Topic: Are the Lord of the Rings films the best films ever made?

[KennyMonster]

The first one was OK.

The second one was so tedious and boring I refuse to see the third until Peter fucking Jackson personally comes round and helps me regain the three weeks of my life I lost watching The Two Towers.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Oh no he has dropped some piece of jewelry HE MUST BE DEAD

[Catalogue Trousers]

Shield-surfing fucking elf. Get tae fuck.

[Replies From View]

Simply put the ring in a swimming pool filled with loads of other rings so that gollick or whatever can’t find the right one.

Did they ever find out who the Lord of the Rings was?

[Dex Sawash]

What's he in the book?

Overboiled text on a page

[QDRPHNC]

I loved them when they first came out, but like the Matrix, they're victims of their own success.

[greenman]

Haaaaaaaaaa-hahahahahahahahahaaaaa.  Oooohhhhhh...

No.

Fellowship is good, the extended cut of Two Towers is excellent, the third hasn't got enough endings.  All three have aged quite badly.

You need to see yourself some Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Klimov, Herzog.  Hell, the portions of Caddyshack that focus on something other than Danny's love life and college plans are better.

Honestly though thats really the same "film vs movie" debate that was had a few months ago isn't it? I find it hard to directly compare something like Lord of the Rings  to say Stalker or Ran because the intension and viewing experience is just so different.

As blockbuster cinema I think there definitely up there with the best, maybe a bit out of fashion now as they take themselves pretty seriously rather than being full of meta references that basically serve to tell the viewer "your not a geek for watching this!".

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Massive no from me.

That is quite a little no actually, look at it, it's small, even when you move your head really really close up to it

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Did they ever find out who the Lord of the Rings was?

Alan

[samadriel]

Alan

"Wot?"

[magval]

Is there any skellington soldiers in this

[Uncle TechTip]

Godawful accent. And, well, just no. He's great himself, fabulous in The Ice Storm for example, but as Frodo Baggins? It's casting designed to make the film appeal to the American demographic. Sorry but this part required an English voice, not an American voice.

edit to add - I mean it's like a scar all over the whole set of movies. 'We will go through the mynes'. It's almost as stupid as having the rest of the hobbit party being a bumpkin, a Scot, and an Irish. Just fuck off Peter.

In the context of some fantasy quest through a mythical landscape to find a magic object that exudes magical properties, I'm surprised to read such a complaint.

[Replies From View]

Film 1 (I have seen this one):

The Gonads leave Trumpton and meet a list of monsters that is of arbitrary length, and there is a cliffhanger around the fact they have to keep on going for two more films.  Watch it if you like YouTube videos of some hikers randomly going “OH JESUS LET’S NOW SUDDENLY HIDE UNDER THIS ROCK” that take up three hours of your life.


Film 2 (not seen it):

Hopefully they use the Two Towers for a bungee experiment but I can’t be arsed either way.


Film 3 (not seen it):

Some kind of big long fight I guess, loads of CGI, loads of superfluous dance sequences added to pad out this arbitrary-lengthed thing that could have ended ten minutes into the film with no harm done.  And then they all say goodbye to each other for about a year.

[Sin Agog]

I hate these blindingly obvious Last Word posts, but...

If you think they are, they are.

By the way, when I went to see ROTK, a probably homeless man with a mug of beer next to me fell asleep in the first thirty seconds, and then awoke in the last thirty seconds, declaring, "Enjoyable.". Beats Mark Kermode.

[thraxx]

Is there any skellington soldiers in this

Yes but they is not skellingtons in the true sense but goast skellington hybrids with speshal powers and that with goast skellington horses.  There is also a gobbling and an oark, but they are controllered by wizzard. Also gollick is in it but he can’t decide if he is a goody or a baddy. All in all an excellent film and Oscar loved it even though it is not as good as The Hobbits.

[Norton Canes]

I remember seeing the Two Towers in the cinema when I was about 11 and seeing Gandalf fight the Balrog whilst falling down the chasm was mindblowing

Not even in The Two Towers

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Yes it is. It's in a flashback scene after Gandalf turns into The White.

"You fell!"
".... through fire..."

My favourite bit of that sequence is the extreme long shot of them both falling into that chasm. Beautiful. There's a lot of artistry in the films which is ignored by their detractors.

[Norton Canes]

Sorry must've been asleep.

[All Surrogate]

Hope is kindled.

[FerriswheelBueller]

The first one is very good. Better than any of the Star Wars but not as good as Raiders of the lost ark.

Good shout from biggy mentioning the Indiana Jones flicks. I watched them again a few months back and they are bloody great - as trilogies go, Indy is near the top of the totem. Great fun.

