Viewing a restored version of The Fellowship of the Ring - Questions.

Ah, so *you're* the one...

 

IIRC, the first draft of a LotR movie script, back in the 1960s, had the Fellowship flying from place to place on giant eagles.

 

He's not the only one. I liked the Hobbit movies. The book never did much for me so I didn't care about differences or bloatedness or whatever. To me it was three more visits to a place I would otherwise never have seen again.

 

Answer 1. The horses all ran away because they were chicken-hearted cowards!

Answer 2. The Fellowship ate them all because they were peckish and MordorBurger was closed on account of war!

 

LOL

Yeah, I thought the Hobbit trilogy was good while LOTR trilogy was great, but it really was good to visit ME again.

 

The more Middle Earth the better.

Not enough Beorn, and I liked Tauriel but the elf-dwarf romance had to go. Other than that I loved 'em, especially in HFR 3D!

Gentle reminder that the Bilbo/Gollum scene is the best part of the trilogy, of course:



The rest of the scene continues in separate videos.

 

I got The Fall of Gondolin for Christmas. Anyone read this yet?

 

People complain all the time about Jackson/Walsh/Boyens creating the non-canonical character of Tauriel, but she - along with the inclusion of both Azog and Radagast - was decided upon when Guillermo del Toro was still on the project. The whole elf-dwarf romance was nonsensical at best, but it was forced on them by the studio, so I sort of give 'em a pass on that one. I think Tauriel would have worked better if she'd died at the climactic Battle of Five Armies, giving her an emotional and thematic reason to exist in those films, and setting her up as an ultimately tragic figure would have given her some actual resonance instead of being a Mary Sue included just for the sake of female 'representation'... guess they forgot they were also bringing back Galadriel!!!

The world-building in that trilogy was extraordinary... then Peter Jackson all but ruined it with that hideous, ghastly HFR digital photography... if any movie series should have been shot on traditional 35mm film, it was The Hobbit, alas...

And in contrast to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, wherein the theatrical versions are (largely) the definitive versions - notwithstanding the disgraceful exclusion of Christopher Lee from The Return of the King - I find the extended versions of The Hobbit trilogy to be (again, largely) the definitive versions overall...

 

I really want to acquire a quality fan edit of The Hobbit (there are supposedly two really good ones). I am unclear how to actually download a file of that size, and am yet to figure it out. Any recommendation on one, and the best way to get it?

 

Interesting, for me the extended versions of LOTR are the essential ones. While for The Hobbit, I think less would be more.

 

That's piracy and quite frowned upon here (and most places).

 

Why would it be piracy if I own the movies? I simply don't have the skill or time to edit them myself.

I pay for everything I own, music and video.

 

It may be frowned upon here but it's not piracy. Fan-edits are considered "Artistic License/Fair Use" and quite legal. Uploading/downloading copyrighted content (such as the official BluRays) on "torrent" sites is definitely illegal.

I happen to like the official extended BluRays of the Trilogy. But there is an excellent 4 hour "bloat-trimmed" fan-edit of The Hobbit by Dustin Lee that is legally downloadable in both 480p DVD and 1080p and is much closer to the book. Google it.

Dave Mac

 

I totally understand why people dig the extended versions; it's more of that world and characters that they so love, there is a deepening of character and motivations, and there is some nice scenes throughout... the trouble I have with them is;

1) They're way too long and mess up the effective pacing of their theatrical counterparts.

2) Whilst they have nice added scenes that deepen, enrich, and expand that story, the vast majority of those scenes aren't strictly necessary and are easy to see why they were cut in the first place, and not just for timing reasons.

3) The deal-breaker for me is the fact I have to change discs half-way through the extended versions... and for me, that's a big bucket of GTFO that I didn't order!!!

