Wired's LOTR III Tech Breakdown

rjjm writes "Interesting little logistics piece in Wired about the technology WETA used for for The Return of the King." Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.

Comments

technoglogy

[pbrinich]

Hmm...must be one of those LOTR words

Re:technoglogy

[lithandie]

trixie technoglogy, we hates it...

Re:technoglogy

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

You know you've married the right girl when you're playing chess, and you make a good move, and she says: "Trick-sy!" in her best Theodore Gottlieb voice.

Re:technoglogy

[Anonymous Coward]

you know you've married the right girl when she let's you fuck and beat your children

Vanished?

[swordboy]

Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere,

I don't think that it just vanished... it turned into something.

Re:Vanished?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok first of all. I think the matrix was not a flop but the ending was not what people where wanting. The effects in the movie where great. The views and effects at the end of the movie i belive raised the bar.

Re:Vanished?

[vijaya_chandra]

aaargh
there is no bar
err spoon

Re:Vanished?

[Anonymous Coward]

The end was a cop-out. "And they lived happily ever after." How can the machines let people out of the matrix if they so desire? I thought they needed the energy because the sky was scorched? And sorry, I don't trust the humans to come up with a way to un-scorch the sky. These people couldn't even think to put a PROTECTED cock-pit on their giant mechanized walkers (forgot what those things were called).

Nothing New Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it possibly be the same technology they used in LOTR I & II ?

Re:Nothing New Here

[enigmals1]

Exaclty... considering all three are already made and all they have to do it wrap up the production editing for III (and start the DVD junk). I guess some people don't know they were all filmed at the same time and the actors have already moved on to other projects a year ago?

Re:Nothing New Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yes and no.
If you'd seen the featurettes on The Two Towers, you'd know that they didn't start working on the CG for TTT until Spring following the release of The Fellowship of the Ring (including entirely redoing all the work they had already completed on Gollum). That being said, they probably didn't finish the CG work long ago, and Jackson will likely be tinkering with the editing until a week before release.

Re:Nothing New Here

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology used to film the raw footage hasn't changed much in decades. So it doesn't matter if they were all filmed around the same time. It's the technology used in the post production phase that they are talking about.

Re:Nothing New Here

[Rallion]

Not really. In the first movie they had but a fraction of that kind of power and didn't need nearly as much of it. No Gollum. No battles. You notice that nearly a third of their processors are brand new?

Re:Nothing New Here

[MuParadigm]

"...Jackson will likely be tinkering with the editing until a week before release."

Close. He worked on it till the last minute, which was in the first week of November. There were in fact some final changes he wanted that didn't make it into the film. It had to shipped for transfers.

Re:Nothing New Here

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Acutally, technology used in filming has changed quite a lot recently. Motion control of the camera enables quite a lot of new tricks.

Forced perspective with a moving camera depends on moving parts of the scenery in sync with the camera. The scene with Gandalf and Frodo at the table in Bag End is a good example of this - no post production tricks at all.

Also, tricks where you film one person on a blue-screen, record the camera moves, replay the same camera move somewhere else (possibly with a scale transform) and combine the images. The post-production combining is completely trivial, but the technique is enabled by being able to track exactly where the camera is during the shot and replaying the same moves later.

Re:Nothing New Here

[Slurm-V]

Actually, that's not true. Mr Jackson has brought various actors back over the past year for reshoots. I myself have seen hobbits walking past my window at work carrying mysterious paper bags. Further evidence here because I know you won't take my word on it. From what I hear (and everyone in this city knows at least one person involved in LoTR) the tricky thing is making them look the same as they did during the primary shooting.

Re:Nothing New Here

[enigmals1]

Ah, good to know... That's the cool thing about the Net, nomatter where you are you can find someone from where you want to be . ;)

Re:Nothing New Here

[DylanPackman]

One of my flatmates is working in the post production (I'm from Wellington, NZ) in part of the editing section. His last work on the movie was finished last night. Look out for a huge extended version on DVD, apparently there's heaps of footage they haven't been able to fit in. (moreso than TTT)

Power at your fingertips

[Max Romantschuk]

Looking at the specs for the rendering cluster... The coolest thing is the fact that power like that will be at anyone's disposal in the forseeable future.

Then all I need is an AI to make up for my lack of skill...

Re:Power at your fingertips

[10Ghz]

The coolest thing is the fact that power like that will be at anyone's disposal in the forseeable future.

The saddest thing is that we will need that much power just to run Windows2009 and Doom5

Re:Power at your fingertips

[nautical9]

The saddest thing is that we will need that much power just to run Windows2009 and Doom5

I think you meant: Windows 2009 Personal-and-Home-for-Middle-class-Income-Families Edition..... and Doom3.

Re:Power at your fingertips

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

The saddest thing is that we will need that much power just to run Windows2009 and Doom5

But will it have the much anticpated auto-slashdot-homepage-reload function. Not to mention the auto pro M$ auto first comment feature penciled in for WindowsNever.

earning it's hype

[lithandie]

probably not. mainly due to the cutting that has happened already. like the loss of the resolution to the sauruman plot.

Most likely ROTK will not live up to the hype until the extended edition comes out.

And I speak from the experience of two extended editions of the other two films that are both superior to the theatrical releases

Re: earning it's hype

[thenextpresident]

As a LOTR reader of many, many times, I keep hearing the same problems people have with "what they removed" and "what they changed." And frankly, it's getting old.

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with. The seven minute scene you refer to is NOT important to the overall plot of the move: getting the ring to Mordor. You can argue all you want, but I remember hearing the same things when people complained about the removal of Tom from the Fellowship. But that hardly ruined the film.

While I agree that the extended editions are much, much better than the theatrical release, ROTK will still be a really damn good movie.

As Fran says in the TT extended edition DVD, this is one group of fants interpretation of the LotR. I never expected a blow by blow account of the retelling. Indeed, one of the scenes I missed (the one with Radagast) was never even brought up!

Put another way, if the books had never been written, and LotR had been simply a movie without a book, would that make a difference. Yes, it would. So rather than judge the movie for what they had to leave out, but rather, for what they put into the movie.

Re: earning it's hype

[dark404]

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with. The seven minute scene you refer to is NOT important to the overall plot of the move: getting the ring to Mordor. You can argue all you want, but I remember hearing the same things when people complained about the removal of Tom from the Fellowship. But that hardly ruined the film.

Lord of the Rings is not like other books. The greatness of the book cannot be distilled into a simple plot of ring is found, ring journeys, ring is destroyed. The book is an epic tale with multiple plot lines, and MUST be taken in as an overall story. This book is the progenitor of the fantasy genre, and those of us who loved the book long before the movies were even on the drawing board recognize the overall importance of it in its entirety. If you consider getting the ring to Mordor to be the most important part of LotR, you just don't understand it at all.

Re: earning it's hype

[Abreu]

As much as I want ROTK to be a great movie, I really fear leaving that theater in a worse dissapointment than last year.

I dont have any problems with the scenes he left out... I have a real problem with the ones he put in that dont have anything to do with the original story.

We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.

We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes

We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.

We dont want any 10 minute long dreamy sequences of Liv Tyler... wait a sec. we DO want those, but not in LOTR!

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

It's not the most important part of the book, it's the most important part of the movie.

And no, it doesn't have to be taken in as an overall story. You don't have to have it all in there verbatim. You want that? Go read the book again. It doesn't have to be transcribed scene for scene, word for word, for the *point* of the story to be made.

The greatness of the book is shown in the craftsmanship of the props and sets and everything else on the screen.

Re: earning it's hype

[mst76]

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with. The seven minute scene you refer to is NOT important to the overall plot of the move: getting the ring to Mordor.

From the standpoint of the movies, this is true, because the movie is told from a different perspective than the book. The movie is told mainly by an anonymous narrator (but appears to switch from time to time to being told by Galadriel, oddly enough). In the book, the story is told by the Hobbits. This is why the Scouring of the Shire is just as important as the fall of Sauron. Seeing their homeland corrupted affected them more than seeing Gondor on the brink of destruction. And note that Saruman does not come to his end in the scene that will be left out from the theatrical release, but in the Shire in a scene that was probably never shot.

Re: earning it's hype

[gl4ss]

well, most people that bitch haven't heard from somewhere that the end story is cripled to begin with(if it was like in the books, with shire messed up and all, then missing saruman would obviously be quite a big thing). though saruman obviously has had some connections to shire in the extended editions versions at least (merri & pippin found pipeweed)

however saying beforehand that it will be a goddamn good movie is a bit much :), for you have not seen the movie yet..

so if you haven't heard anything else about what's in rotk, bitching about missing saruman is quite understandable.

however if i could use some magic to make some changes.. i would have extended it to be shown in the movie number 2, because rotk/3 is going to be tight packed now..

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

They have an excellent reason for Faramir to deviate from his character in the book.

Look, here you have this Ring, this totally evil, corrupting, terrible power, and you go to great lengths to make sure the audience knows about it and that even hobbits can't resist its effects forever (Bilbo). Then along comes this Man, Faramir, brother of corruptible Boromir, whose weakness led to his own death even. Faramir says "Nah, fuck it, I wouldn't even pick it up if it were lying there on the ground"

You've just killed the Ring's power. It's impotent now. Here's this guy who can just shrug it off. He's nothing special, was just introduced. Is *everyone else* in Middle Earth so pants-pissing weak then?

I submit that the Faramir of the book is the flawed character. Surely with all that willpower he would have been greater than he was. Interesting to imagine what might have happened if Faramir *had* been allowed to go to the meeting instead of Boromir, though.

But as for dwarf-tossing, I agree. Toss it. =)

Re: earning it's hype

[blixel]

We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.

We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes

We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.


I could have done without the Tony Hawk shield slide sceen. I personally felt like it was put in the movie for no better reason than an attempt to appeal to the kiddies. Stuff like that is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over your head. If you had been drawn into the movie, a sceen like that is a quick slap in the face - IMHO.

Re: earning it's hype

[CashCarSTAR]

That's the problem I have with the books. They meander away from the point so much and so often that they feel totally watered down.

The movies, IMO gets rid of that water, evaporating it away into the essence.

The story is much better for it.

Re: earning it's hype

[UberOogie]

I agree that Faramir in the books should not so easily shrug off the Ring. However, it is generally accepted that Tolkien was establishing him as the opposite of his brother, a man of pure heart without secret dreams of power. He represents the good and strength of men, which is why it is even more important that he is almost burned alive by his father.

That said, I agree that even with that, he should have been more tempted by the Ring, except after the changes made in the movies with the breaking of the Fellowship. Within the original context of the books, even Aragorn would have been tempted by the Ring to the point that he would eventually succumb, which is why the Fellowship had to be broken in secret. But in the movies, he established that men of pure heart could resist the Ring (temporarily, at least), so the original characterization of Farmir could have stood as is.

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

I still think Faramir would have to have been toned down somewhat. After all, Aragorn is no simple Man, he is a Dunedain.

Re: earning it's hype

[Captain_Chaos]

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with.

I agree, but only because we already know that the Scouring of the Shire is out. If that were in they'd be in a lot more trouble leaving Saruman out...

Re: earning it's hype

[stevey]

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with.

I don't have a problem with the cuts, as it was well known that the scouring of the shire was going to be cut.

That is really where he comes into play.

It would have just been nice to see Saruman being cast out by Gandalf; and had the scene with the Palatari(sp?).

That was used to lure Mordor into the early strike; I guess they can just ignore that bit and have everything come to a head without any forcing.

Really what I'm trying to say is that it's not that I hate the cuts, just as a long time fan a couple of minutes for a scene like that would have been rewarding.

(For example I thought the council scene in the first movie was a bit of a letdown not enough people, not long enough - but I loved it when we had the words from the book "I will go, but I do not know the way").

Re: earning it's hype

[meta-monkey]

Exactly...you hit the nail right on the head.

I love the books, I love the movies. but they've GOT to be two different stories. It's just not possible to tell the same story in both print and on screen, because the mediums are so completely different. Imagine The Matrix (the first one, the good one...) as a book. How could you possibly convey the slack-jawed wonder you felt the first time you saw the fight scene with Morpheus and Neo in the dojo with the written word? If it had been a book first, there would have been a lot more pontificating about the nature of reality, and a lot less action, and then when they made the movie, we'd all be here on /. bitching about how they cut out all the important metaphysical concepts from the book to make room for "senseless special effects" in the movie.

That said, the parent poster is right, that the Extended Editions are MUCH better than the theatrical releases. I felt a little disappointed last year after watching The Two Towers in the theatre. Just a few days before, I'd seen the FotR:EE DVD, and TTT just didn't compare. It seemed light on the story and the character development. It was still a good movie, but it didn't seem to hold up to the first one. Flash forward to last week. I bought the Two Towers: EE, and I've already watched it twice. AMAZING. Now, I think it's superior to the first one.

So, that makes me worry a bit for the third movie. I'm sure I'm going to see it in the theatre, think, "it was pretty good," until I get the EE next year, at which time I'll love it. That is, of course, assuming Peter Jackson doesn't completely destroy the ending of the series. First, I'll say that I'm not bashing PJ. I think he's done an amazing job, and it's awfully easy for people to sit on their asses and criticize, but the labor of love that was the making of these films must have required a level of dedication and sacrifice few would understand. However, PJ, PLEASE don't change the end. I don't want a happy hollywood ending. The ending of the books was absolutely fantastic, and there's no reason to change it. Let the world be changed. The elves, the wizards, the ring-bearers, SHOULD go to the West, and leave everyone else behind. It's supposed to be bittersweet. It's supposed to make you realize that when something that horrific happens, things just can't go back to the way they were, and it's not a "there and back again" adventure like the Hobbit.

Oh, and Gimli shouldn't be the comic relief.

Re:earning it's hype

[0x0d0a]

probably not. mainly due to the cutting that has happened already. like the loss of the resolution to the sauruman plot.

Oh, get real. This is the Lord of the Rings. You realize how much cutting had to happen to get this into any kind of a movie form, *period*? The whole thing'd be something like twenty movies if it were complete.

That being said, I was pretty adverse to the idea of modification to the story and went in to see Fellowship with a pretty bad attitude, and discovered that the movies really are terribly good.

If you want the extended versions, then *buy* the extended versions.

Re: earning it's hype

[nilenico]

*** spoiler alert ***

It's pretty well established that the Grey Havens are indeed in the film.

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

Oh really? Let's see just how effective being Numenorean is:

Boromir - succumbed early on to the will of the Ring. Led him to his death. He did redeem himself in the end, but he's still dead.

Denethor - I forget exactly why he's a right bastard (need to read the book again, I guess), but he's got some serious personality issues of his own that his Numenorean heritage wasn't able to help him with.

Faramir - same lineage, same bloodline, flesh and blood of the above, but somehow he's a saint who can do no wrong and withstand any temptation?

Hmm. Perhaps he got all the good of his family. You may yet have a point. =) But I still say that it would have lessened the power and force of the Ring to just have this random guy (for those people who haven't read the book) shrug off its influence. Especially when they find out he's related to a pack of people who apparently *dont* have the ability to resist temptation.

Re: earning it's hype

[0x0d0a]

Look, here you have this Ring, this totally evil, corrupting, terrible power, and you go to great lengths to make sure the audience knows about it and that even hobbits can't resist its effects forever (Bilbo). Then along comes this Man, Faramir, brother of corruptible Boromir, whose weakness led to his own death even. Faramir says "Nah, fuck it, I wouldn't even pick it up if it were lying there on the ground"

The Ring is addictive. Gandalf and Galadriel also chose not to take it, as did all the folks at the meeting in Rivendel. It's just simply an appealing object (expensive-looking ring, grants amazing powers), and only can really exert nastiness after it's been in someone's posession for a while. (Possible exception -- Smeagol, but he was a nasty character to begin with.)

Re: earning it's hype

[nelsonal]

On Aragorn's doubts, he certainly seemed to be doubting near the beginning of the book to me. It seemed like he went through a transformation through the story as he prepared to become the king. It certainly makes sense that an exiled royal whose line was thought to be ended might have a few doubts about his worthiness to retake the throne.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

>>But as for dwarf-tossing, I agree. Toss it. =)

But don't tell the elf =)

Re: earning it's hype

[thenextpresident]

"however saying beforehand that it will be a goddamn good movie is a bit much :), for you have not seen the movie yet..

so if you haven't heard anything else about what's in rotk, bitching about missing saruman is quite understandable."

Yes and no. Having seen the other two, and knowing the amount of energy and heart that the cast and crew put into the movie, I am very confident in saying that the movie will be a damn good one. Of course, I could always be wrong... =)

There are many things I could bitch about, but I don't. Why? Because the movies stand well on their own. I would love to see more of Saruman mostly because Chrisopher Lee is great in the movie, and I love him as Saruman. It's just great.

Sure, the Saruman/pipe weed connection is a bit obvious, but I think like many things in the movies, while they can't show everything, they can pay homage to those facts. So while they can't put everything in, they can at least pay homage to these things in a subtle way.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

ring is found, ring journeys, ring is destroyed

You just ruined the end of the movie for me, you insensitive clod!

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

"Gandalf and Galadriel also chose not to take it,..."

And oddly enough, neither of them had as easy a time refusing to take it as Faramir did. Neither one just said, "Eh", and had total disinterest in it.

"... as did all the folks at the meeting in Rivendel."
None of whom were given the choice or the opportunity. Boromir came close to snatching it up the first time he saw it. Presumably the elves and dwarves had a slightly easier time of it, but they were still squabbling over it.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment. I haven't liked the movies that much and the story-telling perspective explains a lot. The books are written from the Hobbits' perspective and it makes a lot of difference. Here are a few sheltered, naive people learning about the world and there is a wonder and mystery about things, and yet there are strong urges to go back to their simple, unhurried lives. They aren't so caught up in all the "political" side of things.

The other gripe I have is with the acting itself. The technical stuff is first rate but the acting is very dry. Last night I watched "Fiddler on the Roof" again. Now there is a movie in which the actors played their characters beautifully and showed real acting. After that I watched the first few scenes of the last Stars Wars film. What a contrast in acting and portraiting emotion and character. The same is also true with LOTR, in my opinion. Great technical stuff and cinematography (sp?) do not make up for average role-playing.

Re: earning it's hype

[gfxguy]

I agree... the problem with the cuts and plot changes is that they often go off onto tangents that weren't in the book (like the Warg scene and the subsequent Aragorn/Arwen thing) forsaking parts that a lot of fans of the books would much rather see (like the confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf).

It's not that it's a bad movie, and it's not they shouldn't take some liberties to move such a large story along, but they could have kept the story moving and still had some of the key parts that the book fans wanted to see.

Re: earning it's hype

[MikeHunt69]

It's a movie thats an adaptation of a book. In all the screenwriting books I've read, it tells the reader (and drives the point home many times) that if they are writing an adaptation, they are under NO obligation to follow the story line, or even have the same ending.

Film is a completely different medium to books. Whats easy to do in a book is difficult to do on film and vice versa (eg: It's easy to tell the reader what a character is thinking in a book. It's very difficult in a film without using voice-over).

In short, stop bitching and be glad the film follows the books as closely as they do.

Re: earning it's hype

[Gilmoure]

Denethor used the Palantir in Minus Tirith and, while not captured by Sauron (like Saruman), he was driven to despair and eventually lost all the toys from his happy meal, ending with his throwing himself backwards onto a pile of salad forks.

Re: earning it's hype

[motherjoe]

Although I like what Jackson has done with the movies, I am not totaly in agreement with what is being done/said about Faramir.

I think Boromir and Faramir are opposite sides of the same coin. Boromir is the more action oriented, while Faramir tends to think first.

That's probably why he isn't on Denethor's good side at all. Denethor wanted the ring and in the book I don't recall Boromir asking too many questions as too why? He told Boromir to go and it was good... and Boromir went to the council for the sole purpose of recovering the ring to be used by Gondor, errr Dad.:)

To me, Boromir was more glory minded than Faramir. Yes, they both have good intentions and wanted to do whatever to save Gondor. However, I think Boromir also saw the reward of personal glory as a big bonus. That's how I saw the ring getting to him in the end.

