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Originally Posted by Morthoron
Ummm...the intellectual in me wants to throttle you with Jabba the Hut's chain. Star Wars and its pedestrian progeny are the most overrated films in this galaxy, or even in a galaxy far, far away.
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Two smilies wasn't enough to calm the intellectual in you a little bit? The intellectual in me laughs. The rest of me doesn't care how 'overrated' anything is if I happen to like it!
As for the influence on cinema, all I know is that the LotR films kickstarted a streak of medieval and/or fantasy epics of various kinds which has kinda disappeared by now. And it feels like the battle scenes in LotR have created a standard.
Is the influence beyond that? Is it a long standing influence? Well, I think that since the LotR release there have been a lot more 2 and 1/2 - 3 hour movies being released, but that may be my lack of awareness previously. But, the old epics like
Lawrence of Arabia and religious epics like
Ben Hur ran 3+ hours, and you can certainly see how PJ was influenced by those!
Another thing that came to mind is the difference between a "best picture" and "your favorite movie". They don't have to be the same thing. At least, they aren't for me. I like watching movies for entertainment, not necessarily to tackle philosophical questions or to be moved emotionally or to have my head messed with. I love adorable pixar movies. I love a movie when it entertains me.
I can still appreciate aspects such as aesthetic value, good writing, good acting, engaging plot, etc, etc to a certain extent (I mean, I'm no film critic, but I don't know how qualified all the film critics are either), but...most of the time, actually, I don't want to watch a psychological drama or especially like a politically driven film because I like watching movies, most of the time, purely for entertainment. I like to laugh and find escape in movies, not be dragged into a depressing mess that realistically represents the human condition. Not most of the time.
So...I guess all my point is that, when people vote for a "best picture" they are not always voting for a "best picture" as in an excellent piece of cinema based on all those meaty things critics take to be part of good cinema, but they are voting for their "favorite movie" (at least
a favorite movie) which entertained them and they don't mind seeing more than once.
You may still condemn anyone who voted for RotK, but hey, storytelling in all its forms was always about entertainment, regardless of what else was and is attached to it. Part of that now in film has to do with things looking cool. Of course you could go off on a whole discussion of the various artforms film incorporates, and how all artforms can "tell a story" but bleh, who has time for that...