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LotR Takes Top Spot on IMDB
Dwarf_Sibling writes "Hard to believe but with over 11,000 votes tallied LoTR:FoTR has displaced "The Godfather" as the highest rated movie at IMDB. Over time I'd guess this will fall lower, but this is an amazing accomplishment for a fantasy movie."
but this is an amazing accomplishment for a fantasy movie. ;)
Or a mediocre one for a kid with a script...
It is a fantastic movie, and apart from slightly too long fight scenes, an overuse of dramatic music, and a penchant for long fly by panning shots, there is very little to be criticized. Excellent execution that keeps you riveted to your seat for 3 hours straight. You have to respect LotR for making a superb movie given the challenges, versus saying putting a bunch of people in suits and getting them to talk with an Italian accent.
Don't get me wrong, but I don't think that LOtR was any better than the godfather, or for that matter, better than any of the top ten movies on the IMDB's list. While it was great, and I was happy to see it twice this week, it just doesn't have what it takes to beat the godfather (for that matter, it doesn't beat the rest of the top ten, by and large).
I mean, yes, it was great. Great FX, great cast, great story. But better than Citizen Kane? no way. I mean, the movie it knocked out of the top ten was Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In my mine, there's no contest. Strangelove wins every time.
Nothing finer than starting off monday morning burning some karma.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
We'll just have to see if George Lucas can get his act together and displace LoTR:FoTR with SWep2:AOTC. A lot of people have been hyping that movie, and it'll be interesting to see if George Lucas learns from his mistakes in SWep1:TPM. After that, the ball will be in Peter Jackson's court to make sure that LoTR part 2 can displace SWep2:AOTC, should it rise above LoTR:FoTR. With acting like Sean Bean's, it's no wonder that LoTR:FoTR has been so successful (admittedly, that was not the only factor by far), but LoTR part 2 will not have Sean Bean's acting to rely upon. Luckily, the cast is filled with other talented and well-performing actors. (Ian McKennan was brilliant too). Peter Jackson's directing can't be faulted much either, although his leaving out the details of Bill the Pony and his thing about Saruman "joining forces" and not designing his own ring were kind of questionable.
2DUP * ;
The problem is that there are lots of newbies who recently began voting on IMDB hence this "all new - all beautiful" effect this had on the votes.
;-)/VHS/Betamax... ).
Now, I'd be curious to see if it'll still be at the same place in several months whenever an even more over-hyped blockbuster will have taken place.
Don't take me wrong, I am not flaming whoever for this choice but I firmly consider that there should be a separate voting booth for the film which are less than 2 years old (IE: which are either still playing or not yet available on DVD/LD/DivX
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I went and saw LoTR last Wednesday and loved every minute of it. It was the latest showing at 10:30PM, and the theater was still pretty crowded. Taking into consideration that I live in Hawaii in a relatively low population area, that means that the word is out on how good this movie is.
I went to see it by myself, so I had no one to discuss it with, but as I was leaving, I glanced over the people I had watched it with. Most were staring off into the night with eyes gleaming, remembering. The frightening Nazgul, the oh so beautifully rendered Balrog, the horror of Boromir's betrayl, and the stern stuff that hobbits are made of.
Since seeing the movie, everyone I've spoken to it about has been heaping praise upon praise on it, and it completely deserves it.
I've also been following its rise on IMDB, even contributing my vote (10). When I voted, it was rated at 9.7, and listed at #6. If a movie deserves to be #1, this would be it.
-- Dan
I think besides the fact that Lord of the Rings fans tend to be fairly computer-literate (which will skew any online poll ;-) ), I think you have to remember that 2001 has not been a good year for movies in general.
Movies like Moulin Rouge, Memento, Mulholland Drive, and a few others have a lot of quirks in them that makes them not completely acceptable by the broad general public. High-budget movies such as Pearl Harbor did not live up to their expectations. And Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone made most of its money in the first few weeks just to satisfy the pent-up demand from all those young readers of the Harry Potter books (it's a good, but not a great movie).
