Slashdot Mirror
New Trailer For The Two Towers
Drakkar writes "As most of you know, the new trailer for the Two Towers was online last night for AOL users, but the link was given on the official site, LordofTheRings.net. It's in real player format. A new trailer with higher quality will be up tonight, midnight ET.
This new piece of film is awesome. (the song at the end of the trailer isn't from the TTT soundtrack, it's from the movie Requiem for a Dream)" xTK-421x points to more links: "Now available is the new 3 minute trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Available here in MOV and here in RM. Reported first at Aint It Cool News."
that MOV link from AOL came in at 400 Kbps. fastest download from a slashdot-linked site, ever?
MORTAR COMBAT!
considering that the full-length film of "return of the king" can now be downloaded.
I work at Stormfront Studios in San Rafael, CA and I'd also like to note here that our game based on the first and second movies comes out on October 22nd in North America. I only mention here because this is the first game for me and I am very proud of our team. It is published by EA and will be available for the PS2. We're all fiending to see the second movie as we've gotten to see only bits and pieces along the way and are dying to see the finished product! I've been a Slashdot lurker for quite a few years now and finally have something worth posting! Congrats to the whole team.
-- let me burn you let me burn you let me burn you -Front 242
Does anyone have a higher res version?
-Sean
the song is by clint mansell, who also did the music for pi.
Bah, it's in RM and MOV formats....!
After the amount of junk the players for both of those installed on my machine last time I tried them I won't have them on my machine.
Anyone know any software for windows that will play either of those formats without installing a whole load of junk as well?
Sig is taking a break!
If you just can't stand not knowing what's coming up in the next movie, rumor has it the 2nd book (and even the 3rd and final book) are out now! ;c)
Ok, then...
Explain all the Elrond stuff. He is not in TTT (book) much as you might remember. A siege of Rivendell? That would be a big addition & change!
For us LotR addicts, a frame by frame analysis is available at:
2 _01.html
http://www.theonering.net/movie/preview/ttt_09300
Additionally there is official frame by frame footage available at Lordoftherings.net
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
And what kind of horsepower do you need to pull two towers anyway?
Seems like it would just be easier to just screw the trailer and leave the towers in the same spot.
paintball
Of Gandalf's final fight with the Demon
Of Gandalf's new kickass horse
Of how Gollum compares to the hobbits in size (he is smaller)
Of Treebeard
Even the eye looks slightly different this time.
Rapid Nirvana
It was indeed used in Requiem.
I'm aware that most people who care have read the novel (I know I have)... but this trailer spoils almost every major plot point in the thing!
*SPOILER WARNING*
It's got the group meeting Gandalf again, Gandalf talking with the king, the city evacuating and going to war at helm's deep, it's got gollum attacking frodo and slam, then eventually leading them to mordor. and more.
*END SPOILER*
I mean, way to lone gunmen are dead the thing.
The whole of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and the Hobbit and other books in the series) were written many years ago.
The Hobbit (or as it was also titled as "There and Back Again) was written in 1937
The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were written in 1954 and Return of the King was in 1955.
So no, the name has nothing to do with 9/11. The two towers are referring to the two towers mentioned in the whole of the LotR trilogy.
All this information and more is available from www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biblio_frame.html
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
In Tolkien's notes in the appendices and other writings, he explains that the events of the Lord of the Rings are not the only events going on in Middle Earth. Sauron sent attack forces against many strongholds in addition to Minas Tirith in Gondor. For example, to prevent the dwarves and elves of the Greenwood (also called Mirkwood) from coming to the aid of Gondor, he laid siege to the Lonely Mountain (the one from the Hobbit). Also, the elves of Rivendell and Lothlorien feared an assault and believed they could not successfully defend both locations so Elrond and company joined Galadriel in Lothlorien. Therefore my explanation for Elrond's appearance in TTT (the movie) is that Peter Jackson is showing the full scale of the war in Middle Earth and not just the events of LOTR (the book).
--Atlantix
What the hell is going on here? I was actually able to go to the link and actually see the content of the article. Hell I was even able to see the trailer.
/.'ed 30 comments ago. What are you people doing for heaven sake? Working?
You people are slacking! That site should have been
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Seriously. I'm amazed at the excitement generated by an advertisement. Hey Look! Nike has a new commercial out, it is SO awesome!
