Al Chemyst wrote:
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[q1]> Lord of the Rings - wow![/q1]
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[q1]> Anyone else seen it yet? Thoughts, opinions. Does anyone actually not[/q1]
[q1]> like it I wonder?[/q1]
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Finnaly seen it.
My opinion:
Evidently, the constraints of making the book into a 3 hour film meant
huge amounts simply /had/a to be cut, and some bits /had/ to be greatly
simplified - even cut as it is, and even though it is 3 hours long as it
is, it stills flicks from scene to scene at great speed. Debating
whether it was right that they cut so much is pointless - it simply
wasn't physically possible to cut much less.
However, what Jackson didn't have to do, for good or for bad, was
to make the entire style of it so very much Hollywoody, filmy even
for a film.
In places I really liked the Hollywoodness, mainly in places where it
gave you a real sense of the ring's power and evil - I loved the
shockwave knocking over all the soldiers in the prologue, I loved the
huge, booming CHOONK noise when Bilbo throws the ring on to the ground,
I loved the argument at Rivendell beign reflected in the ring, I loved
it that when Galadriel explained why she couldn't possibly take the ring
she did it appearing as a dark goddess type person, I loved the way the
camera kept suddenly zooming in on the totally plain yet somehow
sinister ring, I loved the eerie cry of the Ringwraiths.
Unrelated to the ring, I also loved the way that whenever the characters
got to an impressive backdrop, as happens so often in Lord of the Rings
(Tolkien's amazing descriptions of the places they come across are for
me one the the greatest bits of the book), the camera swoops and dives
about to make the most of the vista of mountains or tower or whatever.
In so many other places, however, the Hollywood styling really annoyed
me - the way that whenever some monsters are about to kill the
characters, they suddenly pause and in that pause something suddenly
saves them (this happened in pretty much every single fight scene), I
hated the pan-pipey rip-off of Titanic at the end, I hated Sam beating
up orcs with a saucepan, I hated Frodo being chased round a stone by the
troll, I hated lines like "If you want him, come claim him", I hated
Boromir being made so 2 dimensional though I suppose in the time limits
they had to rather simplify his corruption but all the same, I hated the
way I'm sure the Ringwraiths drew their swords twice in the same battle,
I thought the battle between Gandalf and Sauron was actually rather
boring compared to the way in the book it just talks of great energies
being unleashed and leaves it to your imagination (they could have
panned the camera out and just shown huge flashes of light from far away
or something).
In other places, the Hollywoodness didn't really particularly annoy me,
but it did nevertheless still show rather blatantly, like Sauron closing
the doors on Gandalf one by one etc.
N.B. due to the lack of people still in York I ended up going to see it
with just one other person, and hence I can now claim to have gone
to see a film with a gay bloke. Oh dear.
James