LOTR:Return Of The King Trailer

noda132 writes "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King trailer is now available! I just found it on theonering.net. It's only 9mb big, but it's a start." You can also get it from AOL as well. Update: 09/29 20:13 GMT by S : The official site now has the new trailer as well.

Comments

did it get hammered allready ???

[phaktor]

well lets see it's 5:00 am on the west cost and the site is /.ed allready. we all need to go back to bed.

Read the book first

[Davak]

Am I the only one that saw the first LOTR movies before reading the book? What was I thinking?

It totally destroyed the experience for me as the movie's images were stuck in my head as I read.

At least I didn't screw it completely up and read the book before this last one.

Davak

Re:Read the book first

[davebarz]

It's much worse a phenomenon than that. Prior to the movies, I'd read the whole trilogy at least 5 or 6 times. Nevertheless, when I read it now, I still picture all the movie characters. I can't even remember how I used to picture them. On one hand, it's a testament to the quality and immersive brilliance of the movies. On the other hand, it's really annoying that they stole from me the images of characers I've treasured since childhood.

Re:Read the book first

[TopShelf]

They should just release a new printing of the books, and call it "The Author's Cut."

As for myself, I've probably read LOTR 15 times or so, and have been blown away with how good a job they've done with the films. Sure, there are things to complain about (I'll reserve my judgement on the whole Faramir thing until I see the extended DVD this fall), but by and large Jackson took on a monumental task and succeeded admirably.

ONLY! 9Mb

[MosesJones]

I know that isn't really very big, but it did make me realise how much the internet has kicked on in the last few years, and how high-compression technologies like Wavelets etc have been superceeded thanks to broadband connections.

9Mb isn't huge by todays standards, but it is worth considering for a second how much our viewing habits have been changed. No-longer do we go to a movie JUST to see the trailer... we download it. We all know that soon you'll see 100Mb full quality trailers being available.

Prediction of the day.... within 3 years someone will post on Slashdot that a trailer is "only" 100Mb.

Re:how long will be ROTK ?

[akpcep]

"Tolkien fans seem to forget that when Tolkien's works were first released, critics thought they were utter shit. "

VanGogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.

Re:Obligatory analysis

[szo]

Pray tell me, what's the point of this? There won't be any surprise in a movie that claim to be closely based on a book... If you are curious, go read the book.

Szo

I don't wanna watch it

[cyranoVR]

I started to watch the trailer, but I couldn't finish. I just couldn't...I want to save all my enthusiasm for the actual movie which - based on both the last two movies and what happens in the book - can't NOT be good. I was watching the trailer and I was like "I don't need a trailer to know that this movie is going to ROCK." So you guyz can have my bandwidth :)

Re:hmmm

[Angostura]

Jackson has done a fair amount of tinkering with the chronology and action in other parts of the film. For the most part I think he has done a splendid job in bringing out aspects of the story which Tolkien left un-developed. It is rather like seeing the same story through the eyes of a different story teller.

In this case, I think that the tinkerage with the chronology could be rather fine - in the books the reforging of Narsil is a rather ho-hum affair. But Jackson appears to be bringing it center stage to mark out another step in Aragorn's development from ranger to King.

I really like the way he manages to stay true to the original while adapting it to the screen.

----

The only part I really find fault with was the end of Fellowship. In the book Aragorn is beset with doubt - he doesn't know where Frodo has gone, whether he has been captured, or what to do.

In the film its like "Oh, there goes Frodo and Sam, well, by chaps. Lets chase after the others".

Re:Obligatory analysis

[Rallion]

Yeah, all the changes have been rather...too bad. But I can accept all of them, as much as it bothers me to see Faramir being...not so nice. In a movie, you really have to keep the action moving, and make the climax at the END, which means that the removal of Bombadil, and even the Scouring, are necessary. And I can understand why Faramir was changed, too. In the movie, it's far more difficult to show the ring as an evil thing. You can't just use subtleties, you have to come out and say it. And if Faramir had been all nice about it, the idea wouldn't have come across at all.

Ah, still. It makes me sad.

My biggest gripe with PJ...

[epicstruggle]

... is the inclusion of any significant number of elves to battle sauron. The reason armies of elves should not be there for me, is that this is where humans are supposed to redeem themselves for the mistake of Isildur, who should have destroyed the ring when he had the chance.