Deserves excitment! I daresay this trailer does. Many that are geeks deserve excitement. And some that are sarcastic deserve being treated as a naysayer. Can you not give it a rest? Do not be too eager to deal out sarcasm in judgment. For even the very wise sometimes cannot "get it."
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Well a movie that is worth going out to the theatre to watch is a big event in itself. The MPAA keep blaming piracy and P2P for their lower revenues, but they fail to take into account that every good movie made generated a buttload of cash (spiderman, monsters inc, LOTR I, etc).
Theatres wouldn't be dying off slowly if they would have more QUALITY content making the trip worth to see and making good use of "the big screen". I used to go to the movies every week before, now it's about once per 3 months. The quality dropped, so had my support for the movie industry.
LOTR II will be a movie that not only I'll go see, but I'll do like I did for monsters inc, shreck and LOTR I, I'll organise an office group to go watch it altogether and have a beer before or after. At least I'm sure I won't have people bitching that I made them lose a night with that movie
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The name sounds like it could have almost been the name of a character in LOTR. Thanks for the information. Has anyone found a source of the music on the early trailer for the first movie. I beleive it was 'Gothic Power' but never could find it.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
why on earth hasn't hollywood suggested, and gotten a .movie (.mov) or .film (.flm) suffix for all movie websites? I'm REALLY sick of seeing advertizements with urls attached like "reallylongmoviename_themovie.net" and such.
/.'ers. (Personally, I think the most amazing thing about this story is that these links appear, so far, to be unslashdottable.) but does anyone know how "OT" came into use as shorthand for "off-topic?" What's the shorthand for "on-topic?"
I'd rather see them not even use domain names at all, and instead follow Sony Pictures' example of placing all their movie sites under the studio's domain.
Instead, I'd like to see them add a domain ".dum" for all stupid websites.
Let me say, though, that I think your post was quite on-topic, insofar as the original post was of interest to
I'm for once loooking forward to a couple of sci-fi flicks. Oddly(?), they are both sequels. LOTR/FOTR and Matrix both gave us acting (or casting, in Keanu Reeve's case), storyline and character development. I hope the Sci-fi community notices that the stakes are higher now. We are developing a taste for quality beyond expensive effects.
The fact that the plots in both movies were without gaping holes also contributed to a good experience.
Stop the brainwash
Somebody forgot their medication this morning. Chill out, dude, you've unwittingly managed to prove the corollary to the original poster's point: don't get so worked up, it's not that big of a deal.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
It was on all the P2P networks, mis-named to "LOTR:The Two Towers.Yes.This.Is.Real.And.Not.A.Trailer.DivX.avi "
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Well, frankly, I didn't go see the first one in the theater either. (Hey, money's been very tight lately. There's not much I will pay to see right now.)
I did, however, watch it now that it's out on DVD. Honestly, it just didn't do much for me. Before I get slammed by people for saying that, let me qualify:
It was a very well put-together production. Perfectly good acting, special effects, and the whole nine yards. Like the book, there are great lessons taught in the film. (Certainly, the whole theme of "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" runs throughout.)
I just generally dislike the "fantasy" genre, because we're forced to suspend all rational belief through the whole thing. Unlike sci-fi, where it's easy to say "Well, all of this simply happened on another planet we haven't discovered yet." - they have us believe that this world existed on *our own planet*, yet humans never realized it was there.
Somehow, this ruins some of the enjoyment for me, whether it's in book form or a movie. (It's sort of like the stereotypical "action movie" where the hero does so many unbelievable stunts that after 30 minutes, it makes the whole movie "cheesy" - no matter what else is good about it.)
I don't think you should ever ask the reader, or audience, to "swallow" excessive amounts of impossibility. Instead of insulting our intelligence, create a background for the tale that gives our minds a way to justify its existance.
Dragons and gargoyles are cool-looking creatures, and make good children's stories, but beyond that - you just need a little more "substance" to keep us believing in them.
