Has the "Lord Of The Rings" Movie Trilogy Held Up For You?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by mpayan, Sep 13, 2019.

  1. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    And that's fine. I can't watch LOTR. Horrible movies to me. Sorry.
     
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  2. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    I found them entertaining at the time (and did the day-long immersion viewing of all three films with the third came out) but they never "took flight" for me. I found The Two Towers to be the most interesting of the three, mainly because of Gollum's compelling ambivalence, with Return of the King feeling interminable. I think I can chalk some of my lack of engagement up to CG overload, and some of it was iffy even back then (I never bought the Ents, which seemed ridiculously rendered to me).

    Is it a tremendous achievement? Yes. Does it move me? No.
     
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  3. Drew

    Drew Senior Member

    Location:
    Grand Junction, CO
    No. There's some great dialog in those books. It was all streamlined out of the movies. I felt the dwarf tossing joke in FOTR took me right out of what was the best assembled scene in any of the 3 movies.
     
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  4. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    As @Oatsdad said: art matters. Especially art that was a crucial part of your life when you were forming your own identity. The first Harry Potter book came out in America when I was 10. I was a fan right from the beginning. I literally grew up alongside Harry and his friends. Like all of my favorite media, Harry Potter influenced everything from my imagination to my values to my friendships, and provided many wonderful and important memories and moments in my own life.

    Without art (and people to enjoy that art with), life wouldn't mean a damn thing. Not to me, anyway.
     
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  5. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Wow! Though I respect that, I hope my son will learn more from what I teach him about those things than some fiction books.

    I love art but it doesn't define me. If I tell someone I'm a fan of Marcus King, it doesn't tell that person anything about who I am. Just who I listen to. My 2 cents.
     
  6. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I think you're missing the point. @Parachute Woman didn't say "I learned everything about life from Harry Potter" - she just noted that the books influenced her in a variety of ways.

    I suspect you're more shaped by art than you want to recognize. For instance, didn't you ever bond with friends over shared musical interests?
     
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  7. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    You might be right but I just can't get past quidditch which is, IMO, a senseless and stupid game. The whole game is basically won and lost on the snitch so why have all the other stuff at all?
     
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  8. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    I think some may be conflating art with entertainment and, worse, marketing.
     
  9. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Of course I learned from my parents and upbringing. But every child is influenced by the worlds they explore with their imaginations. Every person is. Why else do we have stories at all? Just to mindlessly fill the time until we die? That's certainly not how I feel about them. Stories help us confront the truths of our own humanity. Harry Potter, just as the example we are dealing with, is about friendship, bravery, doing what is right, finding inner strength...all great stuff worth thinking about wrapped up in a wonderful, magical story.

    Well, for starters, Quidditch is quite a minor part of the overall story.

    And, secondly, Quidditch is constructed to be played and strategized as a series of games, not a single game. The Hogwarts House who wins the Quidditch Cup at the end of the school year does so by having scored the most overall points over the course of the whole season. Their points are tallied cumulatively. Therefore, it is wise for the team to utilize their chasers to score as many points as possible prior to the snitch being caught. A team could win individual games by catching the snitch first, but still lose the Cup at the end of the season to a team that had a better overall team of chasers and keeper (plus beaters for the added offensive strategy).

    This point is illustrated in Goblet of Fire at the Quidditch World Cup. Krum catches the snitch for Bulgaria but Ireland wins the game and proves to be the better overall team because they have a stronger team roster with a great set of chasers who score heavily prior to the snitch being caught.

    (We are now well off the thread topic, but there you go).
     
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  10. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I assume there are plenty of Q matches where no one catches the snitch at all, so those are decided by "the other stuff"...
     
  11. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Which highlights how stupid the game is. If by catching the snitch you lose the game, why would you? I know it's only a small part but I really think it's childish and could only be "invented" by someone who doesn't understand what a good sport is (yes I am aware she is a football fan and I'm not suggesting football isn't a good sport)!
    From memory, the game doesn't end until the snitch is caught!
     
  12. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I looked and one site said "The game ends when the Snitch is caught or an agreement is reached between the captains of both teams. Some games can go on for many days if the Snitch is not caught".

    The Snitch usually wins the game because it's worth 150 points, but it's not automatic victory.

    In other words, if Team A has 200 points and Team B 0, Team B would lose if they caught the Snitch.

    This means catching the Snitch early in a game is advantageous.

    Though as Parachute Woman noted, individual wins/losses seem to be less important than total points.

    So you could go 0-10 and still be high in the standings if you lost 700-690 every match, whereas a team that went 10-0 but had 150-140 scores every match could be in last place! :)
     
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  13. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    I admire your dedication to the cause! So if both sides get so board with the game they decide to jack it in then they can agree to or you go into a final having won all your games by catching the snitch in the first five seconds but you lose the cup because the other seeker wasn't as good as yours:D! Nothing here would change my opinion that is an ill thought out and stupid game.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2019
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  14. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    yes...totally.
     
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  15. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    She isn't a very good writer though. Those books are poorly written from a technical point of view and I would take issue with how creative they are.

