Saw the picture at the early showing Wednesday morning. Got done around 4:00am. The other complaint: the crowd that needs to express themselves by yelling and clapping throughout the movie. :mad: But that was about the only complaint I had with this movie.


The acting was superb & plenty of eye candy left me wanting more. It's sad really - that there will be no more. I will need to see the movie again due to the large-scale action and multi threaded story. I think PJ will win the Best Director nod this year as well as sweeping the FX categories; will Andy Serkis finally get his deserved supporting actor nod?

But - what is your first impression?

The best way to understand the 'multi-threaded story', as you say, is to read the books.

Jackson did do a great job, on all three movies.

The question is....will he get the rights to do The Hobbit?

About the Hobbit:

The last I heard is some powers-that-be wanted to do two hour long 6-7 part mini-series of the Hobbit so they could do justice to the book.

Originally posted by kajolishot
About the Hobbit:

The last I heard is some powers-that-be wanted to do two hour long 6-7 part mini-series of the Hobbit so they could do justice to the book.

That would truly suck. IMO the only way to "do justice" to the Hobbit is to present it just as the Trilogy has been presented.

BTW, "The Hobbit" is, in my opinion an even more cinematic tale and a better story that the Trilogy.

I liked reading The Hobbit much more, but I liked the friendships in Lord of the Rings. Also, I think the storyline is much better in LOTR, good vs. evil...possible end of Middle Earth. The evil power must be stopped. Whereas in The Hobbit, the dwarves just want their treasure back. It seems just a pre-curser to LOTR. I think, though, that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit first.

Good movie. I think the lack of hype helped out. But, seriously, I thought the movie was going to end in like five different places.

You did? Mind telling us where? I thought the book was fairly obvious about where it ended.

Methylcellulose: I'm with you. The mood had died down at one point and then it just seemed to go on and on with, what it seemed, were five different endings.

Having never read the book, why was the ending the most suitable ending?

[Spoiler]:
Why was it fitting that Frodo, Elrond, Gandalf, and others go to the Grey Havens? Since she didn't go to the Grey Havens too, will Arwen eventually pass on?

I mean, at some point life has to go on and I guess no one can stay together for always, but it didn't seem like a very 'happily ever after' as far as the mood. Maybe Tolkien thought it was a great ending to a dark story, but I am of the opinion that it was just 'alright.' Overall, though, I thought the movie was great. I really liked Merry and Pippin and I was glad that they got more involved during the third portion of the movie.

[Edit]: Oops. I wrote '... third portion of the book', although I meant movie. I've corrected it now.

If you'd read the book you'd know that arwen does indeed eventually die. Aragorn lives a long and fruitful life, is the greatest king of man in generations etc, then dies, at which point Arwen eventually wanders off into a forest, lays down and dies.

Its not as lame as it seems if you read the books, which are quite a bit different to the movie in an awful lot of ways, and her dying is part of the whole "deep and poignant love" thing. Its why her parting with Elrond is such a big deal, as only once before ( luthien tinuviel if you wanna know ) had one of the elves truly died.

And i you REALLY care about the whole thing, Luthien was Arwens grandmother ( mighta been great? not sure ), and her marrying a human and giving up elven immortality was how the half elven ( ie Elrond ) came to be.

What I don't understand is... after the evil had started to lurk and the master was calling for the ring... then...The time of the elves were done meaning that they were slowly becoming mortal and they had to travel to the undying lands in order to continue to live forever (because Elrond had already lived some 3,000 years), and if so, why did some stay behind? Just to accept death as an honorable thing and to continue to honor their services should it be needed again, or was that just Arwen who slowly became mortal because she married a mortal and gave away her... little necklace-thingy (sorry, forgot what it was called)?

I think I remember from... I think it was the second movie... that Elrond was describing how she would linger on in darkness after Aragorn's passing and it showed her walking through the forest but I just assumed, at first, that what was being told was that since she lived forever and had missed her opportunity to be with her people, she would live in Gondor alone forever, but I think I'm beginning to understand it now. So, she DOES wonder into the woods and passes after he does. Boy! I didn't even get the Legolas was a Prince until the extended version of the movie. I feel kinda ripped-off. Dang! I really need to read the books. I can never find it at the library and they're quite expensive. Hmm... Maybe it's something I should invest in because I am very, very interested in reading the books.

How long does it take most people to read them, I wonder. Aren't they over a 1,000 pages per book?

I think first time round when i was maybe 15 or so, it took me a week to read them. i can now read them in three days, no trouble at all, maybe 3 hours reading a day.
Spoiler alert etc.

