The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

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Orlac
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#51 Post by Orlac » Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:27 am

How do the new 4k releases handle the "Elvish" subtitles?

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captveg
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#52 Post by captveg » Sat Dec 05, 2020 4:35 pm

Orlac wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:27 am
How do the new 4k releases handle the "Elvish" subtitles?
"Burned in" on the image like the theatrical prints.

Orlac
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#53 Post by Orlac » Sat Dec 05, 2020 5:30 pm

thank you!

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#54 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:45 pm

Someone posted some DVD / Blu / UHD comparisons on youtube. You can really see the revisionism undertaken for Fellowship's extended cut, which the 4K seems to fix. But the 4K for Return of the King significantly alters the color timing for Pelennor Fields.

Fellowship of the Ring

Two Towers

Return of the King

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#55 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:22 pm

I've had the extended version box for a while. Just watched The Two Towers, which is my favorite of the three, and all the supplements. Just an amazing undertaking. Jackson deserves all the awards and praise he got. That being said I do really love the extended version of The Two Towers and disagree with him about what he feels affects the pacing in the EC of the film in a negative way. For me it adds so much to the backstory of the characters. And the added time does not drag. The film still flies by.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#56 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:40 pm

Maybe I don't have a strong enough pulse on the masses to claim this is a novel opinion, but I'm the only person I know personally who greatly prefers The Fellowship of the Ring to the other two. I went into it in theatres with low expectations and was blown away by how fun the man-on-a-mission cinematic methodology was applied to the story. Even with the return to physical narrative movement in the third installment, the first's forward momentum through setpieces is unmatched. I came around to appreciate The Two Towers more on a second watch, after hating it in theatres, but it's also the one I understand most critics and peers single out as the best, so maybe another revisit would change my ambivalence. I haven't seen any of them in probably fifteen years, so who knows where my appreciations would fall today. I'll never forget the entire theatre letting out a collective audible groan during the third installment, after the nth "ending" when we returned from a long-sustained cut to black to find Frodo on the rocks with another 30 mins to go.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#57 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 12, 2020 6:33 pm

I love The Fellowship of the Ring as well. It's that The Two Towers is a darker film with lots of tension. It's a bigger film. The whole Helms Deep scenes are amazing. I agree with you about what seemed like multiple endings of Return of the King which kind of kills the momentum and emotion. I haven't read the book so I don't know how close Jackson's ending is to Tolkien's.

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soundchaser
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#58 Post by soundchaser » Sat Dec 12, 2020 6:43 pm

The book of Return of the King actually has a much, much longer ending in which the Hobbits return to the Shire to discover it’s been overtaken by Saruman. It’s clear Tolkien is using it as an allegory for post-war Britain, but beyond that it really doesn’t work where it is. Jackson made a smart move cutting it.

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Big Ben
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#59 Post by Big Ben » Sat Dec 12, 2020 6:46 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sat Dec 12, 2020 6:33 pm
I haven't read the book so I don't know how close Jackson's ending is to Tolkien's.
Boy you're missing out because for all the complaints about Jackson's ending(s) the book is somehow even longer. No really. The book version of Return of the King includes an an entire portion dedicated to the event known as The Scouring of the Shire. This may come off as weird hearing this but the movie is better paced than the book because the movie straight up ends after Sauron is defeated the book goes on for much longer and even includes an entire battle not featured in the film. The only real acknowledgement of the Scouring is when Jackson offs Saruman in the Extended version of his films. In the books Saruman dies in the Shire in the aforementioned battle. Jackson made the right decision in excising all of it.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#60 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 12, 2020 6:59 pm

I haven't read the books either Frau. I had a strange experience where I loved reading The Hobbit but hated the first part of Fellowship so much I stopped (I know the first ~70 pages are world-building but still). As for the movies, well I quit after the first Hobbit, which was awful- dragging out that one book into three films for money, making the non-dragon villain a character from the footnotes, etc.- just terrible creative decisions made across the board.