I think in the end, 2001 will be the year that only two movies will have good box-office take over a long period of time: Shrek and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.
And no, seeing Casablanca once on your local PBS station does not qualify you as an expert on the history of moving pictures. The only way to become an authority is to view several thousands of movies whose release dates are balanced across the first 100 years of movie making. Only then can a reasonable judgement of what is really "the best" be offered.
NOTE: I've read the book about 15 times over the years, so I'm not exactly a casual LOTR fan, but nor am I a rabid "Gandalf is God" fan.
One of the very few negative reviews I've found expresses exactly my feelings about the movie.
Basically I thought the film was OK as big superproductions go, but I was disappointed that it doesn't add anything to the book. On the contrary, it seems to replace most of what's good with tired old Hollywood shticks: meaningful glances, silly special effects, poor character development, ugly sets (the Elves' residences are especially disappointing), and so on.
There's a very few things I liked: the Hobbiton sets, Bilbo and Gandalf smoking a pipe, the grief-stricken fellowship outside Moria, maybe a few other things. The rest seems like a big waste to me.
This would seem to demonstrate that LoTR has satisfied its target audience, us geeks. It remains to be seen whether it will become a cultural juggernaut like Star Wars that appeals to all segments of the population.
It's worth remembering that newer films tend to achieve high ratings initially. By my count, 33 of the top 100 rated films at imdb were made in the last ten years. The database hasn't been around that long, and young people are more active on the net than older ones, so you're bound to see more votes for movies that have come out recently.
Lists like this are meaningless anyway. They only serve to stir up discussion and draw attention to good films that people may have forgotten.
And no, I haven't seen it yet, but I will.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Umm, if you went by ticket sales, that would state that titanic was one of the best movies of all time. And by many non tech people, it might be, but I wouldn't take the word of those people, they are nuts.
Another problem is that the voting scale is too fine for most people and that people tend to be conservatively critical. The number of people voting 2 or 3 is much lower, statistically, that those who vote 8 or 9 becuase people tend to be too NICE when rating a film unless they REALLY hate it in which case they'll give it a 1. A scale of one to four or five would be more indicative than the current scale.
:wq
I've yet to see the film, but I intend to. However, I'm wondering how many people are going to see the film because LoTR is derigeur for the geek crowd? Even when I was a young lad, attending university in the mid-sevnties, the LoTR was required reading for anybody that wanted to fit in with those who spent more time at computer terminals than at their studies. I liked the books, but I didn't think they ranked as great literature.
But, did you know that for a large portion of the source code to Perl, after the usual copyright disclaimer, there is a quote from something by J. R. R. Tolkien?
Yes, there are people who DO read source code, and I'm one of them. It's a great source of education and inspiration if the code is well written and a wonderful source of amusement from code that is badly written.
I'd certainly be a bit pissed if the producers or studio say, "We have to call it Lord of the Rings II, or the idiots won't be able to tell the difference." You just know there's dumb enough people in Hollywood to think that and even push it through.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
While there have been some posts highlighting the fact that the IMDB rating is only representative of those individuals with web-access, I think this doesn't fully address the limits of the IMDB ratings and how in particular they may not accurately reflect this film.
Specifically, the IMDB ratings are the product of those individuals who care enough about a film to take the time to enter a rating. It is likely to contain significantly more strong positive or negative reactions and far fewer moderate reactions than other means of statistical analysis. This can produce skewed results.
Furthermore, to make use of the old 'geeks and dungeons & dragons/tolkienesque fantasy' stereotype, while it is highly doubtful that Hollywood would produce a film with such a small target audience, the IMDB is particularly biased towards this group. In my experience, there is some validity to the claim that computer 'geeks' have generally had a higher level of exposure to fantasy novels and have had more opportunities to form opinions based on this exposure. Tolkien, at least within the circles I frequent, has always been a favourite of computer professionals. While these are not the only people who will see the film, they are the group most likely to head home and make use of an online rating service to make their opinions known and to have the tools available to do so.
