LotR re-read: Fellowship movie re-watch

I like Gandalf’s escape from Orthanc better in the movie than in the book. He takes creative action using the tiny fragment of power left to him, rather than depending on good fortune.

Pretty much Amen all the way through your remarks here. You really hit all my main peeves about this movie, in particular the “loud, flashy, and violent” treatment of the magic, and the abomination that is movie-Gimli. One difference I have is that the Sauron vs the Last Alliance did not especially bother me, maybe because I like that scene as a whole so much. I mean, yeah, it’s non-canonical (likewise the cheap way Isildur/Faramir accidentally cuts off Sauron’s ring finger and thereby defeats Sauron), but didn’t make me cringe in my seat like the wizard fights and the Galadriel-on-acid scene.

Along the lines of your complaint about the wimpification of Frodo, it really annoys me that throughout the three films Sam seems to be on the verge of weeping every time he addresses Frodo. Also the fact that he stays rather plump through months of walking all day…maybe that’s getting ahead to the later movies, though you’d think he’d’ve trimmed down some already by Moria.

Still, I find it’s pretty easy to ignore the many annoying things and enjoy the things Jackson does well, which he generally does very well indeed. As radical a change as it is compared to the book the tremendous compression of the trip from the Shire to Rivendell is well done, and was sorely needed to make the movie a manageable length. And the troll fight and collapsing stairways in Moria…worth the price of admission by themselves.

Kate, with regard to the Uruk-hai: with the fangs, the drooling,the yellow eyes and the being spawned out of a sack of ooze, and strangling an orc when it tries to wipe the ooze off, for me they sort of flipped the switch from stereotype of people to movie monster. Like vampires or werewolves. Sort of like the cave troll wasn’t a big strong people are stupid sterotype but you know.. a troll.

That said, if you took it the way you did, then it obviously can be taken that way. Which is, as you say, not cool. So I guess I check in as one of the unconscious. Must think about that.

Comedy Gimli was the single thing I hated the most about the movies. Even in the Hobbit, the dwarves are not buffoons. In the rest of Tolkien’s extended history they are sober and dignified. Feared warriors and respected craftsmen. Shampoo model/action-hero Legolas also very disappointing. I also missed the elf/dwarf friendship plotline, but after changing these two into one-ply, how could it have any impact?

I disliked the changes to put Arwen in very much as well. The parts given to her weaken the presentation of Frodo (his defiance at the Ford is much more impressive than hers) and Aragon (he doesn’t even heal Frodo at Weathertop!). Arguing Glorfindel is one too many characters is pure rationalization. Take her out and put him in. Or leave him out and have Aragorn cover his part. If you want a “what’s Aragorn fighting for” have a flashback while he’s in Lorien or something. I will not argue there is a lack of female characters in the first book. This was not a good way to put one in though.

Loved the scenery, Sean Bean’s Boromir, the cave troll and the Balrog.

Was ok with the “Saruman cast weather spells” instead of Caradhras being an evil mountain. Hard to explain evil mountain on film. Disliked the wizard fu duel. Thought the Galdriel temptation should have been played with way more subtlety.
Was ok with the Old Forest/Tom Bombadil removal. I like that part a lot in the book but it streamlined out well. Can not figure out where the genetic weakness for the Ring thing came from though.

All in all I loved it though. Especially since the only other adaptation of LotR I had seen was that animated musical version of Return of the King with the orcs singing “where there’s a whip there’s a way”…

i never noticed the race thing (or possibility thereof) about the uruk-hai. something to think on now…

i thought the magic battle between gandalf and saruman could have been way better and more flashy/showy than it was. that was basically telekenesis. even with their staffs prue from charmed would have owned that room. i expected more in the way of magic from two…whatever their other side of the ocean demigod designation is.

i too found it odd that gimli didnt know he was in the midst of a battle field. denser than a rock he was…

i expected a lot more from gandalfs fall, tho i suppose they made up for it in the next movie with the flashback.

