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LotR Cleans Up at AFI
bigdreamer writes "Looks like LOTR is a big hit even among non-nerds. this CNN article says it won the most awards, including Best Picture, at the first annual American Film Institute awards Saturday."
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The CNN article only mentions 3 awards for LoTR. Were there others, or is this just a bunch of hype over a measly 3 awards?
First annual?
Don't we have enough of these goons sitting around saluting themselves?
there's more than one way to do me.
Of course it got the most awards, it's making the most money. That's how Hollywood awards work.
Am I the only one who was not at all impressed with the movie? Sure, the visual effects were stunning and the cinematography was gorgeous, but overall the movie just felt empty. The movie didn't show any real character development or other basic storytelling premises. It was just one thing happening after another over and over again for a full three hours, with little rhyme or reason applied to the events. First they find the ring then they get chased by ringwraiths then they meet Aragorn then they get chased by ringwraiths again then Frodo gets sick then they go to Rivendale then.... you get the picture. This sort of filmmaking works wonders for popcorn action movies like Mission Impossible and the Jackie Chan movie du jour, but I was honestly expecting more of the greatest fantasy works of the twentieth century.
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
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According to www.chud.com, Lord of The Rings has grossed $205,500,000 as of last Monday
(box office totals are updated every Monday). This is over a three week period.
Last weekend's gross was $23,000,000.
FYI: In 8 weeks Harry Potter has grossed $300,500,000 so I don't think that LOTR has broken any records yet.
I think they should make a new award "Reminds me of a when I was a kid". Because the entire movie followed the book quite well IMHO. I haven't read the books for some time, but not in my wildest imagination could I have dreamed of the landscapes and characters in the film. The hobbits never wearing shoes, the magic and understanding of wizzards and elves. The hatred of elves and dwarfs and how humans are low on the totem poll of evolution.
The visual effects drew you in and you never once thought that it was fake, but the time and dedication it would have taken to make the builsings and structures that were in the film. Also the true understanding of the power of the ring and the power of commitment.
I did, however, confuse the story of the hobbit in the begining, but that was portrayed to me in a flashback at the begining where the stories start and begin. They were all meant to go together and they do so wonderfully. I don't think Tolkein could have understood what an impact his stories would have actually had on the world when he wrote them.
For a bit of humor... someone who accompanied me who had not read the books didn't irst understand that the movie WAS 3 hours long and was getting a little bored by not really understanding what was happening in the movie and not getting into it. But I think we can all relate to the next quote directly when the credits started "WHAT??!!! that was it??? no WAY ... they can't just end it like that!!!" ...
Well I will say that my X-Mas present of the LoTR book set from think geek has been confisgated for a while now :-) ... ohh well at least she'll know that the movie ended there for a reason ... hehehe the book ended :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
None of the other movies I saw this year had anywhere near that kind of impact, FOTR included.
The Lord of the Rings Movie didn't really make me feel much. A lot of the effects were well done, and they obviously tried hard, but the characters didn't manage to move me. There was nothing there that made my think -- in contrast to the book -- and no really grand themes that stood out in the plot -- again in contrast to the book. I think the weak points would have been much more evident if the movie hadn't had such a wonderful established fantasy world to draw from. I guess the worst thing I can say about the movie is that I wasn't really captivated by it at any point during the showing.
Quote: "As for the inner meaning or 'message,' it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical."
Take this for what it's worth, that he didn't intend it. However, his biographical information reveals a lot about the characters he wrote and how life affected his books. So in a way you are right, but he's not 'preaching to the choir.'
Arguably, though, you can see a lot of ways in which his life influenced the book. World War I was very trying for Tolkien, and indeed, most of Britain. He lost all but I think one friend in the war, and you can see how the relationship between Frodo and Sam is not 'gay' as many have suggested in movie reviews and such, but merely the type of love that exists between men fighting on the same side, ie. his experiences in the war. Again, this is my own interpretation.
As far as Catholic influences go, I think it wasn't wholly his Catholic livelihood that affected the writing, as much of what he writes is based off of pagan tales and such. His influence on Western Civilization can be attributed not only to these influences which still exist today (Easter Bunny, Santa Claus) but also the fact that he was a westerner.
Whenever I see awards or polls for "best of the year" or "decade" or "century" or "all time", I figure you should normalize the results by multiplying each entry's rank in the list by the log of the time since it came out. The recency hype dominates awards and polls, as can be seen by look at e.g. the all-time top films at IMDB. I mean c'mon, Memento as the tenth best film ever? American Beauty as the 18th???
When you see 50-60 year old films still rated in the top 50 you have to concede that they've got some genuine enduring quality, but some of the more recent ones probably won't even be remembered a decade from now.
So maybe LotR is great (dunno; the hype turned me off from going to see it yet), but right now the only "news" would be if it didn't win an award.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It really depends how you think of it: Memento was incredibly well-written and very, very, very thoughtfully put-together. Lord of the Rings was your typical huge, beautiful, grandoise masterpiece kind of thing. Personally, I feel Memento deserves a nod as the best picture of the year, yeah, but I think Joe Movie Nerd responds a bit better to the kind of epic visual adventure that LoTR brings.
That is simply my opinion, though, for your reflection.
was i the only one who kept expecting sean astin (he played sam) to run on screen in a notre dame football uniform and save the day?
In anticipation for the film's opening, I read Tolkien for the very first time (as a young'un I was a D&D geek, so you have thought I would have taken the time years ago to discover Tolkien's middle earth). After experiencing the Hobbit and Fellowship, I had very low expectations for the movie adaptation. And for good reason. Hollywood script writers are natorieous for completely throwing out the source material when writing a movie version. And subsequesntly the movie going audience is left with a story and characters that are barely anything like the book version (which of course, the movies always suck) As a comic fan, you see this over and over again, when comic hero's make thier way to the big screen (Batman and Robin, Spawn anyone). It's like Holywood doesn't fully trust the original authers. But lately things have been getting better... X-men wasn't turned into a corny joke, LOTR kept to Tolkien storyline, Frank Miller is writing a script for a real batman film....
So to sum up, I hope this starts a trend in Hollywood amoung script writers. That they should stick to the orignial works more closely (although the message isn't going to get out in time for the HellBlazer movie... which they already cast Nick Cage for!!! Good god is that going to suck.)
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Check out the gross income of movies that are currently in theaters here:l
http://movies.yahoo.com/boxoffice/latest/rank.htm
You can compare these totals to the totals of the Top 100 biggest ranking movies of all time here:m l
http://movies.yahoo.com/boxoffice-alltime/rank.ht
As you can see, even if it makes the projected estimates for this weekend, it will only be up to #34 in the rankings. However, it's also only been out for 2 weeks... :)
Guess it's time for me to go see it again and help bump it up one more notch...
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
One has to remember that the Biblical stories are not all that original. Death and resurrection, battles between Good and Evil, powerful staffs, the humble and unwilling hero, etc appear in all kinds of myths, not just in the Bible, and many pre-date the Bible.
This interview smacks more of a co-opting of the work to further an agenda than anything else.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
I enjoyed the movie. As mentioned the visuals were stunning. And I thought the casting was excellent, althought I expected the hobbits to be a bit plumper.
But I also felt that they missed the boat big time by focusing on the battles and not developing the characters.
Two that I particularly missed included the growing friendship between Legolas and Gimli. I was disappointed that the blindfold confrontation was left out along with Gimli getting a lock of Kate's (I can't spell her characters name, and I'm too lazy to look it up) hair.
The other was the development of Sam's loyalty especially as seen with respect to Bill the pony. (And it was pointed out to me after the fact, where did the pony come from? The only time we see it in the movie is when they are about to enter the mines of Moria.)
By focusing only on the adventure part of the tale, they left the fellowship part out of the 'Fellowship'. I described it to a friend as if the book was written by someone who was there, while the movie was done by a 'historian' after the fact.
And because of that I left the theater disappointed.
Steve M
To put it bluntly: Memento forced me to think, while LOTR had me gaping at the screen, drooling into my popcorn.
I think Memento beat LOTR in originality but overall the better cinematic experience was LOTR.
Filthy sums up best what I didn't like about Memento.
Then again, these awards aren't about how good or bad a movie is and I think we all know that.
With 95% of new movies being the same old Hollywood gunk, I'm actually glad to see this move. That's Lobstertainment!
According to this LotR has grossed already over $200M in the US and almost $200M elsewhere. That's way more than the budget of the whole trilogy. Four records mentioned include the biggest Christmas day gross, and some December records. There's also an interesting comparison chart, where the film's gross history is compared against Harry Potter, Star Wars ep 1 and Titanic.
Some guy at Miramax is going to get his ass kicked for wanting to reduce LotR into one movie and driving Peter Jackson away to New Line Cinema, who were ready to fund three movies.
I know this is a troll.
But I doubt that these religions who denounce witchcraft or other forms of earth worship will be swayed by LoTR.
I mean... didn't you see the Harry Potter book burning? That act was symbolic to the fact that the big three don't accept witchcraft in anyway.
They had every right, and I actually applaud them for standing up to the pop culture to show their beliefs. That's what makes this country great - not only can we do these things - sometimes people get the balls to do it.
Get your Unix fortune now!
"Actually, if you read Tolkien's forward to the second edition of his work, he specifically states that he did not intend allegory in the writing."
To take this even further, on more than one occasion Tolkien has spelled out a rather intense hatred of allegory. To quote him in one interview: "I dislike allegory whenever I smell it."
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Re maxsox and others (who say things like the annual releases are simply to whoop up each sucessive years worth of awards);
... New Zealand has a population of 3 million, and the city where it was almost completely made - Wellington (my home) - only has a tenth of that.
... which is the genre of the movies; something which people who criticise this aspect of the film, forget.
You -do- realise that the film was made almost wholly in a city so small it'd hardly feature on any US map
LOTR is leaps and bounds larger than anything created previously in NZ and the infrastructure struggled to do even one film a year. I expect since the shooting is essentially finished, the next two films will have even better editing and computer-generated improvements.
It is rare for such a small country to produce globally acclaimed films; generally this is done by producing offbeat cult films, although those are found more in art-house cinemas. I'm not trying to be overly patriotic or anything, I'm simply believing a large percentage of viewers probably think its yet another piece of US produce.
I personally really enjoyed the film; I had read the first book when I was younger and I just don't think that a graphic portrayal could have been done any better. As for the characters; sure its not the character study of the century, but it sure is alot better than pretty much any standard hollywood film
Ok stupid, what exactly didn't you understand? What wasn't resolved? You do realize that the story is going to be continued in 2 more movies. Maybe you just have to wait. If you don't like it blame it on Tolkien for writing a trilogy.
From Letter #142:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like `religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
I agree that LotR is not an allegory of anything, Tolkien did say that his Christian beliefs did influence LotR alot. You can especially see this if you read the Silm. Gandalf isn't just some guy doing magic, he is an angel clothed in flesh. Morgoth and Sauron are fallen angels.
And yes, GvsE and stuff is quite common. However, you can see many Christian influences. The central theme of the corruption and temptation of the ring is very Christian and what sets LotR apart. In just-another-myth Frodo would be the unlikely hero who learns how to wield the ring and become powerful.
There are many other little details, such as Gollum. Gandalf's speech about pity and not killing Gollum is VERY Christian (and actually very Catholic).
I'm not descending into a "whose religion is better" pissing contest. I'm just saying to deny that Tolkien's faith didn't have a strong influence is wrong.
Brian Ellenberger
The Elves, if they died, went to Mandos, the Halls of Doom on Valinor. (Valinor was what LotR refers to as "the West", i.e. the "undying lands" where world-weary Elves would travel on the Straight Road from the Grey Havens, aided by Círdan the Shipwright and guided by Ëarendil.) Therefore they did not rejoin Eru Ilúvatar if they died, but rather lived for eternity on Valinor, the lands untouched by death. In other words, even if an Elf is slain, he/she is not really "dead" per se.
But Men who died would leave Ëa, i.e. go beyond the circles of the world to return to Eru Ilúvatar, thus being nearer to him than the Eldar/Elves, who could leave Middle-Earth but not Ëa itself.
The Elves therefore became world-weary, longing to return to Eru, but unable to do so, while Men were only on Middle-Earth a (relatively) short time, after which they came back to him.
From one Tolkien nerd to another. ;-)
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I've heard what you said from a number of people.. and I can't dispute it. Those who haven't read the books don't seem to like it much. Those who did usually love it.
I have read the books, probably twice over the years.. so for me, the movie was an unbelievable experience.. They brought the book to life (parts of it, anyway). It's by far the most enjoyable movie I've seen in my life. It was 3 hours of magic.
The real attraction for me was watching a good book come to life on screen.. and in an amazing way. They didn't butcher it. Sure, they could have done more character development, they could also have put in all the songs, and they could have not left out whole scenes from the book... and they could also have ended up with a 9 hour movie. What you say about the Potter movies being edited 'right' for the bigscreen is exactly what I thought of LOTR.
As for what you've 'heard' about the characters in the book... I disagree. Gandalf was not a 'manipulative SOB'. He was pretty much exactly what you see in the film. Now.. of course, if you want to really know, please, read the books for yourself.
Also.. comparing Harry Potter to LOTR as literary works is apples and oranges.
Harry Potter is great, I loved the books.. but it's absolutely not in the same league as LOTR. LOTR is a literary masterpiece. Harry Potter is just a popular book that's light and interesting.
BTW.. Did you konw they renamed it for US distribution? To the rest of the world it's "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone". They also changed many British words in the book to something more American, "Trunk" instead of "Boot" etc..
Uhh... they were *fantasy* characters.. how do you peg that they were all Christians?
Christian groups endorse the film simply because it has a very distinct good -vs- evil mentality.. basically everything relating to magic is evil (not quite, but almost), Aragorn is a good messianic figure, etc, etc...
Non-white? IT's *FANTASY*.
Elves, dwarves, goblins, hobbits, humans, orcs, orukai, and a cave troll.. that's a pretty good racial background I believe...
As for suckage.. the movie is intended to bring the book to life on screen. If you haven't read the book, it's no wonder it sucks. If you had, you would have loved it.
http://us.imdb.com/ReleaseDates?0209144
:-)
Granted, it wasn't released in the US until January 20, but technically it's a 2000-movie, not a 2001-movie and thus shouldn't be competing for best 2001-picture against LotR
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
As others have already pointed out, Tolkien denies any sort of intentional allgeory or historical reference in his books.
At the same time, don't forget that many of the same right-wing Christian groups that go around burning "Harry Potter" books also tend to take a very dim view of Catholics (or "papists" as they would call them). I know, my niece's mother takes my niece to just one such church, much to my and my brother's annoyance.
I gave her LOTR for Christmas...and "A Wrinkle in Time", which I call the "stealth bomb for eight-year-olds". >:-)
At any rate, it's interesting to note that the "Narnia" series from C.S. Lewis is not so often objected to by these same groups -- even though Lewis and Tolkien were close friends and shared many of the same views. (Lewis had been agnostic, and Tolkien tried to convert him to Catholicism, but Lewis became an Anglican instead -- i.e. Protestant, if only barely.) However, "Narnia" is clearly an allegory, with Aslan the Lion directly representing Christ -- Lewis said so himself.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
You keep using this term "very Christian". What exactly does that mean? As though pity is not found in any other mythological structure?
Like I said before... the book may draw on Christianity, but Christianity itself drew from many sources: there isn't much of anything original in the Bible. The themes in LOTR are as ancient as civilisation itself. Quoth Tolkein:
Further: In other words, Tolkein recognised that people will judge things through their own tinted glasses. You may see Christian influence, but I see something much deeper and more fundamentally Human. Further: Amen.Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Oh please. The budget's a little over $100 mil for the first movie. All three movies are coming in with less of a budget - total - than Titanic.
It's expensive, but it's not that expensive.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
I believe they said that's why they did it. I think the second movie (3rd in trilogy) is already done, but it is not yet 'timely' to release it.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
-Legion
After all, the character development is minimal (so far in the story), the plot is fractured by being 1/3rd of a story, etc. It doesn't have any of the characteristics of a good movie, viewed standalone.
While I think there's a reasonable possibility that these accolades will be entirely justified, even in traditional movie terms, once the entire 8-9 hour movie is complete (LotR being a single 3 volume novel, after all), I think there's something deeper going on.
Think of it this way: LotR:FotR isn't a movie. Even viewed as 1/3 of a movie (which is a more accurate in any event), it isn't really a traditional movie.
It's much more accurate to view this film as some kind of artistic travelogue or visual aid for the book.
A movie is an entirely self-contained form of entertainment. The film version of LotR seems to have been developed in a completely unique manner, AFAICT.
Look closely: half of the film is inside "jokes". That's not really accurate but it's the closest analogy I can think of. There's no explicit reason in the movie for many of the little details, but if you pay attention, you'll find that almost every off hand line by an extra, or reference to a far off place in passing is an accurate allusion to the books.
I left the whole thing speachless, not so much because of the excellent cinematography, but because of the shear *depth* of the translation of the novel. On the surface, they had to change many things to produce a "movie" that would have a chance of selling to a mass audience and pay for it's production costs. It's the 3d quality of the interpretation that I found so mentally stunning.
Viewed in this way, it's clear why the film is doing so well critically and in mass appeal: it's absolutely the best movie ever made in its class... and I don't mean at all to damn it with faint praise by saying that's because it's the *only* movie ever made in it's class.
The orcs were black. Or at least some of them were. There were also some blue ones. But anyway, there were blacks in the film; the orcs. So you can hardly say it is racist.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
I heard that Momento is an english language remake of the excellent "Winter Sleepers" (same director as "Run Lola Run"). Can anyone tell me is this is true?
You know, the ultimate winner of the debate between HP and LOTR is AOL Time Warner: they produced both movies and are making huge sums of money from both! I think AOLTW will be playing up the "agression" between the two books for the next two years as they'll be releasing the movies a month apart.
Sadly, probably not. It was a risk, a big one. They could've lost money big-time.
Hollyweird is very risk-adverse. Fortunately this risk has paid off in a big way.
Milalwi
I would prefer to see it done as an epic miniseries that took as many episodes as it needed to get things done right. Either that or you do it as six movies, one for each book, and you can include all the leisurely preparations that Frodo took in the book to get to Rivendell and the whole Tom Bombadil incident.
Even so, I think Peter Jackson did some right things in taking a lot of what was related in the council debate and showing it on camera, with the capture of Gandalf and so forth. In fact, if you did the miniseries concept I would have played up that element, showing the Ringwraiths harassing the dwarves and the whole bit with Gandalf and in general the shadows gathering around the Shire while the hobbits took their time.
The Glorfindel/Arwen substition I have mixed feelings about. Not that we ever got much of a view of Arwen in the books but she always struck me as the more domestic type and so it wasn't quite true to character. I wouldn't have minded having the whole Aragorn/Arwen meeting that was given in one of the Appendices in flashback at some point to fill the background in as an alternate way to bring her in.
Actually, while Titanic did gross over $600M in the US, it's also the only movie over $500M. To round out the top 5, Star Wars has $461M, Phantom Menace has $431M, ET has $399M, and Jurassic Park has $357M.
I do agree it's very unlikely that LOTR will hit top 5 or top 10 for that matter. But with its 3 hour runtime, I'd say it's doing very impressively.
It's not about tolerence. It's about dogma [doctrine].
Chrisitanity is viewed as paganist by Jews. We are tolerant, but we don't think they are right.
The people didn't attack 'witches'. They protested to show they were against Harry Potter, what it stood for and the fact that millions of people are behind it.
I think you confused tolerance with a general disagreement of their ideas.
No one got killed.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Just to add:
It's not Christians who are intolerant of others. It's white people. They just happen to be Christians.
Get your Unix fortune now!
This is a rather arrogant attitude that I find annoying. These books were written long ago before there even was such a thing as a "nerd". My grandma, who was a tough Montana pioneer woman, liked Tolkien's books. In the 60s, the Tolkien books were very popular among college students. Where is it written that Lord of the Rings was made for nerds?
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Peter Jackson called it a "New Zealand film, shot with mostly British actors, using mostly American money."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Both FOTR and Oceans 11 were chocked full of characters- over 20 major characters in each. Yet I felt I new the Ocean 11 one better because the screenplay was much better and aimed at characters. FOTR had a mediocre screen play. One sign is a lead-in narative. Another is are location sub-titles. All this should have been worked into dialog.
These are not Christian, but pagan stores from Zoraster (polarity of Good and Evil) and the Norse myths. Paganism isn't all bad as Xtian writers would make it out to be. Most religions had a core morality and a belief in a greater good.
Both are are mountains and somewhat inhospitable. Both have big bad guys living there and are deamonized in the press. Both are southwest of Europe.
In the European mythic memory, the southwest was a constant source of trouble- the Huns, Jihads, Mongols, Turks, etc.
It looks much more like the heroes of the Terry Brooks' The Sword of Sahannara'.
Ciao
----
FB
My mother went to see it, and when she came back, she swore the movie deep into ground. She complained that the movie had compeletely ruined the story of the book, having only the fighting.
I didn't feel exactly the same, but in my opinion, the movie did lack depth. The relationships didn't have time to develop. And what was IMHO most irritating, was the immediate decisions. Aragorn didn't have any trouble choosing whether to go to Minas Tirith first or to Mordor. Whether to follow Frodo or not. And for Christ's sake the Council of Elrond was the place to decide the fate of whole middle-earth, not some rash "me too, me too!" beach party! Nobody even suggested hiding the Ring. Nobody even doubted it's authenticity! (Gandalf uttering the Black Speech could have made a wonderful effect, if done right.)
Add, say, 5-30 minutes more pondering to the Council of Elrond and other times of decision, as well as to the interaction between the character of the Fellowship, and you'll double the depth of the film. I hope the uncut DVD will be better - that might even be reason enough to get a DVD-player.
I doubt, therefore I may be.