To summarize my own rather rambling post, I think there is some justification for the belief that those people who are both willing and able to use the IMDB rating system may be bias through their own background and interests to grant this movie an abnormally high rating.
Before I conclude, however, I would like to say that I did enjoy the film a great deal and would not hesitate to say that it is one of the better films released in recent years, though not the best ever.
"Be proud to be a fighter" - Martial Arts Adage
LotR was a decent movie, with great special effects, scenery, and cinematography. But the storytelling was rather poor. After the fellowship leaves on its journey, the movie is two hours of barely related events which are fun to watch, but meaningless in terms of advancing the story. There's no sense of progress, not really any background explanation of the places and people they come across. A good movie should NOT require you to read the book it's based on to follow the story!
Essentially, I feel this was a (successful) attempt to put readers' favorite scenes from the book on film, and to do it in a very expensive way, and to make a lot of money off that hype. But I think it fails at being a great movie on its own. This was definitely better than The Phantom Menace, but it is far from being the best movie ever.
-- it's #1 with women on imdb, which means it's not just male geeks voting;
-- the external reviews have been very good, so it's not just sci-fi-fantasy types lauding it;
-- if you look in the top 10 grossing films - 6 of 10 are sci-fi in both the us box and worldwide box - no other genre is close;
-- i've always been a sci-fi fan, and a tolkien nut, and have always deferred to mainstream films when it comes time to high praise - i was glad annie hall won best pic in 1977 - star wars deserved technical awards, but was not the best film made that year...
-- but this has me thinking - sci fi movies are great entertainment and make for outstanding cinematic experiences - this stuff makes good movies in a more rounded way than i'd imagined.
-- now if only hhgg can still be made, we'd have the best of all worlds! as funny as anything that won an oscar, just techie enough and honestly good plot/story arc/characters, all that good stuff.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Has there ever been a movie that's been "as good" as the book?
Absolutely. Off the top of my head, and I know I'm missing a bunch:
Yeah, two of them were sitting behind me in the theater. When the credits came on...
Cretin #1: "Well, that sucked. You know, for sitting through a 3-hour movie I expect some kind of ENDING"
Cretin #2: "Don't worry, they're probably just setting it up for some kind of sequel."
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Whether this was the best movie ever or not, I think that there is no competition for it in the fantasy genre. The only movies that have a prayer of competing are:
Dragonslayer (reigning champ finally unseated)
The Dark Crystal (very cool, but ulitmately just puppets)
Excalibur (honorable mention)
Willow (not enough cool monsters)
Conan the Barbarian (ah-nuld)
Beastmaster (kitschy)
Clash of the Titans (uber-kitschy, outdated special effects)
Am I missing any? I can't think of any other half-decent fantasy movies that are even playing the same game here.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
While what you say is true (I have seen free preview releases of movies here in NYC on many occasions - in the summer, all you gotta do is walk around in front of Sony Lincoln Square on 68th st and Bway to get some, but you have no say over what movie it will be), I also will point out that even though I love Howard Stern, he gets paid off big time to endorse shit on his show. So take it with a grain of salt - you can usually tell by his tone when he actually means something and when he's just getting paid to say it.
It's true -- I'm the only geek left who hasn't read Lord of the Rings. I've read many more O'Reilly books than science fiction novels. But I am an avid moviegoer -- I LOVE movies.
I went into LotR with an open mind. Having never read the books, I really didn't know what to expect. From the opening sequence, I was enthralled.
Several things struck me about this movie. First and foremost, it takes itself seriously. I'll never be able to watch Phantom Menace again, because LotR does what PM should have -- presented a serious and dark tale of myth.
After seeing LotR for the second time, I find it curious that so many people complain about character progression. When your last impression of Sam and Frodo is of them walking off together, and then you see them at the beginning of the movie again, the change is stark.
The special effects were fantastic.
The acting was fantastic.
