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. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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.
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.
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.
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!. 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".
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)
