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Info on the LOTR:FOTR DVD
WonderBoy Cox writes "IGN's FilmForce has an interesting article about the much anticipated Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (LOTR:FOTR) DVD coming in the fall of 2002, and the next two movies. According to Jackson The Two Towers is fairly complete in rough cut and Return of the King is coming along nicely. "Both films will be between two-and-a-half and three hours in length with 500 to 600 effects shots, much like the first movie." But, the best part, is that he DVD will have around 30 to 40 minutes of extra footage! "
I wonder if in the future, we'll find people saying "I'll wait for it on DVD", because only by viewing it at home with your digital projector and 5.1 sound (minus the local talking idiots)with all the bells and whistles of extra footage can you see it "as the director intended". Maybe at that point movie theatres will only be for people too poor to make a "perfect" experience at home.
That doesn't even get into the possibility of people getting snobish about only watching "their version" (digitally re-edited version) of a movie....
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
LOTR less than a year to make it to DVD and Star Wars is going to take no one knows how many years?
As far as the movie i saw it last night and it was great. Unlike star wars the evil characters actually acted and looked evil. Believably evil. Not funny austin powers evil like sw.
For me, the biggest question will be the format of the extra material.
I suspect that the will have the "deleted scenes" in the DVD coming out in August. However, I would love to see the extra scenes actually integrated into the movie. We will probably have to wait until the boxed set for that.
I would certainly buy the boxed set if they had a version of the movie without the CGI in Galadriel's ring speech. Cate Blanchett certainly didn't need it and I weep for what the scene could have been...
I heard somewhere (maybe from my girlfriend who used to manage a theatre) that they will never show a movie that is longer than 3 Hours in a theatre. I don't remember running times, but I noticed it in Braveheart, which came in just under 3 hours at the theatre, but the VHS copy runs about 200 mins.
Can anyone confirm/deny the 3 hour rule?
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
The DVD editions will have a solid R rating. For those of you who are more perceptive, I'm sure you noticed during the fights that there are a lot of folks swinging, but not a whole lot of hits. There were a lot of quick cuts made to the fight scenes to make the films PG13 (so they could get the kids in the theater of course), and this is one of the reasons why the fight scenes are so wild and crazy... you are missing about a fifth of the action.
Remember that this is Peter "Brain Dead" Jackson. He has done his share to set the bar for film gore. You cna probably expect the fight scenes to be a lot more like BraveHeart and Gladiator on the DVDs.
I'm looking forward to the 40 minutes of character development that hit the floor myself...
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
One of the scenes I suspect they filmed but cut was the discovery of the stone trolls while walking through the woods.
In this scene, the hobbits walk into a clearing gaurded by trolls. The look around, cautiously, and get quite frightened. Later, however, they realize that the trolls were the ones that Bilbo had seen 60 years prior, and are made of stone now.
I believe this scene was filmed and cut for two reasons-
The first is that bilbo tells that very story in the party scene early in the movie. This allows them to tie that scene in, without having the hobbit made.
The second is that we SEE the trolls. In the scene where they are resting before Arwen arrives (just before), look in the background. There be trolls there!
I can understand why the cut the scene, hwoever, it must have slowed the pacing in the early act.
I mean, run from danger, run from danger, Oh my god, trolls!
Oh wait. They are stone. Let's all have a good laugh.
Doesn't work in the fast push of the Movie.
Colin
Colin Davis
being a more difficult adaption with its large number of characters and shifting plotline
Okay...it is a pretty simple story. Wizard comes with dwarves to hire Buglar Baggins to go recover treasure from a Dragon.
Along the way they have some adventures:
- meet some trolls and find treasure
- meet some elves
- meet some goblins, lose their ponies, get lost
- get saved from said goblins
- Bilbo finds some treasure of his own that makes him invisible
- regroup, meet some more goblins, get saved by Eagles
- go into a scary forest, meet some more monsters, kill monsters, meet more elves
- get captured and escape
- meet people of Dale
- see dragon, annoy dragon, kill dragon
- have big war.
Good lord. If this doesn't sound like an easy Hollywood plot, I don't know what does. 90% of the time, all the main characters stay together (the dwarves and Bilbo) with Gandalf coming and going when needed.
Plenty of special effects and action sequences without all the history of LotR.