MOV == Quicktime
:)
you're welcome
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I'm excited about these movies mainly because of the spectacle and look of the things...not because I don't know how the movie turns out. I'm starting to really _hate_ trailers that show all the groovy bits of a movie before their opening day...to the point where I deliberately look away and don't watch them when they appear in the theatre or on TV. In some cases, I've attended movies that gave very little more than the trailers did...one of my fave comments to the wife now is 'I guess we don't have to see _that_ movie now...'...and we don't!
I want my first sight of a great movie to actually be _in_ the movie theatre when it starts to roll. Am I weird?
Ummm, yeah. Trivial little plot points. This movie ain't gonna end like "The Usual Suspects", my friend.
Unless Sauron is....KEISER SOZYE!!!!!!
Cheers,
DT
I still find the trailers exciting, if for no other reason than to see how characters and scenes are being realized. The short flash of Treebeard's bottom half intrigued me in this one - I can't wait to see a higher resolution version.
Joke? Troll? Serious? Hard to tell sometimes.
Just to set the record straight, this was totally proven false a hundred times over, most notably by Ain't it Cool News (I would provide a direct link to the article, but their site is refusing connections right now). This was a result of some media idiot claiming it was on Kazaa or some such thing only because he or one of his aides saw it on a listing (i.e. didn't check to see if it was actually the movie). Besides, as others have said, watching a movie on a shitty monitor is a waste of time.
On the bright side, searching for 'two towers' on p2p brings up some substantially interesting pr0n.
>What's the word on the ents? I heard they were
> going to leave out the ents.
Actually, Gimli chops them all up and burns them all to roast fresh orc for dinner.
> Also, rumors abound regarding other aspects of
> the movie.
> Is it true that Merry and Pippin are going to be
> portrayed smoking "Shire leaf" out of some
> sort of a water pipe?
Actually, in the end of Return of the King, they actually return to their jobs as hemp farmers and Pippin does not, in fact, become Thain.
> Will Legolas be killed, his death avenged by an
> enraged Gimli?
No, they both die together at Helms deep, shortly after the orc eating scene above.
> Will there really be a love scene between
> Samwise and Mr. Frodo?
Actually, they cancelled the Arwen - Aragorn marriage and are replacing it with a Frodo - Samwise "domestic partnership agreement".
> Thanks for any clues.
Hope that clears some things up. Hope there weren't any real bad spoilers for you.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
Go to the bookstore. Buy the book "The Two Towers". Turn all the lights in your computer room to off. Turn the brightness on your monitor way up and make sure energy saving features and screen savers are turned off. Turn the book so the text is facing the monitor. RTFB. When you come to a part you want to visualize, stop reading, close your eyes, and pretend.
I don't know how everyone else feels, but...
while I was reading the books, I always got the impression that Tolkien wanted us to immerse ourselves in the belief that this was a "forgotten" prehistory. That maybe a long time ago, before our current history was written, this was the way that things were, and that we are the eventual outcome of everything happening. "The time of elves is gone, it is to men that we now give our hope". Him talking about an Oliphant as a gargantuan trunked creature whose relatives still live today was plain enough. For fun, I've tried to matchup the map he drew of his world and ours, and tried to place it. The closest I've come has been maybe someplace in northern/western africa.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Or you can do what I do and just not watch the silly piece of crap.
sic transit gloria mundi
Or is the MPAA only evil on days that are not December 18?
You forgot May 25th, 2005. They're okay then too.
--trb
That or I am just too lazy to read the books right now.
What?
Elvis is coming back man, Elvis.
No, Elves are coming back!
Gee, how many times are we gonna ask this question? ~sigh~ If you actually are serious, pick up THE BOOK and check out the original publication date....1954. And anybody who is so mired in sensitive political correctness as to think the name ought be changed can suck my ass.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Anyone know any software for windows that will play either of those formats without installing a whole load of junk as well?
I've never heard of Windows software that will do anything without installing a whole load of additional junk.
Or is the MPAA only evil on days that are not December 18?
Today is a Monday. The MPAA isn't evil on Mondays.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
In case you didn't know, the site also streams the movie soundtrack around the clock. Nice. Click Here to listen.
Software Wars
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
They'll just use the money you spend on this movie to try to take away computers. Have a little self-respect for goodness' sake.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Now THAT is a good idea. Even for a first-run syndicated series, it would kick ass. It has all the creepy gothiness that kids like today, it's got a lineage, there's plenty of material to work with, it's a great idea man.
- Have a picture
Also, note to film makers:
The two towers were Orthanc and Minas Morgoul. I don't have the book with me to check spelling, but they are NOT, repeat NOT Orthanc and Barad-dur, as a previous trailer had stated.
The events of the 3rd and 4th books in the 2nd volume in the six book long novel entitled the lord of the rings deal with the dealings with sarumon the white, his orcs, his seige of Helm's Deep, Gandalf's confrontation with him, and the recovering of mary and pippen (3rd book) and the trials of Frodo and Sam as they pass into the land of mordor, via the pass of Cirith Ungol, in the tower of Minas Morgual, which used to be minas anor? I believe, which is one of the two remaining strongholds of the city of Osgalith, the other (directly across the river, with osgalith in between) being Minas Tirith (4th book).
Silly movie.
sig?
I'm sure this is just a sign of my own immaturity, but I read "Please, Moorcock, please!" and just about collapsed in a fit of laughter :)
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
"Agreed! Essentially all the players (real, quicktime, you name it) play MPEGs, so why do the sites publish in a smattering of proprietary formats when they could just stick one MPEG out there?"
The answer is simple: Copy restriction. I've downloaded Quicktime trailers before, only to find that I couldn't even take a [i]screenshot[/i] from them. Pity. One of the movies was fimled next door to my house. I wanted to show my friends that, but thanks to QT's copy protection, I was unable to do that. (bye bye fair use...)
Is it right? No. But you have your answer. They think that the release of the trailer will spell death to the industry if people *gasp* can open it in Premiere.
The rings website reported there was some consideration by Peter Jackson of renaming the middle movie. e.g. "War of the Rings", because of connotations to the World Trade Center "Twin Towers". But I'd guess the anniversary media saturation has been cathartic to many and they can move on.
For a while there it was hard to watch movies like Independence Day or Star Wars and not think of 9-11.
I think it's not at all unusual for the entertainment industry to do this. If a favorite character is coming back, more people are likely to come watch if they know about it and if they're curious about how it happens.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
It's good news for open source, iddn't it? If one can't use their fair use rights on the closed source format, it gives open sourcers a goal to work towards.
I thought it was Tuesdays.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Lighten up -- Peter Jackson has simply taken a bit of poetic license. Since the climb past Minas Morgul and the encounter with Shelob have all been moved to the third movie, it just didn't make much narrative sense to have Minas Morgul be the second tower.
Woe is me. I thought there were too many just plain movie cliches that sucked the life out of the story. Gandalf simply falls, instead of being pulled down by the whip? Five minutes of Sam drowning in slow motion after an already exhausting few hours? Cutting out the cloak of many colors discussion in favor of a bunch of goofy orc training montages and a wizard battle? Arwen bursting into tears and reading Halmark card dialogue over someone she's never even met before? If it was any other film than LOTR, I'd STILL think those were just plain stupid.
Of course, this may have been discussed in one of the previous umpteen LOTR threads I have completely ignored.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
It's from some Joan of Arc movie with that chic the Fifth Element. I forget theexact name, but you should be able to find it from that description.
> I thought it was Tuesdays.
/. will get an obscure)
Nope. Tuesday's gone (with the wind).
o
O
(Thinks: No-one on
(Lynyrd Skynrd reference like that. Sigh )
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
I just generally dislike the "fantasy" genre, because we're forced to suspend all rational belief through the whole thing. Unlike sci-fi, where it's easy to say "Well, all of this simply happened on another planet we haven't discovered yet." - they have us believe that this world existed on *our own planet*, yet humans never realized it was there.
You're familiar with the concept of multiple realities, yes?
Most good fantasies take place in realms that can only be alternate realities--as far away from Earth as the worlds of Star Wars. The rules are different, but there are rules, and it's fairly simple to say "all of this is happening in a reality very different from our own" if you must.
Two rules that should be legally enforced for fantasy: (1) Do not set it on Earth unless it's really set on a well-researched Earth. (2) set your rules, abide by them, and never let "it's magic!" or "it's just fantasy" form in your thoughts.
Dragons and gargoyles are cool-looking creatures, and make good children's stories, but beyond that - you just need a little more "substance" to keep us believing in them.
Are you a fan of science fiction? I've seen some things (2001, Contact, etc.) that are far less believeable than even most bad fantasy.
Now, looking at the Middle Earth maps, and trying to figure out the scale, would that put Lonely Mountain soewhere near Berlin, and Mt Doom somewhere around Belgrade?
Of course, after I wrote all this, I did a simple search, and came up with this map, which centers Hobbiton on Oxford, England. It indeed places Mt Doom near Belgrade, but puts Mt Doom somewhere in Western Poland.
http://people.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~lalaith/Tolkie n/Grid.html
Of course, I've seen some other pages where they skew distances a bit further, and try to place Lonely Mountain near Moscow, and Mount Doom near Jerusalem.... and another page with someone even saying that Mt Doom, accounting for millenia of continental drift, is near modern day Baghdad.
I prefer the theory of the page I linked to....
FYI: Link points correctly... stupid Slashdot rendering of typed text however displays a space between the e and n of Tolkien, so if you're copy pasting, take note.
He's far too young-looking. Even if he's only supposed to be in his 60s according to the chronology of the books, he was prematurely aged by the power of Saruman working through Wormtongue. The vigor he displays in leading his people after his healing by Gandalf ought to be contrasted to his appearance. Here he looks positively energetic in his first appearance compared to how he ought to be presented.
And the brethren went away edified.
Is anyone else horribly dissappointed at further appearances of Gandalf in the trailers? The first one I saw showed him for a split second and then focused on the other characters in astonishment to see Gandalf. It left some suspicion as to what was actually happening with Gandalf, although it revealed more than I would have preferred (for other people, since I already know what happens). I was unhappy to see that in the preview, but figured that perhaps not all was lost. However, this trailer clearly shows that Gandalf has indeed returned, after seemingly falling/fighting to his death. It seems like it is a huge spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the books yet, and although it might bring in just a few more ticket sales, the experience that could have been felt at seeing Gandalf return has now been lost. I am extremely dissappointed to see this in the trailer, anyone else have any thoughts on this?
On another note that people have been discussing thus far, I am happy with the story taking place in the movie versus the story taking place in the book. I was discussing this with the group of friends that I went to see the 12:01 showing of FOTR with - that the story that the movie tells doesn't necessarily need to mirror the story told in the book. We came to this conclusion because the gist of the LOTR as well as other stories of similar-type eras is relatively constant. There is good and evil, heroes and villains, battling, love stories, history (of conflict, of development) etc. What then makes a good story is how you tell your particular interpretation of a particular set of events of the era (or of a particular setting - ie think of multiple copies of the same universe, taking on different courses of events to conclude on different worlds with different races, towns, events, goods, evils, etc but still with the same themes at heart as the other worlds). So, the fact that Peter Jackson hasn't mirrored the exact events, settings, and dialogues of the actual LOTR book is not a problem, because although he is basing his interpretation on the sum whole of events in the LOTR book, he is actually making mild interpretations of the world at hand, but still working the same main themes, just with a slight Peter Jackson touch. The movies are not necessarily supposed to be Tolkein's LOTR on screen, they are supposed to be the LOTR story told on screen by Peter Jackson based on Tolkein's interpretation of LOTR ideas and events (since, really, the LOTR story is not Tolkein's, he just provided his grand interpretation and visualization of events that so many people have thought about). Not that I'm knocking Tolkein down or anything, I think he did a great job, I just think that comments on the movie like "he missed this" or "the book wasn't like that" are fruitless - pointless, even. Anyone else want to comment?
Star Wars?
Star Wars?
You know, there are just some people who WANT to be reminded, and any excuse to be reminded will do it for them.
When you lose someone you care about, everything reminds you of them, even things that make absolutely no sense as something to trigger the memory.
Personally, I would have taken as an insult to Americans and the human race if he had changed the title of The Two Towers. Why? Simple, it would have been claiming we can't heal. It would be announcing to the world that Jackson didn't think Americans could recover from tragedy.