The dialogue and pacing were fantastic.
The last action/adventure movie I saw that was this good was the Matrix, period. For three hours I was swept away into a different land with vivid scenery, odd creatures, and a compelling story. I can't imagine what more I would want from this movie.
Best movie ever? If Towers and King turn out just as good, then I believe the trilogy as a whole is worthy of such consideration. It's certainly not a cinematic masterpiece like Citizen Kane, but if you were going out this weekend, which movie would you rather see?
Fellowship of the Rings could be described with one word that I rarely use but is completely apropos: epic. How many other movies can claim the same?
What if I gave you three dollars? How much? Thr-- four dollars? Keep talking, I'm listening.
This gives great credit to anybody - adapting a work of such linguistic depth and complexity, with so many characters and so much plot, even into a 9 hour trilogy of movies is not easy, and though we don't all agree with all the storyline cuts and modifications, these people deserve the money they are making from the film for such a good job done.
However, while you are reading, let me give my two cents of things I didn't like, cinematically and directorially about this movie: the atrocious use of music in gaudy fashion, trying to push audience emotions around to make up for mediocre acting in some scenes. It was just overdone - music is fine and necessary, but in a good movie you should barely notice it, unless it's really appropriate in a scene. In LoTR:FoTR I noticed it on several occasions, and in a bad way and it made my cheese-factor detector kick into high gear. The other thing that greatly diminished the experience for me was the overly sappy filming of the scenes at the end of the movie. Elijah Wood is not a great, emotive actor. Long face shots of him with tears flowing trying to look like he is distraught are just not engaging in cinematic form. I saw the audience squirming in their seats in the last 3-4 minutes of the movie last night (the second time I was seeing the movie by the way). While you can't change the division of the movie into three parts and keep to the book, you have to do the best you can to at least make the ending _feel_ more engaging.
LOTR is a visionary masterpiece. Every frame could be frozen and framed and look great on any wall of mine. There is no question that the camera work is simply revolutionary, from the vertigo-enducing dives to the slow pans across the vast landscapes.
It is however, a very Cliff Notes friendly version of the plot. I'll take two instances here, and let you decide the rest.
1) Bill the horse. One of my favorite characters from the book is undoubtedly cut to shreds by the film. I don't know why they even bothered including the five-second scene of Sam and Bill. Maybe simple nostalgia from Jackson and possibly trying to give Sam some type of emotional grounding since his only other character scene was dancing with Lucy in the first moments in Hobbiton.
2) The Aragorn/Arwen romance. I have no problems whatsoever with this type of story manipulation, and I am glad that Arwen got such a prominent role in the film (and undoubtedly in the next two as well). But this romance is forced, with the simple gestures and "remember how we met" dialogue not enough emotional foundation to give them the effect that is needed.
These are just two examples, there are plenty more. The word is that Peter Jackson's first cut of the film was 3 hours 30 minutes. It's possible that New Line, scared enough that it was over 3 hours, didn't want to risk such a long cut since the longer it is the fewer showings the film can have. So 30 minutes of character development probably went right out the window.
Must I point out that Titanic, a great flick (despite all you naysayers), is 3 hours 20 minutes, has solid character development, "legs" like you wouldn't believe (ie, stayed on the charts for more than 3 months), and grossed more than any film in history. The hobbits are dreadfully bland, Legolas (especially) and Gimili are bystanders at best. Boromir is given one scene where he describes Gondor as his character moment, with most of the screen time given to the leads. Gandalf is represented best, which is why his (SPOILER WARNING) demise (SPOILER END) is so powerful. I loved the after-Moria sequence, though it was easily apparent that the on-the-rocks scene where Boromir is teaching Merry and Pippin how to sword fight was cut down to shreds, when it really shouldn't have been--after such a huge setpiece, a character-driven segment would've been welcomed.