If it were up to me, I would add the following footage to the theatrical versions, and leave them at that;

FOTR - the few second of dialogue from Gandalf explaining to Frodo the background of Gollum and what his real name was... don't know why they cut that in the first place.
TTT - the scene where Wormtongue shows Eomer the order from King Theoden to expel him from Rohan; the scene where the fleeing Uruk-Hai get massacred by the trees.
ROTK - Saruman and Wormtongue at Isengard (by far the most egregious excision of them all!); Merry getting anointed by Theoden into the Rohirrim; Gothmog's demise at the Battle of Pelennor Fields.

All of those scenes are (more or less) important beats of the narrative that should have been included in the initial theatrical versions, in my humble opinion, but all of them combined add up to less than ten minutes of screen time... which shows you just how right Peter Jackson got it in the first place.

The Hobbit trilogy are already in their theatrical versions an inherently flawed beast (albeit still some of the very best high-fantasy movies ever produced), and there are some genuinely terrific and substantial scenes (as well as some minor filler) in their extended versions that do make them better films overall - especially with The Battle of the Five Armies, whose extended version is the only version as far as I'm concerned - and anything that makes them even marginally better as films and as a viewing experience is a win in my book...

 

Yup. We still can't directly link to it here, as it does fall in that gray area. But that's all.

 

Nerd. Total nerd.




In a good way.

 

lol.
It’s been decades since I last read LOTR. I’m reading something else atm but I’m thinking it might just be next. Thx

 

I have three sons and I read out loud The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings to each in turn.
They looked forward to bedtime (kind of). I would ask, "Lord of the Rings?" and they would jump up ready to go.
When I was finished for the night they always wanted more.
That's how timeless and compelling those books are.

Every single time Gandalf sacrificed himself at the hands of the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm I cried, and they each in turn did too. It was awesome. Books!
I have an 8th grade English teacher from back in 1967 to thank for those books.

When the movies came out I discovered how to correctly pronounce names I had messed up. Oopsie ...

 

Finished rewatching the trilogy yesterday with the extended blu-rays. On the whole, sadly, the films are starting to show their age, which I suppose is the risk with CGI heavy films. Quite noticeable when the hobbits are shown around other characters, the editing used to place them in the same scene looking unrealistic in many places. I also felt Return Of The King seemed a bit more clunky than the first two in terms of acting and direction, but maybe that was due to watching the extended cuts.


Maybe time for another remake?

As for some of the plot holes in the story and missing scenes, I think more should have been covered of the Palantir, covered slightly with Saruman but it would have helped explain Denethor's descent to hopeless madness. As for the eagles, they did show in the final battle at Mordor's gates to tackle the Nazgul but why not earlier when they were attacking the city? And why does Gandalf wield power at times to good effect, but at others he appears helpless and uses no magic at all? For example he rode out to see off the lesser Nazgul during the retreat from Osgoliath but during the siege he used none? I get that he was outmatched against the Witch King himself in their encounter but he could have seen off a few of them? I guess there's always risk of relying on magic too much otherwise it would be a very short story but I always like to see consistency in the use of special powers. Oh and during the siege and the battering ram, guys if you can move huge stones around the city easy enough to be able to fling them at the advancing enemy, then seriously just pile up a couple against your gate and no one's coming in then are they?
I think it's a shame that Sam wasn't shown to travel west later on also, been a while since I've read the books but reading some wiki's for a quick refresher he went later on after his wife passed, presumably he had a longer life span due to being a ring bearer for a while.

I'm looking forward to see what the Amazon series can achieve.

 

They wanted to honor it by creating an epic psychedelic adaptation that would feature their original songs. Paul McCartney would portray Frodo Baggins, and Ringo Starr would star as his affectionate sidekick, Sam Gamgee. George Harrison would portray the wise wizard Gandalf and John Lennon would appear as the unfortunate Gollum.


Thank god that never happened.

 

Well fellow Tolkien followers/nerds, I decided to order a copy of the book.
I suppose the same part of me that tries to secure the best version of an album within my budget came into play here.
I had a $20 gift card for Amazon and managed to find a used copy there of the version illustrated by Alan Lee.
It has arrived and I'm about 1/10 of the way into it (~page 100).



I'm so glad I noticed this thread last month. It's just like catching up with an old friend...
Thx