Faramir on the other hand, asked plenty of questions and tried to see the big picture. Whereas Boromir tended to live in the moment more.

Faramir didn't have the same blind obedience that Denethor saw in Boromir. Denethor wanted action not council, nor someone second guessing him.

Just my .02...

Re: earning it's hype

[Ripplet]

>Possible exception -- Smeagol
Eh? Have you not read "The Hobbit"? Smeagol had the ring for something like a hundred years!

Re:earning it's hype

[glenrm]

I disagree ROTK will live up to the hype, Two Towers was great in the Theater and on DVD. Think of the Theater release as a thrill ride version and the extended DVD as a chance to really sit back and enjoy this great film making!

Re: earning it's hype

[gfxguy]

I'm no LOTR expert, but I don't think that any of the people who were called to the council knew that it was specifically about the ring - it was a secret council, and if they sent messengers out to all the major peoples of the land, that could have been disasterous.

As far as Faramir goes, he is supposed to be different, however I think his reluctance to take the ring is more based on the fact that his brother had been particularly weak about it and ended up dead.

Re: earning it's hype

[gfxguy]

Agreed... they set up Orlando to be a sex symbol, and it was probably after seeing the reaction the ladies had to him in the first movie. The scene where he grabs onto and swings up onto the horse at full gallop is pretty weak, too.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, it's just like when Dune was released.

"It's not DUNE unless it's the un-cut thirty hour director's edition!"

Re: earning it's hype

[Ripplet]

but I loved it when we had the words from the book
That's definitely one of the things I liked most too. In fact, even though it's many years since I last read the book, I found it almost possible to tell which lines were original Tolkein ones, and there did seem to be a lot of them. There just seems to be a certain style to them that hasn't quite been caught by the dialog writers, although of course it's mostly the meaningful and important lines like the one you mention that are used.

Re:earning it's hype

[Ripplet]

The whole thing'd be something like twenty movies if it were complete.
Now there's a corker of an idea! One normal length movie coming out every 6 months for 10 years. Then they can cover the entire book, with nothing at all left out.
It's not so far fetched, how long have we had to wait to get 6 Star Wars movies? And I can remember my mum saying how she used to look forward to the next book coming out, back when Tolkien was first writing them, it's worth waiting for.
Go to it Pete!

Re: earning it's hype

[Ricwot]

But smeagol was never an evil character, just weak and pathetic. and as for him not being easily corrupted, he must have been. The ring drove him to kill his brother.

Re: earning it's hype

[Ithika]

It doesn't have to be transcribed scene for scene, word for word, for the *point* of the story to be made.

Yes, but it's the point of the story that you lose when you remove the Saruman/Sharkey/Scouring section. The audience can never know if any of it was worth the effort until the hobbits return to the Shire and try to find their old lives again. For all that Tolkien didn't like allegory, LotR accurately parallels his own experiences in the trenches of the Great War. For that reason alone the ending - the displacement in civvy street of the demobbed soldier - should be shown.

- Ithika

Re: earning it's hype

[iplayfast]

Faramir, loved his brother, and knew that his brother's death was somehow related to the ring. I think that might have influenced his decission to refues it.

Re: earning it's hype

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Weak in what way? He's an elf, he's supposed to be able to do crazy things like that. He walks on top of the snow in Fellowship while the rest are slogging through hip-deep. While I don't remember it in the book, swinging onto a horse at full gallop is a good visual representation of just how skilled and agile the elves really are. Same with the shield surfing - a human tries to slide down stairs on a shield while firing off arrows, nobody would believe it. But an elf? You're supposed to suspend disbelief and take that as an example of the abilities of that race.

Re: earning it's hype

[li99sh79]

I could have done without the Tony Hawk shield slide sceen. I personally felt like it was put in the movie for no better reason than an attempt to appeal to the kiddies. Stuff like that is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over your head. If you had been drawn into the movie, a sceen like that is a quick slap in the face

No, it's to setup the fact that elves possess super-human abilities. Same with the jumping on the horse bit, when he jumped onto the troll in FotR, and whenever he shoots an arrow. It's stuff that's hinted around at in the book, but you're not really aware of without seeing it. What can I say, it didn't bother me. Neither did the changes to Faramir after I saw the Extended Edition and sat down and thought about it.

-sam

Re: earning it's hype

[gfxguy]

Except that grabbing a horse at full gallop would more than likely rip your arms out of their sockets.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

For some information on the Grey Havens in ROTK, check out this entry from The Grey Book, Words by Ian McKellen, over at www.mckellen.com. Talks about the performance of Ian Holm as Bilbo, "Bilbo's last scene", and Galadriel as not played by Cate Blanchett, among other things.

It's a great website in general for fans of LOTR and Ian McKellen!

Re: earning it's hype

[Yunzil]

What do you mean "we", paleface?

Re: earning it's hype

[japhmi]

Aragorn is no simple Man, he is a Dunedain.

So is Faramir. The House of Stewards was one of the noblest families of the South Kingdom of Gondor (which is why they were chosen to be the Stewards of the Kings)

Re: earning it's hype

[japhmi]

I'm no LOTR expert, but I don't think that any of the people who were called to the council

Heck, the council wasn't even really 'called' in the book. They each has their own reasons for wanting to come. Boromir needed to know what his vision meant, he didn't even know about the ring!

Re: earning it's hype

[mblase]

We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.
We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes.
We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.

But most of all, we don't want a single fan to pretend he speaks for an entire community.

Look, I know that the movie characters deviate from those in the book in several places. I've been reading and watching them concurrently. But you know what? The movie characters are good. The book characters are good. That they're not a perfect overlap really doesn't upset me, because it gives me a reason to enjoy both the book and the movie individually.

Other LOTR movies will be made, probably within my lifetime. They will interpret things differently from the books and from these movies. And that's okay. If nothing else, it gives me something inconsequential to argue about with my brothers at family gatherings.

Re: earning it's hype

[the eric conspiracy]

"neither of them had as easy a time refusing to take it"

Others in LoTR had no problem resisting the Ring. Bombadil. Aragorn. Elrond. Frodo only succumbed after carrying around for over a year under very difficult conditions.

It's just a matter of your quality.

Peter Jackson butchered Faramir and Fanghorn's character in the movie adaptation. Nonetheless, he did a far better job of it than anyone had a right to expect. Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar.

Re: earning it's hype

[japhmi]

He walks on top of the snow in Fellowship while the rest are slogging through hip-deep. While I don't remember it in the book

It was in there. I remember thinking 'cool, they left that in' when I saw the movie.

Re: earning it's hype

[jdbo]

We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.

Guess what? The original non-doubting Aragorn is a static, almost development-free character for the majority of LOTR (everything after The Council, more or less). This can work in a novel, where you aren't constantly confronted by the presence of a static character. On film, however, a character's presence (and personality) becomes far more "concrete" due to the fact that we are seeing them constantly, even when they aren't necessarily doing much. The fact of this concrete presence creates the requirement for onscreen character development in any character with significant screen time (or haven't you noticed that Legolas is, frankly, kinda dull?).

This development could be handled in one of two ways: a) dive into flashbacks of Aragorn's youth based on the appendices, which doesn't entirely solve the fact that he becomes steadily less interesting in his "present time" scenes or b) transform his "Strider-Aragorn unveiling" from FOTR into an actual character arc. This second option makes for a more engaging film experience.

(Note: This is also why dialogue in a novel works well at longer lengths than onscreen dialogue - in the novel, we read the "essence" of the dialogue. In a visual medium, the dialogue is accompanied by every little motion of the actors and their environments, and so becomes "tiresome" more quickly.)

We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes

I think that this is partially a matter of taste, and partially a technical issue. When put onscreen, the visual of a fighting, running dwarf is going to be somewhat humorous, no matter what one does (simply because he has to move his legs so much faster to keep up with the taller party members). I didn't mind seeing this inherent humor played up a bit (personal taste).

We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.

Unfortunately, the original Faramir's character would become an on-screen liability. Faramir represents the second "Man of Gondor" encountered by the hobbits, and so must embody (in some ways) their struggle against Mordor (i.e. he needs to show the strain of battling against huge odds, and also continue the theme of temptation by the ring). While a "relaxed" characterization provides constrast to his brother Boromir (and ties into the concept of the Blood of Westernesse, etc.), the benefits of this contrast are outweighed by the audience confusion factor - i.e. if this guy is keeping it together, so maybe the ring isn't as temping as we thought...? Maybe Mordor isn't as big a threat...? These aren't issues that arise in the books, as Tolkien can pick and choose very precise language (and lots of it) to balance Faramir's goodness against the situation he's in. Onscreen, the visual impact of "nice guy Faramir" would overwhelm everything else, even if it was "explained away" in dialogue (always a mistake).

While Tolkien was able to make these potential conflicts clear in the books, filmic storytelling is generally not capable of "nuance on an epic scale"; I'm willing to entertain the possibility that a LOTR mini-series (with a much slower pace and structure) could gracefully translate Faramir's original character to the screen, but I don't see this working in (even a very long) movie.

We dont want any 10 minute long dreamy sequences of Liv Tyler...

All that flashback material is either straight out of, or implied by, material in the Appendices. I don't understand why people are complaining about getting more Tolkien onscreen than they probably expected - and amazingly enough (for Tolkien), with a female character! :)

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow I can tell that you have not read the books recently or maybe at all.

"We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not."

This sub-plot is straight from the book.

"We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes"

Gimli is used a comedy device in the book as well. PJ is just extending this some.

PJ has captured the themes of books very well, but deskchair critics like us often miss these facts.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

It sounds like what you DO want is to read the books again and not see a movie adaptation.

Watch the Faramir scenes in the extended edition and it will explain much about his character and why he acts the way he does (plus they temper it a great deal from the theatrical version). The commentary by the writers / director also explains why they made the changes they did, which is pretty simple stuff: what works in a novel doesn't always work on film.

Philippa Boyens points out in an interview that the book version of Faramir, who essentially "abducts" them, offers them some tea, and says "Oh I'll help you, on your way then!" is fine for the medium in which it originated, but does nothing for tension on film and is a bit of a bore. And I tend to agree.

Plus I think it will make him a more interesting character by giving him some mistakes to redeem himself from, rather than being as pure as the wind-driven snow from the get-go. Much like I think Aragorn is made more interesting by adding some self-doubt.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider myself a rabid Tolkien fan... I much prefer the Silmarillion to the LotR (or anything else he wrote). But, even I realize that there's no point in having Saruman sitting around talking to Grima when the main point of the scene is to set up the Scouring of the Shire (which is not in the last movie). There is even less of a point to include that scene for people who have never read the book and never will. Would those people rather have eight minutes of a defeated Saruman, or 8 more minutes of a battle scene?

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

Elrond was there when Isildur took it, he has an marked advantage in avoiding the call of the Ring. He knows from first-hand experience what it does to people.

Tom Bombadil is an Elder creature, a 'god', a who the hell knows what. All rules of human psychology can pretty much be tossed out the window with Tom.

Aragorn you have more of a point with. Especially since he is Isildur's Heir. However, he's got a lot more to deal with than Faramir. And he's been with the Elves for most of his life. Perhaps Elrond taught him well.

The reason Faramir was changed is covered in the commentaries.. basically, most of the audience wouldn't understand why this one guy could say "Meh, no thanks" without so much as considering it first. And since he ends up refusing to take the ring and sending the hobbits on their way, no permanent damage was done, and it gives Faramir a growth of character that is not present in the book, where he is basically the same from the first time you see him till the last.

How do you think they screwed up Fangorn? I thought they did a great job with the character.. the bluescreen effects were shit, but Treebeard himself was done well. At least, I thought it was.

Andy Serkis does indeed deserve an Oscar. Or two. I can't wait to see him as pre-Ring Smeagol =)

Re: earning it's hype

[li99sh79]

The greatness of the book is shown in the craftsmanship of the props and sets and everything else on the screen.

Yes, the real power of the books comes from the completeness of the world Tolkien created, and Peter Jackson has brought that world to life perfectly. Sure, i've had some doubts about the parts of the book that have been excised, and I've questioned a few of the character decisions, but throughout it all I've felt the movies have captured the look and feel of the books with deadly accuracy. And for that Peter Jackson and his crew deserve heaps and heaps of praise.

-sam

Re: earning it's hype

[JPelorat]

Good point, you may be right. Lets see what RotK delivers, it may work out in the end. Probably not as definitively as what you point out, but I think it'll turn out ok.

Re:earning it's hype

[dswensen]

Cutting one seven-minute Saruman scene means there's 2 hours and 53 minutes of other material that they felt was better, more interesting, and more germane to the story.

So I think there's plenty left over to get excited about.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

He DID resist the Ring. Just not right away. He let Frodo go, presumably at the cost of his own life (though we all know that's not going to happen).

The main problem, I think, is that in a visual medium you have to be reminded physically of a threat as ephemeral as the Ring. In the book it's perfectly workable to say that the Ring is an evil influence and leave it at that; in a series of three-hour films, a general audience is going to need some kind of reminder that it's there. The Ring itself, the centerpiece of the movies, barely appears in Two Towers as it is.

I think also it ties into the Ring growing more powerful as it grows closer to Mordor, and also getting more desperate to find someone whom it CAN tempt. Galadriel's little spiel near the middle of the movie sets this up, and I think the conflict with Faramir pays it off.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

Because they aren't able to include the entire lengthy, involved Scouring of the Shire subplot in the third movie doesn't mean they won't do something to address the central theme of the book. They've shown themselves pretty faitfhul to the themes and spirit of Tolkien so far, in my opinion -- I doubt they will just gloss this one over.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

Plus, saints who can do no wrong and can shrug off any temptation make pretty dull characters.

If you watch the extended edition of Two Towers, it outlines the tragedy of both Boromir and Faramir very poignantly -- Denethor puts all his faith in Boromir, and shuns Faramir as a failure and a weakling. Faramir desperately wants to "prove his quality" to his father, but doesn't have the opportunity.

Then Boromir goes off and fails, and dies -- and no doubt we will see Denethor saying his lines "why couldn't it have been Faramir?" somewhere in Return of the King.

So now Faramir finds the Ring coming into his possession, and finally has a chance to finish what his brother has started, redeem himself in the eyes of his father, and perhaps save all Gondor and Middle-Earth while he's at it (so he thinks anyway).

No slight intended to the great Professor Tolkien, but I found this much more interesting as a plot than goody-two-shoes Faramir who sits the hobbits down, has a nice chat, and then lets them go. It paints both Boromir and Faramir as wonderfully tragic characters, where in the books I found Boromir a tad unsympathetic and Faramir a trifle dull.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

Agreed, that is easily my least favorite scene in the movie.

Interestingly enough, in one of the documentaries, Orlando Bloom admits that the scene probably made "Tolkien roll over in his grave," but was true to the spirit of how Peter Jackson saw Legolas. Which is all it comes down to, really.

I thought that one was a bit much, but overall I have been a pretty big fan of Ass-Kicking Legloas and his bow that never misses. I find it a joy to watch.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

On the list of things in a fantasy movie we can list as impossible and / or unlikely, that particular scene is a pretty obscure nit to pick.

Elves are immortal beings who don't sleep, I think we can fudge reality enough to say he can jump onto the back of a moving horse.

Re: earning it's hype

[schussat]

Lord of the Rings is not like other books. The greatness of the book cannot be distilled into a simple plot of ring is found, ring journeys, ring is destroyed. The book is an epic tale with

Aw crap. Thanks for the spoiler.

-schussat

Re: earning it's hype

[li99sh79]

So is Faramir. The House of Stewards was one of the noblest families of the South Kingdom of Gondor (which is why they were chosen to be the Stewards of the Kings)

But Aragorn is a descendent of the House of Elros. He's not just Dunedain, but counts the mightiest heros of men and elves as his ancestors, and the blood of men, elves and maia flow through his veins, albight rather diluted.

-sam

Re: earning it's hype

[Mark Pitman]

"Except that grabbing a horse at full gallop would more than likely rip your arms out of their sockets."

Yep, and there's no such thing as giant talking tree people, evil magic rings or orcs. What's your point?

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Within the original context of the books, even Aragorn would have been tempted by the Ring to the point that he would eventually succumb, which is why the Fellowship had to be broken in secret. But in the movies, he established that men of pure heart could resist the Ring (temporarily, at least), so the original characterization of Farmir could have stood as is.

Actually I got that Aragorn would be tempted by the ring, he knew it, so he made the decision to leave it with Frodo. The movie did this fairly good justice for a 2 minute scene.

Re: earning it's hype

[painandgreed]

Lord of the Rings is not like other books.

Sure it is. It's a book like any other book. It may have a dear place in the hearts of millions as well as fanboys. It may be the birth of the modern fantasy genre. It may be a classic, but it's still just a book with its own flaws. Some peope find Tolkein's writing style too dry to even read. He wanders off on tangents that don't contribute anything. He passes over most women characters so fast that they hardly even seem to appear in the book. His dealings with the races, even the races of humans belongs much more in pre-WWII world as the "bloodlines of men grow weak". If he had tried to get it printed today, the editor would have asked for a rewrite.

Re: earning it's hype

[blixel]

No, it's to setup the fact that elves possess super-human abilities.

Oh come on. There are much better ways to portray elven abilities without stupid "sk8r boi" tricks.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

"I agree that Faramir in the books should not so easily shrug off the Ring."

I gotta disagree here. I actually found this one of the most interesting parts of the book - that Faramir, even though he was not the "man of destiny" Aragon was, still had this hidden strength in him. I thought it showed some hope for the race of Men - that their final inner strength was not due to some gift from some high race, but was innate in some and could spring up at great need. This is why the King is called the Renewer, and Man is the one who does not fade in the fourth age - something native in him can create when all the enchantments of the old world are gone, and even when beaten he is never, ever defeated.

Re:earning it's hype

[Brandybuck]

And I speak from the experience of two extended editions of the other two films that are both superior to the theatrical releases

I have nearly the opposite opinions. I felt that the theatrical releases were better. There were some parts of the extended editions that I thought should have been in the movies, but overall they were weaker. The orcs meeting up with each other and the "medicine" was good, but the ent draughts scene was silly. Faramir seeing dead Boromir drifting by on the boat was good, but the extended scene of them with Denethor definitely was weak, and seemed only to be there to tie in the first movie. And of course, the scenes with Faramir abusing Gollum were completely out of character.

Re: earning it's hype

[li99sh79]

Heck, the council wasn't even really 'called' in the book. They each has their own reasons for wanting to come. Boromir needed to know what his vision meant, he didn't even know about the ring!

And as I recall it wasn't even Boromir's vision, Faramir had it, told Denethor about it and Boromir horned in on the action.

-sam

Re:earning it's hype

[Brandybuck]

Too long. "Cute Hobbit Children" become "Surly Hobbit Teenagers".

Re:earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

They are superior for the Tolkien devotee. The Two Towers extended edition would have been a nightmare in the theatre.

After watching the special features and commentary by the writers, I fully agree with the cuts they made. The theatrical release has to be tailored for audiences that don't give a rip about little details.

For example, I thought Fellowship was absoluetly brilliant and Two Towers was lacking. Amongst non-Tolkien readers, they believe the opposite. Why???? Because Two Towers starts with a bang and has a lot of action sprinkled throughout.

Re: earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

Even Tolkien's editors questioned his decision to include such a lengthy ending after the Ring
War is won. I agree that it is crucial to show the completion of the hobbits journey as well as the completion of Gandalf's mission.

Personally, I would be happy with the version in the book of stripping Saruman of all his power and banishing him from his own tower. They could do the Scouring of the Shire stuff as part of "The Hobbit" if they do the project.

Basically, it would be an action intro as told by Merry and Pippin. They would be telling stories for children. Then the children would ask them to tell the story about Bilbo and they would segway into the Hobbit complete with it's more kid oriented themes.

Re: earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

This is one scene they SHOULD have included in the theatrical version. We were all pretty pissed about Jackson making all that stuff up. This flashback framed it properly. Nothing of Faramir's character has essentially changed except he is not immmune from the tempttion of the ring.

