A 'darker' Hobbit

[Sauron the White]

WCH - Ridley Scott did his own version - it was called LEGEND and it sucked bigtime. Heroic fantasy has been something of quicksand for many filmmakers and Scott is just one example. The fact that Jackson did the three films and they had such huge success on several fronts is a profound statement in and of itself.

You claim the films are shallow. To support this you claim

There is nothing intellectually challenging, and what little tone of high seriousness to be found is quickly dispersed by the next popcorn-movie moment.

Sounds to me like you are a "glass is half empty" kind of person. Moments such as the funeral song sung by Eowyn is far from shallow and resembles nothing in pupl slam bam fiction. We have many soft moments such as the conversation about life and death between Gandalf and Frodo in Moria, Arwens vision of a child, Arwen by the tomb of Aragorn, Theoden reciting as he puts on his armor, the four hobbits back in the pub treated as strangers by the rest of the world they saved, ... all that and more. If Jackson wanted to make a mere sword and sorcery epic, none of that would have been in there. None of it.

SHALLOW says to me that it is very one dimensional and that single dimension is without nuance or subtlety. The scenes I mentioned put that claim to rest. And there are more. Many more.

If all you want to see is the action - that is your choice. Just admit your biases going in.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Bethberry ... if you reread my post you will see that I did not connect a dislike of the Jackson films with a denial of the historical record. That indeed would be an error of logic as you state. What I said was this


Quote:
You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.

My statement was directed at those who want to imply that the LOTR films were some type of failure simply because they did not approve of them or of parts of them. I provided three industry standards to measure a films success. All three were achieved by the LOTR films ... and then some.

Oh dear. Do forgive me for reading your "But" as an intensifier, since it began the sentence, rather than as a conjunction implying contrast.

This is really a matter of tomayto or tomahto. There are several measures of success viewers can point to and several definitions of success. Popularity and critical acclaim are some, and I applaud your endeavours to search out all these websites. (For the record, they do not record some of the negative reviews by critics in my town, but then I don't live in the centre of the cinematic universe--probably the suburbs. ) Yet these polls and statistics do not deprive viewers of the right of individual definitions of failure. If a person was not pleased with the movies, then the movies failed for them.

For me, I applaud the moving of Boromir's death to the end of the first movie, as it gave that movie a very dramatic climax and implied greater peril to come. It shook us (me?) out of the happy sweet depiction of the Shire and prepared for the darkness to come and gave a satisfying conclusion to the character we saw arguing at Elrond's Council. Well and good. I can't say, however, that Denethor's Plunge did anything but to turn the event into cinematic histrionics. It sacrificed a study of the terrible effect on Denethor of looking into the palantir for special effect. As well, Denethor's death paled substantively beside that of his son Boromir; had these two deaths been more closely related with similar emotional effect, I would have cared more about the fate of the White City. As it was, I kept thinking of the Emperor's fall in SW3 and that, for me, was a mistake. I laughed, instead of cried, I suppose I could say. I'm sure there are many who are quite happy with laughing.

Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the matter. I wouldn't for the world deny you your têtê à têtê with others who may be more extreme than I in their condemnation of the movies, so do carry on without me.

[Sauron the White]

I cannot disagree with your analysis of the Denethor plunge situation. Perhaps the justification was the wide angle shot which showed the armies of Mordor as they laid siege to Minas Tirith. I suspect that was the purpose of it.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

According to the DVD supplementals, they used that shot because they already had it: they ran backwards the model-tracking run they had already made to open the coronation scene (crowds/armies were of course added later.


It's still silly. But by that point I SO didn't care what happened to film-Denethor anyway.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

It's still silly. But by that point I SO didn't care what happened to film-Denethor anyway.

Yes, he was rather an oaf wasn't he? Not a shred of the dignity that Denethor possessed in the books. But one of the best scenes of the movie is where he orders Pippin to sing. The juxtaposition of Denethor mauling his food, Pippin singing plaintively and Faramir's doomed ride was perhaps the only Jackson inspired piece I cared for in the whole film.

[Findegil]

Ohh, what a nice topic this has been - back on page one of this thread!

Didn't we have this discussion many times before? It is boring and fruitless and both sides have already learned that several times. So why again ruin a topic by puting in arguments about Peter Jacksons films?

First of all: The topic was JRR Tolkiens revisions of his own book 'The Hobbit' - not to make a movie out of it but to make it a diffrent book.

Second: Peter Jackson is out of the 'Hobbit-Film', as far as I know. (I do not care much, so don't put to much trust on my word in this matter.) So what ever we think he could have done will remain speculation for ever.

Third: Since the rights of "Return to Bag-End" are not sold, and probably will not be sold as long as the Tolkien trust can help it, we won't get that 'darker Hobbit' as a film.

Respectfully
Findegil