The Best and Worst Movies of 2003?

rufey asks: "As 2003 comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to ask Slashdot what they thought the best and worst movie of 2003 was, and why. At the beginning of the year there was excitement about parts 2 and 3 of The Matrix triology, X-Men 2, and of course, LOTR: Return of the King. In Slashdot's opinion, what did and didn't live up to the hype and expectations, and were there any surprises?"

Comments

I'd have to say

[mOoZik]

Master and commander!

Re:Surprises

[danmitchell]

I dont think I ever respected Murray as an actor before - though I've thought him to be a fantastic comedian - but this movie showed that he actually had the ability to evoke complex emotion.

What, you've never seen Rushmore? Murray won several awards for his performance in that wonderful film.

Re:Best I've seen

[MillionthMonkey]

Haven't seen RotK yet. Hopefully it'll be better than The Two Towers.

I went to see RoTK yesterday. Not knowing what sort of crowd to expect, my wife and I arrived 90 mins early for a 3:15 showing, and traded tickets for the 2:15 showing once we noticed (at 2 PM) that the 3:15 line was longer than the 2:15 line!

I was waiting for it to start, and remember some guy two rows behind me muttering about third movies sucking. "I hope it doesn't suck, because it's the third movie, and the third Matrix movie sucked. So this is probably going to suck." Heh heh, dumbass.

I liked the Two Towers more than FoTR, and I liked this even better. It has everything in it that made the Two Towers enjoyable, plus more stuff. I don't consider myself a Tolkien weenie, since I've only read the book once and that was ten years ago when I was in college. So I can sometimes remember something not being in the book, and it irks me when I see deviations from the book, but if they work in the movie then I don't care.

PRO:

• The battle scenes. The battle for Minas Tirith in RoTK makes the battle for Helm's Deep in the Two Towers look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The orc army has new beasts and bigger war machines. More varied creatures and men take part in the fighting. More vehicles are used to get there. More people are killed by being carried into the air and dropped from great heights. Larger objects are smashed into castle doors. The Minas Tirith scene is the most amazing battle scene in the history of cinema. (Its only rival is Spartacus, since Kubrick didn't have CGI.) It is a triumph of production design. See it in the theater if you don't have a sixty inch screen.
• Gollum continues to become more of a conniving rat bastard. You get to see Andy Serkis in person as Smeagol (with Deagol) at the beginning of the movie, and you see his deterioration into Gollum explained without the need for any cringe-inducing narration. Although it seemed a bit hurried and I have a vague feeling that the Extended Edition DVD will contain a lot of scenes that were cut from here.
• Shelob is well done, exactly as I remember picturing her from the book. Jackson could have really messed this one up, too, as do many attempts at giant spiders in movies. Shelob was a mere highlight here, but that alone could have been enough material for a movie. Just think of all the stupid movies devoted to a single special effect like Godzilla.
• The signal fire scene. Watch a single bit of information travel across mountaintops all the way from Gondor to Rohan. Remarkably well filmed, and will surely help New Zealand's tourism industry.
• The volcano scene. I know the lava is all CGI, who cares. The atmosphere here and in the rest of Mordor is spot on. (Although I was bothered by the way [a certain major character] sinks into the lava. I'm pretty sure he would float. And show signs of being affected by the heat.) But it was really touching, seeing Gollum briefly reunited with his precious. I've never seen such a happy face in my whole life. It gives me the creeps now just remembering that happy face.

CON:

• The Aragorn/Arwen/Elrond subplot continues on its course as a slow motion train wreck through all three films. These include the Liv Tyler scenes that you use to check your watch.
• Legolas's required stunt scene retains the pornographic character it has in every movie. While they are extremely enjoyable, after you see them you feel stupid for having enjoyed them so much. But I have to admit that this movie has by far the best Legolas stunt scene of all three movies.
• Sauraman is already dead. He died an implied death in the movie you already saw last year. Put him out of your mind. Unless, that is, greedy executives at New Line Cinema apply pressure on Jackson to make a Scouring of the Shire "wedge sequel". You could fit the whole thing right in there as

Re:Ug..

[perlchild]

LOTR:ROTK and the rest of the series were in a rather tight bind, they had to respect the books enough(and the most-sold ever set of books of fiction in english literature kinda deserves a little). They also had to fit 5 books(in three volumes) into a three-movie set(and cut enough stuff to make it fit in the time constraints). They managed to alienate the true purists by cutting essential scenes from the movies, yet make it a wide-audience series that generated wide interest.

The cutting out of Tom Bombadil, for one example, was a perfect example of mass-marketing(it would helped to understand the world of Tolkien better, the mythology, and the role the Ring had with regards to the powers that be). It didn't include a fight scene, and the potential for special effects was minimal, so it was cut. The equivalent part with Galadriel, which served the same purpose, but to understand the relationship between the Elves' head honchos and the ring, didn't include a fight scene, but had more special effects/pizazz potential, was kept. I imagine that Saruman's invasion of The Shire(my term for it) was cut because it was hard getting that many male hobbits in uniform as to compose two opposing army units.

As for the books not standing out on their own, you're kinda missing the point... The books already are a hit, the idea is to translate the books into visual medium, for a different audience(how many people do you know would buy, then read a set of 3 800 page volumes? ), not make a related, but different product.