Remember, this was a story that JRRT told his kids. With the exception of having "The Greatest Adventure" playing over and over, the Rankin/Bass version did a decent enough job of this already.
If PJ can do a Balrog and tons of Orcs streaming out of Mordor, then Smaug and the Battle of Five Armies should be cake!
Spoiler warning for FotR
Peter Jackson (in the first film anyway) decided to focus on the corrupting influence of the One Ring, as the central theme of the first movie.
When you view it with this in mind, a lot of reasons for the changes from the book become apparent: Tom Bombadil is beyond the currupting power of the ring, so he was left out as unnecessary to the main theme. Gandalf touches it himself and is visibly shaken by it, even muttering about "precious". Extra emphasis is given to Boromir's lust for the ring; he even holds it on Caradhras. Galadriel's little witch spaz was a little overdone, IMHO. Even Aragorn treads the line, right from his confiding in Arwen at Rivendell about the weakness of his ancestral blood.
This is why Lothlorien was cut so short... once the powerful moderating influence of Gandalf is gone, the rest of the movie is about leading to Boromir's fall... his discomfort in Lorien, Galadriel's warning to Frodo, then the rushed trip down the Anduin to Argonath and Rauros. Anything else would be a distraction from what he was trying to hammer home.
Spoiler warning for Two Towers
I don't see how he can maintain this theme through the Two Towers... unless he really focuses on Gollum and Faramir; but I doubt he will since the story just explodes in so many directions.. Theoden and Wormtongue, Riders of Rohan, Treebeard and the Ents, the White Rider, Helm's Deep and Isengard... all of which really have nothing to do with the currupting influence of the ring.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
The Ring's power is not to turn people invisible (though it can do that). It's to amplify the bearer and give him what (he thinks) he wants.
When Bilbo first finds the Ring, he most wants to escape
Frodo also puts the Ring on during times he wants to be invisible (in the Prancing Pony, or when trying to escape Ringwraiths, etc.) So it makes him invisible.
But in Mordor, Sam wears the Ring. Sometimes he wants to be invisible, and so he is. But at least once he instead uses the Ring to intimidate an orc, who sees him as some great Captain. At the time, that's what Sam needed done, and so that's what it does.
We can only speculate what Sauron's desire is, although it's pretty clearly dominion. So the Ring gives him dominion over the other rings and over the minds of lesser beings.
The essence of the Ring -- and perhaps, metaphysically, the source of its evil -- is that it gives the Bearer exactly what he wants, with no constraints.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Gonna have to disagree on this. We did not need Yet Another Elf who would show up, do one thing, and vanish without any explanation. It makes a lot of sense to put Glorfindel's role into Arwen's.
The only verb sense of "borking" I can bring to mind is to deny a Supreme Court justice a seat based on his past writings, so I'm not sure how that applies to the ford.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Why is it so important that the movie glue itself to the book so tightly that it becomes impossible to tell the story visually. I've been hearing people say one of two things: either it was a great movie and very enjoyable or it was crud because a certain part of the book was left on the cutting room floor.
Gene Siskel complained that one scene (with the Balrog) was extremly short in the book but played out longer on screen. Other people are complaining that their favourite parts of the book were omitted. My question is who cares as long as the movie tells the story.
Going into the theatre there are two kinds of people: those who have and those who have not read the book. I think those of us who have read and enjoyed the book have a different perspective than those who are seeing it all for the first time. I know what scenes are missing and how the book portrays the story differently. These are, afterall, completely different media and there are many that believe that large books such as LoTR cannot be conveyed on the screen - it is a world that exists in the mind of the reader. What I think often happens is that some readers create different understandings of the same material and, when presented with a conflicting view, become all too defensive.
There will never be a definitive Lord of the Rings movie that trancends the silver screen and gives everyone the full experience of the book. The movie is simply one person's description of the taste of the story. It is up to the individual to bite into the book.
I enjoyed the movie for all it's flaws and omissions because what it presented was clear and complete within iteself. I don't think it is necessary to add scenes back in simply to make it more closely resemble the words from the book.
It's an opinion, that is all.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Sure, why not? Besides, in my mind, it wouldn't take an extra 7 hours to add what they missed. I think PJ did an excellent job, however my main complaint was that Jackson focused to much on the 'epic' bits of the story, and so missed out on lots that made the adventure memorable for all the readers.