Galadriel has always been my favorite elf (i have a thing for super powered women lol). i thought her whole temptation thing was rendered perfectly on screen. in my head it was always an internal thing with her, but to see it externalized was pretty cool.

celeborn, cele-who?

i liked that arwen was made out to be pretty martial in this movie, cant remember if she did all that stuff in the book.

it was very difficult for me (at first and still kinda) to reconcile Agent Smith with Elrond. thats all imma say.

gollum rocked.

and bilbo spazzing out when he saw frodo with the ring is my hands down favorite scene. (cant remember which movie tho…)

I always thought that Peter Jackson’s Uruk-Hai were very influenced by Maori culture, for what that’s worth.

I remember that when I was going to see this movie over and over in 2001 and 2002, I thought there were three dumb parts that made me itchy every time: (1) The Watcher in the Water, because I didn’t like the execution of it; (2) the staircase bit, because it just shouldn’t be there at all; and (3) Galadriel’s Mirror, which was basically botched CGI. (The CGI is really all over the place in the movies overall. Some places it’s incredibly subtle; others it’s horribly cartoonish, like Galadriel and my other pet peeve, the ghost army in the last movie.)

Kate–

Agreed on all your comments. I would note that I think Arwen could have been salvaged with better casting. Liv Tyler was far to young to play a woman who was, conservatively, 2500 years old. She simply hasn’t the gravitas. If they’d cast an older actress in the part they might have been able to do more with her later instead of having her swoon around in Rivendell.

Granted, Tyler was cast when Stuart Townsend was cast as Aragorn, and he’s rather younger than Mortensen, which probably played into it. It’s my understanding the studio insisted on Tyler, as a “name” they knew could draw the crowds.

I still fantasize about Claudia Black in the role, though. She would have been awesome, and far more believable as an Elven woman of great age and power.

Kate, I found myself disagreeing with you about the color of the Uruk-Hai skin. It never even ocurred to me that their skin color could be a subconcious stereo-type. So I took some time and examined my thoughts and feelings from when I first saw the movie, and I just didn’t think that way. They always seemed more like animals to me, creations of Sauruman.

I really did not like Liv Tyler as Arwen. I don’t mind that they have increased her time in the movie vs. the book, but it’s taken me years to be able to watch her in this movie without getting angry at her having been cast at all, let alone her acting.

As for the Aragarn “inherited weakness” thing, I just didn’t see it as necessary. Why not portray Aragorn as he was, in his full splendor as a king in exile battling against all hope to defeat evil, regain his ancient kingdoms, and thereby win the girl. Seeing his greatness would have been just fine on the big screen.

Moria: I loved everything about Moria. The cave troll battle and the balrog were magnificent, as others have said. The collapsing stairwell was unnecessary, just hollywood fluff which made the movie even longer. Could they not have just cut to the bridge at khazad-dum?

Galadriel’s temptation: cheesy, stupid, unnecessary, poorly done, did I leave anything out?

Elrond: I did not like how they changed his character. In the books he was full of ancient wisdom and kindness. In the movie they turned him into an ornery man-hater. Did not like that at all.

While I have missed most of the relevant discussion, I feel compelled to add my 2¢.

There are really two things that I cannot stand about this film:

1) Jackson’s decision to wussify Saruman. Saruman was a being of vast power making his own play for the One Ring. In the film he comes off as a Sauron’s fawning lackey. WTF? Yes, he was corrupted by his use of the Palantir and yes he was falling under the dominion of the Enemy, but in his own mind and actions he was making his own attempt at ultimate power. Jackson buggered this character up but good. Way to take the one other character who is a main threat to the Fellowship (and Middle Earth) and turn him into nothing more than a thug.

2) Gollum. Everything about him. Perhaps I have been too heavily influenced by the BBC animated Hobbit from when I was a child, but Gollum was far to recognizable as a hobbit. He is centuries old and have been physically corrupted by the One Ring. He should bear no resemblance to hobbits or men in anyway but be far more ‘evil’ like the Ringwraiths. This, I know, flies in the face of absolutely everyone’s opinion, yet I cannot stand his look, his portrayal or his voice.

Things I hate but can put up with:

1) Gimli. Yes, it is a great pity what Jackson did to Gimli, but I can understand why he did it: appealing to the Lowest Common Denominator. The wider movie going audience (the ones that the studio counted on for all of their millions of dollars) expect comic relief. Gimli was the only real option here. Yes, Peregrin and Merriodoc could have fulfilled this role (and in many scenes do), their parts in the overall story are smaller and less frequent. Elves must be serious, Men must be serious, Wizards must be serious, but Dwarfs? Dwarfs are ready made for LCD comic relief.