AS for your questions, you have to read the silmarillion to understand. elves are not quite of this world, they are nearly perfect, they live forever unless killed, and thus, they had no need to travel westwards to maintain tehir life, I think its more a matter of living so long, seeing things change, and getting tired of life. Plus, elves when dead go to the halls of manwe i think, or something. There they await the end of time, or the world. Men however only seem to have one chance at life, nobody knows where their souls go when they die. Arwen was given the choice, mortal or immortal, and she chose mortal, a painful choice compared with immortality I would think. The way teh choice was given is not xactly spelt out, tis more in the nature of a religious hcoic, tolkein shyed clear of much religious detail in LOTR. Suffice to add also, that GAndalf and Sauron are essentially angels, and thus gandalf goes to the west, and the ring that sauron forged was essentially a little bit divine, thus it touched the lives of frodo and bilbo, such that they too can find rest in the west. The darkness after Elrond has left is figurative. If you imagine the elves society as being the height of a great civilised civilisation, and then to forsake that and go and live with the mud hut savages out in teh desert, its an apt comparison.

The books expensive? Whit? You can pick up a papaerback version here for maybe 15 to 20 dollars. Just excuse it as being for the kids, when they grow old enough.

My one complaint..... Gandalf was supposed to be this big bad wizard... but this is how I saw him:

A pissed off old man because he wasnt getting enough attention, so he bleached his hair and clothes, made a new staff out of a wood and bleached it, then came back to life after supposedly dying. Now he's like im a baddddd mother f***er.

But the schmuck only uses his staff as a baseball bat, and a self powered super bright white LED. WtF? I kept on waiting for the almighty powerful wizard to whip out some magic and like strike down the dragons, or do something useful.


It was ok, just a little long and dragged on.

Later
T

I think wizards were more powerful when the world was young, and for gandalf to reveal his full power would overawe everyone so much it would damage his ability to lead and succour them, instead likley turning it all to adoration and worship, like Saruman did. Plus he wasnt really a wizard, that was just a relatively modern human name for them. There were 5 in middle earth, we know of saruman, GAndalf, and rhadhagast the brown, who was quite weak and talked to birds and animals a lot.
Apart from that clearly Tristan missed the whole symbolism and everything else associated with GAndalf and his resurection. But not having seen the film, maybe they werent covered so well in it.

No, symbolism is great, but it starts to get irritating when the entire movie is all about symbolism, its 3 hours long, and people just cant enjoy it because of the acting, action, and CGI. I dont want to disect the movie, I want to just enjoy it. If you want symbolism and a movie storyline appropriate for it, go see Solaris.


Later
T

Well neither Gandalf nor Saruman, could use there full extend of their powers. For one simple reason; they were forbidden to do that. The Gods who send them to middle-earth forbade this peticulair because they could get tempted by power and to spare humankind who would be to week to withstand their might.
Sauron who was under no such compulsion, since it weren't his gods anylonger could do as he pleased(forging rings of power, destroying nation, reeking alout havoc).

Just a side comment...

I find it amusing to see people who have read the books to get all worked up when people see the movie without reading the books.

Good movie, but a little too heavy on the denouements.

Originally posted by wesmorrisbabe
What I don't understand is... after the evil had started to lurk and the master was calling for the ring... then...The time of the elves were done meaning that they were slowly becoming mortal and they had to travel to the undying lands in order to continue to live forever (because Elrond had already lived some 3,000 years), and if so, why did some stay behind? Just to accept death as an honorable thing and to continue to honor their services should it be needed again, or was that just Arwen who slowly became mortal because she married a mortal and gave away her... little necklace-thingy (sorry, forgot what it was called)?

I think I remember from... I think it was the second movie... that Elrond was describing how she would linger on in darkness after Aragorn's passing and it showed her walking through the forest but I just assumed, at first, that what was being told was that since she lived forever and had missed her opportunity to be with her people, she would live in Gondor alone forever, but I think I'm beginning to understand it now. So, she DOES wonder into the woods and passes after he does. Boy! I didn't even get the Legolas was a Prince until the extended version of the movie. I feel kinda ripped-off. Dang! I really need to read the books. I can never find it at the library and they're quite expensive. Hmm... Maybe it's something I should invest in because I am very, very interested in reading the books.

How long does it take most people to read them, I wonder. Aren't they over a 1,000 pages per book?

Elrond is half human. Because of this he and his heirs (Arwen) can make a choice at some point in their life as to whether to remain immortal or become mortal. Arwen will die, see will just outlive Aragorn.(He is a lot older then her)

There are rumors that "Return of the King" the extended version, is to be over four hours long! (http://www.dvdtown.com/announcement/Return_of_the_King_-_DVD_rumor/235/). I can't wait!!