Ultimately, It's kind of a toss-up. Jackson presents Farimir as not "purer than though". He did it partially to help outline the corrupting influence of the ring. Since the Ring arguably a more important character, (yes, the ring itself IS a character (played schizophrenically by various characters) sacrificing Farimir's purity for the sake of further outlining the Ring's corrupting evil is a good tradeoff.

Ultimately, it raises the character of Farimir because he goes through a process and changes. He is still stronger than his brother AND his father.

The bonus is that Frodo and Sam have something to do. The timing of the films dictated that Helms Deep must be the climax of Two Towers. The Shelob story is saved for Return of the King. The audience also gets an introduction to Gondor and Osgiliath.

Re: earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

The theatrical release does Fangorn a dis-service. The extended edition did a pretty good job.

Ultimately, Fangorn was important to the main plot for one reason. The Ents destroy the machinations at Isengard. From the standpoint of the theatrical release, it was a good idea to cut down their parts.

Some people might get the wrong idea about the Ents. But it's probably a better idea to instill a sense of wonder than overwhelming people with information. A lot of people will probably watch the extended edition and be pleased with the material, whereas they would have been bored with it in the theatre (the damn thing is four hours long ;-)

Re: earning it's hype

[sacherjj]

It was weak, because that was the only part in the movie that screamed at me "CG! CG! CG!" The physics were just totally wrong.

Re: earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

Good news. According to Two Towers special edition, Smeagol the Hobbit makes an appearance in Return of the King as a flashback. He is played by none other than Andy Serkis.

There is an excellent feature on the Two Towers Special Edition called "The Taming of Smeagol". It goes into some detail about the evolution of the Smeagol character and the radical changes that were made after Andy Serkis was cast as the voice.

Basically, every aspect of Gollum was changed to match the physicality of Serkis. The facial features were changed to look like Serkis (had he been carrying the ring for 300 years). All the facial expressions were changed to match those of Serkis while narrating the lines.

It's VERY cool.

Re: earning it's hype

[willtsmith]

He's had a thousand years to practice his horsemanship skills. I'd bet he's better than any Mongolian who ever lived.

BTW, elves are stronger and faster than humans. They also have more attuned senses and better timing. If he can shoot Orcs through the eye at 1000 yards, than I'm sure he can mount a horse at full gallop.

Re: earning it's hype

[sacherjj]

I don't know if other LOTR movies will be made. It would be a tough bar to raise.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want you fan-boys bitching about it anymore - he's done a fantastic job with the films, and if you don't like what he's done - don't watch it!

simple.

Re: earning it's hype

[Feanturi]

Yes, I agree that Legolas as depicted is an accurate idea of what Elves can do. Elves kick anybody's ass, that's an established fact in the books. If you want to square off against a lone Elf, you need friends, and they better be good friends because most of them are going to die.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and there's no such thing as giant talking tree people, evil magic rings or orcs.

I see that you've fallen for the propaganda.

Re: earning it's hype

[nelsonal]

When I first saw the trailer I thought the sliding scene was cool because I didn't see the shield and thought it neat that he was racing down those stairs with elven dexterity, which shouldn't have been a difficult trick.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

He's an elf, he's supposed to be able to do crazy things like that.

Re: earning it's hype

[squidfood]

The House of Stewards was one of the noblest families...

True geek fodder: The seeds of the struggle are older that ROTK. They stem from Denethor's jealosy of Gandalf, who was a friend of the popular Aragorn-in-disguise, fighting alongside young, less-popular Prince Denethor, 60 years before ROTK.

Denethor may have even then sensed the power of the king and transferred the jealosy of Gandalf to Boromir. Faramir was a failure because he listened to Gandalf too much.

Re: earning it's hype

[varith]

But I thinks that is why books, novels anyway, are so good. Think about it, is there only one story going on in your life right now? Probably there are several involving your job/school, your family, SO's, and perhaps any random interesting events into which you happen to blunder. Truly stripped down to the point LOTR would be a single movie that followed only the main ring quest itself. There would be no Aragorn as King subplot, no Aragorn/Arwen, (failed)redemption of Gollum, nor any other of the smaller subplots that ran all through the books and through parts of the movie. The Scouring of the Shire served to advance at least three, the failed redemption of Saruman, the oppurtunity for the hobbits of the Shire to win the right to control their own destiny and at the end it highlighted Frodo's sacrifice - the loss of his sense of home - in completing the ring quest. Admittedly those are all kind of subtle for a movie, so its not surprising it was cut.

Re:earning it's hype

[RogerWilco]

The book was written before the war (WW II) and only published in parts after the war when The Hobbit became a succes. Until then it was deemed to expensive to publish because of thew post war paper shortage.
The Hobbit was written after Lord Of The Rings and a lot of other stuff to introduce Tolkiens children to the greater epic, but was published first as it was small enough and a good story on it's own.

Adriaan.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

I TOTALLY agree - it was fascinating to watch the process that Andy Serkis had to go through to move from "what the f*ck are you doing here on set, you're just a voice actor" to driving the entire production development of Smeagol/Gollum to the point where he was recreated from scratch based on the onset work that Serkis had done - not only bringing the directors, writers and actors along with him, but also most if not all of Weta Digital. One or two Oscars? Bugger that, send him to the middle east to negotiate a peace deal!

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

"They could do the Scouring of the Shire stuff as part of "The Hobbit" if they do the project."

No they can't... the Hobbit finishes decades before the Lord of the Rings and the Scouring of the Shire is not until the end of Lord of the Rings.

Re: earning it's hype

[Anonymous Coward]

"(failed)redemption of Gollum"
Spoil the film for me then. :oP ;o)

Re: earning it's hype

[hey!]

No slight intended to the great Professor Tolkien, but I found this much more interesting as a plot than goody-two-shoes Faramir who sits the hobbits down, has a nice chat, and then lets them go.

Well, it depends on your (literary) viewpoint.

If you view literature as a window into the souls of the characters, then you're right. However, that's not the only way to create meaningful literature.

Faramir is not only meant to be compared with Boromir, but even more so he is to be compared with Eomer. Tolkien sets up a very deliberate and elaborate parallelism between Rohan and Gondor -- both good and heroic societies in their way, but Rohan primitive but vigorous and Gondor advanced but declining. I think this is both a distinction closer to Tolkien's heart and much more interesting than an explanation of personal temptation and psychological speculations about individual character.

Re: earning it's hype

[dswensen]

I agree with you. I should have qualified that as "from a film perspective" -- I think the parallel you're talking about is fascinating in the books, but nearly impossible to bring to a film such as this in any way that is both meaningful and can fit in the running time.

Re: earning it's hype

[nathanh]

Imagine The Matrix (the first one, the good one...) as a book. How could you possibly convey the slack-jawed wonder...

Enough! I'm sick to death of everybody picking on Keanu Reeves.

Re: earning it's hype

[neonmagic]

Have you read the book? Faramir was far sighted, of the men of Westernesse. Strong of will and elf friends from the second age when men and elves battled Morgoth. His blood is pure, and that is why he is able to see past the ring in the books. Tolkien explains it quite clearly in the books - I suggest you read them again, and maybe read the Silmarillion as well to add some depth. Dave

Re: earning it's hype

[Ripplet]

>But smeagol was never an evil character, just weak and pathetic
But also pitiful remember.

>and as for him not being easily corrupted, he must have been.
Well he was just an ordinary dude. Remember most people who came into contact with the ring were some of the greatest representatives of their race, and even they had trouble resisting it. The only exception is the Hobbits, who drew their strengths from their ancestry, and their hardy race.

Re:earning it's hype

[Ripplet]

OK, I stand corrected.

So, the whole thing was finished, but the readers of the first part then had to wait until the next installment was published? Sounds familiar.

Re: earning it's hype

[Grab]

They chose not to, but it took all their will-power to do it. Gandalf even says "Don't offer it to me, I'm not strong enough to refuse it" or words to that effect - generally he acts like Frodo has just prodded him with a red-hot poker. Gandalf and Galadriel are two of the most powerfully magical people in Middle Earth, and they had a seriously hard time refusing it. And the Council of Elrond gets pretty damn stirred up about it too.

Grab.

Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[linux_warp]

With their hardware, from the article:
"Average time to render one frame: 2 hours"

I guess that means slashdot nerds won't be able to make LOTR quality CG for sometime?

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[mpoulton]

"With their hardware, from the article: "Average time to render one frame: 2 hours" I guess that means slashdot nerds won't be able to make LOTR quality CG for sometime?"

That must be "2 processor-hours". With 1400 CG shots and 240 frames per shot minimum, that is at least 336k frames, and 672k hours of rendering. They would have had to start rendering in 1926. If you assume processor-hours, though, it drops to a much more reasonable 210 hours of total rendering time.

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[PEREGRI]

But... Why do you need 240 frames per shot? You need 24 frames per second in a film. Then... Why so many frames per shot?

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[SoVeryWrong]

... because the shot is 10 seconds long ...

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[gfxguy]

Average shot = 10 seconds.

The story is broken down into scenes, and then further broken down into shots. Every time the camera cuts, it's a new shot.

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[IWannaBeAnAC]

A factor 90,000 between 2 hours and 1/25th of a second... probably 50 years off I reckon.

But that is just a sot in the dark of course.

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[FlashBIOS]

That makes a lot more sense. What is the ratio of processor-hours per hours?

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[Overzeetop]

I get about 20 years, given that moore's law holds.

Re:Wow, average of 2 hours per frame

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Yeah but there is no way Moore's law can hold for that long. Too many fundamental limits in the way. For silicon, a further 10x reduction in feature size is probably impossible. Likewise, another 10x increase in clock speed will be difficult. Individual transistors have been built at 30GHz but at that speed its going to take multiple clock cycles simply to propogate a signal from one side of the chip to the other.

Beyond silicon, its anybodys guess. Waaaaaaay beyond the applicability of Moore's law.

Will it really be good?

[Negatyfus]

I wonder if Return of the King will truly earn it, as it looks like it will deviate from the book even more than The Two Towers, having cut out Saruman and all. I fear I will be seeing more Hollywood-style action scenes that take away from the severity of the original story.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Tet]

I wonder if Return of the King will truly earn it, as it looks like it will deviate from the book even more than The Two Towers

Agreed. The Two Towers was probably the most disappointing film I've seen in the last 10 years. After FotR, I had high hopes for TTT, only to see Peter Jackson make an ass of himself, and trash what had the promise to be an excellent trilogy. I'll go and see RotK, but I'm not expecting much. From the trailers at least, it looks like it won't be quite as dire as TTT. But I'm not expecting a really good film.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Epistax]

Do they have a choice?

Re:Will it really be good?

[10Ghz]

Saruman is cut from the THEATRICAL release of RoTK. He's right there in the Extended Edition.

I for one enjoyed TTT ALOT. Sure, there were deviations from the book, but they were necessary to keep the story going. You cannot make the movie 1:1 identical with the book.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Munk]

Agreed. The Two Towers was probably the most disappointing film I've seen in the last 10 years,

So...I take it you didn't see Matrix Revolutions ;)

Re:Will it really be good?

[JPelorat]

You need to watch the documentaries and listen to the commentaries for FotR and TTT. They have some very good reasons for doing what they did - the main one, which a whole lot of people seem to be forgetting:

Book != film. Some things you can do in a book drop flaming turds on screen, and vice versa.

Re:Will it really be good?

[bheer]

The Two Towers was probably the most disappointing film I've seen in the last 10 years

Try seeing Terminator 3 and Gigli in quick succession... you'll feel _much_ better about The Two Towers.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Captain_Chaos]

Peter Jackson has said that The Two Towers deviated by far the most from the book of the three films. We already knew that the Scouring was out, and given that, the removal of Saruman isn't such a big deal. Leaving out the Scouring is already a pretty big departure from the book, so I anticipate that the rest will be pretty close...

Re:Will it really be good?

[thenextpresident]

What? I am sorry, but Fellowship deviated a LOT from the book, and it was still a damn good movie. Frodo's age and the whole timing, how Merry and Pippin were introduced, the whole escaping from the shire, Tom was missing, etc. And that was just the beginning! But even the Theatrical release was damn good.

Simply put, Saruman is not important to the plot of the movie: Getting the ring to mount doom. They could easily remove Saruman from the third movie, and it would still be a good theatrical release.

Rather than be a glass if half full, you can start looking at what they have put into the movie.

I just can't imagine why someone would sit there and say that the movie won't be good because the film makers had to make a choice of which parts were indeed vital to the movie, and what parts to remove.

Saruman was "finished off" in the second movie. Their will be no scouring of the shire, hence why bring him back in at the beginning of the third? It's not vital to the main plot: getting the ring to mount doom.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no way for Revolutions to meet expectations. Even if they got Jesus to be in that film...oh wait...

Re:Will it really be good?

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot make the movie 1:1 identical with the book.

No. But you can make it better than 0.0000000001:1, with occasional forays into -1:1 (eg Faramir, Theoden and Treebeard's inexplicable recasting as cowards).

Re:Will it really be good?

[d_i_r_t_y]

why on middleearth did you so dislike it? while there are a couple of minor sequences that don't feel "right", the movie as a whole is excellent (IMHO). i find it difficult to believe that people who've read LOTR a few times could not be thrilled with what PJ and co have done. i am so excited about ROTK i can hardly restrain myself from assassinating my local distributor and stealing their copy.

perhaps seeing TTT again might help?

Re:Will it really be good?

[sonicattack]

Changes are inevitable when doing an adaption, but they can be used to add another creative dimension to the story... :)

Re:Will it really be good?

[Tet]

So...I take it you didn't see Matrix Revolutions ;)

Actually, I did. Yeah, it wasn't great, but my expectations had already been lowered by Reloaded :-)

Re:Will it really be good?

[10Ghz]

Faramir was changed because his character was not believable in the book. Think about it. EVERYONE was tempted by the Ring. Galadriel, Aragorn, Gandalf, Saruman etc. etc. But Faramir was not. I find that hard to believe. Had they followed the book 1:1, viewers would have wondered "why didn't he want the ring to himself? IT doesn't make any sense!". Also, had they done Faramir like in the book, it would have too much action off-screen. This way the viewers were allowed to actually SEE the fighting going on in Osgiliath, instead of just having someone refer to it afterwards. Having the action "off-screen" works for the book, but it does NOT work in the movie, since movies are a VISUAL media, whereas books are not.

Theoden was not that different from the book. Sure, Sarumans influence over him was more tangible in the movie than in the book, but again, that's due to the difference in the media. Book relies on your imagination, whereas movies are visual.

Re:Will it really be good?

[Tet]

while there are a couple of minor sequences that don't feel "right"

That'd be an understatement[1]. Try wholesale plot rewrites (no Huorns, Elven presence at The Hornburg, Aragorn's cliff/warg farce to get more Liv Tyler screen time). Add in wanton character assassination (Faramir, Gilmi and to an extent, Theoden, to name a few of the more obvious ones), and you have departures from the book that are completely unjustified, and for me, signficantly detract from the overall experience. No, they're not justified by the "film != book" argument, either. And don't even get me started on the whole shield surfing thing...

[1] FotR had several sequences that weren't right, and deviated from the book in a number of way that I wasn't happy about. But none of them were significant enough to detract from the film, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The same wasn't true of TTT, though, where the changes were gratuitous, unwarranted, and significant, all of which made for a poor film (for those familiar with the book, at least).

Re:Will it really be good?

[mshiltonj]

I for one enjoyed TTT ALOT. Sure, there were deviations from the book, but they were necessary to keep the story going. You cannot make the movie 1:1 identical with the book.

I agree. I just watched the TTT extended edition this weekend, *and* all the footage in the appendexes. (That's a lot of LOTR for one weekend! I've still got to watch the commentary tracks.)

The extended edition is much, much better than the theatrical release, explores the "tempting of Faramir" much more, and the appendexes explain *why* Jackson and Co. put the tempting in the movie at all.

I was initially upset they added that part in, but with the extended edition footage, and given the very plausible reasons that they did it, I like it.

Heresy, perhaps, but so be it.

My only real problems with TTT were:
* Using Gimli as comic relief with all the short-jokes.
* The shot of Legolas surfing down the stairs on a shield.

Re:Will it really be good?

[harley_frog]

I agree. If you want to see a movie that is more or less a 100% faithful reproduction of the book, go watch "Harry Potter". One of the reasons LOTR has taken so long to be made into a film (other than the obvious technical challenges) is the story itself. It is not written in the classic story line model. The are scenes of nothing but extended dialogue (The Council of Elrond, for example), telling two storylines that happen simultaneously as two seperate parts (all of TTT and a good portion of ROTK), and characters that seem out of place in the story (Tom Bombadil's and Faramir's reactions to the ring).

Face it, if PJ has done a 100% faithful reproduction of the book, the movies would be at least 6 hours each but audiences would leave and/or fall asleep after the first hour; not exactly the kind of movie I'd want to watch. Did PJ & Co. tamper with the book? Yes. Was it necessary? I believe so. Is everyone happy about it? Hell no, but that's to be expected. Personally, I enjoyed both FOTR and TTT, both the theatrical and extended versions and can't wait for ROTK.

Re:Will it really be good?

[0x0d0a]

I liked Matrix Revolutions. (well, pieces...the slow-fast jerky pacing of if it is a bit odd).

On the other hand, I didn't hink that the original Matrix was particularly philosophically interesting -- there's nothing particularly new it in, just things being repackaged for a mass audience. So it came down to special effects and action scenes for me, and both Matrix and Matrix Revolutions had plenty.

Re:Will it really be good?

[lithandie]

Faramir in TTT:EE is a much better thought out character. Most of the added footage for the EE is for his benefit. He comes off more as a young man torn between duty to his father (taking the ring to gondor) and his phylosophical views on the war itself which is often the thoughts of an intelligent soldier. He wants the war to end as soon as possible, but questions the good/evil relationship of the enemy. Add into it how the EE shows how much he looks up to his brother Boromir (the favored son) and how much he broods over things and all of his assinine behavior becomes understandable ifnot acceptable.

Theoden, being treated as a coward who is constantly questioning his ability to rule, except when Aragon questions his decisions is very different from the book where he gets pissed at being the pawn of saruman and goes on the offensive only to be driven back to helms deep when he sees the numbers that he is facing.

Treebeard and the ents decision to sit it out until they are tricked by the hobbits into seeing what saruman has done to Fangorn is foolish when you are suppose to believe that the trees in fangorn talk to eachother thus they should have known (as they did in the book) all the evil that saruman had done to the trees to being with. Not to mention how it just shits on the "don't be hasty" lifestyle of the ents...

ok, that is enough... I am tired of tyoing...

Re:Will it really be good?

[meta-monkey]

Have you seen the extended edition of the Two Towers? I was disappointed with the theatrical cut, too, but I found the EE to be highly enjoyable. They put a lot back in that makes up for the changes. No, it's not the same as the book, but it's still really, really good. They de-character-assasinate Faramir (from your later post in this thread), which is nice, and provide a lot more back story. Still, I do wish they didn't use Gimli as the comic relief ALL THE TIME.

Re:Will it really be good?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

The Special Extended DVD mostly redeemed the film in my eyes, but several sequences are still painful to watch. Namely "Aragorn Falls Off a Cliff", and "Frodo Almost Gives Ring to Nazgul".

Re:Will it really be good?

[dfj225]

"I for one enjoyed TTT ALOT. Sure, there were deviations from the book, but they were necessary to keep the story going."

The only thing that really bothered me about what was changed in TTT was Faramir's character. In the book he was a very noble person who wasn't even interested in taking the ring which makes his fathers greater love for Boromir all the more ironic. So far, I haven't heard a good reason for why this was changed for the movie. I think they probably could have kept his character the same and still had everything work out correctly.

Re:Will it really be good?

[urbazewski]

If you want to see a movie that is more or less a 100% faithful reproduction of the book, go watch "Harry Potter".