You know what? In the grand scheme of things, 9-11 was NOT that massive a disaster. True, it killed thousands of people, and yes it changed the country, but worse things happen all over the world, and the rest of the planet recovers. The people learn to live life without the people they lost. Did you hear about the recent bout of floods in China? How about the starvation that's ravaging Africa? Hell, what about AIDS in Africa. Yes, losing over 3,000 people in one day is terrible, but it happens all over the world. Americans are just too ethnocentric to see the rest of the planet as anything other than the Disney / Hollywood sanitized tourist attraction on TV. Terrorism is nothing new, it's as old as human conflict. Human conflict has been going on since the dawn of the species itself. From the moment our ancestors first picked up a weapon in the Fertile Crescent, we've been killing each other.
Clearchannel releasing a list of songs that might offend, people being chastised for speaking out against the ongoing war and every other patronizing thing that's been going on disgusts me.
People don't heal or recover from emotional trauma if they don't face reality. Those who retreat into a shell where all traumatic stimulus is hidden wither and die.
There were times in the last year where I saw the entire country morphing into Ms. Havisham from Great Expectations. Unable to deal with the groom running away on her wedding day, she locks herself in her room and never emerges. She withers and dies in her wedding gown. The windows are shut and the curtains sealed to prevent light from entering. She froze herself and her memories at a time just before her loss, when she was still filled with the promise of marriage and a family.
Erasing the WTC from photos and movies, pretending it didn't exist, is no different than what Ms. Havisham did. It's hiding from reality, letting the wounds fester. We've been bitten by a rattlesnake and are refusing to drain the poison. Refusing to think about what has happened, the poison works its way into our blood and kills us.
We have to face reality, and that means picking up the things we enjoyed before the disaster and enjoying them again. If a man loses his wife, he can't shut himself up forever and never see the sun again.
Yes, changing the name of a movie is a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it is one step on a road we must not take.
The saying "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" is more true than people realize. Physically, most the country is unharmed, but if we crawl into holes and let our liberties be drained away and our lives become a mass of traumatic material that must be avoided, we will wither and die. The events will not have made us stronger. We will have died inside.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I could believe this. The Two Towers could refer to any number of combinations of locations.
The "tower" of the Misty Mountains where Gandalf was reborn and strove with the Dark Tower, and Barad-dur. Or...
Barad-dur and Orthanc, and the collaboration and rivalry between Sauron and Saruman. Or...
The two watch towers overlooking the Black Gate.
The tower of Minas Tirith and Orthanc. Or...
It could involve the watch tower that guards the pass of Cirith Ungol, where Frodo was taken, which is not Minas Morgul.
It could mean a lot of things.
it's not stupid rendering, it renders correctly.
It was however a stupid fix to the long-line-trolls problem
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
No, it wasn't awful. I think there are a lot of things to praise in it: it was an action movie in which the characters definately seemed to feel geniune emotion about each other. But the clowning Merry and Pippin, the awful council of Elrond: it just felt like the people who did the script had no feel for the material, or ANY material. Stilted dialogue, poorly timed... bah. There shouldn't be stuff that could have been so easily corrected with a little thought.
Given that Sam is shown covering a very pale Frodo, I think we can assume Shelob will be present in TTT.
But... it did have the musical score that the original poster was interested in.
The history of St. Joan is conflicted, not simple. It's something that could benefit from multiple interpretations, and I don't see why the interpretation of the Messenger is a bad thing. It may have been a lousy movie (I didn't see it), but that doesn't make the concept lousy, or even historically inaccurate.
conclusive proof that Gollum/Smeagol == hobbit
http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/the_two_towe rs/
Full Screen PPL
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Those of us in New Zealand know perfectly well that Mt Doom is Mt. Ngauruhoe. :-)
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
A recent interview didn't really give too many clues. It could be him or maybe not.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Gee, you think so? That was my point. That was WHY the post was lame.
Let me try to explain - the original poster said that it is just a movie trailer, that you shouldn't get all excited about it. Only die-hard LOTR dorks would. Then some dufus replies with a paraphrase from the book. (acting as a pseudo-flame, the same way reniassance fair people do. They think they are being clever, but the rest of the world laughs at them because they are so friggin stupid) You ever see the episode of Jackass where they go to the ren fair, and that one dumbass gets in their face talking about smiting them and all that gibberish? You probably thought that was cool, didn't you?
I DID get the idea of the response, and I stand by my assertion that it was totally lame and stupid, not funny. Wow, the moderators modded it up as funny - big surprise. But you aren't in your little world where you can talk like raving idiots and get pats on the backs because you have l337 70lk13n 5k1lz.