Let me state right at the start I have not read the books.

The return of the king is great, but after all the hype and the reviews of the critics, I left the Cinema a little disappointed.

Good as the film is, the two towers was better, the battle for Helms Deep was better, it was more exciting, it was more believable. hey and even my 14 year old daughter agree's with me.

Don't get me wrong, the Trilogy is A1 top notch super duper, first class entertainment, the return of the king is superb in it's own right, it's just that in this case in my view the best came "second".

Originally posted by kajolishot
The other complaint: the crowd that needs to express themselves by yelling and clapping throughout the movie.
The same thing happened to me. Well several things happened.
The part where Legolas killed the elephant looking thing with the 3 arrows, the theater started cheering. And another thing, 30 minutes before the movie ended people started clapping. They thought that when ever they saw the screen turn white it was a que to start to clap. IDIOTS:m:
Altough the movie was done very well and the Pete should be awarded. the movie kicked ass. (to bad no more LOTR movies coming out)

I was pretty doubtful about this movie after seing TTT - which i thought had not the perfect soundtrack that FotR had. TTT also has that silly scene with legolas skating on the shield which nearly spoiled the whole damned trilogy. I'm a fairly critical guy when it comes to movies. I feel that two bad scenes in TTT really spoiled alot. I also doubted that PJ was the right man for the job. Luckily, RotK didn't disappoint me. It was even better than the first one! Totally blew me away. Wow! PJ really did a good job.

Having seen ROTK for a second time, it improved on the second helping. My feeling of disppointment can now be more adequately explained. The battle scenes although magnificent were in my view just too fast and furious, no time to take them in before things moved on. Helms Deep was for me the perfect pace for a "movie battle".

The trilogy does still get 10 out of 10 though. fantastic cinema

I don't want to offend anybody with my comments. I know a lot of people love the novels and these films. I tend to be more in to sci-fi fantasy than this type fantasy story any way. But I went to see them in the theater with my wife because she loves them. But honestly I find them to be boring. Maybe I've read and seen to many rip offs. Maybe I've seen so many CGI and special effects that nothing impresses me any more. But I really do not see what the the big deal is about these films in terms of story, acting, or in some regards visuals. It really doesnt seem to stand out from any thing I have seen any other modern major film of this type. I thought the Star Wars Prequels were just as good and I have a lot of problems with them. I know of lot of Tolkien fans were glad to see these films and see that PJ made a decent effort to bring them to life. Overall I will say the LOTR films are beautiful visually and well made. I just do not find them overly entertaining.

i do believe that lotr movie is entirely for the fans, not for your casual movie-goer at all. hardly anyone who hasn't read the books has really liked it all that much. exception: i know a few people who went and read them to see what happened after the end of fellowship.
i'm not prepared to say anything just yet but there will be plenty to say. i'm still majorly overwhelmed having seen it just 2 weeks ago. i've been a fan of tolkien for quite some time and i'm so glad this movie has been made to put down in cinematic history this epic work of literature. i need to see the last part a few more times before i can start taking it apart.
i was fortunate enough to have a friend as fanatical as me to secure for us tickets to the biggest theater in manhattan for the first showing to sell out (months ago!). it was a bitch having to stand in line around the block for as long as we did to get two seats together but it was worth it. the audience was on the ball. i tend not to do anything in theaters but i like that everyone else does. cheering when someone does something amazing, gasping when shelob drops down onto the screen, reacting at all the appropriate moments...made the first time good fun. it was so heavy and imbued with emotion that it needed to have some fun. i could hardly stand it as it was. i'm overwhelmed. i think it has ruined me for all other movies.

apparently we're not fanatical enough because we couldn't get tickets to the marathon showing. it sold out in 10 minutes. after that you could get them on ebay for hundreds.

*whimpers*
...D-did you have to call this thread "the end"? I mean... it's... IT CAN'T END! It won't end. The road goes ever on and on.


jAdeFI

I finally saw it. loved it! loved it! loved it! Great visuals. I'm sad it's over.

It's not over. Not really. Jackson may still have The Hobbit to give to us. Besides. There's all the extended scenes, additional scenes, books to read. There's so much. It lives on. And yes...The road does go ever on and on.

I'm sure the Hobbit may actually exist in other worlds, in distant galaxies, in very distant times......If it does, then probably so does the the Lord of the Rings........Why not? Anything that can be imagined can be lived........