Exactly. I thought the Harry Potter movies were just okay --- they might have been better if they were willing to sacrifice some of fidelity to the book for cinematic energy. There's a lot of plot in a full length novel, and squeezing it all in means squeezing something else out, often particular details that give character depth. The humor of the original books got lost in the movies, in my opinion.

I think the LotR movies have done a great job of picking details to flesh out the characters. I noticed the details more the second, etc. time I watched them, kind of like the books.

Re:Will it really be good?

[ScottGant]

I'm familiar with the book, which is an understatment for me.

This wasn't a poor film, in fact it was one of the best films of last year. Bar none.

The changes were not that bad in my opinion. Gimli's role as comic sidekick was a little much, but not that bad. You're plain wrong about Faramir...especially in the extended version (which I doubt you would watch..and if you DO watch it, why? You hate this movie so much why waste your time?).

The shield surfing thing...hmmm...your argument was that it wasn't in the book? Legolas is right handed in the movie also...but it didn't mention it in the book!!! EGADS!

Theoden was dead on in my book...perhaps you read a different Cliff Notes version of TTT or something.

While it's your opinion that you didnt like the movie. But what would YOU have done? Would you have drawn on all the long bits of the book? Would you have included all the singing and poems? The characters in the book are a little dry. They're dialog wouldn't make it in today's theaters and in fact would sound very hoaky. Remember, these movies were made to make money. They don't spend $400 million on 3 movies for just high art and the fans of the books only. They have to walk the fine line of the fans vs. the general population. The Liv Tyler sequences are in there for this reason.

It's a very rocky path...but I think Jackson deserves every amount of praise he gets on bringing these movies to the screen.

Re:Will it really be good?

[gfxguy]

I agree and disagree...

The changes made to the FOTR were minor... they didn't, for example, fundamentally change the nature of any of the characters.

There is a lot to be said for streamlining a book to make a movie. A typical screenplay is only like 100 very spaced out pages long. I'm sure the LOTR screenplays were much longer, but nothing approaching the well over 1000 pages of the books.

For example, even though the face to face confrontation of Saruman and Gandalf is one of my favorite parts of the entire trilogy, that they shortened it with the confrontation through King Theoden didn't bother me that much because they basically took two parts and condensed them into one, while still giving a lot of the same feeling I got reading the book (although they are going to have to do something about the palantir now, but since we left Pippen and Merry in Isengard anyway, there's still the hope they somehow get it there).

So while we can agree that the movie != book, for obvious and necessary reasons, the major complaints about TTT were not streamlining or shortening, they were fundamental character changes that were totally unnecessary to make the movie flow.

Rather than be a glass if half full, you can start looking at what they have put into the movie.

Exactly the problem... they put in the Aragorn/Arwen "dream" sequence after the warg attack (that also wasn't in the book).

Now, that scene is not so bad in and of itself. It doesn't fundamentally change the characters, it doesn't really disrupt the storyline at all... the scene itself didn't bother me at all.

But the question is "why?" When time was so limited, why did they include that scene and cut parts that most fans feel were so much more important to the story? Given a 3 hour limit on the movie, we ask why such fluff was put in while key parts were left out.

Then there's the Faramir part they "added." Now they do fundamentally change a character, and again made what could have been a relatively small part (thus giving time to other more important scenes) into a giant deviation... and the question really is "why?" What purpose did it serve?

These example scenes didn't move the story along, they didn't add to the story, and in some ways they changed it in a debatably negative way, all that at the sacrifice of scenes that really should have been included...

I'll finish by saying that I REALLY liked TTT A LOT! I won't say it's a bad movie at all, and I'll be buying the extended version today and hopefully getting a chance to watch it tomorrow (probably a lot tonight). I already am convinced I will love it. But just because you are really happy with how something turned out doesn't mean you can't be somewhat disappointed knowing that it could have been even better.

Re:Will it really be good?

[ConceptJunkie]

Actually, that's disappointing to me, because having seen the first HP movie and some of the second, they came across to me as merely somewhat disconnected sequences of things that happen mainly to be a vehicle for cool special effects. I had assumed that the books, which I did intend to read some day, had lost a lot in the translation to cinema. The characters were extremely one-dimensional, many elements of the story seem to exist solely to show off neat ideas, rather than advance the plot, and a lot of elements seemed to be shamelessly lifted from other mythology, rather than worked into the story in an organic way (e.g., Cerberus vs, say, Tolkien's Elves).

I did read a few pages of the first Harry Potter and did find the writing style to be good, but based on the movie (if it is a true representation of the story), I'd rather stick to Terry Pratchett, or reread Tolkien for (n + 1)th time.

Re:Will it really be good?

[dswensen]

Well, I can't help you out much with the other things, but the Huorns are back in the film with the extended DVD cut.

I think they round out Faramir's character very nicely as well. He is much more three-dimensional in the extended cut and the added footage solves a lot of problems I had with his character in the theatrical cut.

Re:Will it really be good?

[ealar dlanvuli]

I actually agree with them on everything except for the Elfs at Helms Deep. It's very clear they are trying to justify this in the extended documentary (they spend like 15 minutes on it), but I just don't buy it.

It would have been a different movie without that scene, much much darker. But the movie was supposed to be that dark.

Re:Will it really be good?

[will592]

I wonder if you realize that the HP books are children's books? They're not LOTR, even if you argue that LOTR is a story for children it's just not the same thing. The characters are one-dimensional. There are quite a few elements of the story that exist solely to show off neat ideas. Kids love it. My sister is 15 and I have tried to get her through LOTR many times (even reading the Hobbit to her as a kid) but she just isn't that interested. She devoured the HP books.

Re:Will it really be good?

[li99sh79]

Now, that scene is not so bad in and of itself. It doesn't fundamentally change the characters, it doesn't really disrupt the storyline at all... the scene itself didn't bother me at all.

But the question is "why?" When time was so limited, why did they include that scene and cut parts that most fans feel were so much more important to the story? Given a 3 hour limit on the movie, we ask why such fluff was put in while key parts were left out.

They explained this in the actor's commentary, and it's pretty simple. They didn't want people to forget who Arwen is. And that makes sense, given the stretch of time between FotR and RotK the casual movie-goer might very well forget who exactly Liv Tyler is supposed to be and why she's so important. Notice that they gave some amount of face time to every important character from FotR in TTT. It was a bridging device to further the trilogy as a whole.

-sam

Re:Will it really be good?

[Brandybuck]

...having cut out Saruman and all.

Yes, that's horrible. Although we all realize that PJ couldn't have filmed everything that was in the books, one has to question his sanity by not filming the breaking of Saruman's staff. Come on! This is totally CENTRAL to the books! The ring is nothing without Saruman. The war with Mordor is nothing without Saruman. Aragorn's kingship is nothing without Saruman. Heck, even the Council of Elrond was nothing but a coffee klatch without Saruman. If a decision had to have been made, then PJ should have dumped Helm's Deep, Henneth Annun, Cirith Ungol and the Pelennor Fields, just to give enough room so that Saruman could have insulted the Hobbits properly. It appears that PJ will even film "The Black Gate Opens". What kind of a compromise is that! No one cares about Mordor! Who wants the Mouth of Sauron when you can have the Voice of Saruman?!?!

</sarcasm>

Re:Will it really be good?

[JFMulder]

You should not dismiss FP books as children books. The first book is more for 10-12 years old, but by now book five is pretty mature for a children book, countaining a lot of violence (well, if you consider it as a children book) and deals with subject matters rarelly used in children books like death and torture.

LOTR is highly creative, much more than HP, but HP is more fun. Characters are all interresting and make you laugh or make you sad. LOTR achieves that sometimes, but the emphasis in LOTR is more on plot in my own opinion.

Re:Will it really be good?

[pipingguy]

"Remove wrapper, open mouth, insert muffin, eat." -- Instructions on the packaging for a muffin at a 7-11.

No mention of where to insert the muffin.

Re:Will it really be good?

[ConceptJunkie]

Try reading Terry Pratchett's children's books and you'll see the difference. Despite being written for kids, the stories have depth, as do the characters. There are two series of three books each: "The Bromeliad" ("Truckers", "Diggers" and "Wings") and the Johnny series "Johnny and the Bomb", "Johnny and the Dead" and "Only You Can Save Mankind"

Good action and neat things for the kids, but subtle humor and character depth that adults will appreciate. This is what sets good children's material apart from the mass-market brain-dead crap. That's why the Looney Tunes are my kids favorite cartoons and mine too. They like Pokemon, but there's nothing in it for me.

In fact, if you look at almost any children's book written more than 50 years ago, you'll find the same thing. Look at "The Wind in the Willows" for crying out loud. You'd have to dumb that down to get it to the average level of adult books these days.

I won't pass judgement on the HP books as I haven't read them, but I have read numerous "children's books" to my kids that I consider to be excellent literature.

"Tom Sawyer"
The original Winnie the Pooh books
"The Hobbit"
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
The original Thomas the Tank Engine books... very good for the 2 - 5 year olds, but still entertaining for older kids.

"The Wind in the Willows"... we actually didn't make it far into this one because it was a little too dry for the kids. The syntax and grammar in that book are really complex.

There are many other great examples.

I guess the only thing we can all agree on is that the general level of writing has decrease significantly in the last 100+ years. There's certainly good popular literature to be found, but when you compare it to popular literature from 100 years ago, it's frightening how much simpler much of it is, at least from a language point of view.

What I can say about the HP books, based on the few pages I have read is that she does a good job using more sophisticated language, which is sorely needed in today's world.

Re:Will it really be good?

[urbazewski]

The books are much much better than the movies, even though the plot of the movies is extremely faithful to the books. A novel is more than a plot, so is a movie.

What the Harry Potter books have going for them is "profluence" ( the term John Gardner used to describe the quality of book that makes you unable to put it down, you just have to keep reading to find what happens next). A good plot can create profluence, but I think there's much more to it than that, good storytelling, empathetic characters, and above all, the ability to invoke a "vivid, continuous dream" in the reader's mind.

I think the HP books have good character development too, especially if you consider the whole series. Oddly, Harry is the flattest character in some ways.

Fahrenheit Weight?

[Red Pointy Tail]

Is that like Pascal Length?

Re:Fahrenheit Weight?

[sacherjj]

I think it is closer to a Kilogram velocity.

Re:Fahrenheit Weight?

[403Forbidden]

From what I know, they measure A/C units in tonnage... 1/2 ton, from what I remember, is about the sized used to cool a 2000+ SQ/ft house.. They might even use 1/4 ton units, i don't remember.

Re:Fahrenheit Weight?

[kegger64]

One ton of cooling is equivalent to 12,000 BTU/hr. A 1/2 ton unit will cool your typical 2-3000 sq.ft. home pretty well.

Re:Fahrenheit Weight?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fuckers. Look at the main article again.
It's 78 degrees........Fahrenheit. They just formatted it weird and the unit is on the next line. There's no such thing as Fahrenheit Weight.

'Hey, I weigh 12 degrees today.' 'shit, it got warmer, i put on 30 celsius'

fuckers.

LOTR Hype

[galaga79]

Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.

I hate to rain on your parade but if anything the indications of the Return Of The King have been disappointing. Firstly there is no sign of the Rangers of the North in the trailer even though there is a scene that obviously shows them entering the pass of the dead. Secondly it has been announced they have cut out the scenes with Sauruman, which is certainly going to make things interesting in terms of the seeing stones (I think they are called plantirs).

Re:LOTR Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

(I think they are called plantirs)
that's palantirs.
and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Re:LOTR Hype

[bheer]

A lot of us felt quite outraged about Tom Bombadil being cut off from FOTR, and the entire fiasco of Arwen and the river. This was at a time when PJ was an unknown quantity, and many feared that he'd screw up the movies.

But somehow, despite the cuts and the departures from the books, the first two movies worked very well. So I'm going to keep my scepticism in check until I actually see the third.

Re:LOTR Hype

[10Ghz]

A lot of us felt quite outraged about Tom Bombadil being cut off from FOTR

I wasn't. When I read that they are making a movie about LOTR, I cheered. 10 seconds after that I though "They movie is going to rule! Except the part with Tom Bombadil". Having Bombadil in the movie would have been worse than Jar Jar Binks x 10.

Re:LOTR Hype

[SlashdotLemming]

Firstly there is no sign of the Rangers of the North in the trailer even though there is a scene that obviously shows them entering the pass of the dead.

As a representative of the 95% of people who will see this movie that have not or will never read the books, who the hell are the Rangers of the North, what is the pass of the dead, and why are your firstly and secondly reasons that I will be dissapointed by this film?

Re:LOTR Hype

[rokzy]

imo the Tom Bombadil part is boring and pointless.

I don't know why people are so obsessed with it following the book perfectly. if you want what's in the book, then read the fucking book. I think the films are fantastic so far, but then I judge them by how much I enjoy watching them, not by how similar they are to something which has already existed for a very long time.

Re:LOTR Hype

[Smedrick]

No Rangers of the North?!?! I'm outraged! Well that's it...I'm boycotting this movie!!

</sarcasm>

He's not rewriting the book. If you want your Rangers, you can pick up the damn book...I can assure you that they'll still be in there. I'll let you in on a little secret... Movies based on books generally serve as COMPANIONS to the books, not replacements.

It's one person's interpretation of the story. He's under no obligation to stay completely true to the books. The man has done an incredible job with cinematography and I've uttlerly enjoyed every second of the first two movies.

Re:LOTR Hype

[Rallion]

The Rangers are really just a whole bunch of people as cool as Aragorn that come to help in the huge battle. But I can see why they'd be left out, that battle could get hella confusing.

As for the removal of Saruman, I have my doubts. Though he is important in the third book, that's mostly in the Scouring. But if they go without the Palantir, I will be disappointed.

That didn't help you. My bad. Read the books. Heh.

Re:LOTR Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the films are fantastic so far, but then I judge them by how much I enjoy watching them

I judge them by how much I enjoy watching them as well, and they're cringe-makingly awful in places, especially The Two Towers.

Re:LOTR Hype

[rokzy]

such as ?

Re:LOTR Hype

[zerocool^]

***SPOILER****

The Rangers of the North... are the remenants of the people of Gondor, from like, way back in the day. If you want to get really into it, they're a group of a more sturdy, higher class of Men, and their bloodlines run fairly pure back to before men even came to Middle Earth. So, like, they're described as tall, grim, dirty, good fighters, etc. And they live longer than regular men.

It's revealed that Aragorn (who is refered to as Strider) is the heir appearant to the throne of Gondor. Remember Boromir, the dude that got killed in episode 1? Yeah, his dad is the "Steward" of Gondor, meaning that he's not actually king, but he's like, holding down the fort while the king is away, which has been for like a thousand years or something.

So, the true king has been hanging out with his kinfolk, the Rangers, until such time as this and that prophecy can be resolved, and then the heir can take back the throne. It's been like that so long that few people in Gondor even know the king's bloodline still exists.

Anyway, the paths (not pass) of the dead... Back in ep.1 when they went into the enchanted forest, Galadriel (cate blanchett) in the book makes mention of something to the effect of "if you're in a hurry, aragorn, remember the paths of the dead". As it turns out, in book 3, Aragorn is hanging out by Edoras (the horse people - the guy who was possessed by Saramaun before gandalf hooked him up), and he discovers that he has to get to gondor, like, yesterday. He remembers what the chick said, and realizes that, even though it means certain death, it's a shortcut.

So, he goes up a hill behind Edoras, and he enters this valley, known as the path of the dead (or mabey paths of the dead, plural). Gimli and Legolas are with him, as are his ranger folk. It's really creepy, and Gimli is freaked the hell out, even though it's like partly underground and he's a dwarf.

As it turns out, the ghostly inhabitants of the Paths of the Dead are the spirits of men who deserted Gondor WAAAY back in the day, the first time they fought Sauron (remember the arguement to the first movie? Cut the ring from Sauron's finger?). These guys deserted and went over to the other side, and ever since then, they've been cursed to wander this valley for a thousand years, until they can fulfill their oath of service to gondor, which they do in the climactic battle fought in front of the gates of Gondor.

As for why you'll be dissapointed, I honestly don't think you'll be dissapointed. I loved the 1st and 2nd movies so far, and I've only seen the theatrical releases. And I'm a huge fan of the books (read the lord of the rings probably 20-25 times, all the way through, read the silmarillion, the hobbit, and even took a college class on fantasy novels, which included a study of Tolkien's work). I mean, it comes as no surprise that no one can, in 9 hours over 3 movies, represent over 2000 pages of very complex, intricate text.

But there are some things that I like in the books that are being left out. For example, since you'll never read the books - Saruman has a resolution (a lot of people bitch about this, you may have seen it). In the books, after he is stripped of his power by Gandalf, he is imprisoned in his tower by treebeard and the rest of the ents to sit and steam out all his problems, and notice that everything he had built around him (all of his orcs and contraptions) have come to naught. Well, after a while, he gets loose, and makes his way back to the shire, and wreaks havoc among the inhabitants, destroying, pulling down trees, and all this stuff, and there's a battle of hobbits vs. invaders (it's really short). Then Sam marries Rosie Cotton (whom you see in ep. 1, but aren't introduced to - the girl that sam couldn't dance with). They have a daughter, and then like more kids, and sam is mayer of hobbiton, and all that, and frodo is all sad all the time.

All the elves are leaving middle earth because their time was the 2nd age (from the fall of saur

Re:LOTR Hype

[sacherjj]

I wonder if the wrap up will be told in a voiced over "where are they now" sort of way. If they filmed a few representative scenes, that wouldn't be a terrible way to wrap it up, given the time constraints of a motion picture.

I would really like to see the entire wrap-up though. I think the battle at the shire is really important to actually book end the films. It shows jus twhat a transformation that the Hobbits have gone through.

Re:LOTR Hype

[rokzy]

lol what a pathetic list for a ~3 hour film

I like the dwarf jokes, and the friendly rivalry between Gimli and Legolas is fantastic, I'm glad there's more in the extended version.

Re:LOTR Hype

[meta-monkey]

I've read the books twice. The last time was two years ago, before the first movie came out in theatres. I have completely forgotten who the Ranger of the North are. Somehow, I don't think I'll miss them that much.

Re:LOTR Hype

[zerocool^]

You're absolutely correct, but so am I. From the encyclopedia of arda:

"After the loss of the kingdom of Arthedain, the descendants of Isildur's line survived in the wilds of Middle-earth, and became skilled in hunting and woodcraft; their warriors were known as the Rangers among the peoples of the north. "

Arthedain is the northern kingdom (north at least to rohon and gondor). But, the descendants of Isildur would have had to be from the gondor / osgiliath / minis ithil area. Dunedain is a term synonymous with the rangers, and it means "men of numenor", which would be the earlier race of men. And yeah, these are the guys who set up the kingdom that fought against the witch-king.

~Wx

Re:LOTR Hype

[li99sh79]

All the elves are leaving middle earth because their time was the 2nd age (from the fall of sauron to the other fall of sauron), and the third age is the time of men. They are all departing for some land where everyone lives eternally, and it's across the sea to the west or something. This is what Liv Tyler has given up - she traded her immortality for one life with Aragorn, and she can never cross the sea to the havens. Anyway, frodo eventually goes with the elves.

Nice analysis, but you're off on your ages. The Second Age was the time between the fall of Morgoth/destruction of Beleriand(the Silmarillion) and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men where Sauron was cast down by Elendil and Gil-Galad. The events in the movie take place during the Third Age which ends with Sauron being destroyed and the Rings of Power crossing the sea. The Fourth Age is the Age of Men.

-sam

Re:LOTR Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

This was at a time when PJ was an unknown quantity

Actually, I expected Gandalf to say "I kick ass for the Lord!" Not an unknown quantity at all, just a seemingly odd choice.

Re:LOTR Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

You've read the books twice? Wow, dude, you're like some kind of bookworm god, or, something.

Ha. Come back when you've read the book twenty or thirty times, and we'll talk.

Re:LOTR Hype

[Requiem]

You'd better not be talking shit about Eowyn-babe, or I'll fucking cut you.

I'm dissapointed..

[clifgriffin]

I was hoping it was an article on certain effects and how they were accomplished.

