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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! "
Perhaps they will have the option of "un" expanding Arwen's role... ech.. ;-)
Justin
Inevitably, there will be a box set of all 3 films sold, sometime around 2004 or 2005 (just in time for Christmas I am sure!). No doubt, the box set will be a no holds barred affair, lots of extras, behind the scenes, cut scenes, booklets, etc. This no doubt will be the one to own. I'm glad that FOTR is being released singly, but I'll wait and buy the full package with all the trimmings.
I'm glad that the DVD will contain some extra footage, especially the evoloution of Gimli's character in Lothlorien. When that entire theme was left out of the movie, I was concerned. The friendship of Gimli and Legolas becomes important in later books, and without showing it's beginning, it would have been rather unexplained later. Truthfully, there was a lot that was left out of the movie that I'm afraid will make the later films a little rough. Hopefully the extra footage will eliminate future wrinkles.
Given that Tom Bombadil adds absolutely nothing to the storyline (other than providing the Hobbits with their weapons, which was handled pretty well in the movie), I'd be more than happy if they kept him out of the DVD.
Dinivin
There's a reason the footage isn't in the original cut.
Yup - the moviegoing public has limited patience for 4 hour films.
From the description, the extra bits will be sequences that got cut for time in a film that had to work especially hard to fit a large story into a smaller viewing slot. There's no evidence that these sequences are less well shot - just that G**** falling for G********* and thus changing his opinion of E**** didn't directly relate to FOTR as it did to the Trilogy as a whole, and thus it got cut.
All the other "extras" they claim are in them are just crap.
We'll see. In August. I am looking forward to it. The only big question is whether it'll be spliced into the story or if it'll be set aside.
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."
Whoa! LOTR DVD! forget that! I can't wait! wow!
Maybe the extra footage won't interest most people, but for fan boys like me, it sure as hell will. There are lots of reasons stuff doesn't make it into a movie. FOTR has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, because it cost so damn much. So a lot was left out to keep the running time friendly to the mainstream audience.
/. readership is part of that niche.
Fanboys and cinemaphiles love the kind of extras in DVD's. While the general public might not care about missing scenes or directors commentary, there is definetley a niche market that does, and I think in the case of FOTR, much of
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I am missing the, Tom Bombadill-o!
Where were the on my screen-o!
'Tis there a part of you,
Some unheard tune-age,
appearing in the additional footage!?
Seriously, it would have been cool to see some of the swamp/forest/willow/Tom from the book even though it would have extended the time it took for Frodo to find Strider and begin the second part of his adventure...
Like most people who have actually read the book, I was VERY disappointed in the "Lord of the Rings" movie.
It omitted several of the most important aspects of the novel.
Specifically, there was no island, no conch shell, and no "Piggy". Instead, we got a bunch or fanciful immature swords-and-sorcery dungeons-and-dragons crap.
Far too many dramatic liberties were taken.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
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.
Please don't mention extra footage. Hobbits can be very sensitive about their height you know.
And when the DVD comes out, there'll be a revised version of the list, I'm sure. Yeah, I'll pick me up a copy...
I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker.
Is the DVD going to come with an ending? Watching that movie in the theater was like making out with your middle-school girlfriend for three hours and then having to go home...
...only you can't even finish the movie yourself!
second society
I can see a bit of Jackson's reasoning for not wanting to introduce another character (many of the non-readers that I've talked to have complained about the sheer volume of characters in the film). I am still pissed, though, that they made the ford scene one of Liv Tyler playing the Elven Amazon warrior, instead of letting Frodo take what he thought was going to be his last stand.
Yeah, he was on horseback, but Glofindel wasn't with him. It was him going face-to-face with the Nazgul.
That was my biggest gripe with the movie: the way the hobbits were portrayed as wide-eyed, bumbling know-nothings who couldn't fend for themselves if their lives depended on it.
Most people would place Frodo as the "hero" of the books, but I've always been of the opinion that Sam ends up being the truest, most noble hero in the book... Ahhh well.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
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?
Movies are a visual medium. They work best when they show you things. Have Sauron just be this vague, nebulous 'evil thing' works in the books.
But for a movie, the bad guy has to look intimidating and powerful.
In a book, you can simply have someone tell the story about how Sauron was defeated and the One Ring taken.
In a movie, you have to show someone slicing it off the guy's freakin' arm.
No movie has ever been 100% faithful to a book and been good. Simply because it's a movie, not a book.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
What DVD-Region is Middle-earth?
sulli
RTFJ.
A single DVD-18 would probably hold all three movies, but it would hold little else and you would likely make sacrifices in video and audio quality to squeze everything on there. You would also have to get up at some point to flip the disc, as DVD-18 is dual-sided. You could even probably stuff everything onto a single-sided DVD-9, but kiss any video/audio clarity goodbye.
Personally I'll be quite happy with three discs with some nice extras, a good Dolby Digital (or dts for those with the support) soundtrack and a well-mastered anamorphic image.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
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.
Oh, I diagree, strongly. Movies most often go wrong when they attempt to show Ultimate Evil. (Except Time Bandits, of course, since Ultimate Evil was indeed a named character). Ultimate Evil is best kept in the shadows, so that you sense it viscerally. No amount of Hollywood SFX -- not even these -- can live up to the conception we carry inside.
My usual case in point is Star Wars. Yes, Vader is evil and they show him. But he isn't Ultimate Evil, since it is always intimated that the Emperor is way more evil than him. In the first, the Emperor is hardly there at all. In The Empire Strikes Back, he shows up only as a vague, intimidating hologram.
Then in Return of the Jedi, he becomes an on-screen character and shrinks to merely human proportions. The showing of the Emperor is what undermines Jedi, for my money. Well, that and Ewoks -- just another manifestation of Ultimate Evil.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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
Region 3 for the Elven Kings under the sky,
Region 7 for the Dwarf-lords in halls of stone,
Region 9 for Mortal Men doomed to die,
Region 1 for the Dark Lord on this dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
I hope that helps.
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
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?
> 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.
while I don't agree with the poster that this is why the ring made you invisible ( interesting argument not borne out by close reading of the text ), another component of the ring is, indeed, as a machine to give you your desires.
Gollum's problem was that he wanted the ring in and of itself... which is the real problem with the ring. It's near absolute power makes it an object of desire in and of itself ( a perfect circle ), hence his constant hissing "My precious" and his ultimate, venemous hatred for "Baggins, Thief!"
Gollum's desire is the ring.
The ring gives one power over the wills of others. It is an emblem of tyranny... how it enslaves others to it's bearer, and the bearer to others... and itself, my preccccioussssss....
Ooops. Sorry. Going back to lurking and eating homemade sushi now.
Can anyone confirm/deny the 3 hour rule?
Titanic was 3 hours and 18 minutes. Of course, very few theaters ran that small independent film....
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.
This is NOT the readers' fault. They've been subtly trained to expect idiotic posts to appear, so when one does it never occurs to them that it might not be what it seems.
This is the same problem usenet has with satire. If you don't have a previous record to go on, you have to assume the poster might really BE a lunatic.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.