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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.
The frame-by-frame analysis can also be found here.
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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.
barzelay.net
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Please do not put direct links to movies on slashdot...
Unless you find some movies on SCO's page, then feel free.
Here's the torrent for a 12 min preview by Peter Jackson. It includes most of what is in the trailer and then some background goodies.
2 33 /ROTK_Preview_(12mins).torrent
http://bittorrentmovies.de/~supernova/torrents/
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
My download through this torrent link is corrupt. At 1:42 into the movie the sound becomes distorted and video stops.
I'm using BitTorrent 3.3, the newest as far as I'm aware.
I tried it twice. Did not help. Is anyone else having problems?
(Score:5, Not Funny)
The mirror that TORN put up is a corrupt download, so my bet is that that is what the torrent is :( Bummer... I've been trying to get it from another site for over an hour now.
Blockquoth the poster:
Read the FAQ.
I'm downloading your "only 9MB" file on 28.8Kbps dial-up, you insensitive clod! :-)
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 :)
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.
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