Does it bother anyone else? Its minor, but why not bring an army of dwarves too, if we are rewritting things.

All in all, still a great adaptation. You go PJ.

later
epic

Re:My biggest gripe with PJ...

[dswensen]

That's totally unfair and uncalled-for. Peter Jackson is an ENORMOUS Lord of the Rings fan, and that's about the only reason you're not hearing Frodo say "talk to the hand" and Gandalf drinking a refreshing Pepsi-Cola (TM).

Stanley Kubrick himself once called the Lord of the Rings completely unfilmable -- and, in the books' original form, he's right. Many things which make the book great will simply not fly in a movie medium. You might think they will -- thirty minutes of a guy in a yellow jacket and pointy shoes talking about sheep and Goldberry, and Faramir finding Frodo and Sam in Morder and going "aw shucks! Get out of here with that Ring of Power, you scamps!" In a lengthy, leisurely book like Lord of the Rings, that's fine, but in a movie that already clocks in at three hours a pop with tons of stuff cut out, you'd be bored out of your nitpicking skull. I love Tolkien dearly, but most of his material is as dramatic as a flapjack, because Tolkien was ultimately a lover of the slow and pastoral life of the English countryside. Which is great, but doesn't make good film. Sorry.

Consider how moving and exciting the Lord of the Nazgul scenes from RotK would be if Jackson adapted them faithfully. He rides into Gondor, Gandalf says "you cannot come in here," a rooster crows, some trumpets play, and the Nazgul turns and leaves. Yeah. Thrilling stuff. The crowd would be on the edge of their seats.

Listen to Jackson's DVD commentary on Fellowship sometime, with the other two writers, and how much they agonized and labored over every change that they made, and how many things Jackson wanted to leave in but simply couldn't and deeply regrets. He even laments having to take out Glorfindel and Gildor Inglorion.

I am a big fan of the books, and I was disappointed with a few of the changes too, especially in Two Towers. But Jackson and everyone else have labored very hard to bring as faithful a movie adaptation as they could to a book that is, fact's a fact, completely impossible to adapt faithfully and still have it be any good. Go watch the Rankin-Bass or Ralph Bakshi adaptations of LotR sometime if you want to see how truly, awfully BAD an adaptation could have been. Tolkien fans got very, very lucky when Peter Jackson landed this project, and sorry -- he deserves better than "oh he probably never even READ the books." That is pure bunk.

Re:My biggest gripe with PJ...

[dswensen]

If you want to make a point, try doing it without the ad hominem attacks next time, thanks. You have no idea what I do or don't understand, or my appreciation of subtlety, so let's not pretend you do.

I understand perfectly well how literature can be translated to the screen. I also understand part of the reason for LotR's enduring popularity is that it is different things to different people, and additionally, that any film adaptation of a work of literature is the interpretation of one person, or, in this case, three (Jackson, Boyens, Walsh). Jackson's vision of Lord of the Rings is not the same as my own, nor should it be.

Insofar as the scenes mentioned are concerned -- in some sense you are preaching to the choir. The changes made to Faramir, especially the trip to Osgiliath, was by far my biggest gripe with Two Towers. I was extremely irate about it, but on further reflection, could understand why Jackson made the decision. I just wish he could have handled it differently. For my part, I found the encounter with Faramir in the books to be devoid of suspense -- but likewise found the movie version swung too far in the opposite direction. Because I support Jackson's privilege to make changes to the original doesn't mean I worship them all as immaculate.

As far as the Lord of the Nazgul scene goes, that remains to be determined -- I am anxious to see what Jackson does with it. In my opinion, the strength of the written word is that it can support the sort of subtle, existential horror and dread such as you describe far more reliably than a visual medium, because they rely on the reader's imagination.

You can bank on that tension more or less forever in the written word -- in Tolkien's work, the Nazgul are mostly a non-existent threat until the (very brief) confrontation on the Pelennor Fields, where the fearsome Lord is undone by a stab to the ankle and one swipe from a sword. To his credit, Tolkien still manages to pull them off as dreadful despite the fact that they never actually do much but ride around and slaughter the occasional Prancing Pony bed-bolster.