2) Frodo. Why on earth was Elijah Wood cast as Frodo? Why on earth was he directed to be a pussy? Frodo’s whininess only increases as the films progress, reaching the ultimate heights of boo-hoo-woe-is-me gutlessness in Return of the King. Too effeminate, too lacking in the inner steel the character truly has.

3) Liv Taylor. I saw an interview with her during the run up to the release of Fellowship… where she stated that she was glad that Arwen’s role had been expanded because there were only two strong female characters in the books: Arwen and Shelob. Yes, that’s right, Shelob. That right there told me that Taylor would not only be horrible as Arwen, but that it was clear she either had not read The Lord of the Rings or did not bother to read anything dealing with Eowen. But once again, the LDC must be appeased. Taylor is nice to look at, so Jackson was more or less forced to increase her screen time.

The Awesomeness:

The Balrog. Period. The Balrog rocked. The Cave Troll was a close second, but the Balrog was ‘teh hotnez’.

In the end, the extended versions were better than the theatrical versions, but they remain flawed, and in some particulars, horribly flawed.

What these films do best are the visualization, sets, costumes, scenery: with the exception of Rohan (which is entirely too rocky) i think the physical world-building is quite wonderful, and i don’t mind at all when i see PJ’s Bag End while re-reading the text. i agree with many of the comments on characterization, casting (Elijah Wood in particular; not a fan of Eowyn either, but we’re not there yet), and unnecessary action sequences.

And i am with Kate 100% on the uruk-hai. I don’t think the orcs portrayed on-screen are substantially different or worse than those in the book (indeed, i naively hoped for an improvement), but i wish the filmmakers had made some different decisions there, especially about the dreadlocks. I’m honestly confused by those posters who say the uruk-hai hair seems animal-like, as humans are the only animals i can think of that grow much longer hair on heads than elsewhere (there are manes and tails, but that’s clearly not what we’re seeing here), and to me the long hair of the fighting uruk-hai unambiguously and unnecessarily evokes dreadlocks.

re: Maori influence — there’s something in the commentary or special features for the Two Towers extended edition on this, in particular the orc-chanting before the battle of Helm’s Deep may have some relation to traditional Maori war chants, but it’s been a few years so i wouldn’t swear to it in court. I don’t recall if this originated with the Maori actors or the filmmakers, but I am pretty sure it was mostly acting and behavior-related, nothing to do with the character design.

I’m surprised that nobody is complaining about Arwen in the chase scene. The way PJ cut and spliced the shots together really didn’t work for me at all. She’s about to get cut off, she is way in front, she is almost surrounded…maybe it’s just me.

Elrond the prick was a definite sore spot for me. He can be abrupt or untrusting of humans, fine, but he treats his 2 or 3 millenia old daughter like a 10 year old.

It’s a running joke in our house everytime we see the movies while channel surfing: Elijah Wood and his stupid eye-rolling swoon everytime something EEEEVILLLL is around. I actually liked him in most of the first movie but was ready to scream by the time ROTK ended.

katenepveu @@@@@ #36:

The entire role of Saruman and (if you ask me) the whole point of The Lord of the Rings is completely lost with Jackson’s changes. While there is the reversal of the arc you mention, the fact that the Scouring of the Shire is entirely absent from the film and Saruman dying pretty much destroys the dramatic resolution of the novel. The thrust of LotR is that the Shadow has touched the entire world, even the green and pleasant land of the Shire. Saruman is the agent of the Shire’s destruction and is necessary to this theme. Wussifying him and then killing him (in a completely inane way, I might add) necessitates that the Scouring must be cut from the films.

This, I think is the greatest of the crimes Jackson committed against the novels. There are no happy endings, evil comes to all, no one is untouched by the Shadow and nothing can remain pure; that is the moral of LotR and Jackson’s films completely gut the emotional impact. When I first came to the end of the novel there was an almost physical reaction to the description of Saruman’s raping of the Shire. I felt loss, rage, grief and true sorrow. Jackson dispenses with this and instead gives out great heaping handfuls of sentimentality. LDC strikes again.

legionseagle@38 – thanks for that. it’s been years since i watched that, guess i conflated a few things. i stand corrected.

sps49 @@@@@ #44:

There has been much discussion about The Hyperion Cantos and either people love it or hate it. I am of the opinion that you should read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion and then stop. Do not, under any circumstances, read only Hyperion (although Jo Walton has made a different and convincing argument on these boards that Hyperion can stand alone) without reading Fall…. I did not really care for the next two books (Endymion and Rise of Endymion) but if you are captivated by Simmons’ universe and want to ‘find out what happens next’ by all means read them.

I am of the opinion that The Hyperion Cantos is some of the finest Science Fiction written.

FWIW, there are a few things that make me cringe in the LOTR movies, but nothing that I truly “hate”.

I admire Jackson for tackling the project with the dedication that it deserved, but there were a few times where his schlock horror roots were showing (the tilted shaky zoom cam shots and Galadriel’s temptation scenes come to mind).

Overall, though, the look of the movies impressed me the most. The dedication to things like the weapons and costuming were incredible (right down to the arrowheads of the elves in Lothlorien). The first time I saw the movies, a few things didn’t look like I imagined them. Strangely enough, when I re-read the books later, the movie had portrayed those things faithfully to the book – it was my memory and imagination that were faulty.

One thing that bugged me was how the world looked when Frodo put on the ring. Tolkien himself was a bit inconsistent on this, though. When Bilbo finds the ring in The Hobbit and puts in on, he doesn’t realize anything has happened or that he is invisible. That stuck in my mind when the movie showed the foggy, loud, streaky version. I was surprised that in the book, this is pretty much how it is described (at least later in the books, like when Frodo puts on the ring right before the breaking of the Fellowship).

I didn’t like Aragorn’s doubt about his ability to be king as a reason for his wandering, but I liked that they discussed his age and the ages of the elves (the scene where Elrond recalls the battle against Sauron gave me chills).

All-in-all, while there are things in the movies that could have been done better (poor Gimli), I don’t know that anyone else could have done a better job on the movies.

I agree with many of the comments already posted. Sean Bean really humanized Boromir for me. Ian McKellan was wonderful as Gandalf. I’ll be forever grateful to Jackson for using New Zealand to stand in for Middle Earth.

No one’s mentioned Howard Shore’s fantastic score.

I hated both of Sauron’s incarnations in the movie: Iron Transformer Guy in the battle, and Radio Flaming Eyeball on top of the Dark Tower. Granted, it’s practically impossible to show ultimate evil on a movie screen without making it look silly. But Jackson’s solutions didn’t work for me. And I can barely watch the Gandalf vs. Saruman fight.

Was anyone else bothered by the art nouveau design of Rivendell? It seemed too cluttered with gingerbread, like a fussy seaside resort. In my imagination, Rivendell has an austere, almost Japanese aesthetic, connected to the elves’ deep love of the natural world. I had a similar reaction to the movie’s Lothlorien.

Hooray for your icon, Kate. Hooray for your NH spoilers, too.

I don’t understand why Hollywood has no problem with any of the sexism in most of their original movies, but then in a movie that’s an adaptation of an existing book, they feel they have shoehorn in a female part, and it ends up reinforcing more stereotypes then it shatters. And then they apparently envision the Elvish males as gay?

Maybe they didn’t have Frodo invoke Elbereth because he didn’t have anything suitable to engrave with and he kept engraving Elloer?th instead.

I think honing in too much on the casting of the orcs and blaming it on PJ, et al, ignores the bigger racist aspect of the original source material. Granted, it was the first half of the 20th century, not exactly social liberty at its height, but the story is essentially the English (Hobbits), the Norse (Gondorians), the French (Elves), the Scots (Dwarves), the Germanic tribes (Rohirrim), against Sauron leading orcs and a bunch of Arabs and Africans and Asians (Easterlings and Haradrim). Whether the Orcs themselves capitalized on racist western thinking is NOT the number one issue along those lines, in my mind. While of course I love the series, I think the sometimes overwrought angle of “all the races coming together” theme of the Council of Elrond leaves a bit to be desired. I love Tolkien, and he was a great storyteller and linguist, but social activist, he was not.

With reference to Elijah Wood’s performance, I liked the comment in the satirical BBC radio programme ‘The Now Show’ that “he spends the entire film looking like he’s just been slapped and doesn’t know why”

Re library scene:
Having spent all too much time being reverent around archives, I hugely enjoyed Gandalf plunking his beer and pipe ash on them. Note: parchment is a form of leather and doesn’t catch fire all that easily. Anyway, what light source are they using in there? Right, naked flames – just like everyone before the 20th century.

As it’s trash-the-films hour, I’ll add a few peeves that I don’t think have been mentioned:-

1) Frodo bellowing “NYEEAAAOOOOOOOWW” when Gandalf takes his dive. I’m aware this is compulsory in popular drama at all moments of stress, but I still want to kick the little berk off the ledge.

2) Pointless shouting of characters’ names whenever they’re in danger. How does it help Frodo dodge a troll if several people scream “FRODO” from across the room?

3) Rivendell looking like a wilting municipal arboretum. I always expect to spot a few waste bins and a dog fouling sign.

4) Irrelevant regional accents. These probably don’t register outside the UK, but whenever Merry or Boromir speak I can’t help wondering why the hell they share speech patterns which no-one else in the Shire or Gondor has.

5) Logical absurdities, like the Bridge in Moria being seen first from below, then they run elaborately down long flights of stairs and come out at the level of the bridge. Was the place designed by Escher?

Despite this, I agree the Moria scenes are great, though for me they lack the tinge of Lovecraftian horror that creeps into the book’s descriptions. The comic staircase and some of the troll business ignore the laws of motion, but that’s standard for CGI; many fantasy films are far worse.

6) Those damned plastic ears. Whoever said elves have pointy ears anyway?

Re: the design of Rivendell. Actually, virtually all of the design of the place is taken from Tolkien’s own drawings and paintings. This is actually true for most of the artwork in the films. Whenever there was something that JRRT had done art for, they used that as the basis. It’s one of the things that really stood out to me when I first saw them and impressed me a great deal.

As for second breakfast and elevenses, that is a bit of dialogue taken straight from the book. If I’m wrong about that, then it comes from the On Hobbits appendix.

My reaction to the race issue of dark skinned bad guy orcs (sometimes with dreads) was recognition and regret.

Two brief stories. I am a white woman, and the only time I have ever been stopped and approached by the cops was well after midnight, downtown in the city, while standing on the street talking to a young black co-worker after our shift in a fast food place was over. He was a sweet kid in high school and we were just standing there chatting. The emotional tone of the cop was very “what illicit thing are you two up to?” He was not acting like the friendly and helpful cop you teach your kids to approach on the street if they need help. At the time I was a young urban bar-going, music-loving person, and was frequently out and about very late at night. But I have never been stopped and bothered by police before or since. Just the time I was talking to the black guy.

Also, a couple of years ago I dated a rather huge and very black man from St Lucia for a while. It was a revelation to go for a walk with him on a pleasant spring evening in my quiet neighbourhood and watch elderly white people recoil in horror. White persons living in predominately white neighbourhoods will probably think I jest, or exaggerate, but no. Unless you have some reason to notice it – such as having a close friend who is a racial minority and you see it happening to them – white people in white contexts can live their entire life without noticing the extent of the inherent racism of their culture.

If you are making a film and that film is based on a wonderful and famous book in which different races are a major part of the story and structure, and if that book itself was written a good while ago, and the ravening hordes of bad guys were written as darker skinned than most anyone else – except for another bad-guy race with a minor part to play… well, I think it would be a bit tricky to manage that film without evoking a few racial stereotypes. Tricky, but not impossible, and I do wish P.J. et al had tried harder with this one and managed to pull it off.

When it comes to racial stereotyping in the white consciousness – or perhaps unconsciousness? – the black guys are the villains.

Now, listen up! I am NOT saying the following is what white people believe, except perhaps for the occasional frankly psychotic white person, but there is an evil ghost of a racist stereotype that exists as a whisp in the brain, supported by dregs of the racist beliefs that were once common currency, and while not universal (thank you, Wilberforce) certainly prevalent; and also derived from (sorry for the hackneyed phrase) portrayals of black people in the popular media. (To make up for that hackneyed phrase, one example from my own life. I loved the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid, but as a more wary adult I am repelled by their horrible racism. Does anyone remember how the native africans were portrayed? Nasty. This is also the writing of an earlier time.) There is a whiff of fear, rarely directly acknowledged, but it is there, lurking in the back of the white brain, especially in the brains of white people who haven’t had a close friend or roommate or partner who is dark skinned, which is what exorcises this ghost – but when a black person sits down beside a white person on the bus, that stereotype is evoked, and arises willy nilly from some depths of the light skinned person’s brain, and it says: Caution! Strange, unknowable, dangerous, possibly on drugs and fresh out of prison, probably packing a knife or gun, and definitely with a grudge against the hapless white guy whose ancestors, if they did not commit atrocities themselves, probably approved of them at the time! And this ghost? It is why cop shows and action movies and probably even some black gansta rappers continue to evoke it. You can do some work to build a menacing, scary character, but you can sure get an effect by just pushing the big scary black guy button…

So the moral thing to do, if you are making a film that has the potential to be a huge blockbuster, and you are sensitive to this issue, is to not reinforce this stereotype, this evil ghost, because to reinforce it is to be complicit in something unjust, cheap, sad, and demeaning to us all.

As mentioned in earlier comments (GoblinRevolution@33) the Lowest Common Denominator has been a major force in turning these films into something Pretty Damn Impressive, Zowie! when they could have been Classic, on the same level as some Great Work of Art. So much in these films is heartbreakingly beautiful, and then… you have dwarf-tossing jokes.

Those dreads bothered me. Ok, the orcs were darker skinned in the books, and they were trying to represent the books faithfully (look at the care they took with Hobbiton, they did an amazing job in recreating the look of things – just don’t get me started on what they did to the character of Faramir.) So unless you want to go all “interpretation of Macbeth as set in a modern cheerleader squad” artsy, which is not what they were doing at all, fine for me with dark skinned orcs. But I don’t recall the book having orcs running around with dreads.

Subwoofer@61 Your comment made me want to see all the Lorien elves in elegantly arrayed white dreads, just to mess with that soap-commercial pure angelic vibe a little…

Firefly@63: Yes, I found Rivendell to be unnecessarily droopy also. Pretty but attenuated, no vigour. “Wilting municipal arboretum” indeed!

As someone who adores Galadriel, I think Cate Blanchett looked the part well enough, but hated the freaky alien way she talked and was filmed. Elrond looked wrong to me, completely. However, I loved the look of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, even if they messed with his character to some extent. And I agree that Sean Bean did a wonderful job as Boromir, and I loved Ian McKellen’s Gandalf.

One thing I didn’t like was how Bree was overplayed as sinister and threatening as the hobbits first arrived. Sure they were tired and scared and a bit overwhelmed by all the “big people” stuff, but also those lights of Bree were “twinkling” and “the door was open and light streamed out of it” and lots of other welcoming imagery is going on. Is this more of the hobbits being made childlike?

debraji@53: I love “Radio Flaming Eyeball on top of the Dark Tower”!

riotnrrd@70 What do you mean, interpreting European politics differently from the locals? I am European. I voted in the European elections on Thursday and one of the strongest motives in getting me into the polling station was the motive of voting against the BNP, whom I regard as unequivocally racist.

I also regard your comment about the focus being as much on the East as on the South (funny how those two directions map on to the directions of threat in LOTR, though, isn’t it?) as a tad disingenuous. The fact that the BNP hate the Poles (nearly) as much as they hate the Pakistanis doesn’t stop them being a bunch of racist scum. It just makes them a multi-directional bunch of racist scum.

Kate@72 You referenced Firefly’s comment with regard to speech patterns. Sean Bean is using his native South Yorkshire, somewhat toned down from the version he uses in Sharpe but recognisably a Northern accent (cue Ecclestone’s comment in Doctor Who: “Lots of planets have a North”). It is recognisably different (and in UK class terms coded as lower-class than) Aragorn (who it would make sense to give a Northern accent to), Faramir and Denethor. I suspect Firefly may have meant Pippin rather than Merry, whose random Scottish accent is the really odd one among the hobbits for me.

meteorplum@76: I’m not sure if it would be a good movie or not, but I would love to watch it. And I think that the gender reversal might be much more striking than the race reversal. What about Helm’s Deep, when everyone would be bawling for the men and children to get to safety? I think the scenes of frightened females in the Helm’s Deep are those with the most female presence in the three movies. And they are shown as powerless to help themselves. Didn’t they play that much more strongly than in the book? Probably as a contrasting background for Eowyn’s story, I imagine, but I found it very annoying at first viewing, and every one since.