Go ahead, flame me some more, and by all means, quote LOTR (or any of the Star Trek movies, or some anime movie, or a video game). You can pretend all you want that I don't get it, but I do in fact get it, I just see it for what it is - stupid, weak, pseudo-social delusions.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
A friend of mine, her husband and I sat down to see "The usual suspects" one night, she just couldnt take the movie seriously because apparently Keiser Soyze (sp?) means "Imperial sauce or soup" in german...
Which of course makes complete sense once you see the ending, but it was pretty much a spoiler for her
No sig for the moment.
There's things I liked (Boromir in general, the scenery, the orc makeup), and things I didnt like (Galadriel's temptation, the wizard's duel)
However in the balance of things I think its a better movie than what anybody else could have done
No sig for the moment.
Well, there's a line in the movie (near the beginning, where the wizard is riding into town on the wagon), where he makes a comment about "the humans not often interacting with the hobbits, which is probably just as well".
That would certainly lead me to believe that this is supposed to be taking place somewhere on our planet, at the same time humans are alive.
Sorry, next time, I'll be sure only to speak for myself when making such statements as "dragons and gargoyles don't really exist".
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I don't know if there's anything to say here that will help you understand my complaint? Obviously, you feel that fiction of any type is perfectly fine, whether it has any grain of "believability" in it or not.
I, on the other hand, have a view that's shared by many other people I know. I think that one of the biggest creative challenges of good fiction is coming up with credible explanations for the technologies, events and places depicted in the story.
EG. We all know there is no such thing as a "warp drive", a la "Star Trek", and we know we can't currently teleport people from point A to B. We also know we don't have phaser guns that can "stun" or kill, depending on their setting, and certainly not the level of medical know-how illustrated on the series. Nonetheless, Star Trek stood out, above many other sci-fi shows, precisely because the effort was made to explain it all. If the "science" wasn't there to give something legitimacy, it didn't go into the TV show or movie.
The "Fantasy genre", on the other hand, seems to discount any of this as relevant at all - and wants its readers to disregard reality completely. Some people are bothered less by this than others. (Perhaps parallels could be drawn between those who blindly accept religious beliefs "on faith" and those who choose not to believe in a "god" without better evidence?)
In any case, I see no reason why a fantasy novel couldn't be written that still preserves some "credibility". It might take a little more forethought and knowledge of science and history, but what's wrong with asking for that?
Even most fairy tales and myths make sure not to give enough detail as to the "where" and "when" so you feel as though you're struggling with a contradiction with reality.
That, or they dealt with the "unprovable"... concepts similar to ghosts or ancient gods/deities. There's not really any way to disprove their existance, so why not write stories about them?
All I'm saying is I don't care for fantasy novels that make claims that "lock them into a particular place and time in history". LOTR would have been improved, IMHO, if it was made clear that it took place on another world. Tying it in to the human race starts the reader/viewer asking lots of questions that the author would have been better off not getting involved with.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I say the proverbial "you" rather than "I" because I happen to know I speak for more people than just myself.
Just because you, in particular, don't care whether an author puts in the extra effort to add a measure of believability to his/her story doesn't mean I'm automatically in a small minority of those who do.
In fact, I had a number of fantasy novels up for sale on eBay last year (all in brand new condition), as well as a collection of science ficiton novels. (My girlfriend ordered a whole bunch of random things from a sci-fi book club one time, and I wanted to get the stuff out of here.) The sci-fi sold without any problems, yet several of the "fantasy" novels never sold at all, and the others sold for only the minimum bid price of about $1.00.
That's just one more shred of evidence that helps back up my claim that there aren't an awful lot of people out there into the fantasy genre. I daresay it's largely because people feel it's a "waste of time" to read hundreds of pages about a mythical fantasy world that not only doesn't exist/never existed, but doesn't even try to leave the reader with any new wisdom/insight or ability to relate to the characters presented.
Note: I'm not claiming *all* fantasy is void of "value" to the reader. That's absurd. As I said in my first post, LOTR teaches several good lessons. Still, I think those same lessons can be better communicated in another fiction genre that roots itself a little deeper in science and/or reality.