I liked these LotR films as well though. Prefer the books and agree that Sauron being a literal eye was a bit mad (as he is depicted in the books as incorporeal and seldom glimpsed) but that’s film for you I suppose. In the Silmarillion he has specific forms and is able to assume any he likes, but is denied that power by Eru after corrupting Ar-Pharazôn and creating the conflict that destroys Númenor at the end of the second (?) age. I imagine he’d be a bit more spectral after that - certainly less conspicuous than being an eye-fire on top of a massive pointy tower but what do I know eh.

I forget my point. Merry Christmas. Will see if Mrs Ferris will humour me and put the first film on in the background while I do some Christmas baking.

[St_Eddie]

Good shout from biggy mentioning the Indiana Jones flicks. I watched them again a few months back and they are bloody great - as trilogies go, Indy is near the top of the totem. Great fun.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is the greatest movie (as in popcorn flick) ever made, in my estimation.  Virtually faultless and the very embodiment of pure adventure.  Despite the crossover presence of John Rhys-Davies; The Lord of the Rings... not so much.  The lack of Nazis having their faces melted off doesn't help matters much either.

[Shit Good Nose]

they take themselves pretty seriously rather than being full of meta references that basically serve to tell the viewer "your not a geek for watching this!".

Actually that's a very good point and, speaking as someone who is LONG bored of the wink-at-the-camera sarcastic shenanigans of nearly all of the current crop of superhero fantasy films, LOTR seems like a breath of fresh air in comparison.

But their main problem, as I said, is that they've aged quite badly, whereas the likes of the aforementioned Indy trilogy stand up well decades later and against much more advanced films.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Fellowship still looks great, timeless.

[biggytitbo]

Raiders of the Lost Ark is the greatest movie (as in popcorn flick) ever made, in my estimation.  Virtually faultless and the very embodiment of pure adventure.  Despite the crossover presence of John Rhys-Davies; The Lord of the Rings... not so much.  The lack of Nazis having their faces melted off doesn't help matters much either.

The big problem with the Lord of the Rings films is Peter Jackson is a middling director who got shitter the more he indulged CGI, to the point where he lost touch with any kind of grounded filmmaking technique and got lost in overusing terrible, computer game like cgi cameras. You can create whatever nonsense you want in CGI but once the camera is fake too, zooming in and ut of your charactesa rseholes in a way that is obviously impossible, all sense of reality goes down the toilet and the film flops into farrago of empty noise and whooshing.

For the same reason, King Kong is one of the worst films I've ever seen and Jurassic Park is one of the best. The former does everything stupid and wrong you could possibly do with CGI, like a child let loose in a sweet shop, whereas Spielberg's judicious, artful and limited use of it way back in 1993 has still never been bettered.

[Endicott]

There's a lot of artistry in the films which is ignored by their detractors.

It's the existence of the artistry, the almost perfect use of the landscape, the incredible attention to detail in the production, the sheer beauty of so many sequences, which makes the rotten things done in the script such a crushing disappointment.

[grassbath]

The big problem with the Lord of the Rings films is Peter Jackson is a middling director who got shitter the more he indulged CGI, to the point where he lost touch with any kind of grounded filmmaking technique and got lost in overusing terrible, computer game like cgi cameras. You can create whatever nonsense you want in CGI but once the camera is fake too, zooming in and ut of your charactesa rseholes in a way that is obviously impossible, all sense of reality goes down the toilet and the film flops into farrago of empty noise and whooshing.

This is true of Peter Jackson.

But not a problem that affects the original Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[Bazooka]

My favourite scene is when the lad throws a watch into boiling tikka masala.

[St_Eddie]

The big problem with the Lord of the Rings films is Peter Jackson is a middling director who got shitter the more he indulged CGI, to the point where he lost touch with any kind of grounded filmmaking technique and got lost in overusing terrible, computer game like cgi cameras. You can create whatever nonsense you want in CGI but once the camera is fake too, zooming in and ut of your charactesa rseholes in a way that is obviously impossible, all sense of reality goes down the toilet and the film flops into farrago of empty noise and whooshing.

For the same reason, King Kong is one of the worst films I've ever seen and Jurassic Park is one of the best. The former does everything stupid and wrong you could possibly do with CGI, like a child let loose in a sweet shop, whereas Spielberg's judicious, artful and limited use of it way back in 1993 has still never been bettered.

I completely agree with everything that you just said.

[Kelvin]

I don't think Jackson was a middling director, at all. He has problems, but a good eye for visuals and charachters, and a sense of the grotesque - certainly compared to most mainstream directors. I agree that he got seduced by the convenience of CGI, though.

[bgmnts]

To be fair to him though it must be hard to do epic battle scenes and walking trees, in all their glory, without the use of CGI.