JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Other Middle-Earth Stories Book • Page 8

I wasn't so much upset at fidelity to the books, or lack thereof, in regards to Saruman's fate as I was in feeling that a character built up as important through so much of the films so far needed a more satisfying on-screen conclusion to his story. The last you see of him is a brief shot of him looking around while backing into Orthanc while Sam is making his big speech at the end. He isn't even the focus of the scene and there are many other things being shown.

I think that was probably the best place structurally to wrap up Saruman's storyline - as the filmmakers themselves figured out when they began working on the final edit for the 3rd film - but the way it plays out in the theatricals feels like the filmmakers simply forgot about him and then tossed in a quick line of dialogue after the fact explaining what happened. That's not very satisfying.

 

Got around to TTT theatrical version last night. Honestly the only part I really missed from the extended was at the end when Sam says to Faramir "You have shown your true quality", which links back to something Faramir said earlier in the movie and is a really great little moment.

 

Sam: “Come, Mr. Frodo. I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you”

*proceeds to carry Frodo up Mount Doom*


Weird flex but okay

 

What?

 

Besides the first one, which I saw when it came out, I started watching the trilogy for the first time this weekend. I’m only an hour in to Return of The King, but i think my ranking atm is ROTK >/= FOTR > TTT

 

Curious what you thought after finishing ROTK. Only watching one hour of that movie is pretty tough to make a judgment call on haha.

 

The last hour of ROTK is stupid amazing.

 

I love the two towers. The how did it come to this scene might be my favorite

 

FOTR is a perfect adventure movie with one of the all-time best cliffhangers.

TTT moves at breakneck pace and has the best battle in the history of cinema. Recently my favorite of the trilogy.

ROTK is the most inconsistent but has the highest highs of the series. The pacing is weird though, especially in the last hour.

 

I don’t like the Army of the Dead at all. It’s the low point of the trilogy for me.

 

FOTR is almost a perfect movie, and I think the filmmakers struck the absolute perfect balance in not knowing how anything was going to be received at that point in time. As the trilogy goes along I really think the overwhelming success of the films adversely affects their quality and the filmmakers lose their way a little bit and start to focus too much on the spectcle and the CGI at the expense of the emotion and heart of the story.

TTT is strange for me because as it stands as a film it could be the greatest of the three if ROTK had resolved things a bit differently. The way they are now I like them less as the trilogy goes along, but still think they are all great movies. It's a sentiment echoed by Viggo Mortensen in interviews, and I think the trend continues straight along through all of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth movies, with the distinction for me being that all 3 of the LOTR movies are great films while none of the 3 Hobbit films are.

Viggo mentions his last scene of filming for the entire trilogy being a reshoot for ROTK where he is in the Paths of the Dead being bombarded with thousands of skulls with thousands more being added with CGI in post, and I feel like that little scene right there shows the type of thing that would have been cut from the first film for financial and logistical reasons, but they had the ability to do whatever they wanted by that point. Not only is the sheer number of skulls absolutely absurd, but also you have to look at what's going on and ask why are Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli being buried beneath an avalanche of a million skulls in the first place.

For me, that little vignette perfectly sums up how the story was sort of being lost at that point beneath spectacle and CGI silliness.

 

Yeah, I sort of wished they figured a way to write around it, like they did with Tom Bombadil. But the army of the dead is way more integral to the overall plot, I'm not sure how they would've don't things otherwise.

 

The Army of the Dead as an idea is so compelling and interesting that I absolutely think it could have been explored on screen in a compelling and captivating way...

...however, the bright green super-powered deus-ex-machinas we got were not the way to do it.

 

I never got around to re-watching ROTK after I finally finished the book last year. I may watch the trilogy over this month

 

This is really interesting to read. I thought that the films were filmed simultaneously so had never realised that budgets were in play. I actually thought that they were all finished before FOTR was released!

The Paths of the Dead scenes are the reason I prefer The Two Towers to ROTK.

 

I loved it! Definitely my favorite. I absolutely agree with your take on FOTR.

 

From my understanding, the main footage for all three films was shot in one long block before the first film was released, with some reshoots planned, but after the success of the first film the amount of reshoots and the resources for them both grew exponentially.

 

That makes sense. I was quite young when they came out so wasn't certain.

 

ROTK is 9/10th's of a perfect movie. I'm even fine with the multiple "endings" that people so often complain about. It's those 30 minutes or so between the battle of Minas Tirith and when the ring is actually destroyed. In the theatrical version, it feels like Aragorn & co. show up at the black gate like literally 2 minutes after fighting the biggest battle of their lives. For an almost-4 hour movie there's no excuse for things to feel so rushed in the back half.

This is amended a bit by the extended version, but then the extended version is altogether too long and has some scenes I don't really like. I wish I could pick and choose which extended scenes got included in these movies, haha.

 

That's my biggest criticism of Peter Jackson's style of filmmaking, with the script constantly changing and more and more things being filmed and added. I know I've harped on this before, but with the LOTR trilogy it's the easiest example for me - but I think it's very poor planning and filmmaking the way Saruman's fate slipped through the cracks and was ultimately relegated to the extended editions when you have three roughly three-hour films to work with. I don't think he's good at looking at the overall picture ahead of time and figuring out what's important to the story and what absolutely has to make it to the screen.

In The Hobbit films that is what ends up bothering me about a character like Alfrid getting the amount of screentime and focus that he did. It's not that there's so much of him, because objectively there is only really a few minutes of him - but it's the fact that he gets those few minutes at all in a film where the dwarves have been effectively dropped from their own story altogether and the titular Hobbit has been drastically sidelined.

When I try to watch The Hobbit films it's like I want to reach through the screen and grab the goddamn camera and point it somewhere - anywhere! - else 90% of the time. There is a good story going on there but the majority of the time it's happening around what's being shown. What PJ chooses to focus on in The Hobbit films is honestly mind-boggling and staggeringly bad.

 

I've only seen each of the hobbit films once because of how bad they were, but yeah the complete sidelining of Bilbo in those movies is unforgivable.

 

I'm really enjoying reading your insights. Totally agree.

 

I've been looking for something like this for a while now, this website breaks down all the different musical themes found in the films and references each time they appear throughout all three. It's crazy detailed, I have so much respect for the work Howard Shore put into these movies.

The Lord of the Rings Score Analysis Project

 

Theoden becomes my favourite character more and more every time I watch the movies, for a secondary character his arc is utterly stunning

"Where is the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blown?" for best scene in all three movies too

 

Lately whenever I’m drunk I turn on FOTR and get all emotional. Perfect movie.

Although, my favorite scene like in the history of ever is “you bow to no one.” The way the music swells omg.......my eyes become geysers