Amph One Thread To Rule Them All: The Rings of Power + The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings Trilogies

Yeah, they aren't that bad, just that didn't meet many people's expectation. I knew it would not be as good as the trilogy since they said it's going to be 3 movies.

 

"Not as bad as the Transformers movies" is a bit of a low bar for the man who made "Heavenly Creatures."

I've pretty much only read thoughtful negative critiques of these movies, including all the things you've mentioned. I haven't seen any nonsense bashing or flaming. I can't recall any, other than the parodies and satires of Jackson's narrative choices. It's often the other way around. The positive reviews generally seem much more nonsensical and vague.

The Tolkien book purists dislike the adaptation for very specific reasons. I'm no purist/strict adaptation nazi, but I don't understand the reasoning behind many of the adaptive choices Jackson made. Generally, they've made the narrative of the three movies worse. I could have gotten behind Jackson's effort to tell the backstory elements, e.g. the things Gandalf is doing behind the scenes in the book, but Jackson really botched that part of the story in particular. If you go off the reservation, you really have to do it well or people will immediately notice that you're a poorer storyteller than the original author.

 

These films are not simply adaptations of The Hobbit in isolation as putative children's book, and there would have been little point in crafting them as such. They are a rendition of the major events in the timeframe of The Hobbit as seen through the lens of The Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling; the comparatively fairy-tale-esque setting of The Hobbit gave way to a somewhat darker tale of a Great War not wholly unlike the one in which Europe was enmeshed at the time of its writing. The Necromancer changed from a throwaway excuse to get rid of Gandalf into the Big Bad. A ring of invisibility changed into the Death Star. Such retcons, once fixed in place, cast their shadows backwards.

 

To be fair, even the trilogy received quite a few nonsense bashing from the "HARDCORE books fans", I don't believe the Hobbit never got such comment.

 

I guess people forgot the backlash that PJ got with the absence of the Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadill in the LOTR movies. I've read all Tolkien books and I love them to death, but I was already expecting that with inclusion of the Appendices that these movies will not be a literal Hobbit adaptation, even most of the Peter Jackson own changes I don't mind. The hardcore book fans got all pissed of some of the DOS changes, specially the Erebor scenes ones, with the dwarves running from the dragon, which I didn't mind the most, it kinda went to long but I understand why PJ did it, he wanted to create a sequence that would lead Thorin facing the Dragon which didn't happened in the book.

I was not the one that put the Transformers movies in the first place, I was just commenting to the person who mentioned those movies.

Go to the IMDB boards, the comments on Hobbit news on any major film website (coming soon, collider, IGN, you name it) or Youtube, just to name a few.

Explain.

 

So I should change my opinion that the first two films are boring as hell because of the majority? But, if you so favour the majority, the majority of people haven't seen any of the films, therefore no one should. Do you see how your point is quite ridiculous?

And if I'd seen the first two, I'd see the third. Because of, ehhh, I've seen the start, may as well finish. I did that with the PT and LOTR, despite the first being horrible all over and the second going downhill.

I genuinely don't like the films. It's not trolling, or whatever. There are films I like, and there are films I don't. It's that simple. Don't get protective...unless you have an actual investment in them.

 

No way, TT was the best of the trilogy.

 

Eh?

 

You don't like it, you don't, I'm cool with that, but don't go saying that "the audience" has the same opinion as yours. That's what I'm criticizing. You've said Thranduil expression in that poster was reflecting the audience's expression that they were bored, am I wrong?

By investment you mean, I've read all the books and enjoyed the movies, yeah I did. I just don't like dumb arguments and this trend of making the Hobbit movies the new cool thing to hate on the Internet, because people were expecting Lord of the Rings part 2 or a literal translation of the Hobbit book, like I've said, there are some criticism I agree with but most of them is just hating for hating.

 

Slowpokeking ROTK is the best of the Trilogy followed by FOTR then TTT

 

ROTK is the most epic, but it's the one I struggled with the most because it was so long.

FotR I enjoy most.

 

Edited so that I could make the "That's What She Said" joke.

 

Really? I thought RotK was the weakest of the LotR films.

 

By far. The titular character has nothing to do for 3/4s of the duration of the film. His arc was more or less closed at the end of Towers, so he spends the first half standing around waiting for Elrond to give him his sword so he can disappear for the next hour and show up in time to have a master plan to defeat Sauron. Hate to be the "it was better in the books" *******, but the palantir episode at Helm's Deep would've given him more interesting material to work with. Oh, and Gollum becomes a one-dimensional villain, Denethor is reduced to a raving madmen caricature, those ****ing ghosts, the Saruman death scene that doesn't understand what it wants to be in the narrative after it was shot five times, and the poorly edited denouement.