The problem is, the books are enjoyable because they tell a story, and they tell it well. I don't claim that Tolkien is the best author ever, but his attention to detail made the story more vivid (unlike Jordan's attention to EVERY FUCKING THING EVER which after chapters of talking made me want to burn his books... but I digress). Sure, the epic moments are, well, epic. But the smaller moments make the books feel more like a real story.
The whole Arwen/Glorfindal doesn't really bother me, the movie has to try to appeal to others than us nerds who've actually managed to finish the Silmarillion. However, I missed Legolas and Gimli's little tiffs and growing friendship. It was hinted at during the Counsil of Elrond, but not really explored. During the books, that whole relationship makes for an interesting and sometimes humorus departure from the main storyline.
I personally was pained by the way Lorien was glossed over. In the books, we get a sense of restfulness and relaxation. In the movie, they show up, Galadriel does her crazy weird freaky thing, then they leave. No rest, no relaxation. How about Gimli falling in love with Galadriel? When does he have a chance? He's only in the Woods for like 5 minutes. And that whole blindfolding thing when they enter the woods. That was key character development. arr.
Well, just a couple of things that've been bothering me. All-in-all, it seems to me that that 30-40 minutes of promised extra footage might just do the trick.
> The Ring's power is not to turn people invisible (though it can do that). It's to amplify the bearer and give him what (he thinks) he wants.
No, the Ring was made to hold much of Sauron's power and to control the wearers of the other Rings of Power. Read the book, you'll see that that is the reason that the bearers of the Elf Rings removed theirs immediately when Sauron put his on.
> Frodo also puts the Ring on during times he wants to be invisible (in the Prancing Pony, or when trying to escape Ringwraiths, etc.) So it makes him invisible.
Back to the book again. Frodo does not put the Ring on in The Prancing Pony, it slips onto his finger to reveal itself to those who are looking for it. It is trying to return to Sauron, remember? It turns him invisible at a bad time, not what he would want.
Yes, you can watch the movie without reading the book, but you have to take it for what it is, and at face value. If you're going to ask deeper questions, such as:
> Why didn't Sauron turn invisible when he wore the ring?
You have to read the book. Although it makes no mention of Sauron turning invisible when he wore the Ring, the answer is clearly implied in the Tom Bombadil sequence. Frodo asked Gandalf why Tom didn't turn invisible when HE wore the Ring. Gandalf replied that it was not because Tom had any power over the Ring, but because the Ring had no power over HIM. I would imagine that the Ring would have no power over Sauron either, Sauron being its maker and the source of its power.
(Wow, it's amazing what sticks in the mind, even after twenty some-odd years! Of course, read anything that many times and you'll be hard-pressed to forget it no matter how hard you try.)
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Peter Jackson is a master of gross out special effects. Such master works such as Dead Alive and Bad Taste have FX so icky that the films lose about 20 minute of footage to get a R rating.
From what I've heard Jackson filmed the action like he would any other film and just kept cutting it down until he had the rating the studio wanted.
But all bets are off for the DVD, and there is a good chance you'll see a restored DVD version with a lot more gore. That would be my hope at least.
McKellen has this to say in his grey book diary:
Talk about picky...when director's license wasn't changing things for the film media, the care for accuracy is astounding at times...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Frankly, I don't plan to let a law stop me from enjoying what I feel is reasonable, such as watching an out-of-region DVD on my region-hacked player. I feel I have a good sense of what is right and what is wrong, thanks in part to my parents and schooling, and I rely on that to make my decisions.
It may get me in trouble one day, but I'm not too worried about that.
Does anyone else out there think that instead of squashing FOTR into one 3 hour movie with cut scenes and modifications, it might have been better to break it up into 2 movies based on the two distinct books within FOTR?
This way there could be two 2-hour movies portraying FOTR more accurately, and not whizzing too many things by. I thought some scenes seemed rushed, even though they were severely truncated already. For instance, at the Prancing Pony.
Of course, there's the issue that the public might get tired of a 6-movie series instead of a trilogy, and thus reduce demand which would rake in less dollars. However, from a fan-of-the-book viewpoint, I think the 6-movie approach would be truer to form and more interesting. Any comments?
make world, not war