Kate@72, Legionseagle@73, Meteorplum@76: I agree it would be fine for Merry to have a different accent, as Bucklanders are almost ‘foreigners’ in the Shire; it’s the similarity to Boromir’s that makes me double-take. (Prof. Higgins would probably say they’re quite different, but as an effete southerner I never could tell Yorkshire from Lancashire.) Then along comes Théoden to confuse me further…

I must have missed the explanation of Pippin’s accent on the DVD, but as the Tooks live near Hobbiton I can’t see that it makes much sense for him to be Scottish. It’s no big deal, and I don’t say the performances would necessarily have been better in vanilla English, just that they jar a bit when all the American and NZ actors are dutifully suppressing their native vowels. (Full marks, by the way, to Astin’s nearly faultless Mummerset.)

Kate@72 again: I don’t think Legolas’s hair colour is ever described, but Tolkien does say (near the end of Appendix F) that all elves are dark ‘save in the golden house of Finrod’. In Silmarillion it turns out this was because Finrod’s – and Galadriel’s – grandmother belonged to the Vanyar tribe, who for unexplained reasons were all blond. Legolas isn’t likely to be related, as he’s Sindar.

@meteorplum, wrt Pippin’s accent:

There are two problems with giving Pippin the accent he used:

1. PJ had already adopted the (unfortunate) D&D convention that dwarves speak with a Scottish accent. (I don’t know where that one came from, but I’d love to stamp it out.) Once you’ve done that, it makes no sense at all to give some other group a Scottish accent; why would Pippin sound like a dwarf?

2. Peregrine Took is as close to a ‘prince’ as the Shire can produce: the heir to the Thain. He’s actually higher-class than the Bagginses. (Paraphrasing from memory: “If anyone were going to play at being Chief at this time of day, it would be the right Thain of the Shire”), in a society that clearly has an English class structure. And yet they gave him a working-class Glaswegian accent — just plain wrong. If it was going to be Scottish, it needed to be Edinburgh (or Inverness or Aberdeen) gentry. For Tolkien’s purposes, Oxbridge would have been best.

nviner@86: They are indeed the heirs to the two most important families in the Shire, but I did not find the joking and playfulness of Merry and Pippin in the movie grating because unlike Gimli, they don’t take themselves very seriously for much of the story in the book either.

Re: Comic Relief in the Hobbit: I’m curious to see how they play that. As people have pointed out there’s the planning party, but there are also a fair number of “wow, Bombur sure is fat” bits, and the Elves in Rivendell are remarkably silly.

Kate@95 And I’m even more disturbed by the “Mongol-types” stuff since at the date of writing LOTR “Mongol” also was the official medically approved terminology for people with
Down Syndrome as identified by John Langdon Down, an identification in which the word “degraded” and racial politics played a very profound part (see Wikipedia on Langdon Down). “Mongol” was first suggested as offensive terminology in a letter to the Lancet in 1961, but remained acceptable “polite” currency among lay people for a good decade longer.

Elaine T @88: Appendix F is ambiguous, as it talks first about the Quendi (elves generally), then about the Eldar in particular, and the remark about hair colour may refer to either. Since the Sindar were a branch of the Eldar I’d maintain that they’re included both ways; I can’t read it as applying only to High Elves (the ones who went to Valinor). Tolkien changed his mind about details so often that contradictions are likely enough to occur, but it does suggest he thought of most elves as dark.

#103, I agree he likely thought of most elves as dark. I read those lines in Appendix F, though, as refering to the Quenya, the People of the Great Journey, since that’s where the house of Finarfin comes from, and he goes on to talk about the history of those who returned to ME.

But, yes, he also did change his mind a lot.

In the prologue of Movie 1, there’s a red haired elf, isn’t there?

