry of Isengard.

 

[nutball]

Hm... I think I will pass on the movies until I read all the books, then. Besides liking to do things in a chronological order (release date of books and movies), I like to compare the things I see in movies/series to the things I imagined while reading.

My take - for what it's worth and as someone who likes the books(*) but isn't embedded in them. The extended edition LOTR movies are probably about as good as was possible, given the constraints on budget, SFX at the time, and how long the bulk of people will voluntarily sit on their backsides in a cinema for "fun". They are true to the book in some senses, diverge in others. You are probably better off treating them as two different stories with the same name (as, for instance Game Of Thrones has evolved in to). The movies won't spoil anything about the books (spoiler alert: the good guys win).

The Hobbit movies on the other hand. The book is significantly shorter than LOTR yet the movies end up being more or less the same length. Take that as you will. I honestly think that if Jackson had made the Hobbit movies first, the studio would not have allowed him to pad them out so much, and they would have been better for it.

(*) The Hobbit was like the third or fourth book I read as a kid, after The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Encyclopaedia of Science, and a few other nonsenses about Jack & Jill doing some dodgy shit. As a six or seven year-old, whatever I was at the time, I thought it was great. Now as a fifty year-old, I'm less convinced. The writing style now seems to me a little child-like.

TL;DR - watch the movies, read the books, don't get hung up on the order you do either.

 

[eloic]

My take - for what it's worth and as someone who likes the books(*) but isn't embedded in them. The extended edition LOTR movies are probably about as good as was possible, given the constraints on budget, SFX at the time, and how long the bulk of people will voluntarily sit on their backsides in a cinema for "fun". They are true to the book in some senses, diverge in others. You are probably better off treating them as two different stories with the same name (as, for instance Game Of Thrones has evolved in to). The movies won't spoil anything about the books (spoiler alert: the good guys win).

The Hobbit movies on the other hand. The book is significantly shorter than LOTR yet the movies end up being more or less the same length. Take that as you will. I honestly think that if Jackson had made the Hobbit movies first, the studio would not have allowed him to pad them out so much, and they would have been better for it.

(*) The Hobbit was like the third or fourth book I read as a kid, after The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Encyclopaedia of Science, and a few other nonsenses about Jack & Jill doing some dodgy shit. As a six or seven year-old, whatever I was at the time, I thought it was great. Now as a fifty year-old, I'm less convinced. The writing style now seems to me a little child-like.

TL;DR - watch the movies, read the books, don't get hung up on the order you do either.

Thank you for your recommendation. Nevertheless, after considering everything, I will wait and read the books first.

And yes, I understand that The Hobbit was a story for children and I knew that before reading the book, so the style didn't catch me unawares.

 

[tangey]

LOTR film trilogy brilliantly encapsulates the books in my opinion and was a work of genius, that brought my imagination of the books to the screen. I read the books at least 6-7 times as a kid, but never read the end, always wanted to leave a bit unknown and start again, which is a bit wierd I admit. I did find the books a bit of a drag around the middle. I only became aware of the outcome of the final battle from the movie, and as for the end scenes, I didn't see that coming.

The hobbit movies on the other hand where too corrupted by the commerical needs. The hobbit book is primarily about Bilbo's adventures going to fight the dragon. That's it. The movies put in a lot of "filler" that doesn't exist in the book, including constant references and side-stories to evil rumblings and impending dread that precursor the narrative of LOTRs ( no such mention AT ALL in the book, i.e. the entire necromancer story is NOT from JRR Tolkiens book), and includes a lot of characters that don't exist in the book, including Galadriel and especially Legolas, which again was used to make a tie to LOTRs that never exists in the book. The Female Elve that has a crush on one of the Dwarves, is a central character in the movies and yet does not exist in the book.

LOTRs was 1200+ pages, was naturally split into 3 physical books, and made 3 films.
The Hobbit was a couple hundred pages and resulted in 2 films, 60+% of which was narrative that did not come from the book.

For someone who hasn't either read or seen LOTRs, I'd suggest reading the books then marvel at how the films bring them to life.

 

[BRiT]

Agreed. The Hobbit was too much filler included in the 3 films.

 

[3dilettante]

The Hobbit movies on the other hand. The book is significantly shorter than LOTR yet the movies end up being more or less the same length. Take that as you will. I honestly think that if Jackson had made the Hobbit movies first, the studio would not have allowed him to pad them out so much, and they would have been better for it.

Assuming that the studio would have allowed a Hobbit movie to be made without the precedent set by the LOTR for high-budget fantasy success: I think that if the LOTR movies had not been made first, the studio would not have mandated three movies rather than the two originally planned.
On top of that, the way LOTR created a cultural stamp as to what epic fantasy movies should be may have been part of why Del Toro's original separate vision was discarded and they goaded Jackson into doing another trilogy that tried to tie in heavily with the LOTR. The safe bet for commercial success was to put out more movies to get more ticket sales, and to guarantee more sales by padding it out with content similar to and connected with Jackson's prior work regardless of whether the source material really matched it.

 

[Svensk Viking]

Speaking of Lotr, I recently rewatched the 1978 film, and I'd totally love a new take on that. That film was dark and gloomy, and it had some nice details that you appreciate if you have read the book (such as Legolas dropping an arrow out of chock when recognizing the Balrog)