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soundchaser
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#61 Post by soundchaser » Sat Dec 12, 2020 7:09 pm

All three of the Hobbit films are terrible — some of the worst pacing I’ve ever come across in a major blockbuster, and with CGI that looks somehow worse than the stuff that Jackson did fifteen years earlier. The barrel river chase sequence in the second one is genuinely embarrassing.

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Mr Sausage
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The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#62 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Dec 12, 2020 8:06 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:I haven't read the books either Frau. I had a strange experience where I loved reading The Hobbit but hated the first part of Fellowship so much I stopped (I know the first ~70 pages are world-building but still). As for the movies, well I quit after the first Hobbit, which was awful- dragging out that one book into three films for money, making the non-dragon villain a character from the footnotes, etc.- just terrible creative decisions made across the board.
I had the exact same experience. Loved The Hobbit when we read it in Grade 6, immediately took up Fellowship when summer came, and couldn’t get through the first hundred pages, it was so boring and turgid. I eventually forced myself to finish it two years later out of a weird guilt I get over leaving things unfinished, but it was scarcely a pleasure. I eventually read the other two sometime after seeing either the second or third movie in theatres. They seemed like bloated, self-important adventure stories written in a faux-mediaeval style that grows tedious the more elevated it tries to make its language. I read them quickly and moved on. I’m not baffled that they’re popular, but definitely am whenever I see them listed among the great books.

I remember the movies fondly, tho’.

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#63 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sat Dec 12, 2020 8:14 pm

I just want to hop in and defend the ending of The Return of the King, which I think is a fitting and bittersweet coda to the entire trilogy. A central theme of LOTR is that one who has seen war can never truly "go back again," and that is what the movie's final 20 minutes takes time and care to convey. Also, the whole trilogy is essentially an 11-hour movie; to wrap it up in a few minutes would seem weird.

I'll also point out that the extended edition of the third Hobbit film, The Battle of the Five Armies, is pretty bonkers and, in its own way, great. It's very different from the theatrical cut, and almost everything added is action. It's rated R, and it never fails to blow my mind that a big-budget, R-rated movie adaptation of The Hobbit exists. It is not high art, but it is absurd and fun.

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The Pachyderminator
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#64 Post by The Pachyderminator » Sat Dec 12, 2020 9:31 pm

The Scouring of the Shire is a crucial element of the books, thematically and structurally. The books return, over and over, to the thought of the Shire as a source of comfort and grounding for the hobbits, but also the place that relies on protection it doesn't understand, and which our heroes have had to leave to an uncertain fate. Setting the Shire to rights proves that the comforts of home are real and resilient enough not to be destroyed by the much greater events of the story, while also showing that the hobbits have grown enough that they can now take charge of their own home. Omitting it would make the ending rather bathetic - "Well, we're back again, everything's just like it was before, and fortunately we'll never need to use the strength or heroism we've developed."

It may not have fit in the movie very well - I still haven't seen the second half of Return of the King - but that's because Jackson had only a vague idea of what the themes and structure of the books are in the first place. I realize that some people find Tolkien's style a bit florid, but it's important to realize that the continuously and artificially heightened tension, tonally inappropriate melodrama, pratfalls, and B-movie horror effects in the films were all Jackson's additions. It's actually possible to present a series of resolutions to a long, involved story in a logical way without making it seem that the story simply doesnt know how to stop.
Last edited by The Pachyderminator on Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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soundchaser
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#65 Post by soundchaser » Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:39 pm

I totally disagree that omitting it destroys the structure of the ending, because that “you can’t go home again, except some of you can” theme is covered by sailing away from the Gray Havens. Frodo *is* changed by his adventure, and Annie Lennox singing “Into the West” shows that in a far more involving way on screen than that narrative detour would have. Again, I get why Tolkien has it there, but I just don’t think it works.

(I am really not a fan of the books, admittedly, but I think the movies are by and large pretty good. I respect Tolkien much more as a linguist than a prose-smith.)

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Big Ben
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#66 Post by Big Ben » Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:59 pm

The Scouring of the Shire is also a very not so subtle allegory for the industrialization of the UK after World War II. For a man who was not a fan of allegory it always struck me as odd that Tolkien included it besides wanting to simply make commentary on it. I say this because Frodo and the entire Fellowship very much DO make growth throughout the story. Furthermore any sort of battle/conflict outside of the ones detailed in The Silmarillion could never possibly match up to Sauron and his subsequent defeat. Jackson is not perfect but cutting out the Scouring of the Shire was absolutely the right decision.

Mind you this excludes all of the things NOT detailed in the book proper like all the details of what happens to Middle Earth and all the characters in it. That could be an entire movie in itself!

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#67 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:10 am

I'm not a fan of The Hobbit films. It would've been interesting to see Guillermo Del Toro's vision for them.... Where does The Silmarillion fit into Tolkien's world? I heard it's hard to follow. Is that's why a film version most likely will not happen?... I did find it odd that when the Hobbits returned to the Shire, the Shire seemed untouched and unfazed by what happened throughout Middle Earth.

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Big Ben
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#68 Post by Big Ben » Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:19 am

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:10 am
I'm not a fan of The Hobbit films. It would've been interesting to see Guillermo Del Toro's vision for them.... Where does The Silmarillion fit into Tolkien's world? I heard it's hard to follow. Is that's why a film version most likely will not happen?... I did find it odd that when the Hobbits returned to the Shire, the Shire seemed untouched and unfazed by what happened throughout Middle Earth.
The Silmarillion is essentially a collection of stories about the First Age of Middle Earth and it's dense only in the sense you have to remember an obscene amount of names pertaining to names, locations and constructs contained with the fictional universe Tolkien created. But I suppose a major take away from the book that should be shared is that Sauron was not the first Dark Lord to plague Middle Earth and the book details said figure in detail. It's difficult to really explain without going into an obscene amount of detail but if you really want to understand all the bells and whistles of Tolkien's world right down to the literal music that made it when that Universe's God set it into motion it's the book for you.

Mercifully there will never be a film or television adaptation of the book. For the benefit of creators and audience alike.

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knives
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#69 Post by knives » Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:27 am

The reason it won’t be adapted, to be specific, is that the Tolkien family own the rights to it and hate the idea of adapting them.

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The Pachyderminator
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#70 Post by The Pachyderminator » Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:50 am

knives wrote:
Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:27 am
The reason it won’t be adapted, to be specific, is that the Tolkien family own the rights to it and hate the idea of adapting them.
Which is my biggest reason, unprincipled as it is, for hesitating about what I said in the WKW box thread about wanting a shorter copyright term. Yes, in principle, I think these stories should belong to the world by now, but part of me is grateful I won't have to find out what Hollywood would turn the Silmarillion into.

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The Pachyderminator
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#71 Post by The Pachyderminator » Mon Dec 14, 2020 11:58 pm

Big Ben wrote:
Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:59 pm
The Scouring of the Shire is also a very not so subtle allegory for the industrialization of the UK after World War II.
Tolkien denied this, for whatever that's worth:
it has been supposed by some that The Scouring of the Shire reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.

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aox
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#72 Post by aox » Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:19 pm

Soviet Lord of the Rings Discovered and Released on Youtube

I'm not sure, as a fan, I am "delighted" to see this. But, it is an interesting curiosity. Reaffirms that Jackson did a great job with the material.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#73 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Apr 03, 2021 2:31 pm

That's an interesting find! I was previously aware that there was a 1980s Russian version of The Hobbit (though I have only seen it through the naughtily re-subtitled Cinema Snob video on the film!), but I did not realise that there was a Lord of the Rings adaptation as well!

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#74 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Apr 02, 2023 8:11 pm

For those much more in tune with Tolkien's work and what seemed to be neglected by Jackson, is there an explanation as to how Saruman turned towards Sauron's side?

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

#75 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Apr 03, 2023 10:09 am

Saruman never "turned towards" Sauron -- he thought he could out-Sauron Sauron. So he is a third, complicating force. He is an enemy of the good guys -- but not as an "ally" of Sauron but as a competitor.

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