Since I just rewatched FOTR EE I think I’ll add a few things that haven’t been mentioned much before:

Nitpicks:

– Why didn’t Gandalf cover up Bilbo’s disappearance at the party? It’s not like Gandalf to be so careless
– Merry & Pippin joining out of the blue. I understand that filmmakers wanted to save some time by cutting out their lengthy preparations but they should have come up with a way to show their dedication to Frodo more.
– The hobbits taking Aragorn as a guide no questions asked. Was it so hard to show Gandalf’s letter?
– “Sarumen crossed orcs with goblin men” … huh?
– Elrond the misogynist and Aragorn “I’m too weak and stupid” to be the King. Why couldn’t they stay closer to the real history of Aragorn and his ancestors?
– Except the Balrog, Moria as a whole was disappointing. In the books it’s both ancient and abandoned, majestic and claustrophobic with the hidden menace growing with the company’s progress. Here, we see dead orcs right away so some of the anticipation is gone. And why does it crumble so easily? Balrog has already been in its passages many times.
– The Argonath – could have mentioned that one of them was Isildur. And where are the axes? This is minor, but why not stay true to the books when you can?
– The breaking of the fellowship, aside from Boromir’s death, was poorly done and unbelievable. I understand the need to make it more cinematic, but it just didn’t work for me.
– Saruman looking eeeevil. We’re talking about one of the Istari who could be very charming even after his treachery was uncovered. Christopher Lee is still playing Drakula.
– Frodo looking hurt, scared and generally inept.

Good things:
– The shire, of course.
– Galadriel, for the most part. I wouldn’t call her particularly beautiful, but she managed to be both regal and kind.
– Anduin and the Argonath
– Sam – best casting, I think.
– Gandalf was awesome, too.
– Boromir, surprizingly, came off more likable than in the books.
– The looks – kudos to the artists and New Zealand landscapes.

legionseagle@97, re: Kate@95,

I read Tolkien’s comment about the “least-lovely Mongol types” as referring to the invading Asiatic people, not much beloved by Europeans, rather than people with Down’s syndrome. (Not that it’s one of the professor’s more endearing remarks…)

JLund@117: You’re right. It also makes it sadder that they got so silly with Gimli and Legolas, instead of showing them as highly skilled warriors. The running count between the two at Helm’s Deep seems like a grim contest in the book, but showing Aragorn having trouble with one, makes Gimli’s count of what, 50ish? seem awfully inflated.

Okay, first of all, Balrogs don’t have wings. Otherwise, the Balrog could simply have flown out of the chasm it fell into. It’s not like Gandalf had wounded it earlier.

Secondly, JLund, Orcs are not nearly as small as you make them out to be. They are shorter than Men, but taller than Dwarves and the Uruk-hai are definitely man-size. That and the fact that they can endure sunlight brings up all the man-orc hybrid talk.

There is some evidence that when Aragorn was younger, he did feel that way about the kingship. Over time, and all his travels, he came to terms with his birthright

This note surprised me, and I just reread the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, and I don’t see the claimed ambivalence about his heritage and kingship.

Can you elaborate on where you see it?

the movies are not good. period. some people might like them anyway, but that doesn’t make them good movies. it just means that some people can enjoy bad movies, in the same way i enjoy saved by the bell: the college years.

i’ve done a live blogging of my own rewatch of the trilogy, and i point out all the flaws in the movie. if you can read the whole thing, then rewatch the movies and still enjoy them, then i congratulate you on your ability to compartmentalize.

I have mixed feelings about discussions like this. Part of me delights in any excuse to read/talk about the films (which I love) and the book (which I adore). I’m fascinated to see where others’ opinions gel with my own, and where they don’t. But another part of me finds the whole thing just a bit…

Actually, Tolkien himself said it far better than I ever could. So I will paraphrase:

Even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed these films, there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long movie adaptation to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from various articles, comments & forums I have read that the scenes or performances (or sets or music) that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. I myself see many defects, minor and major, but being quite unable (lacking the skills, resources, and especially the talent) to remake the films myself, I will pass over these in silence, except for one: the movies are too short.

@@@@@ katenepveu: In case that last sentence has you wondering: I think you’re completely wrong about PJ’s motives — though probably not the studio’s — in making the extended editions, and I disagree with you about their worth. But hey, to each her own. Great article anyway, many thanks!

@@@@@143 thegooddoctor: I congratulate you on your ability to think that your assessment of a “flaw” is the only one possible.