It wasn't until I saw the film the second time that all of this occurred to me. Having re-read the books this summer to get a feel for them, I knew all the characters and took all of the shortcuts for granted. Though one can still enjoy the film as it is constructed (hell, even my girlfriend liked it), when you read the books the events are much more effecting, bringing to life all of those superb moments you once built in your imagination.
The plot goes as such: a little story, a big action sequence, a little story, a big action sequence, etc. Repeat ad nauseum.
Let's just hope that judging by the immense reaction, both from fans and critics--a rare event indeed, that New Line will give Jackson more leeway with The Two Towers and Return of the King and let him include some truly meaningful character moments.
And damn I can't wait for the LOTR:FOTR Director's Cut!
No need to be redundant.
-Legion
When one compares the artistry at work here to anything Lucas has done, it's almost embarassing that Lucas is working as a filmmaker at all.
Nobody who voted at IMDB ranked the movies. Nobody went to a page and filled out a form that said, LotR is better than The Godfather. People voted on a scale of 1-10 based on how good they thought that this particular fantasy-epic was. And they thought that it was better than any fantasy-epic movie that they could have imagined.
The fact that it has become the "#1 movie of all time" according to IMDB is not the fault of either the viewers or the voters. It is the fault of the IMDB for comparing the voted ratings of different types of movies.
It makes no sense to compare the user ratings of older movies with the user ratings of newer ones. After all, IMDB was not around when the classics were released and first appreciated. Nobody flocked to IMDB to fill in "10/10" and click Submit. The core IMDB users have probably voted for it, but people such as you and me have probably never thought to vote on something like Dr. Strangelove. And of course, when IMDB compares ratings between movie genres, we get into an obvious comparing-apples-and-oranges scenario.
So why should we put any stock into the Top Ten movies as selected by IMDB ratings? I think that we shouldn't. The IMDB is a wonderful tool to tell us how much we might like a particular movie, based on the people who have seen it and thought that they should vote for it. But it can not fairly tell us how well one movie compares to another, and it should not try to.
As I said earlier, I really think there was an excellent reason - it shows the very simple gold ring to be a violent, powerful insturment of war. The focus on the ring as Sauron's source of power is what occurs during that scene. It's not just "power", but the power to wage a massive war.
Tolkien was an excellent author, focusing on some things, and glossing over others. Someone said that one of the battle scenes in the movie was 500 words in the book. Well, you can't just *say* there was a battle on screen... if you skimp, it looks like a minor tussle or scrape. So the battles got drawn out. Other things he went into great detail about, spending page after page on glorious details. Those visual details, by and large, were followed to the letter in the movie, but they are in the background or fleeting. The clasp to the cloaks, Bags End covered in kickknacks (I can't remember the Hobbit word for them off the top of my head, but there is a long description of how they are passed back and forth), and a myriad of other details are just set design in the movie. So to a certain extent, the focus shifts... but unlike 99% of book to movie jumps, the *same* details are there... the sign on the gate during the party preperation, the colors of signs and doors, even every drawing that Tolkein did was followed perfectly (the door to Moria, for instance).
But some of the details (like exactly *how* the ring was cut off the hand of Sauron) are missing (okay, at least I don't remember the exact lines, and I'm not gonna look it up right now). I always pictured it as it being cut from his corpse, but that may very well be wrong according to the book - but the three of us (you, myself and Jackson) pictured it three different ways because there *are* many parts of the book that are vague... or at least too vague to hand to a set designer and actors and expect a coherent result.
But the details that were there were left in, and the sweeping changes were (IMO) kept to a necessary minimum. That's a good thing.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Probably because he didn't. He killed his (friend? brother?) to get it, justifying that it was his birthday present (which is interesting, considering that, at least for "modern day" hobbits, they *gave* presents on their birthdays). That would have stretched the scene for quite a long bit, though, and I've already heard from two people that the history of the ring was hard to follow if you didn't read the book, so another kink in the story would have been even more confusing. I would have liked to see the "historical hobbits" and how they lived, distrusting and finally expelling Smeagol from the area.... but that's another "it was over three hours long, anyway" bits that I have no problem losing (but why wasn't the sword carried by Aragorn? Ah, well...)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Star Wars - A New Hope
Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars - Return of the Jedi
Star Wars - The Jar-Jar Binks Chronicles... er...The Phantom Menace
Star Wars - Jar-Jar Strikes back...eh...Attack of the Clones
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Interesting thing about Titanic...