    Have you ever read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin from 1968? From Wiki:

    "Modern writers have credited A Wizard of Earthsea for introducing the idea of a "wizard school", which would later be made famous by the Harry Potter series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter. Reviewers have also commented that the basic premise of A Wizard of Earthsea, that of a talented boy going to a wizard's school and making an enemy with whom he has a close connection, is also the premise of Harry Potter. Ged also receives a scar from the shadow, which hurts whenever the shadow is near him, just as Harry Potter's scar from Voldemort. Commenting on the similarity, Le Guin said that she did not feel that J. K. Rowling "ripped her off", but that Rowling's books received too much praise for supposed originality, and that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt"

    Boy wizard. Check
    Wizard school. Check.
    Scar. Check.
    Enemy that will stop at nothing to kill him. Check.

    I do like the HP films and enjoyed them but one thing they are not is original or creative. A Wizard of Earthsea is a far better book and obviously more creative and original. All credit to Rowling for making the money she did.
     
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  16. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I disagree. That is entirely your opinion. I have read everything J.K. Rowling has published, including The Casual Vacancy and all of the Cormoran Strike books. She is one of my favorite writers.

    The Harry Potter books have been compared to lots of books that came out before them. Another one is The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson. I never said, nor do I think, that the Harry Potter series is the most original fantasy series ever. It draws on many tropes and ideas seen in lots of works that preceded the first book. But, as with music, innovation is less important to me than emotional impact. In my opinion, the series demonstrates great creativity in language, world-building, humor and original, interesting characters and relationships demonstrated. There's a reason this series reached the level of popularity they did. Rowling created a world and a set of characters that millions and millions of people fell in love with and wanted to visit over and over again.

    I love Hogwarts and Diagon Alley et al, but the reason I care about the series is because I love Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape, Lupin, Luna and dozens of other wonderful characters. Characters and their emotional arcs are always my #1 priority when it comes to storytelling and HP has them in spades.
     
  17. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Fair enough. I guess I just don't see entertainment (no matter how involving it is) as being the life-changing experience that it has been for you. Although I'm deeply passionate about art, it did not cause me to veer in one direction or another as a human being. My personal interactions shaped who I am. I'm glad you've gotten that much out of art, though. We all need guidance and to be taught. I was never taught via art how to be a better person or whatnot.

    To her credit, that doesn't mean a thing in art. It either moves you or it doesn't. Steve Vai is a far better guitarist (technically-speaking) than Paul McCartney ever will be but I was only moved by the latter ; never the former.

    Otherwise, the only real measuring stick in art would be technical proficiency which it thankfully isn't.
     
  18. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    To be fair, I don't think Rowling ever felt a buncha music nerds would be arguing about it decades later! :D

    I suspect Quidditch is something that Rowling barely thought about when she wrote the first book. She probably had a loose idea but then needed to work out more formal rules when the series continued.

    It has a "making it up as she goes along" feel and probably shouldn't be inspected as closely as we're doing. It's really just a plot device anyway! :shh:
     
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  19. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    She should have had a friend who actually enjoys sports give it a read.
     
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  20. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    To invoke our pal Vidiot - for whom sales seem to be the ultimate arbiter of worth - the books made her a gajillionaire even with an effed-up sport involved, so I think she did okay! :laugh:

    Anyway, like I noted, Quidditch exists to motivate plot points. Whether or not it makes sense is pretty irrelevant...
     
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  21. malcolm reynolds

    malcolm reynolds Handsome, Humble, Genius

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    We need a sequel trilogy where we find out that Sauron forged a second "one ring to rule them all" before being defeated. Then we can have all of the original characters come back and they can be crapped upon like with the new Star Wars films.
     
  22. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I enjoy some of the fanfiction (it's something to share with one of my nieces) and those writers have to compensate for it. I'd prefer that it had a rational scoring system, rather than one designed to make Harry be a hero.
     
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  23. budwhite

    budwhite Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

    Location:
    Götaland, Sverige
    An LOTR/Hobbit 4K update, new 4K catalog, Shout, Scream & KL Studio Classics titles, Monty Python & more

    There is a LOT of work that needs to be done to get all six of these films ready for 4K UHD release, especially with both versions of each film included. The Hobbit films were shot in 5K/3D high frame rate, while The Lord of the Rings films were shot on 35 mm film in Super 35 format. All were finished as 2K Digital Intermediates for theatrical release. So to do this project right, Weta, Wingnut Films, and WB are going to have to rescan all the original camera negative in native 4K (for the Rings films), re-render all the VFX in 4K (or decide to simply upsample the existing 2K), and assemble all-new native 4K DIs for all six films. That’s going to take a while, especially if the project is just beginning (which, as I noted, I suspect it is). So I would guess that June 2020 release date is wildly aspirational.

    Rumors about a release next year or in 2021.
    They must take the Star Trek route and re-render the effects.
    I don't think an upscale and HDR of a 20 year old DI in 2K will do anyone happy.
    (better to keep to the old blu-ray if this is the case)
    Plus I hope they fix the greenish colors in Fellowship
     
  24. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    I'd happily settle for reference-quality 2K transfers of the Rings trilogy (theatrical and extended; take yer pick!)... with original color timing, of course.

    We don't have that at present, alas... and we know P.J. can do it; King Kong's 1080p presentation is still one of the best Blu-ray transfers I've yet seen... absolutely stunning.
     
  25. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    Watched the third one last week with the kids.

    Personally I thought it was showing its age. And that ending went on forever.
     
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