Not a tiny list of vital stats. (that didn't seem to impress me somehow) :(

Blogzine.net
Fortress of Insanity

Nitpick

[FrostedWheat]

Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees

Well that's specific ... 76C, 76F or 76K? :)

If it's farenhite, then that's quite cool. If it's celcius then holy crap that's hot.

If it's kelvin then I think we've found the new overclocking kings ...

Re:Nitpick

[Red Pointy Tail]

Look at the next line:

Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees
Fahrenheit Weight of air conditioners needed to maintain that temperature: 1/2 ton

The Fahrenheit went there.

Re:Nitpick

[ahillen]

Considering that the next line begins with Fahrenheit Weight of air conditioners, and I don't know of any Fahrenheit Weights, I would assume that the temperature unit is Fahrenheit and it just slipped to the beginning of the next line...

Re:Nitpick

[FrostedWheat]

Thanks ahillen and Red Pointy Tail!! I missed that completly.

That still makes it oddly cool for a server room. My single Athlon computer can heat up this room quite a bit. They've got 3200 processors!

3200 processors. I can imagine the admin of that watching it, wispering "It's my precious ..."

Re:Nitpick

[syrinx]

Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees

Well that's specific ... 76C, 76F or 76K? :)

If it's farenhite, then that's quite cool. If it's celcius then holy crap that's hot.

If it's kelvin then I think we've found the new overclocking kings ...

It's already been pointed out that it's F, but Kelvin isn't measured in degrees anyway. It's just Kelvin. [/even more nitpicky]

Re:Nitpick

[FrostedWheat]

Yeah, well he's a moron, we all knew that.

I didn't! .. Oh wait ...

Re:Nitpick

[SoTuA]

That still makes it oddly cool for a server room.

Maybe that's because they've got HALF A TON of air conditioning equipment...

Re:Nitpick

[nelsonal]

That's not the weight of the A/C unit, its a measurment system. An A/C ton is the same as a 12,000 BTU system (~12.66 million joules). I have no idea where it comes from, perhaps the amount of coolant in a "standard" system?

Re:Nitpick

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clearly Farenheit. There are no other relevant choices. Nitpicking on this issue just makes you look like an ass.

76C = 168.8F = clearly too hot for an equipment room.
76K = -322.87F = way too cold for an equipment room

Now if there were Masters or Slaves in the equipment room, you might have an issue, particularly if the room was in Los Angeles.

Re:Nitpick

[Sabalon]

I thought it had to do with how much air it moved. I think 76 is a bit warm. (though impressive for that number of machines).

Re:Nitpick

[Fjord]

Actually, it's either degrees Kelvin (obsolete) or kelvins (lowercase K). [/yet more nitpick]

How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement - Russ Rowlett
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictD.html

degree Kelvin
an obsolete name for the kelvin. In the International System, temperatures on the absolute temperature scale are stated in kelvins, not in degrees Kelvin.

Re:Nitpick

[SoTuA]

oh well :)

I got stuck with the tonnage and never bothered to find out more (what? on slashdot!?! NO ;)

Interesting how clusters must have pushed refrigeration tech... the Big Mac cluster, if cooled with normal A/C, would have had 60MPH winds in there :D

Or...

[clifgriffin]

You could assume that they render multiple frames at a time. With all the frames they have to render, at 12 frames a day that requires a few decades to render.

Put it on my WETA Charge!

[PSaltyDS]

1,600 Servers............. $640,000

10GB network.............. $378,000

35 IT staffers............ $140/hr

420 Visual f/x staffers... $9,800,000.28

Seeing Gollum bite Frodo's finger off with "Photorealism"... Priceless!

Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[Zak3056]

1,600 Servers............. $640,000

10GB network.............. $378,000

35 IT staffers............ $140/hr

40 Visual f/x staffers... $9,800,000.28

Wow, looks like they outsourced the IT to India. :)

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[yotto]

Mod parent down for being an ass. I've read the books. 3 times. That's why it jumped out at me. However, for the second time this month I must warn a friend not to read a /. article because it contains a movie spoiler in it. The first was worse for me because I had not seen the movie (Nor read the book, but then again I don't think I'd want to read the Matrix Revolutions book after seeing it).

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[Epistax]

Oh no the movie is ruined for me for I now know the fate of one of Frodo's digits.

I knew everyone that was going to die before the third Matrix movie and that didn't make it any worse than it already was. I don't think the knowldege of the demise of 1/793rd of Frodo will ruin this movie either.

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[_LORAX_]

If it was they misplaced the 0.

10GB network.............. $378,000

350 IT staffers............ $14/hr

40 Visual f/x staffers... $9,800,000.28

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[bobdehnhardt]

Actually, Gollum bites of TWO of Frodo's fingers, the ring and pinkie on his right hand. Peter Jackson wants to do the Thomas Covenant series next, and figured he might as well take care of some casting while he had the opportunity.

Re:Put it on my WETA Charge!

[_newwave_]

35 IT staffers at $140/hr = $4/hr for each IT staffer.

wow, no wonder all of our jobs are moving over seas....

LOTR 3 = eye candy

[192939495969798999]

This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics. Even Matrix didn't go that far -- they at least attempted to pass M3 off as a "movie" with a "plot". I definitely enjoyed M3, don't get me wrong, but it was no "usual suspects".

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[clifgriffin]

I think I'll wait to see it before making my judgement.

They hyped up Two Towers as better than the 1st...in many respects it was. The same people made this one and are hyping it up as the best of the 3.

I'm not so quick to pass it off. I'm not going to set myself up for failure...but I'm not going to assume it will be trash.

There's no evidence to support this.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[pacsman]

That's how it's being pitched in Wired, not exactly the publication you'd expect most people to read. This article is aimed at the techno-literate computer crowd that can appreciate what went into the making of the film as far as computers go, not people like my mom who want to see the movie but who could care less about the computing aspect of it's creation.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[thenextpresident]

Wired.com is a tech-savvy news website. What did you think they are going to write about? I mean, unless you think Wired is suddenly going to STOP writing tech-savvy articles about movies, and instead, focus on reviewing movies like "She's All That", and talk about the inner struggle between lunacy and sanity.

Yeah, because an article is written about how something is made == whatever is made will obviously suck.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[PollGuy]

This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics.

It's being pitched in Wired on the basis of the technology.

It's being pitched to the academy on the emotional pull of the story. Just check out the trailer -- sure, there are FX shots, but they are far outnumbered by people looking nervous, distressed, hopeful. Good drama lies not in the depiction of battle itself but in the anxiety in the buildup to battle -- something Lucas and the Wachowskis don't understand. But if half the trailer goes to those kinds of character moments, it's a good omen.

I'm all for keeping expectations reasonable, but everyone on this thread is being such a downer on the movie without having seen it. Wait until all the facts are in, EE if you have to, and you will understand why PJ & co. made their choices. To the purists: the books are still there on your shelf and the fact that movies are out does not change that. I'm sorry you don't have an open mind but don't spoil it for those of us that do. Besids, it will definitely be the best Part III of any series since Police Academy: Back in Training.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

To the purists: the books are still there on your shelf and the fact that movies are out does not change that. I'm sorry you don't have an open mind but don't spoil it for those of us that do.

To the people who think that me thinking The Two Towers was completely spoilt by its gratuitous introduction of Hollywood cheese, its misunderstanding of the major characters of Theoden, Faramir and Treebeard, its peculiar rushed pacing and its creaky special effects: the DVDs are still there on your shelf and the fact that my opinion are out does not change that. I'm sorry you don't have an open mind but don't try to shout down those of us that do.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes absolutely no sense.

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[fireduck]

check this week's Newsweek here and here. Read the articles + links at the bottom. The studio is trying to push the movie as an actor's film (i.e., something to give an Oscar to), so clearly they have faith in the acting job + special effects + everything if they are hoping for Oscars...

Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy

[TrentC]

This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics.

Yeah, if Wired is the only magazine you read, that is. (And that wasn't even a real article, at least on the website; just a bunch of facts about the render farm.)

Premiere Magazine has a nice bit about the four hobbit actors (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dom Monaghan) and the friendship they've developed over the course of the three movies. So obviously it's being pitched as a movie where the actors have enjoyed themselves and developed a strong bond over the course of the three movies.

I saw a cover to some bubblegum teen magazine with Orlando Bloom all over it, so obviously it's being pitched as a movie with a bunch of droolworthy male eye candy.

If you ask me, all of the above are true; you can make all sorts of generalizations if you have only part of the data.

Jay (=

Re:Synopsis

[junklight]

yeah - 'cos LOR is a bit on the short side and lacking in narrative delvelopment. They should only have done one film really instead of padding it out for three.

Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition

[Channard]

You could assume that they render multiple frames at a time. With all the frames they have to render, at 12 frames a day that requires a few decades to render.

That sounds like a call for distributed computing and an LOTR rendering client on each PC. One million slashdot readers willing, we *will* render the Scouring of the Shire...

Re:Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Well.. if you can do your magic with povray, join the Internet Movie Project.

Then you have a lot of machines to do the rendering and you will perhaps find someone to help you out a bit with that project. :)

The first step however is to decide what exactly you want and after that it only needs to be done.

Re:Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition

[jacksonyee]

I know that you meant that as a joke, but that's actually not a bad idea. For everyone who's complaining that the movies don't match the book, why don't we just create our own version? The Star Trek and Matrix parodies have proven that amateur work has risen to the level where very nice productions can be done with readily available hardware and software. The only issues standing in our way is leadership, talent, money... and of course, time. If the community wants to get together and every person contributes in whatever way he or she can, then I don't see these issues being a problem.

Open source movie? It's just a matter of time...

Re:Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition

[Channard]

I know that you meant that as a joke, but that's actually not a bad idea. For everyone who's complaining that the movies don't match the book, why don't we just create our own version? There have been some good fan created movies - my personal favourite being Batman: Dead End. However, the 'why don't we' would have something to do with the litigous nature of many studios. Even if the creator of the film was cool with these 'tributes' being made - the studio owning the property might not be so happy.

Re:Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition

[impdotorg]

We don't think it is a joke, rather we think it is fun. We do have an active global distributed renderfarm. We are currently making shorts, and will start pre-production on a feature length CGI film next year.

However, we do realize the amount of work involved. Our framework for making open source movies for the public domain is still developing, and there is still a long road ahead of us. Check out the site to see where we are.

Tom

The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Bombadil and the Witch-king of Angmar are the same person.

1. We never hear of Tom at all during the whole of the First Age. The Nine Rings aren't forged until the Second Age. QED.

2. You never see the two of them together.

3. In the first part of Fellowship of the Ring, the Nazgul are sent to the Shire to look for the wandering Baggins. Interestingly, Tom says to Frodo at the dinner-table: "...I was waiting for you. We heard news of you, and learned that you were wandering... But Tom had an errand there, that he dared not hinder" (Fellowship p.137 hardback, note the fear Tom has of his master, Sauron!).

4. In Tom's questioning of the Hobbits, JRRT notes that "there was a glint in his eyes when he heard of the Riders." (Fellowship p. 144) I think he was concerned that his double-life might have been noticed. Interestingly, Tom immediately changes the subject of conversation! Furthermore, the One Ring had no effect on Tom - which seems consistent with Tolkien's observations about how the Nazgul would have handled the same priceless object (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #246): "They were... in no way deceived as to the real lordship of the Ring."

5. It's also interesting to note that Tom could see Frodo clearly while Frodo was wearing the Ring (Fellowship p. 144 hardback) - just as the Witch-king could see Frodo clearly while he was wearing the Ring at Weathertop! (Fellowship p. 208 hardback)

6. Perhaps most damning, however, is the incident with the Barrow-wights (Fellowship pp. 151-155), where Tom - with nothing more than a few simple words (p. 154) - commands the Barrow-wight to leave. And it does, without argument. Why would the Wight be so completely under Tom's control? Because in his alternate guise as the Witch-king of Angmar, Tom ordered the Wight to inhabit the barrow in the first place! Turning to Return of the King, Appendix A, p. 321, "evil spirits out of Angmar... entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there." Obviously the Witch-king was reponsible for sending the wights there; just as obviously, the Witch-king (disguised as Tom) would be capable of ordering them to leave! (This is related to another passage, which has since been brought to my attention. On Fellowship page 158 hardback, Tom is guiding the Hobbits back towards the Road when he gazes towards the borders of Cardolan. "Tom said that it had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago. He seemed to remember something sad about it, and would not say much." Since Tom, as the Witch-king, was the one who destroyed the kingdom of Cardolan, it's little wonder that he wouldn't say much about his involvement. Perhaps his remembering "something sad" reveals some remorse at being the instrument of Cardolan's destruction...?)

...Yep: I think we have an airtight case here. :)

...It's worth noting that, after the Witch-king was dead, Gandalf said he was "going to have a long talk with Bombadil" (Return of the King, p. 275). Curiously, he never tells anyone about the meeting later... and he's right there at the Grey Havens at the end of the book, undelayed it seems by long conversation. I think we can therefore theorize that Gandalf made it to the Old Forest, but that Tom (once the so-called "Witch-king" had died) was nowhere to be found!

...Of course, all this brings up the curiosity of motive. What would make the Witch-King of Angmar sport such a double identity? I suppose that the Witch-king, once of proud Numenorean ancestry, felt trapped by the guise of evil which Sauron had tricked him into, and in the fullness of time forged this alternate identity for himself so that he could occasionally feel happy, helpful, noble, and more at one with himself and his lineage. The situation is perhaps analagous to a crossdresser who, feeling trapped in a man's body, would occasionally assume the identity of a woman. It therefore makes sense that the Witch-king's other identity would be so peculiarly enigmatic, and perhaps sheds light on JRRT's observation

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Lovepump]

Interesting, but you need to get out more.

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[doubleyewdee]

Tom Bombadil and the Witch-king of Angmar are the same person.

Actually, well, no. No they're not.

I suspect this is a clever troll, but I'll bite anyways. IHBT, IHL, IWHAND.

1. There's a lot of stuff you don't "hear" about in the First Age. Big deal.
2. You never see Galadriel and the Nazgul together either. So what?
3. The 'there' in Tom's comment was in reference to the pond from whence he retrieved the water lilies for Goldberry. In furtherance of this, according to the timeline, the Nazgul were not yet aware that Frodo had left the Shire at the time he met Bombadil.
4. Just because they knew who the real ring owner was intended to be does not mean they would not have been effected by it.
5. All the Nazgul could see him. Glorfindel could see him. Big deal. Does that make Glorfindel the Witch-King, or Tom Bombadil?
6. Now this is just getting silly. Any number of denizens of Arda could probably have done the same thing.

None of your points prove much of anything, except that the Nazgul and Bombadil were not in the same place at the same tim in LOTR.

A stronger case could be made, I think, that Bombadil was actually a subdued manifestation of Iluvitar (or one of the Valar). In Tolkien's world good and evil are rigidly defined (as they are in all mythologies) and I find it hard to believe that he would intend something this preposterous, when in no other case do you see a being that is both extremely evil and extremely benevolent in LOTR.

Anyhow.. IHBT. :)

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Captain_Chaos]

You might have quoted the (seven year old) source of this. Anonymous Coward indeed.

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Tanaan]

and Mr. Coward copied this from here:

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's a joke but...

Furthermore, the One Ring had no effect on Tom

From a review of "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" (http://www.greenmanreview.com/bombadil.htm);

The most difficult thing to get over for some friends of mine is Bombadil's trademark singing: "Come, derry-dol, merry-dol, my darling!" which can seem like nonsense. In fact, in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo thinks of it as exactly that. This, and his detachment from the power struggle that is the tale of the ring, are perhaps the primary reasons why Bombadil is sometimes marginalized or ignored among Tolkien's creations. They are, in fact, the same issue.

If one looks closely, there is sense to the nonsense. Middle Earth is a musical world and Tolkien, as a friend points out, was a linguist who confessed to having begun writing the stories as a way of experimenting with his invented languages. Bombadil, in the Tolkien mythos, laid aside the broader scope of the world, put it in a corner, not to "fight" -- no longer to tread where he might find himself participating in the question of power, including, in the other books, the war of the ring. Indeed, that is why he is master but not owner of anything. In a world of song Tolkien seizes Bombadil's singing as one strong way to indicate his detachment. "If you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless." - Tolkien's Letters #144

The URL also contains links to some good essays on Tom.

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Captain_Chaos]

Hook, line and sinker... :-)

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[stevey]

A stronger case could be made, I think, that Bombadil was actually a subdued manifestation of Iluvitar

There are a lot of arguments about the nature of Tom online and in papers.

This is probably the best collection I've seen : What is Tom Bombadil?

Interesting stuff if you're a Tolkien geek..

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[zerocool^]

You can also reference the entry in the encyclopedia of arda, found here:
http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm?http://ww w.glyphweb.com/arda/t/tombombadil.html

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

> A stronger case could be made, I think, that Bombadil was actually a subdued manifestation of Iluvitar...

It can't because JRRT explicity denied it, 'Letters 181'

There is no 'embodiment' of the Creator anywhere in this story or mythology.

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[doubleyewdee]

The Creator of the Mythology, or the Creator in the Mythology?

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[myc]

dumbass moderators....this is not -1 troll it's +5 funny :)

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[baileytal]

My favourite theory is that Bombadil is actually Tolkien.

Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[fbg111]

FWIW, here's an excellent discourse on just who Tom Bombadil really is:

The Riddle of Tom Bombadil

Short answer: there's no definitive evidence for any conclusion, although the discussion of some of the possibilities is interesting (Maiar, Valar, Eru Illuvatar...).

Half a Petabyte

[Ba3r]

Thats fuckin cool

Re:Synopsis

[syrinx]

except of course, he doesn't. the books have been out for 50 years, maybe you should try reading them.

Huh, you call that a spoiler?

[WIAKywbfatw]

There's a series of books that were out years ago that were packed full of spoilers for all three films. They even had most of the stuff that's in the special edition DVDs and some of the stuff that didn't even get filmed. Now that's a spoiler.

That Tolkien dude sure had some sweet movie biz contacts. Harry Knowles eat your heart out.

Lots of Raw film

[kongstad]

For those people who think that ROTK is only about F/X.

I can't remember the amounts but around the time #1 came out they talked about the fact that in a normal picture they shoot about twice or three times more material and then cut it down to what you see.

I LOTR they shot about ten times as much. That is for every minute of finished movie they've shot 10 minutes of film.

So sure there is a lot of CGI going on, but there is still plenty of old fashioned moviemaking involved.

But off course with gollum and a giant orc army (what 100.000 orcs?) they have to rely on CGI. /Soren

Re:Lots of Raw film

[MikeHunt69]

A normal shooting ratio on a feature film is around 5:1 or 6:1. 10:1 isn't really that high, especially when you consider (1) their budget and (2) the fact they had around 30 35mm cameras available to shoot multiple angles, etc.

Re:Lots of Raw film

[Galvatron]

Their budget? As I recall, their budget was around $300 million for all 3 movies, or $100 million per movie. That's really not that much for a 3 hour long, effects heavy movie.

Re:Lots of Raw film

[Perky_Goth]

to be pedantic, 10000 orcs and uruk-hai

What about the CPU's?

[Martigan80]

Great so the movie is done, what will they do with all that power? I'm sure they can stomp out some SKG competition.

weta liquid: still not released iinto open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

there was a /. article where weta pledged to open source its maya to renderman gate called "liquid".

it's been quite a while ago, and i still don't find it anywhere. did they lie?

Tired of hearing that....

[Anonymous Coward]

...anyone that didn't see plot in Matrix 3 didn't see the movie(s). And there were vital story points made in the final movie that led to the ending that occured. The only problem I had at all with the movie is that the final cut needed to have the epic multi-tier battle much like Jedi had and it didn't. It would have been more impressive if the humans were about to be swarmed for the last time and Neo then finished off Smith right then and the machines stopped. The 'end' just occured over too many parts in a scattered fashion, there needed to be one great finish and it WAS there, just cut badly. I can't wait for the DVD to cut my own finish.

