A 'darker' Hobbit

[Sauron the White]

fron Nogrod in a post attempting to refute my claim that the professional critics lavished acclaim upon the 3 LOTR films:

Collective praise by the critics? I'm not sure about the U.S. if every critic is fed by the big movie-corporations but at least in Europe I think most of the critics had a long list of reservations and some even scorned the whole project. So at least here it was not a "collective praise"...

If you look at two different websites you will get the proof of my point. The first is metacritic.com -- it keeps track of professional media critics reviews. It tries to limit itself to only the full time critics. Here are the figures for approximately 40 reviews they tracked

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
92 out of 100 - listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

THE TWO TOWERS
88 out of 100 listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

RETURN OF THE KING
94 out of 100 listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

rottentomatoes.com is a bit more expanisve in thier definition of a film critic so they have between 175 and 227 listed. Here are the figures for the 3 LOTR films

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
93% positive out of 183 critics reviews

THE TWO TOWERS
97% positive our of the 206 critics reviews

RETURN OF THE KING
94% positive our of the 227 critics reviews

Again, my point is NOT that the critics are always right. Sometimes the public can love a film that critics hate or vice versa. Sometimes the industry can bestow awards of excellence of films few saw while spurning the fan favorites of the year. The 3 LOTR films are the exception because they achieved the level of a rousing success by three distinct measurements of film success
box office take
critical acclaim
industry awards

Name me any other three films by the same director which can match that feat?

You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.

There's an error of logic here. Hating Peter Jackson and his work or disliking the films does not mean denying the historical record. It means simply having independent judgement and freedom of thought. That is allowed in most democracies, although not in Mordor.

When I saw RotK in the cinema, I had the misfortune of sitting behind four young girls who did nothing but hoot, hollar and laugh with cynical derision at every speech Aragorn made--I got a running commentary on the movie. In fact, I suspect they came to the film in order to laugh at it. I won't repeat their verbal comments here as I'm sure they would earn me an infraction if not a wrist slapping from the mods. But their money still went into the movie coffers and I suppose one can say that they were entertained.

[Sauron the White]

Bethberry ... if you reread my post you will see that I did not connect a dislike of the Jackson films with a denial of the historical record. That indeed would be an error of logic as you state. What I said was this

You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.

My statement was directed at those who want to imply that the LOTR films were some type of failure simply because they did not approve of them or of parts of them. I provided three industry standards to measure a films success. All three were achieved by the LOTR films ... and then some.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Bethberry ... if you reread my post you will see that I did not connect a dislike of the Jackson films with a denial of the historical record. That indeed would be an error of logic as you state. What I said was this


Quote:
You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.

My statement was directed at those who want to imply that the LOTR films were some type of failure simply because they did not approve of them or of parts of them. I provided three industry standards to measure a films success. All three were achieved by the LOTR films ... and then some.

Oh dear. Do forgive me for reading your "But" as an intensifier, since it began the sentence, rather than as a conjunction implying contrast.

This is really a matter of tomayto or tomahto. There are several measures of success viewers can point to and several definitions of success. Popularity and critical acclaim are some, and I applaud your endeavours to search out all these websites. (For the record, they do not record some of the negative reviews by critics in my town, but then I don't live in the centre of the cinematic universe--probably the suburbs. ) Yet these polls and statistics do not deprive viewers of the right of individual definitions of failure. If a person was not pleased with the movies, then the movies failed for them.

For me, I applaud the moving of Boromir's death to the end of the first movie, as it gave that movie a very dramatic climax and implied greater peril to come. It shook us (me?) out of the happy sweet depiction of the Shire and prepared for the darkness to come and gave a satisfying conclusion to the character we saw arguing at Elrond's Council. Well and good. I can't say, however, that Denethor's Plunge did anything but to turn the event into cinematic histrionics. It sacrificed a study of the terrible effect on Denethor of looking into the palantir for special effect. As well, Denethor's death paled substantively beside that of his son Boromir; had these two deaths been more closely related with similar emotional effect, I would have cared more about the fate of the White City. As it was, I kept thinking of the Emperor's fall in SW3 and that, for me, was a mistake. I laughed, instead of cried, I suppose I could say. I'm sure there are many who are quite happy with laughing.

Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the matter. I wouldn't for the world deny you your têtê à têtê with others who may be more extreme than I in their condemnation of the movies, so do carry on without me.

[Sauron the White]

I cannot disagree with your analysis of the Denethor plunge situation. Perhaps the justification was the wide angle shot which showed the armies of Mordor as they laid siege to Minas Tirith. I suspect that was the purpose of it.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

According to the DVD supplementals, they used that shot because they already had it: they ran backwards the model-tracking run they had already made to open the coronation scene (crowds/armies were of course added later.


It's still silly. But by that point I SO didn't care what happened to film-Denethor anyway.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

It's still silly. But by that point I SO didn't care what happened to film-Denethor anyway.

Yes, he was rather an oaf wasn't he? Not a shred of the dignity that Denethor possessed in the books. But one of the best scenes of the movie is where he orders Pippin to sing. The juxtaposition of Denethor mauling his food, Pippin singing plaintively and Faramir's doomed ride was perhaps the only Jackson inspired piece I cared for in the whole film.

[Sir Kohran]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

There's an error of logic here. Hating Peter Jackson and his work or disliking the films does not mean denying the historical record. It means simply having independent judgement and freedom of thought. That is allowed in most democracies, although not in Mordor.

When I saw RotK in the cinema, I had the misfortune of sitting behind four young girls who did nothing but hoot, hollar and laugh with cynical derision at every speech Aragorn made--I got a running commentary on the movie. In fact, I suspect they came to the film in order to laugh at it. I won't repeat their verbal comments here as I'm sure they would earn me an infraction if not a wrist slapping from the mods. But their money still went into the movie coffers and I suppose one can say that they were entertained.

And what about all the people who went in, saw it, and praised it? Their money also went into the movie coffers.