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

Nothing New Here

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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

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.

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: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: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: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 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.

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

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.

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

[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

[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.

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: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: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.

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.

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)

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.