If you just want mindless entertainment, you can get plenty of it from TV sitcoms.... No need to read fantasy novels too.
King_TJ (in what fantasy world are you a king, I wonder? And by what credible method?) the basic problem is that you don't understand what suspension of disbelief *is*.
A good story must be consistent with its own world. The bulk of fiction uses our own world; sometimes a different time period, sometimes the present day. I found I enjoyed Deep Impact far more than Armageddon for precisely the reasons you discuss... it simply exercised my suspension of disbelief gland less. But, these were both very near-future stories based off of our current world, so I saw them in that context.
Aside from the fact that Lord of the Rings is not, at any time, set in a particular time period in our history ("Middle Earth" is not Earth, and "The Third Age" doesn't correspond to any period I know of), it belongs to a genre that explicitly does NOT root itself in our world. Therefore, suspension of disbelief is based on the internal consistency of the world, not on whether or not it matches the fossil record. Tolkien was one of the great masters at creating an internally consistent world; Middle Earth's history was completely known to him, he developed the languages of the major (non-human) races, and a dozen other details are apparent in his work that make it a paragon of fantasy literature. LotR is considered a classic fantasy novel (establishing many staples of the genre) specifically because of this amazing internal consistency. As the story unfolds, there isn't anything that reminds you that this world was made up... except for your own hyper-awareness of the world around you.
I, myself, enjoy fantasy much less than science fiction precisely for the same reasons as you... it can't happen. I don't much enjoy science fiction that's poorly executed, either... nor do I enjoy regular fiction books or movies with plot holes and continuity errors. But even a very well-done fantasy piece fails to satisfy me as much as those that *can* happen, because I am also (as you are) a realist.
This isn't the fault of the genre, however. I don't like westerns, either, and that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. Nor is there something wrong with me; I recognize that I have different tastes from a great many of my friends and *that's fine*. I don't have to find fault with the genre of fantasy literature to justify it.
Neither do you.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Essentially, the problem is that you cannot accept the nature of fantasy, but instead of understanding that this is a problem with you, you insist that it's a problem with fantasy. Manifestly, the majority of people do not have this problem, which is why I conclude that the problem lies with you. Now I don't insist that you start finding the same value in fantasy literature that I do -- if you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it, but don't go around pooh-poohing what other people like to read simply because you don't get it. If you're going to keep this up, you're going to have to come up with some kind of actual logic, rather than just, "I don't like it, therefore it sucks and nobody else should like it."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Blockquoth the poster:
Uh, no. Peter Jackson has already said that Shelob has been moved to third movie, not only to give Sam and Frodo enough to do but also to have the events line up chronologically. Here is the report.
Ah-hah! Thanks for an excellent reply.
I do find myself in total agreement with you (both on preferences in reading material and movies, and on the comment about it not being the "fault of the genre").
Honestly, as much as anything, I'm partially just trying to be difficult in this discussion, since I was nitpicked over my usage of "you" rather than "I".
If I've managed to find fault in the entire Fantasy genre, that's not quite what I intended to do.
This whole thing originated from the argument over whether or not LoTR was supposed to have taken place on our planet. Some folks seem to be saying "No way. Middle Earth isn't *our* Earth." Others say yes, Tolkien stated before that it was, indeed, supposed to be here on our planet.
Perhaps we're supposed to assume that the human race does/did live on more planets than just Earth? That's a possibility I hadn't really considered until now. All I know is in the movie, the wizard does mutter something about humans and hobbits rarely interacting with each other (and that he thinks it's probably just as well).
Initially, it was exactly that part which bothered me. (Why go to all the effort to write a consistent, epic story about an entire fantasy world, and then nail it down to supposedly happening here? It's just an unnecessary "tie-in" that needlessly strains credibility.)
The name of the planet that Tolkien's LotR world is set on is Arda. It's not Terra (our Earth). The complete history of his world is laid down in the Silmarillion, which covers from the beginning of time, up until something like 1,000 years before the events in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. So, it's fairly clearly established that this is a different world, with a different history.
;-) about it, to make this response. But I never did make the assumption that it was supposed to be "our" world. Had you been told that before you saw the movie, or after? How did that information "ruin" it for you?
Now, I didn't really know all that until I started asking my husband (Dirtside
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?