In the box office, December 1997:
Paramount releases Titanic on Friday, to a weekend box office take of only $28,638,131, which is actually not bad given the mere 2,674 screens it played on. A Bond flick released the same day does nearly as well, around 25 mil. This is a good opening, but not remarkable. However, over the week, it takes another $24,331,205, and then another $35,455,673 the next weekend. Then another $35,727,684 over the week, then $33,315,278 on the weekend. This trend continued over the next two months, bouncing around in the $25-35 million range both weekends and weekdays totals, until the end of February, when it slipped below $20mil on weekends, and plummetted on weekdays to the (more typical) $5mil range. It then started to slide slowly down toward the $12mil weekend range, with a brief spike for spring break, until the end of April. Then it abrubtly dropped to about $5mil at the begining of May. A month later, it was drawing about $1mil a week, which was pretty much finis. What was unprecedented was: The weekday take was as high as weekend for the first two months (Leno's "housewife factor"?), and; The falloff curve was typical of a solid drama making 20% the weekly gross, not the much more flash in the pan spike and settle of an action film. For contrast, the first three months curve of Titanic (on a by week, not by day, basis) is pretty much lockstep matched by the two week older "Good Will Hunting"... but about five times as high.
How is this significant with regard to FotR? FotR has the potential to pull in a broader demographic than most films that would be reviewed here. It's getting the same kind of fervered reviews as Titanic did (with much better cause, IMO, but I'm biased... I saw Titanic for the effects, and because it was playing and my friends wanted to see it, but I wouldn't have gone a second time if the most attractive woman I knew had begged me on bended knee... not that she would have, being one of the most razor-minded people I've known, and regarding the film as manipulative drek... ah, how I miss her... but again, my bias is showing) and has the potential to create a repeat viewing draw. It seems to be growing in popularity, not diminishing, which is (sadly... my, what fools these mortals be...) unusual, though we won't have a clear picture on that for two more weeks. It has sequels coming close behind it, and they may sustain the excitement a while. It's already a threat to episode II... putting the EpII preview before this film was a mistake, as the contrast is going to diminish the Star Wars film even more (but it will quite possibly actually create a small late boost in viewing of FotR if it's still on enough screens, which could be interesting) and it has the additional distinction of getting a great deal of weekday attention. Even on the normally brutal Xmas week, there's been two sellout shows today at the theater in the mall next to the offices I work in. The first one was an 11:00 matinee. I don't know (only noted this in passing while grabbing something to nibble on) but there's a chance the next (5:00) show is already running out of tickets. It's currently 2:45. And I think it was on two screens, too. Thing is, though, it's not hauling nearly what "Harry Potter" did. That's bad, right? No. Potter isn't making much anymore, not much at all. It hauled, and it's holding, but it was a Monty Haul, or Hall, and those blow over. FotR opened on the (theoretically) worst week of the year for a debut. No, really. So did Titanic. Was that a factor? Well, not exactly... but sort of. FotR is making a lot more than Titanic did at the begining (or anywhere in its run), but Titanic lasted (oh, my aching head, did that stinker last...) and given it's nature, FotR is really not making nearly as much as it would if it were, say, released in May. Initially. That'll change. (A lot more movies were released in December these last three years than had been previously. Go figure.) And if FotR can keep the momentum long enough, it might even get one last upsurge from anticipation of the sequel. TT will be out the same time next year.
I wouldn't say FotR was the best movie I've ever seen, but it is the best one with mainstream appeal, and I'd really like to see it unseat Titanic. Rest assured, however... as a trilogy, it will certainly do so, and more.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement