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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
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.
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
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.
No, but I was just waiting for Elrond to say "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson."
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
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.
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.
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.
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".