Not that it doesn't have its bright spots, such as anything relating to the hobbits, Gandalf and Pippin, Pippin's song, Theoden's arc and anything with the Rohirrim, the beacons scene, Shelob, it's got some good stuff going for it.

 

RotK was quite good, but it lack of intensity compare to TT. The undead army was horrible.

 

I'm now finally seeing Desolation of Smaug. The music is nice, and the pictures are pretty...the script, however, is brainless.

 

movie is absolute garbage.

 

And that is you're opinion

I thought ROTK was a simply amazing film, with great acting, storytelling, and great action all around

Plus it is my favourite movie of all time

 

Fellowship is probably the best, followed by RotK and followed closely by Two Towers, just in my opinion. Though both RotK and TT are both much weaker films. They both fit more easily into just being Hollywood blockbusters. Both original books were much more action-filmed, but they were both dumbed down or slowed down for or altered for more mass appeal. Like that whole Elf army at Theoden's Keep? Not to mention Aragorn being way more angst-filled and denial of his heritage than in the book. Its debatable whether not ending TT on the cliffhanger regarding Frodo being captured is better than what they actually did, since the third movie was pretty long as is.

Sadly all the Hobbit films have the worst elements of the LotR films magnified, especially because the Hobbit movies had so much more filler, though just in my opinion of course. There are some bright spots, but the simple matter is hobbits are not meant to be action heroes for the most part (outside of Merry and Pippin), and the story falls apart because of it, what with all the orcs chasing dwarves scenes, not to mention all the elf focus. Even Thorin's not quite an action hero (even moreso in the first movie, with his second oakenshield failing so miserably against whatever that orc's name was) so instead the wizard Gandalf and Legolas and Tauriel are elevated instead.

My parents somewhat like the movies, but they've never read the book either, and so I'll probably go with them to see the third part just to see how it ends and keep them company.

 

I don't think the Hobbit movies are bad at all. Some of the action scenes might be a bit excessive at times (I admit, the whole killing-two-Orcs-with-one-arrow thing was fun the first time but after multiple times it became unnecessary), and although I'm a sucker for acrobatics and neat fight styles, and I love most of the river chase scene in the second and I adore the Goblin-Town escape scene in the first, I can understand why book purists would not appreciate it. The only scene I truly found that I am not 100% a fan of is the "battle" between the dwarves and Smaug in the refinery. It just...doesn't fit with the feel of the rest of the movie, I think.

 

As far as LOTR rankings go, mine is FOTR first, followed by ROTK, and then TTT. TTT is last for me because it simply has the least purpose for the overall plot. Not bad per se, but for that reason it's last. ROTK is good, but it's hurt IMO by a few things, including silliness like the army of the dead and the eliphaunts, the endless endings, and (as mentioned above) Aragorn's somewhat minimal role before the conclusion of that particular storyline ("it's ROTK, and look, here he is being crowned"). So FOTR seems to be first for me.

Regarding the Hobbit movies, I do agree with the majority opinion that they're just not as good as any of the LOTR movies. But to me, they are only inferior by a somewhat small margin... not the huge gap that many seem to see. They have issues, yes, but as noted above in many recent posts, so do the LOTR movies. The Hobbit's main issues seem to be enhanced by the very nature of what they were trying to do; create another epic trilogy of movies, but this time from a single book that just didn't have the same epic scope as the LOTR books. The other main issue for the Hobbit movies lies with some of the special effects, namely pretty iffy CGI, and for that I agree that those are simply flaws with no excuse. The escape from the Goblin town, especially, just looks really bad IMO.

 

What's a Hobbit movie?

All I see are elf movies with Dwarves and a Hobbit in them...

 

One of the biggest problems is Thorin. They're trying to make him be the Aragorn of this trilogy but two movies later I still don't really give a **** about him.

 

That's true regarding Thorin. At the beginning of the first movie I thought I would like him more, but at this point I kind of just want him to stop whining about getting the arkenstone and getting to be king.

 

Thorin is just a bitter, inbred royal half-wit who's a good enough warrior to enable an epic soldier's death for himself.

For me, it's hard to fit the Hobbit, a story I loved in childhood, into the larger history of Middle Earth. Why would Gandalf ever underwrite this stupid plan? Is he omniscient? Does he know that they are actually going to manage to flush out and get the dragon killed despite incredibly slim odds? Does he know that Bilbo is going to find the one ring, rr is Gandalf just following orders from higher up the deity chain of command? He must know that at the very least the dwarves are going to get a lot of people killed.

From the point of view of universe building, it would have been easier to accept the long odds against the success of the idiotic dwarf plan and the startling coincidence of Bilbo finding the ring if Gandalf had not orchestrated it. The only sensible explanation for Gandalf getting involved is that he knows the outcome in advance or that he is being ordered to help the expedition by someone or something that does know the outcome in advance.