View Single Post
Old 03-15-2016, 05:52 PM   #4
Morthoron
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
 
Morthoron's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ensconced in curmudgeonly pursuits
Posts: 2,528
Morthoron is a guest of Galadriel in Lothlórien.Morthoron is a guest of Galadriel in Lothlórien.Morthoron is a guest of Galadriel in Lothlórien.Morthoron is a guest of Galadriel in Lothlórien.Morthoron is a guest of Galadriel in Lothlórien.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Faramir Jones View Post
What annoys me is knowing that far younger and far more inexperienced people, given a fraction of the money that was spent here, could have produced something far better...
Which is something PJ was at the time he directed the LotR trilogy: relatively unknown outside of cheap horror films, and certainly untried when it came to serious or big-budget films (the two terms not necessarily being synonymous).

He strayed here and there, but his hubris was often reined in by cooler heads ("No, Pete, Arwen should not be cutting off orc heads in Helms Deep!"), but much of the esthetic of the film, the cinematography and a greater part of the dialogue (whether or not the original character voiced the lines) was basically true to Tolkien's Middle-earth. Certainly, one can be annoyed at the character assassinations of Denethor and Faramir, the whole wasted 15 minutes of Aragorn falling off a cliff, then frenching his horse, or the entire "Arwen is dying" idiocy, but, for the most part, one got a sense of the depth and breadth of Middle-earth. If anything, his energy was commendable.

However, ten Oscars later, PJ was a different sort of director. Whether or not he forced out Guillermo del Toro (and the conspiracy theorist in me thinks he did, and GdT was simply too much of a gentleman to say what really happened), PJ decided that he alone should direct the films.

Again, hubris overpowered common sense: he ignored all the genuine humor and quaintness of Tolkien's tale, and in its place threw in troll snot, a diva operatic GoblinKing, unendurably long chutes 'n' ladders chases, sophomoric elf/dwarf sexual jokes, and bird-droppings on the hat of a psychedelicized wizard; admitting he had little time, he ignored the bigatures and extensive modeling and rendering that lent a sense of realism to the films, and instead opted for overbearing CGI that basically sucked the life out of Middle-earth; and worst of all, he absconded with the original plot and dialogue and threw it in the garbage, choosing in his pomposity and appalling effrontery to create characters and write the script with merely a nod to the original.

To quote Christopher Tolkien: "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25."
__________________
And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision.

Last edited by Morthoron; 03-15-2016 at 05:56 PM.
Morthoron is offline   Reply With Quote