Atta Boy

*whimpers*
...D-did you have to call this thread "the end"? I mean... it's... IT CAN'T END! It won't end. The road goes ever on and on.

I've been reading the book again just so I wouldn't feel like it's over.
Though we do have the EE dvd to look forward to. :cool:

apparently we're not fanatical enough because we couldn't get tickets to the marathon showing. it sold out in 10 minutes. after that you could get them on ebay for hundreds.

ha ha! Were there any reports of people dying of blood clots from sitting for 6+ hours? I'm not sure if that's my idea of enjoying a movie. :o
But to each their own...

After having seen all 3 instalments of LOTR's and after the gruelling 3.5 hours plus half an hour of previews for the last instalment, what can I say. My bladder felt like it was on the verge of exploding and my ears were nearly bleeding due to the theater's idiocy of upping the volume to the point where just about everyone in the theater (young and old) were blocking their ears (lol walking out of the theater all I could hear (above the ringing in my ears) were complaints about how stupidly loud it was and how it lessened their enjoyment of film). After having to listen to my other half grumble that some of the changes were so fundamental that it was ridiculous and how some of the add in bits were painful and destroyed the true plot of the film (could only hear him in the quiet bits of the movie). After all that, I thought the movie was ok. Pretty good actually. Breathtaking scenery and brilliantly filmed.

Although after the first instalment I preferred to just watch it as a movie and just forget the book. I do agree that some of the changes were a tad painful and because I was thinking back to the book I'd feel confused as to why this was happening here or there and shouldn't that be in the first instalment, etc, I thought stuff it, forget the book when watching it and just enjoy it as a movie, on its own. Although, regardless of that, by the third instalment I felt tempted to shoot Sam (god he whined). I feel sorry for my other half in a way as LOTR is one of his favourite books of all time and he was so looking forward to it, but he just thought that there were too many changes to the actual plot. Just as a movie, PJ should be rewarded. My other half would probably shoot me lol, but I think he did a pretty good job with such a huge story. Regardless of some of the changes, visually the movie was stunning.

Although I did feel sorry for the 5 year old boy who was sitting behind me in the theater, who's parent's had taken him to see the movie and poor kid looked terrified and each time he tried to block his eyes (especially during the battle scenes when the orcs were shown up close and the undead cursed fighters) his father would tell him off and tear his hands from his eyes. Obviously it wasn't a movie for a 5 year old and the volume in that theater was so loud it could have permanently damaged his ears. Poor kid and silly parents I guess.

But was a good story and in a way it's a shame it's all over. I just wished PJ hadn't waited one year between each instalment. And aside from the pain of needing to pee and not wanting to leave in case I missed anything and ringing eardrumbs, was GOOD!! :D

something that's really bothering me looking back through this thread: luthien is not arwen's grandmother. she's more distant a relative than that. galadriel is her mother's (who went to the west) mother.

also, elrond is of a race of half elves. the 'half' does not mean he is half human. he has a few drops of mannish blood in him from way back and since the elves are godly, the half elves were given the choice to become full elves as elrond did or full man as arwen later does.

not as pressing, but yes legolas is the son of the very same king in the hobbit! note: woodland elves are not very godly, they are very much part of middle earth although legolas does get the sealust and ends up wanting to go to the undying lands.

aragorn isn't older than arwen!! they fell in love when he was 20. she's an elf for chrissake.

no gods were ever mentions. the wizards were sent but not by gods. infer what you like but keep your interpretations to yourself if you're not gpoing to identify them as such. they weren't forbidden from using power. they did use it. plenty. do you think saruman would have followed anyone else's orders after he decided upon becoming master of middle earth?

i don't get bent out of shape when people see the movie without having read the book, but it annoys me when people make dumb comments without knowing what they're talking about. at least get the freaking cliff notes. the pacing gets a bit too fast and jerky towards the end, especially through the 6th book, so pj just had to keep with that. the ending is written that way: too much information jammed into too few pages. if you don't like the ending, well what can i tell you? it was crucial to see rosie cotton and elanor gamgee at the end since the history continues through her.

i do have criticisms of my own but i need a few more viewings first.

Although after the first instalment I preferred to just watch it as a movie and just forget the book.

Exactly. Cinema and book are different medium.

This was a spectacular movie that should win best movie of the year. The directing , storyline, costumes, music, continuity, cinimetography, grapfics, CGI, and many other items were the best I've seen this year. I really enjoyed this fantasy of a tale and they have a movie that will be shown for many years to come. If you want to see a great fantasy film then this is truely a great one to watch and I recommend it highly.

nooooooo why oh why does it have to end. For the love of god, WHy