And one other thing is you cannot watch it as a single movie, which is why it's part of a trilogy. At least the first part felt like a stand alone movie. Hell LotR can't live up to that, you need to see the other two movies to get a sense of conclusion. At that you need to sit through 3 3-hour long movies to get to that end.

As for 'Usual Suspects', anyone that paid attention knew what was going to happen by the end, just like 'M3'

Re:Tired of hearing that....

[CashCarSTAR]

Actually the reason for that was to fufill the whole Final Fantasy VII vibe that was going on. The machines as Shinra, Neo as Cloud and Agent Smith as Sepiroth.

LOTR vs. Matrix Hype.

[skywalker107]

The hype surronding the LOTR: ROTK is a different Hype than that of the Matrix. Everyone has read LOTR many times over and everyone knows that Peter Jackson just has to follow the storyline of the book and people will be generally happy. Your comparison to the Matrix hype was not a good one.

The Hype surrounding The Matrix was that of unknowing. The story was in a form that this was a first time for everyone. I have to admit I was one of the few that thourghly enjoyed all three episodes and admired them for there story and cinematics. For lord of the rings I already know the story is good, I am just here for the cinematics.

Re:LOTR vs. Matrix Hype.

[The Locehiliosan]

Everyone has read LOTR many times over and everyone knows that Peter Jackson just has to follow the storyline of the book

He does??? I guess I watched two different movies than you did.

Re:LOTR vs. Matrix Hype.

[skywalker107]

For the sake of argument he does. The overall plot is the same. Where in the matrix no one knew exactly what was going to happen, and the hype was derived from the unknown and the predictions.

I will give LOTR it's credit because most movies adapted from books normally are not recieved with the kind of hype that LOTR has, plus most normally fail at getting the story across the way the book did.

Re:LOTR vs. Matrix Hype.

[Sabalon]

After seeing The Two Towers, I think I have that feeling of unknowing as well.

But as you said, the cinematics is the reason to see it in this format. Then again, I like the animated ones as well, so I'm an oddball. With the Matrix I think they tried too much on the cinematics and forgot a story was needed.

Why so long?

[mOoZik]

Average time to render one frame: 2 hours

That's quite a bit of time for 1600 separate computers, isn't it? Anyone know what resolution it is all rendered to?

Re:Why so long?

[KirkH]

I'm pretty sure that means processor hours or machine hours. Two hours for the entire array would be rediculous.

Re:Why so long?

[LiquidCoooled]

320 * 200 in 16colors

This film was based a long time ago, in a time before vga.

In reality however, the time seems quite normal, when rendering 100's of 1000's of cg animated dynamic figures it tends to take a while, so 2 hours is quite a speedy estimate.

We might have nice fast 3d renderers at home that do things in real time, but movie quality ray tracing at the detail levels and sheer scale we expect on the big screen do not come quickly.

Re:Why so long?

[mOoZik]

That's two hours PER FRAME, not 100's of 1000's of frames.

Re:Why so long?

[LankyBoycie]

I'd say minimum 2048x1556x16 bits per component. Maybe more like 4k x whatever.

Re:Why so long?

[LiquidCoooled]

Yes and?

It used to take me 24hours + to render a single simple frame on my computer, this is many many orders or magnitude more complex than my simple little mirrored ball, and with much more work to do.

Not everything in life can be done in 0.02 seconds, and frankly I am surprised they have got the time down so much.

A couple of years ago, raytracing and rendering was catching up with technology, and render times were coming down to just a few seconds/minutes for even the largest most complex of scenes.

Then those pesky animators/graphic designers found the equations for furr and even more complex dynamic materials, and started using much more detailed models, and render times were right back up there.

Re:Why so long?

[LiquidCoooled]

also...... i never mentioned 100s and 1000s of FRAMES - i mentioned the number of objects per frame if you read it carefully :)

Re:Why so long?

[SolFire]

In order to have high quality ray traced scenes you would need to have a high recursion limit, somewhere near 5.

So for each ray that intersects, you need to calculate shadow rays to ALL lights, reflected ray (which will generate more shadow, refl, trans), and transmitted ray ( also generate shadow, refl, trans).

Say you have 10 lights in the scene, thats 12 rays. Going to recursive limit of 5 each incident ray at the worst case scenario would generate 692 rays.

Now do that for a large scene with many objects at high resolution. Then before all this rendering takes place add all the AI calculations for each object, animation (translation, rotations, etc) for each object and you can see that the ammount of computation required to render one frame quickly gets out of hand.

Now imagine it being done for 10 000 orcs, 10 000 humans, plus structurs (castles,towers,etc), plus dynamic lights (torches, burning balls of fire tossed by siege equipment, burning pitch). Now you can see why it would take 2 hours.

To whomever is writing these headlines

[Asprin]

When drafting your headlines, please consider that some of the older residents around here have high blood pressure and a low tolerance for extreme panic.

When I read the headline "Wired's LOTR III Tech Breakdown", my first thought was "Aw, crap! ROTK has been delayed because their servers crashed! ARRRRRRRRGH!"

Now I have to go to the restroom to clean up.

A better, LESS INFLAMMATORY headline would have been something like "Wired Breaks Down the Tech Behind ROTK".

My underwears (and my cardiologist) thank you for your consideration.

Re:To whomever is writing these headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

My underwears (and my cardiologist) thank you for your consideration.

Both your underwears and your cardiologist would better appreciate it that you watch what you eat!

Surely a diet with less cholesterol would make misunderstood Slashdot headlines less dangerous...

And a diet with less chili and beans would make Slashdot headlines agree better with your underwear.

Saaarumaaan!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazgul: Describe Sauron for me.
Saruman: Well, he's dark...
Nazgul: And?
Saruman: ...and he's tall...
Nazgul: Does he look like a bitch?
Saruman: What?
*thud* *scream*
Nazgul: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH!?
Saruman: No!
Nazgul: Then why'd ya try to fuck him like a bitch?

Re:Saaarumaaan!

[MooCows]

And somebody should REALLY photoshop/gimp a picture of the One Ring with "Bad Mother F***er" inscribed in it.

(this is from Pulp Tolkien by the way,

A plea to the moderators

[Illserve]

Can you please stop handing out Karma to that unfortunately large body of people who don't yet realize that books and movies are not the same media, and that you can't expect the same story to work equally well on both.

I don't know how it's possible that they haven't yet learned this basic fact, as it's been discussed to complete death by everyone and their grandmother for the past 10-20 years.

Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible. In some places his story telling is actually subpar. Peter Jackson has(for the most part) done a truly excellent job of culling the important elements into a theatrical release that the public can enjoy. His idea of releasing a very different version on DVD for the book fans is sheer genius. He recognizes that you can't please everyone with one version. Why can't you? It's not a hard concept to grasp really.

And if you really have issues with the job Jackson has done, suggest someone else who would have done better. Peter is the perfect choice IMO, as he doesn't have the ego that big producers do, an ego that would have turned LOTR in "Spielberg's LOTR".

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible.

LotR isn't, no. The Silmarillion is the Bible of Middle-Earth, LotR is just a chapter of history.

And if you really have issues with the job Jackson has done, suggest someone else who would have done better.

Why do I have to? Why can't you just accept that these are bad films, full of sub-par special effects, cheesy one-liners and silly scenes - like Legolas SHIELD-SURFING TO THE K-RAD MAXXX! - inserted for the kiddies? Sure, when you adapt a book you have to change it around, but you should be aiming to make a good film, and these (especially TTT) are not good films. Bladerunner is a good film. Minority Report is a decent film. Bondachuk's War and Peace is a good film. They're all adaptations, and they all muck around with things to a large degree. The Two Towers, considered on its merits as a movie and not in any relation to the book, is not a good film in many people's opinions.

Deal.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[JPelorat]

"The Two Towers, considered on its merits as a movie and not in any relation to the book, is not a good film in many people's opinions."

And you are willfully refusing to consider that TTT is the middle part of what is essentially a 14 hour movie. It cannot truly be separated from the other two films. It has no true beginning, no true end. It simply *cannot* stand on its own against single-part films. Especially when you front-load the opposition like that.

As for Tolkien - he was not God with a typewriter. He made mistakes, fewer than average for an amateur writer, but perfection eludes even the Lord of the Rings.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[totallygeek]

Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible.

Thank goodness his work isn't the bible. Can you imagine every sentence or two starting with a little number? All the scenes in the beginning half would need to be more violent and include incest, rape, and mass murder. The second half would have no substance of a story, it would simply be some letters written to all the races of middle earth informing them that they all suck and everyone should love. The book would then end with a written-down dream that everyone will claim to understand completely, but everyone's interpretation will be different. To top it off, some of the elf chapters will be left out of some editions, with some of the public complaining they were added, others that they were always in. Some other chapters would be left out completely by the original publishers; information about Frodo's youth and more information about his alleged love life.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Two Towers, considered on its merits as a movie and not in any relation to the book, is not a good film in many people's opinions."

Maybe so, but the "many people" you speak about must be a tiny minority compared to the vast crowds that think it's a great film. Note the 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as the #4 position on IMDB's Top 250 list.

Deal.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

"Titanic" is the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[EvilXenu]

Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible. In some places his story telling is actually subpar.

Heathen!

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Strange Ranger]

> His idea of releasing a very different version on DVD for the book fans is sheer genius. He recognizes that you can't please everyone with one version.

I'd bet a wagon full of Southfarthing tabac that Peter Jackson sees the DVD releases as the "real" movies.

It would be a TON of effort and a big financial risk (based on extra revenue generated just from the difference in versions) to make the DVD releases like they are "just to please the book fans". Those extra scenes are not just spliced in. It seems fairly obvious he planned the entire production around the DVDs. I think he WOULD have released those versions to theaters if he hadn't been contractually obligated to give them movies that were under 3 hours each. The theater release versions are to please the pocketbooks of the theaters, because they can show more than 3 showings a day. I don't believe for a second, after reading and listing to interviews and commentary, that the theater releases are what he considers the "real" movies, or that he released shorter cut down versions of his dream production just to please the uninitiated or the attention-span challenged. He did it because that was the only way the theaters where going to show it at all. He had no choice.

5 years from now, the "extended" DVDs will be all that counts in anyone's book.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

>5 years from now, the "extended" DVDs will be
>all that counts in anyone's book.

That was already the case for me, from the beginning. I knew from some source, before the first film was even released in the theatre, that there would be two DVD releases, and that it was worth it to wait for the second one. I broke my long-standing theatre boycott for this film (and ONLY for this film).

When the second film came out on DVD I did the same thing, waiting for the extended version. Why would anyone buy the theatrical version?

Re:A plea to the moderators

[vivek7006]

"Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible."

Right. Bible is a bigger piece of shit

Re:A plea to the moderators

[DenOfEarth]

Hear, hear, hear.

I just finished reading someones comment that they are preparing to be totally disappointed with the return of the king...which says to me that they are telling themselves not to enjoy it for the get-go, or else they aren't really fans of the source material anyways.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[Brandybuck]

For all those bitching about the "liberties" Peter Jackson made, stop and place yourself into the shoes of a film maker. Everyone is having kittens of the portrayal of Faramir. At first I had some problems too, then I started thinking about how I would film it. I came to the same conclusions that Phillipa Boyens did when writing the script.

1) You have to remember the "shape" of the film. Though the three movies tell one story, you have to make some effort into making each stand on its own. You need a some conflict during the latter part of the Frodo/Sam story line. Shelob was already moved to the third movie for a variety of excellent reasons. So you're left with Faramir. He doesn't need to be a bad guy, but he does need to be an obstacle. If he had been filmed strictly from the book, the few die hard LOTR fans would be pleased, but everyone else in the world would have been bored to tears watching the Hobbit holiday traipsing through the wilderness and meeting all sorts of charming fellows.

2) While Tolkien can tell you that Faramir wouldn't take the ring even if he say it laying at the side of the road, the movie audience simply wouldn't have believed it. This is the ring that destroyed Boromir, tempted the wise and immortal Gandalf and Galadriel, twisted Smeagol into a pitiful shell, and even corrupted Bilbo. Do you really think that the audience would have believed that Faramir wouldn't have given it a second look? Give me a break! This guy's nation is tottering on the brink of complete and utter destruction, and here comes some puny hobbits with the way out.

3) "But, but, but," I hear you stammer, "what about the Nazgul who saw the ring!" You need something to show Faramir that the ring is corrupting. Sam's speeches simply aren't enough. But now Faramir can see that Frodo is turning into another Gollum. And that's the point where Faramir understands and lets them go. Also remember the Tolkien timeline. This is another excuse for Sauron to unleash his armies too soon. Remember, in a few days Frodo and Sam will be right by Minas Morgul in time to see Mordor's army marching off to Gondor. This "excuse" is much easier to film than Aragorn wrestling with Sauron through the palantir.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[wfrp01]

I think if Peter Jackson's filmaking came much closer to the imaginary vision I've had since childhood, I'd have to start wearing a tinfoil hat.

Re:A plea to the moderators

[splaytree]

And if you really have issues with the job Jackson has done, suggest someone else who would have done better. Peter is the perfect choice IMO, as he doesn't have the ego that big producers do, an ego that would have turned LOTR in "Spielberg's LOTR".

I hear you man. I wonder what would have happened if George Lucus decided to do LOTR?

[begin dream sequence]
Gollum: Meesa want yousa Precioussss, okie-day?
[end dream sequence]

er... must go volunteer for Ebola vaccinations now...

Re:A plea to the moderators

[quintessent]

Peter Jackson sees the DVD releases as the "real" movies.

Yes, he said just that on a TV interview a while before the first film was released.

As a data center manager (here comes the math)...

[Khyron42]

... I wonder how they came up with the numbers here.

A blade chassis full of dual PIII's similar to what they showed in the "render wall" photo will, in my experience, pull 300 to 600 watts of power depending on CPU load and configuration - the maximum power use is 850 W. At least a third of that is turned into heat.

This puts the minimum heat load at around ((1600 servers / 6 servers per chassis) * 150 watts average heat output) = approx. 40,000 watts.

While I've never heard of "farenheit weight" before, "tons refrigeration" is pretty common in the air conditioning world - 40,000 watts heat load = 136,500 BTU/hr = 10 tons of refrigeration (in UK units, 11 in US). It's amazing how well that 1/2 ton air conditioner is operating!

Pretty elves

[nilenico]

ah, but you're missing part of the point!

Legolas is pretty. We LIKE seeing Legolas doing cool stuff on the screen (jumping on horses, shooting watercreatures, sliding down stairs).

The LOTR films are great chick flicks:
- Aragorn: the strong, silent, hunky one
- Legolas: the pretty one
- Eomer, Faramir, Boromor: the dishy ones...

yummy!

Specs?

[StormForge]

> IT staff: 35 & Visual f/x staff: 420

Are these people temps or do they have full-time jobs? Must be a real challenge to find that many people with experience in this sort of thing. I imagine they do alot of training? Anyone know?

> Servers in renderwall: 1,600 Processors (total): 3,200

Anyone know what these are? Dual Xeons? Do they take advantage of fast graphics hardware to speed up the rendering?

> Processors added 10 weeks before movie wrapped: 1,000

Making for a total of 4,200? About 30% more capacity 10 weeks before the end. So they added 1000 processors just to save about 3 weeks!

> Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees

Assuming farenheit, that actually seems high.

> Fahrenheit Weight of air conditioners needed to maintain that temperature: 1/2 ton

This seems low...

> STORAGE Near online: 72 terabytes

What would this be? Robot DVD archive or something?

> Digital backup tape: 0.5 petabyte (equal to 50,000 DVDs)

What kind of tapes are these? Last I checked, IDE-RAID was a better bargain than tapes and DVD archives.

> Number of f/x shots: 1,400
> Minimum number of frames per shot: 240

This is confusing -- so a minimum of 1,400x240 frames = 224 minutes of shots but the screen time of F/X shots is quoted as 120 minutes...

> Average time to render one frame: 2 hours

Is this on the whole farm? If so, that's 76 years. If that's on a single processor, then the farm should be able to render the whole movie in 160 hours -- and you hardly need such a big farm. Must be rendering a frame uses several processors?

In all, very confusing...! :-)

-Bill

Re:Specs?

[nomadlogic]

>In all, very confusing...! :-)
not really ;)

>Is this on the whole farm? If so, that's 76 years. If that's on a single processor, then the farm should be able to render the whole movie in 160 hours -- and you hardly need such a big farm. Must be rendering a frame uses several processors?

what usually happens is that certian groups are allocated resources based on the scene, or part of scene, they are working on. let's say i'm working on one shot, i will most likely need to render several passes before my final render. so you can't think of this render farm as just doing one render to make the movie. each animator will need to do tons of renders before they even get close the final output.

>> STORAGE Near online: 72 terabytes

>What would this be? Robot DVD archive or something?

nah not DVD. 1 DVD=4.7 gigs. more likely a SAN of somesort. Online storage is data storage attached directly to the workstation (editing machine/compositing station/cgi workstation). so near line would most likely be storage that every workstation has access to, but does not work off of daily.

> IT staff: 35 & Visual f/x staff: 420

>Are these people temps or do they have full-time jobs? Must be a real challenge to find that many people with experience in this sort of thing. I imagine they do alot of training? Anyone know?

i don't work for WETA, or any film post house for that matter, but i do work for a smaller visual effects house. most of the engineers i work with were trained on SGI's back in the day. now most work is done on Linux so alot of that training is transferable. you would be supprised by the amount of people with experience in CGI/Compositing/IT hacking out there that would kill to get a chance to work on LOTR

Re:Specs?

[SolFire]

Anyone know what these are? Dual Xeons? Do they take advantage of fast graphics hardware to speed up the rendering?

Fast graphics processors do not help when rendering movie quality graphics, ie Raytracing or Radiosity. GPU's are built to accelerate simple shading models such as Phong shading. All high quality rendering is done in software on the cpu.

[Serious] Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved!

[Saint Stephen]

I don't remember what I thought Tom Bombadil was before I read the Simarillion and knew the "back story".

After I read the Simarillion, I always thought he was Illuvutar (sp?): i.e., Eru, the main god. Since he was supposedly there before *everythng*, including the Valar and morgoth.

Now that I'm older I like the more clever theory that Tom Bombadil is THE READER. I.e., only the reader can have read the Simarillion, and be "present" throughout the whole history of time.

I don't like the theories that he's some supernatural Green party activist. I hate politics.

Not this joke, AGAIN

[bonch]

In every single LOTR article, someone makes the "I hear there are books out that contain all the spoilers!" joke as if it's funny, original, and clever. And every time, people mod them up!

Everyone--this joke is old and been done countless times before. It's like copying and pasting a +5 post from before and sticking it here just to trick you.

Re:Not this joke, AGAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the first time I've seen it... Pretty funny too!

Wired & Slashdot

[cthlptlk]

Does anyone else smell a Wired shill on slashdot? This must be the fourth or fifth "I saw a really neat story in Wired" article in the last two weeks...

King Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot will be used for King Kong I guess.

I also heard SETI mentioned once, but I'm not sure if it was only a joke.

How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[Luinitari]

You make a good point, and I'm sure one which it seems "impossible" for readers here on /. to comprehend. For those who have never read the books, never even heard of the story line or the characters the movie is amazing. My best friend falls into that category and enjoys the standard versions moreso than the extended cuts, the story line flows better, and the movie itself has great continuity. He didn't care when I tried to explain to him about Saruman. It wasn't even that critical of a part of the movie for him.

Hell, try explaining the significance of Saruman, without revealing the seeing stone and without including the destruction of the shire, which we know is cut. Place yourself within the mindset of these blissfully ignorant few and you'll see why LOTR has such great appeal. We're just the precious few that have enjoyed the rich world so much that anything missing is a travesty.

I still want Bombadill.

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[meta-monkey]

Why do you want Tom Bombadill? I've read the books twice already, and I'm re-reading them again now before I see RotK. I'm actually on the Tom Bombadill part of FotR right now, and I can't wait to get through it. It's completely pointless to the story. It's a side trip, wherein the characters don't really grow, expand, or learn anything new about themselves or their quest in any way, and then never mentioned again for the rest of the trilogy.

I do a lot of writing, and I like to watch and critique movies, so I always try to think about why the author has the characters do things, or ways in which it could be shown better. I'd say my biggest complaint about most any movie is character development. I hate it when I can't understand why a character in a movie is doing something. It completely ruins their character. So, what's the solution? You have to SHOW things in the movie, that explain WHO this person is, and WHY they have the motivations and feelings that they do. That takes screen time. You can't simply throw a character into a movie, have him look directly into the camera, and explain his life story. Show, don't tell. So, now, let's include enough screen time to get the hobbits into position to meet Tom in the first place (going through the forest, the run-in with Old Man Willow, etc) and then enough time to develop Tom's character enough to satisfy the viewers and the book-lovers, and you've probably added 15 or 20 minutes to this already 3.5 hour long movie. All this, for a scene that does absolutely nothing to further the plot.

Now, on the other hand, the elves shouldn't have shown up at Helm's Deep. I hear there's a good explanation for why PJ decided to do that in the bonus disks for TTT:EE, but I haven't had time to watch the bonus disks yet. Maybe I'll do that tonight :)

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[urbazewski]

Agreed on deep-sixing Tom Bombadil: that's where I threw the book down in disgust in jr. high school ( and I didn't pick it up until well in adulthood.) I thought it made no sense at all: were these hobbits going to get out of every fix by singing little songs? why didn't Tom just escort them to the edge of the territory in the first place? and I didn't know enough about the ring yet to understand that it was a big deal that the ring didn't have any effect on Tom.

Faramir was a little too cold in the movie I thought, although I wonder if that was acting/directing as much as the actual script. And not nearly cute enough, either.

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[the eric conspiracy]

Why do you want Tom Bombadill?

Bombadill is only interesting if you are looking at understanding Tolkien as a person and the history of the writing of his body of work. Bombadill otherwise has no importance to the story.

I do miss the barrow-downs as it touches on important back-story for LoTR, and is especially important because it is where Merry gets the sword that helps defeat the Witch King of Angmar (the leader of the Nazgul).

It is strange how this backstory appears here and there in the movies. For example, the Ring of Barahir. Nowhere else in the movies is the old lineage and the deep relationship between Elrond and Aragorn hinted at.

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[Artifakt]

JRRT himself defended using Bombadill by first admitting that whole section was written before he realized where the story was going. After admitting that, he said that Bombadill was still essential to the book, even though it had little to do with the plot.
Some people have taken this to mean that the book is better art with B. included. I don't see it that way. I think Tolkien wanted to reference a lot of very early English lit. He wrote Boromir's death to reference the song of Roland, and drew parallels between Rohan and the Saxons and even the Geats of the Beowulf saga for similar reasons.
So Bombadill is essential, but only if you want to see a tie to the very early, heavily pagan influenced versions of English faery tales such as Thomas the Rhymer. These are influences that extend to much more modern literature (e.g. the Rip Van Winkle story). But they are not that meaningful unless you are one of the readers who is keeping score of just how many literary traditions Tolkien is alloying here. Frankly, that's probably limited to three guys who know just how many years it took for Irish monks to illuminate the book of Kells. The rest of us don't have a lifetime to devote to acquiring the necessary understanding.

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[meta-monkey]

I'll give you the barrow downs, but you can't include that without including Tom, and if you DO include Tom, one of two things are going to happen:

1) Let's say you put Tom in exactly as he is in the books, to please the fanatics. So, you've got him there in his bright blue coat, yellow boots, and bright blue feather in his cap, and he's singing

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

...

Look, you can write that, but you can't say that. If that character appeared in the movie, I think about 95% of the viewing audience would either scratch their heads in utter confusion, or perhaps question Tom's sexuality. Either way, it would not do well for the movie.

Or, option the second:

2) So as not to completely lose the non-Tolkien-fiend audience, Tom gets watered-down to something not completely inexplicable and unscreen-worthy. Now the Tolkienites are even more furious, because Tom's character has been rewritten in horrible, uncharacteristic ways.

This is one of those cases where, if you can't do something right, you shouldn't do it at all. In no manner on stage or screen can the character of Tom Bombadil be portrayed. He's just fine in the written word, but in real life? Just don't do it at all.

Re:How my friend (the long lost non-reader put it)

[Slurm-V]

Also, Bombadill is more a part of 'the sequel to The Hobbit' than LoTR as a separate entity. Notice how all his speech is in a particular meter? Very The Hobbit - where even goblins are known to burst into song.

Wrong

[bonch]

Actually, the complete opposite is happening. New Line is pushing this as an actors' movie so they can win Academy Awards.

Gotta love all the Wired news

[BigJimSlade]

My wife and I just got a subscription to Wired a few months ago. I finally got my hands on it first and read the whole thing last week. It's amusing watching each story trickle in to /.

1. Subscribe to Wired
2. Submit each story to /.
3. ...
4. (Karma) Profit!

Re:[Serious] Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved

[doubleyewdee]

Although I am not possessed of yellow boots or a yellow cap resplendant with blue feather I do like that second theory. I think it is at least as enjoyable as the Iluvitar theory. I'm currently re-reading FOTR, and I just stopped at the beginning of chatper 7 (In the House of Tom Bombadil. I think this will present an interesting point of view from which I can re-read.

There are some indicators that Tom is not the reader, of course, but I'm willing to overlook these. ;) Thanks for a new spin on an old favorite!

(As an aside, I'd never seen the original copy of what our AC friend posted, it was ridiculous enough to be funny, but on Slashdot one can't assume that something ridiculous enough to be funny isn't being posted seriously. Forgive me, father, for I Have Been Trolled. ;))

OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not mention which OS was used for the same? Anyone knows which? Hopefully Linux?

WIRED's "Render wall" pic

[kdogg765]

If you look at the print edition of that WIRED tidbit, you can look closely at the picture to see that it's actually shelves of DLT or more likely SuperDLT tapes with bar codes on them, part of their reported .5 petabytes of tape backup.

The article says "Meet the real star of Lord of the Rings - a 1,600-box server farm." but they dont' have a single picture of the actual boxes. If you want to see a brief glimpse at some of the renderfarm, you can see it at the beginning of the VFX section on disc 4 of the Two Towers extended edition.

I'm really curious if Wired thinks they actually rendered the movies using shelves of DLT tapes. Do they have 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports on them???

On that subject the stats seem to imply also that they have 10gigabit ethernet everywhere, which is a retarded waste of money if that were in fact the case. I imagine that interconnects between their core switches would be 10 gigabit ethernet, but anything beyond gig-E to each node would have a hard time being utilized.

-K

Conservation of energy, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the maximum power use is 850 W. At least a third of that is turned into heat."

Um, if we assume that the energy spent in actually flipping bits on the hard drive is negligible, wouldn't nominally *all* of the energy used in the computer be turned into heat?

Re:Conservation of energy, eh?

[taradfong]

This is an interesting question: is there a fundamental, irreducible 'energy of information'? In an ideal transistor, what is the minimum energy needed to flip a bit?

--matt

Re:Conservation of energy, eh?

[Khyron42]

You're right. I forgot to mention that I was using some ridiculously low assumptions to show that, even in the best possible world, this equipment is going to need more than 1/2 ton cooling.

Aside from power to heat conversion, I assumed that they'd be using the lowest-power-consumption blades on the market and that the systems would be running below full load. Realistically, they've probably got a 120kW+ power bill and it all gets turned into heat.

Re:Conservation of energy, eh?

[MuParadigm]

There is: it's zero. If you're using a reversible logic gate, you can, in theory, perfectly conserve energy.

Re:Conservation of energy, eh?

[alehmann]

Yes, it is directly proportional to the temperature and Boltzmann's constant is the constant of proportionality. Schneier did some calculations in Applied Cryptography about how much energy it would take to brute force a 256 bit symmetric key and still not violate any laws of the Universe. I believe it was on the order of needing a supernova as a power source.

This probably doesn't apply to quantum computing.

Re:Conservation of energy, eh?

[alehmann]

...using a supernova to complete in a reasonable amount of time, that is. Power is not energy. Unfortuately I don't have the book handy so I don't know what "reasonable" meant.

Re:Synopsis

[J_Omega]

tricksee trolls

Better yet, each of the movies could've been 2x as long. Six movies, and we'd get to have lots more of what is missing!

Have you even read the book? Condensing that into one movie (and I bet you'd prefer it to be only 90mins long) would be futile.

Eh, I'd take Two Towers alongside those

[ianscot]

Having seen Blade Runner in the theater originally -- my birthday as a teenager -- and Minority Report last winter, I can say Two Towers was about equal to them in my book. Among the three I'd say Towers held its own as a movie's movie best, but Blade Runner has staying power because it's a measure, a measure, more original and it has a slightly more mature heart to it.

Blade Runner largely gets people cranked with its production values. The whole "Why am I here? Why is Rutger Hauer such a tragic figure?" philosophizing side of it fell flat for me even back then in the almost empty theater. We didn't exactly leave the movie talking about the original issues it brought up, and I was, what, young enough not to drive yet... For Harrison Ford it's nowhere near as complete and convincing a performance as Mosquito Coast. The lame narration it was released with, the happy ending thing... It's a cool movie to look at, I guess, but muddled by studio interference and not high on my list of movies to watch again sometime.

Minority Report was maybe the biggest mess I've seen in ten years. The entire Warner Brothers "factory fight" sequence just made me wince, again and again. (One kept hearing that WB music, even -- dump dump dump dump DUMP dump dump dump...) Max von Sydow was no surprise at all, the plotline involving how he avoided detection in the original murder made precisely zero sense (he knows where "the camera" will be for these psychics?), and so on. The movie was maybe a half-hour long, partly owing to the tooo looooong homage to Blade Runner involving the whole eye transplant thing. We left that theater saying Spielberg had overproduced his material in a big way but never answered "What if he kills people inadvertently while he's running away this way?" Pretty basic plot question, you know? It deserved awards for production design and nothing else.

And you're right, the whole "shield surfing" thing and especially the Dwarf jokes got very old in Two Towers... almost as old as the incredibly tedious Tolkienesque declarative language. ("And so.... it begins...") The "Gollum debates himself" scene produced unintentional laughter in both theaters I saw it in. But, you know, I get bashed as a movie snob -- The Third Man, Citizen Kane, the Big Sleep -- and I could bring myself to see Towers a second time, despite all the screaming orcs and so on. The first movie was better, but Towers was okay by me. Not great, but pretty good for what it was.

Re:Eh, I'd take Two Towers alongside those

[orac2]

One kept hearing that WB music, even -- dump dump dump dump DUMP dump dump dump...

Just FYI, that music is titled Powerhouse and was composed by Raymond Scott. Carl Stalling was the man responsible for incorporating it into many cartoon medleys for WB.

Re:Eh, I'd take Two Towers alongside those

[ianscot]

that music is titled Powerhouse and was composed by Raymond Scott Awesome! Thank you. (If the iTMS has that around, I'm all over it.)

Re:Synopsis

[junklight]

Er, I think you will find that I was taking the piss

would have been greater than he was

[dpilot]

There's the old saying, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I once heard an interesting tweak on that, and perhaps more true than the original. "Power attracts the corruptible."

Perhaps Faramir really IS as pure as all that. Perhaps he never sought any greatness or position, only to do his best for his people. In that case, any station he has would be purely as a result of people under him pushing him up. Perhaps those of higher station yet were either born to it, or sought it, the latter implying that they are likely corruptible.

Re:would have been greater than he was

[Anonymous Coward]

that was in dune the tyrant

Re:would have been greater than he was

[dpilot]

Never read that one, so the phrase must be making the rounds.

Re:As a data center manager (here comes the math).

[q-the-impaler]

Fahrenheit missed the carriage return/line feed. Read it as:

Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees Fahrenheit
Weight of air conditioners needed to maintain that temperature: 1/2 ton

The Grey Havens

[MuParadigm]

The soundtrack titles have already been released and "The Grey Havens" is the last instrumental piece before the credit music. So we can exect the bittersweet sadness of the books ending. I do kind of hope they preserve the last scene of the book though:

[Sam] drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.

Re:The Grey Havens

[WalksOnDirt]

There is a sample song from the soundtrack available from the site linked to in the intro. Unbelievably good.

WETA Supercomputes!

[patheticloser]

From The top500.org supercomputer list

Number 44 - WETA Digital New Zealand/2003 BladeCenter Cluster Xeon 2.8 GHz, Gig-Ethernet / 1176 IBM

Re:WETA Supercomputes!

[Noren]

... and Number 48 - WETA Digital New Zealand/2003 BladeCenter Cluster Xeon 2.8 GHz, Gig-Ethernet / 1180 IBM Counted together they'd be Number 16.

what kind of hardware/OS?

[verrol]

SGI/IBM? Which OS?

Re:what kind of hardware/OS?

[patheticloser]

Penguin Power

Looks like they've used Linux in the renderfarm from the beginning, and than began moving their artist workstations to Linux as well.

Re:what kind of hardware/OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the EE of TT on Disk3 of App's for some fraction of a second (out of two hours) you can actually spot something that looks like KDE desktop, but what exactly they are running is hard to tell

Here ye, here ye!

[Godeke]

Gather round, for the true reason parts were cut from the book to the movie. You see, I read each book to my son before the movie comes out. At approximately 30 minutes a night, it takes a month plus to read *one* of the three books. That's 15 hours per book. Now I grant that a few pages of "majestic mountain description" can be cut down to a flight over some real ones in the movie, but on the other hand, some of the action takes longer on screen than in text (especially describing the inner state of a character, which in film must be *shown* not spoken).

Personally, I don't have the bladder control for a fifteen hour movie. Yes, now you know the real reason for cutting the film to three hours (four for those in the comfort on their own homes). Bladder control. Simple really.

Re:Here ye, here ye!

[Paul Lamere]

So the real questions are: do you sing the songs when you read lotr aloud? Did you ever skip-ahead during a particulary long and seemingly non-essential song or section?

Re:Here ye, here ye!

[Godeke]

Actually, I read it without edits, including the poorly executed singing. I read with character voices, and sadly mangle the already poor lyrics due to a lack of higher elvish education. That said, my comment was an attempt to get the hopeless "but they removed obscure reference 234 subsection a, paragraph 23" people to realize that the work they love is 45 hours long in totality. The fact that we are given extended versions that bring the movies up to 12 hours is an astounding tribute to the love being poured into the movies. But even at twelve hours, *something* has to give. (The "mass market" releases mean *more somethings* have to give). I'm just thankful a true fan of the works has handled the compression, and not someone who would have used cliff notes to render a 3 hour version of the full trilogy, wherein Frodo would have ended the movie in hand to hand combat with Sauron, and Gollum would have been a furry.

Re:Here ye, here ye!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no excuses for some of the cuts/additions other than typical Big Movie Standard Procedure. PJ apologizers are just that. Apologizing for the fact that some Big Movie Studio gave him money and wanted something that they were comfortable with, not something that was as good as it could be.

Where is the OS in the top500.org list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't this used to list the operating system for each entry?

-- ac at work

Karma whoring is bad!

[dark-br]

At least quote the real source of the things you say.

Those kids... they think their internet is better then mine :/

Back to the fifties...

[dpbsmith]

Why, that article reads just like the sort of technology-worshipping PR stuff that used to be churned out by big industrial corporations in the U. S. (and, of course, by the Soviet Union).

Only back then it used to be dams and steel mills and such.

This mighty dam holds mumble godzillion acre-cubits of water from the Colorado-Dnieper river. Its sixty-nine turbines turn at over 3000 therbligs, generating twenty-two thousand, six jillion and seventeen point six five myriads of power, coursing through twenty thousand leagues of wire--enough to serve the needs of sixteen-and-a-quarter cities the size of East Buffington. These complex control panels, with a combined mendacity of six hundred and fifty-eight knobs, buttons, and levers, are constantly monitored by eighty-six point three five highly trained technicians. Yes, when in full operation, this project will harness the vast forces of nature and offer the promise of a better life for the six million, two hundred and seventy-six-thousand, seven hundred and eighty-four people served by the North-by-Northwest Winnemac Regional Development Authority!

Speaking of "Old" on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new acceptable postings overlord.

Worn out jokes are the mainstay of this community. Haven't you figured that out, yet?

This whole thread is filled with spoilers!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much the importance of the digit in question, rather what Golom bites off with the digit that is important.

Palantir ain't gonna happen, IMHO

[EricTheGreen]

No need for it now. IIRC, the plot device it served in the books was to (inadvertently) misdirect Sauron into believing the ring was headed to Minas Tirith. A happy accident for the Fellowship's sake.

In any event, the whole Osgiliath distraction in the second movie seems to serve the same point--Nazgul spots Frodo with ring in Osgiliath, Sauron gets mistaken assumption that ring is going to Minas Tirith, etc., etc. Which is probably why Jackson made the "addition" in the first place--accomplishes the same plot device without having to return to Isengard in the third movie. Time economy, I guess.

So no need for the palantir at this point. Sorry.

Re:Palantir ain't gonna happen, IMHO

[Rallion]

Sigh. Point made and made well. I'll expect it in EE, then.

Re:Palantir ain't gonna happen, IMHO

[EricTheGreen]

FWIW, you'll probably get a glimpse of the palantir of Minas Tirith in the third movie, since it would be all-but-impossible to explain Denethor's madness without introducing it, unless Jackson completely cuts anchor to the book. So you'll get a taste of it, at least. :)

Actually, I enjoyed TTT better than FotR

[ScottGant]

I'm interested in why people make these claims as you do, about how Jackson made and ass of himself. In what way? How did he trash this?

But of course, these books being what they are they can't please all the fans all the time. I'm a long time Ring fan...reading it for the first time in 1975. I've read it now a total of 13 times (all the way through that is, I sometimes pick it up now and then to breeze through it). And I thought Jackson did and excellent job of the movies. In fact, these movies now rank as my all time favorite. I knew he would have to change things, to leave out things. They're movies...movies are always different. I know some people who wanted the books verbatum. 2 people I know wanted 3 movies for the first book alone...so everything, including the singing and Tom B. could be included!

Then again, I know other people that never read the books that loved it...and some that said it was so so. But what amazes me are people like you that just make wild statements like "he trashed it" yet give no reason.

In this issue: Linux sux - or does it?

[sdcharle]

Yeah, it's neat how that issue of Wired has: "Bill Joy on Why Linux Sucks" on the cover.

Then you read the Bill Joy article, and actually what he says is Linux doesn't interest him, it's not groundbreaking, but it's great for people who want to learn - a decidedly moderate and non-inflammatory statement. Later in the same article there's a reference to a meditation wall he's building, using Linux of all things.

Then there was this LOTR article, where Linux is never really mentioned, but you suspect they (WETA) were using it, and the parent post confirms it.

I'm not saying Wired is out to get Linux, actually they did a nice Linus cover recently. Just pointing out a stupid magazine publishing trick, I suppose.

PJ and OB rock!

[sreeram]

To all those bitching about PJ not being a good director (for having left out this or that element in the books):

The director's role is in bringing a book to life. I say PJ has done it exceedingly well.

I read the books before I saw the movies, and I had this mental picture of Legolas - you know, being an elf and all, especially in the Misty Mountains, where he was the only one who could run atop the snow and such.

Orlando Bloom has more than delivered. The way he runs lithely across the mountains (in the beginning part of TTT) is amazing. No-one could have done it better. His dexterity with the bow (remember the rapid fire arrows in FotR where he kills the Uruk-Hai?) is also fantastic (of course, thanks to excellent editing too).

Usually, I am prepared to be disappointed that actors don't do my mental pictures justice. LotR has been a pleasant exception.

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[Genrou]

I am amazed by the way Legolas climb on horses backs.

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[holygoat]

The first time I saw the trailer for Fellowship, I remarked that every single character was perfectly cast - you could name them just from a second of footage. Aragorn in particular; amazing.

But then, they did put a lot of effort into the casting process (curiously with the exception of Viggo Mortensen as I recall - that was serendipity!)