While this approach might work for the die-hard enthusiast (as might a 15- or 20-hour faithful adaptation of the work), the LotR film is an expensive project that needs to make a profit, and that means placating the majority of moviegoers who expect a bit more action from their fantasy films. I think it's the price we pay for having a film adaptation at all, and though I have problems with Jackson's interpretation as well, I think we as an audience could come off much worse than we have. Again, I point to Jackson's precursors, Bakshi and Rankin-Bass. You want to see a filmmaker taking some liberties with the story? Watch Bakshi's LotR sometime. Saruman becomes "Ahriman" (sometimes), Treebeard is supremely comical, Elrond wears a tee-shirt to the council at Imladris, and Boromir is a shrieky nincompoop who dresses like Hagar the Horrible. Jackson is a purist by comparison.

I didn't go into the Lord of the Rings movies expecting the book to be retold in movie form. Not only is that impossible, it would hold few if any surprises for someone who's read the books as many times as I have. If I wanted that precise experience, I'd just read the book again. Instead, I got to see Boromir as a slightly more sympathetic character, Faramir as slightly less (again, that didn't work out so well), Aragorn a bit more conflicted, and the Nazgul a little more active, and a pretty fantastic Watcher in the Water, while still (in my opinion) maintaining quite a few (not all) of the book's original themes.

It's not a faithful adaptation, but I don't believe a faithful adaptation could or should be filmed, nor would it be interesting even if it was. That's just my opinion. I believe that people who want the experience of the novel should read the novel. A movie of the novel is going to involve some retelling and some shuffling of the elements, because one medium is of the eye and ear, the other is of the imagination. Anyone goin

Re:My biggest gripe with PJ...

[gfxguy]

I disagree - some of the changes obviously would have just belabored the point, but some of the changes make no sense.

Let's look at leaving out the gift giving in FOTR. Yes, it was included in the extended version, but that's not really quite fair to the movie going public. Who, after seeing it in the theater once or twice, and then maybe renting it when it was available, has seen the extended version? Why, it's the big fans - the ones who already read the books and knew about the gift giving, left in or not. Now, the FOTR had a lot of long, beautiful, yet somewhat boring shots. Some of what was left in could easily have been cut to fit in things more important to the story.

The worse part, again, is the Faramir part. Here they added stuff that wasn't in the book - made those scenes LONGER to put stuff into the movie that wasn't in the story. In other words, they went out of their way to change the story, as opposed to going out of their way to make it follow the book.

Me, I'm sure he read the books. I'm sure he loves them. And like a lot of "artists", he wanted to add his own ideas to it, much to the chagrin of the fans of the story. I mean, if your band covers someone elses song, if it sounds EXACTLY the same, then what's the point? You cover it to add your own flair to it. Some people might like it better, some might not like it as much.

The problem is that here, instead of creatively cutting down on stuff so that the movie flows along better, he seems to have gone out of his way to make sure he didn't follow the books.

Not only that scene, but the whole Aragorn thing when he goes over the cliff. That was a huge time wasting departure... and the point was? To give Liv Tyler an even bigger role than she should have had?

I saw TTT on it's first day of release. I had a friend who went to a midnight showing, and I talked to him in the morning before I saw it (in the afternoon). He said it was good, but Jackson made it a "movie" instead of a "film", and my first thoughts were "that's pretty pretentious of you, you elitist bastard." Then I saw the movie and was very dissappointed - the Dwarf jokes, the Legolas estrogen brigade...

Don't get me wrong, I loved it! I will be getting the extended version. I have the cinematic version (only from the free Blockbuster rental deal) that I'll be giving away. I loved the movie, but was so dissappointed because it could have been so much more, more faithful, and even more interesting. Not all the changes were to help the flow of the movie, a lot of them simply made no sense to me.

So read the damn books already!

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been out longer than you've been alive! I think that puts the burden on you to reading avoid spoilers, not on others to keep them away from you.

Re:Obligatory analysis

[Apreche]

I was just thinking about that.

Nooooooo! That's the best chapter. Whit Saruman being all old and stuff. It's hilarious.

Hopefully they'll at least put it on the extended DVD version. They at least have to show the trip to the gray havens in some fashion. Ring falling in volcano != end of story.

Part of a flashback, maybe?

[thefinite]

It was reforged and given to him when he left Rivendell, but I think what is seen in the trailer may just be part of a flashback. I don't think that is a terrible idea, because it is more topical in "Return of the King" anyway, especially when you consider that those who see the movies and don't read the book might forget the significance of Narsil.