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[li99sh79]

The first time I saw the trailer for Fellowship, I remarked that every single character was perfectly cast - you could name them just from a second of footage. Aragorn in particular; amazing.

But then, they did put a lot of effort into the casting process (curiously with the exception of Viggo Mortensen as I recall - that was serendipity!)

Apparently they initially offered the role of Aragorn to Russel Crowe, who obviously turned them down. Would have been quite a different film with him instead of Viggo. I mean Crowe would have brought a lot to the role, he's a terrific actor, but he looks more like a movie star than Viggo does, and that isn't neccesarily what you want for that part.

But yes, I agree completely that the film was perfectly cast...except that in the books Frodo is around fifty years old, and not the thirty or so he is in the movie. :)

-sam

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[CrackHappy]

He may be fifty, yes, but remember, he's had the Ring for quite a long time. The ring gives you essentially immortality while you hold it (whether or not it's actually ON your finger). This perfectly explains the fact that Frodo still looks 20. Also remember that most hobbits live to 100 without a problem!

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[li99sh79]

He may be fifty, yes, but remember, he's had the Ring for quite a long time. The ring gives you essentially immortality while you hold it (whether or not it's actually ON your finger). This perfectly explains the fact that Frodo still looks 20. Also remember that most hobbits live to 100 without a problem!

Well, you still age when you have the ring, look at Bilbo or Gollum, just quite slowly. And you are correct, I remember in the book some mention of Frodo looking like he was just out of his tweens, or something along those lines. But that's beside the point. The compression of the story in FotR means that the seventeen years between the party and Frodo's taking the ring to Rivendell didn't happen. So he's still younger in the movies than in the books. :) Though admittedly they never say how long Gandalf's trip to Gondor took.

-sam

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, which one is Pippin?

Re:PJ and OB rock!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pippin is the impish one always getting into trouble, dropping rocks down wells to see how deep they are, stealing the Palantir to look at it, etc.

Merry is the more serious one, a bit smarter than Pippin, likes to study maps, read up on history, ie, he's the one who knows where they are and where they are going.

See, that wasn't hard.

agreed [spoilers for the non-readers]

[gfxguy]

I agree... there were some good transitional parts for him:

• When Boromir died (Boromir's last words to him).
  
• When he rallies King Theoden for the "last stand."
  
• When he chooses the path of the dead confronts the "ghosts."
  

By the time he returns up the river with the ships, flag of Gondor flying, he is the king. (goosebumps)

Just because the extended editions are superior

[fullmetal55]

Just because the extended editions are superior, doesn't mean that the theatrical releases aren't excellent as well. one thing you have to keep in mind, the theatricals have to work together, they can't rely on extended edition footage to work. with no more saruman the average viewer who's unaware of the books will assume that it was resolved at the end of the two towers. for the die-hard fans of the series, they will know that there's more in the extended edition. as always I reserve judgement on the movie until Dec 16th. however I believe it will be good, and the extended edition will continue to excel. average viewers won't really care what happens to saruman, he's an important villain, but at the end of the two towers (theatrical), it appears he's routed... he is defeated...

yes removing the scouring of the shire removes a lot of saruman's character, but then a few short cuts they made in two towers really changed Faramir's character...

Re:Just because the extended editions are superior

[lithandie]

one thing you have to keep in mind, the theatricals have to work together, they can't rely on extended edition footage to work.

But that is not true, TTT theatrical relied on extended FOTR for several things not the least of which is the fact that Frodo new golums real name. which was only descibed in the extended FOTR.

I mean sure you can just assume all sorts of things that happened off screen, but you are not suppose to in a good flowing film.

the extened editions so far have worked together better because they are the versions of the films that PJ intended and not the cut down versions that the studio wants.

And I am not talking about the scouring of the shire. I am refereing to the death or sauruman that was suppose to occur at Orthank thereby wrapping up a plot element. just because he is defeated doesn't mean that he is no longer a threat. he is still a wizard with powers to be reconed with.

Re:As a data center manager (here comes the math).

[Dr. Zowie]

At least a third of that is turned into heat.

Actually, essentially all of it is turned into heat in the room (except for the microscopic amount of power that gets sent out of the room as Ethernet pulses). Yep, technically 1 is "at least 1/3", but the second law of thermodynamics is too oft forgotten.

When I moved into my dorm room at Stanford, nearly 15 years ago, I was shocked to discover that the university imposed a surcharge per quarter for the power used by certain appliances -- e.g. if you brought a mini-fridge or a microwave, you were were supposed to pay an extra $10/month or something to account for the power you used. The catch? The dorms were heated with ELECTRICAL HEATERS. Hence it was practically impossible to waste electricity in the cool half of the year -- using your fridge or microwave would just reduce the duty cycle of the elctric heater...

What about the REAL logistics...

[OriginalArlen]

A friend who was lucky enough to land a job on the tech side of the first film forwarded me an internal mail that went round which had the same sort of statistics, but with a much more realistic bent. Something like...

• Cups of coffee: 2,398,394
• Abandoned shots: 82
• grammes of cocaine: 1982
• nervous breakdowns: 4
• sceaming matches between (someone I'd never heard of and someone else I'd never heard of): 12

... You get the idea. Surely someone here has a copy of this and would post anonymously... c'mon you know it makes sense...

live up to the hype or not...

[zorcon]

ROTK can't possibly leave you more disappointed than EP1, Attack of the Clones, Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolution. And be thankful that Peter Jackson puts out mind blowing extended editions. No extended edition could possibly save the previously mentioned flicks.

Life is an Oasis

[Anonymous Coward]

And after all... you're my renderwa-ah-all.

over-exposed

[cifey]

Shouldn't great movies allow the general public to build a buzz about the movie instead of forcing it down our throats? I thought LOTR2 was a great movie, but watching the special features on the dvd it's kind of nauseating listening to actors profess their blind religious zeal over the greatest director, greatest performance, greatest whatever. Ultimately the public will decide if it's great, not the crew. I guess I have a problem with the way it is marketed.

Re:over-exposed

[Anonymous Coward]

With that post, it's obvious that you haven't even watched the extra two discs and are speaking completely out of your ass.

Whadda ya mean, "Vanished"?!

[DataSnake_RD]

The Greatest Trilogy out to date, and you say it "vanished"?

Re:Whadda ya mean, "Vanished"?!

[vijaya_chandra]

vanished...
out of the heads which don't having anything inside

Re:Whadda ya mean, "Vanished"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Greatest trilogy? Matrix trilogy isn't fit to wipe the original Star Wars trilogy's ass. Matrix trilogy isn't even fit to be in the same room as LOTR trilogy.

Should have left well enough alone; the first Matrix movie was a good movie. The sequels don't measure up.

ok, you missed my point...

[fullmetal55]

first forget that you know about the book, forget that you've read the book. forget everything from the book, this isn't a 1-1 translation of the book to film, its an adaptation of the book to film. now forget about the book the book doesn't exist. take the movies for what they are. you don't know that Saruman is an Istari, you don't know that he's actually a spirit. all you know is he's some big wizard who turned evil. The Ents go and attack him, the movie ends with him panicing in his tower. He is, by the appearance of the movie, routed, no longer a threat. while having a bit more, is a "nice to have" to me its not a requirement for a good movie, there is a lot going on in return of the king, and pre-maturely ending the story of saruman, won't affect the flow. You say you can assume all sorts of things that happen off screen, but aren't supposed to in a good flowing film. frankly, a good sequel is the same way. you don't bring a character in just to kill him off... you can omit him and by rights the plot will show he's no threat anymore. what happened to him? who knows, there's enough going on that it isn't important. thats why it got cut. it would actually detract from the film. it would make the flow not as smooth. and its a crappy way to end a movie so they couldn't put it in Two towers.

and yes the extended editions work better together, I never argued against that. But the ending of Two towers indicated that saruman was no longer a threat, i'm not reading more into that, I'm reading what happened at the end of the two towers. He is still a powerful wizard yes, i won't argue, but his army is gone. and since he's no longer doing anything its safe to assume he's not a threat... because he's not in the movie... therefore he's not an important character in return of the king. which if he has those 7 minutes, it'll just re-inforce that. that same sentiment that will be quite evident.

Re:As a data center manager (here comes the math).

[jenkin sear]

It's gotta be a typo - it's gotta be 12 tons, not a 1/2 ton unit.

pixar: 1536 x 922 pixels

[peter303]

Pixar mentioned that number for a few of their movies.

Re:Synopsis

[dswensen]

A little sarcasm-deficient I see.

THE JURY IS STILL OUT (Re:A plea to the moderators

[mihalis]

5 years from now, the "extended" DVDs will be all that counts in anyone's book.

So far i think the cinematic cut of FotR works better than the extended DVD, and for TTT it's the other way around (for me).

Sure I love the extras on the first extended edition, but in a lot of cases I thought the essential story still shined through in the leaner cut.

The extra length of the extended editions is a big problem. Balanced against all the extras is the issue of attention span and logistics - for example even at home I tend to not watch the entire extended version of either film in one sitting or even in one day.

Hype Addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco says "Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up."

Sounds like your additicted to the hype, buddy.

Re:Synopsis

[el-spectre]

A friend of mine was really mad because her father told her that Aragorn dies at the end of the book...

He neglected to mention that he dies about 100 years after the war of the ring :)

Re:[Serious] Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved

[makohund]

Tolkien himself nixed the Eru/Iluvatar theory. I do like the ones claiming him to represent either the reader, or the creator. (Not Eru... Tolkien himself.)

But I think my favorite (and the one that makes the most sense to me) is the one that claims he is Aule. There's an excellent writeup on that, but don't know where it is at the moment. I think the link someone else gives below probably will have it, though.

The Grey Havens and Into The West

[jhurshman]

Fear not! "The Grey Havens" and "Into The West" are the titles of the last two tracks on the soundtrack. I don't see how anyone who listens to "Into the West" (as you can do at the official site) can imagine that this is a "happy Hollywood ending."

Try 1200 Hours of footage!

[Moekandu]

Actually, 7:1 raw footage to finished product is considered the holy grail for indie/low budget films.

Remember that the raw footage starts at tape roll, slate, waiting for everyone settle (waiting for the car to pass, airplane noise, annoying office worker on the phone, clumsy PA, etc), then "Action" through "Cut" and then a 3 or 5 second count before you stop the camera.

Most bigger budget films are in the 20 or 30:1 range. Action sequences can chew up a lot of film simply because of the number of 1 or 2 second shots used, with all of their above overhead. Also, directors in general are running more camera angles and more takes than they have in the past.

On the two indie shorts projects I've directed, I'm running about 10:1. I also ended up with between 100 and 120 camera setups for a 22 minute film. That's a bit more than most amateurs and a bit less than a lot of pros. I actually called for 182 camera setups on my last project, but had to scale down because we simply didn't have the time to get that many shots. In retrospect, I know I could have used our second camera more effectively to get those additional shots at the expense of more footage. Thank god I'm a digital boy, or this filmmaking stuff would be damn expensive!

Try this experiment one of these days: Pay attention to the commercials you see on TV. Count the number of cuts they make in 30 seconds. The resulting number will suprise you.

Now, Peter Jackson shot over 5 million feet of film for the three movies. That translates to approximately 1200 hours of footage. Or, a bit less than 100:1.

Do I consider that excessive? Well, um... no, not really. Oh, okay it was a bit excessive in some places, like the Arwen/Nazgul horse chase scene, but that was actually one of the second unit directors.

Moekandu

2K, standard film rez, most likely

[kdogg765]

Usually film frames is rendered to 2048x1556, as a 10-bit log cineon file (about 12.1MB per frame).

-K

Re: earning it's [sic] hype

[akahige]

Lord of the Rings is not like other books. The greatness of the book cannot be distilled into a simple plot of ring is found, ring journeys, ring is destroyed.

If you think this description somehow characterizes The Lord of the Rings as something unique, then you apparently don't read much. The greatness of ANY great work cannot be reduced to a simplistic list of plot elements. It isn't the individual elements, it's the execution that makes something great (or not).


The book is an epic tale with multiple plot lines, and MUST be taken in as an overall story.

Again, that hardly makes it unique. Name one -- just one -- epic tale without multiple plotlines.

Perhaps what you mean to say is that the various published books that comprise The Lord of the Rings (even though JRRT wrote it as one story) must be considered as a complete and overall story when making a three part adaptation? In that case, you simply don't understand the needs and requirements of dramatic structure.

The object of the story is the destruction of the ring. The thing that makes it great is the fact that Tolkien doesn't treat the object of the story as the entire point of the story. He spends time commenting on the "human" condition, on the nature of duty, honor, and friendship, and the destruction of a rural, pastoral way of life in favor of an age of industry. And, it being a book, he has all the space in the world to do just that. If you want all of those things, read the book. If you want a distillation of as many of the things that Tolkien addressed as can be included in a thorough and respectful adaptation to another medium, then you'd be hard pressed to find a better shepherd of original material than Peter Jackson and company. You will note that I said thorough not slavish . Slavish adaptation -- meaning that which doesn't take into account the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the target medium -- will doom a project just as readily as if you entirely abandoned the original work.


This book is the progenitor of the fantasy genre, and those of us who loved the book long before the movies were even on the drawing board recognize the overall importance of it in its entirety.

The Lord of the Rings may be the progenitor of modern D&D-type quest fantasy, but it is most definitely NOT the point of origin for the whole genre. Frankly, Tolkien would be embarrassed by the legions of crap that has been spawned in his image (Terry Goodkind, David Eddings, anyone?), but then you could probably say that about any pioneering author who's been endlessly knocked off.

Article isn't quite right... By a long shot.

[�nertia]

I've worked at Weta, and I know for a fact that the wired article isn't right. Hopefully I'm not breaking NDA, but I can tell you that the minimum number of frames for a shot aint 240 (less) and the longest aint 2 days (more).

Just take the specs with a pinch of salt.

Re:As a data center manager (here comes the math).

[Overzeetop]

Actually, that appears to be 1000lbs-mass worth of cooling hardware. That's 31 slugs, give or take, for those considering non-terrestrial applications and are American or are thinking of designing with 19th century units just for fun.

While I'm suspicious that a 1000lb-m unit can pump 10T-30T of heat, if you discount the heat exchanger it's entirely possible. A 25T roof mounted heat exchanger, for example, may run from 2000-10000 pounds in weight, but the fan-coil unit rarely weights more than a few hundred pounds.

The Faramir / Boromir dynamic

[UpnAtom]

... is the one I found more fascinating than any other in the books.

Faramir is kind and selfless whereas Boromir is brave but shortsighted, with an ego that overshadows even Dubya's.

Boromir is favoured by their father and has all the glory, but in the end, he puts his people and, indeed, the whole of Middle Earth at risk, whereas Faramir helps save them.

In life you can choose to help yourself or help others. Sometimes you can do both, but most of the time you have to make choices.

Tolkien also shows that neither choice is inherently more difficult - Faramir is born that way as much as Boromir is.

Most of you know who fares better in the end and I wonder how realistic that is.

South Park

[willtsmith]

I'd like to see the gang at South Park do another Lord of the Rings episode. This time, the kids get Big Gay Al to play Tom Bombadil. He would wear Tom's exact outfit and say all of Tom's lines. This is the only practical way to portray Tom Bombadil ;-)

BTW, Tom was kinda smooshed into treebeard in Two Towers: EE. Old Man Willow also makes a cameo (transplanted to Fangorn). And Frodo and Pippin talk about the Old Forest bordering the shire and living trees.

In this way, Treebeard effectively does everything that Bombadil does expect give swords to hobbits. Treebeard saves Merry and Pippin twice (Tom saves the Hobbits twice). He saves them from a hungry Orc and from Old Man Willow. Bombadil and Treebeard have virtually identical roles. They are elder spirits in Middle Earth. They are among those who are first awakened. Treebeard is a gaurdian of the forest, same for Tom.

Re:[Serious] Re:The Mystery of Tom Bombadil Solved

[Number14]

One possibility (as put forth here: What is Tom Bombadil? ) is that Tom Bombadil was the spirit of Middle Earth. Note that there are Nature spirits- Goldberry is basically a river spirit. She stays near her river and that's all well and good.
Tom, then, is the Nature spirit of all of middle earth. Thus was he first- he awake when the world was made, before the Ainur entered into it, before any of the Firstborn awoke.

It's as compelling as any other theory- I don't think he fits as a Maia, and too frivolous to be Eru.

Re:Synopsis

[Feanturi]

Condensing that into one movie (and I bet you'd prefer it to be only 90mins long) would be futile.

It's been done, Ralph Bakshi has already taught us what futility looks like.

Istari story is very important

[eamonman]

From the standpoint of the movies, the Saruman plot is finished, over, and done with. The seven minute scene you refer to is NOT important to the overall plot of the move: getting the ring to Mordor. You can argue all you want, but I remember hearing the same things when people complained about the removal of Tom from the Fellowship.

I don't know about you, but after reading the books (even after the nth time nowadays), this scene was/is very striking and powerful. The fact that Saruman had been finally been cornered, the revealing of Gandalf as white to him, the shattering of his staff, the realization of the evils of the palantir, and even the slinking away of Wormtounge... I mean, those images (in my mind at least) are very powerful. I realize that putting the Istari plotline would be far too time consuming (you'd start having to deal with Silmarillion history) It's just that after thousands of years of existance, the order of the wizards was finally changed with Gandalf taking the head of the group. This can be potentially used as a 'building up' piece, to let people know how unbelevably powerful Sauron is, rather than just showing us the angry cat's eye and some huge giant armored thing swatting soldiers around (FOTR). Showing the audiences how powerful these characters are can help to just accentuate the disparity of power between Sauron and a weak Frodo. That greater appreciation (and depth in story) makes things more powerful to the audience.

It's too bad that we just have time to hint at the second age... It would have been great if there was time to cover the light of the trees; Melkor; the powerful ancient elves. I for one would be more interested in seeing a history that covered the Second age... but that will probably not happen for a long time :( Someone should really make a short miniseries on it. I mean, they had all those primetime live action fatasy tales on NBC a few years ago, why not take the best parts of the Silmarillion and the lost tales?

In any case, Tom Bombadil was an interesting sidenote that was skipped but made sense (Tom always stayed independent of the rest of the world, therefore skipping him was not a problem).

Re:weta liquid: still not released iinto open sour

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been open source for over a year now.
Source and binaries available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/liquidmaya/

gollum outtakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend the feature on Gollum in TTT EE DVD.

There are a couple of outtakes, where the rendering software went astray. In one, he has long purple spikes radiating out of his head while he is talking. In the other, his eyeballs would pop out of his head and hover in front of his face, then pop back in.

Pretty funny stuff.

Hype

[AlternateSyndicate]

Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.

Even if it does suck, people here will still proudly proclaim that it's the greatest movie and movie series of all time.

In the real world, The Matrix was a better film than Fellowship of the Ring, the sequels to each film sucked equally, and I'm about 97% sure that Matrix: Revolutions is a better movie than RotK will be. (RotK will certainly have better acting, though)

Perhaps I can see reality because I don't base my perceptions on what "karma" I'll get for them.

"yeah, what they said"...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's pretty funny that there's so much cool shit in wired magazine that whenever a new issue comes out, slashdot has to space their coverage of the stories out over a couple of weeks so the site doesn't look like the wired fanboard for a little while. it seems kind of silly, as a subscriber to the magazine, to see yet another new reference to something in wired that wired published at least ten days ago. i'm sure that quite a few slashdot readers, and at least a few of the people that run it, are subscribers and perhaps feel the same way.

really, since the interests of slashdot readers and wired readers are so similar, slashdot should just have a single post when a new issue comes out that mentions some of the coolest highlights highlights that month. (i realize that some of the content of wired's website isn't in their magazine, but generally all of the best stuff gets printed, and, coincidentally, it also happens to be what is mentioned most on slashdot.)

Re:The guy is called...

[Captain_Chaos]

OK, which asshole modded me down? You're the same guy who spelled Saruman's name as Sauruman, aren't you?

The actual quote...

[grgyle]

...is from Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune) "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."