LOTR
 

What? No Lord of the Rings talk on Cellar? I'm dissapointed.

Actually, I couldn't bring myself to see it. I'm taking an enormous amount of flack from my peers because they forced me to see the first movie when it was released in the theaters. When we walked out, my opinion of it wasn't praising it to high heaven, so I was treated as an outcast in the local geek community. Oh, no!

Now, I never read the books -- it is really rare that I can read or watch anything that has various classes, species, and a caste system for elves, dwarfs, and fairies. Since I don't know what the books are like, maybe that is why I didn't enjoy the movie.

I sat for three hours, watching what my friends proclaimed to be a masterpiece of a film and prompty fell asleep for the last 45 minutes of it. How can anyone sit that long for a movie?

The final movie, I've been told, is 3 hours, 40 minutes. Sheesh. I work in IT and sit all damn day. I simply can't bring myself to sit another four hours!

I saw it last night with my gf and a friend...

We all agreed on one thing : TOO DAMN LONG!

I won't spoil anything, but the movie is 'over' at least 40 minutes before it 'ends'. There is a lot of "Oh look they're hugging and reunited....awww" People in the theater were laughing whenever the screen faded to black and instead of the credits yet another scene showed up. The ending is tediously painfull, people were walking out in packs at that point.

Overall I'd say that the movie could have been easily cut down by at least an hour and a half. Lots of "Look at the cool castle!" scenes and pathetic attempts to draw some emotion from the audience.

Overall, had to see it I suppose. Not at all impressed. Wished I rented it so that I could have had a nice food/drink break in the middle.

What really scares me is that the 'directors cut' will probably include an additional hour of footage...ugh

I am in disbelief that many people called in sick, today, to go see the marathon. Yep -- all three movies in a row with short intermission breaks inbetween and more than ten hours of sitting with your feet glued to the floor by some spilled soda.

More than ten hours of staring at movies with buttery popcorn and sugary soda. Please tell me that no one with young children went to see this set -- crying babies will be murdered where they sit.

Heh.. I can't imagine sitting through all three. (I like the books and liked the first two moveis; I plan to see the third this weekend.) What really amuses me about the whole business is the way LOTR has become mainstream thanks to the movies, when, back during my salad days, association with any of that fantasy stuff was considered the height of nerdity. Oh, well, maybe it just means we're all nerds now.

Nah we're not ALL nerds till they start making movies based on Asimov and Clarke books....real SciFi not the A.I. "I'm a kid!" bullshit.

Considering that it's that long WITHOUT including the most critical part of the third book (the Scouring of the Shire), I'll pass.

Nah if the Shire was wasted then they couldn't have had the 1 hour ending showing the jolly halflings drinking beer in the shire

I'm gonna go but I am disturbed that the Shire will not be molested. There is a great lesson in that part of the story about the effect of war on the home front but we'd hate to confront that today, wouldn't we?

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I like the books too much to watch their movie adaptations. Even with ten hours and three movies to play with, I know I'll feel like I'm watching Lynch's "Dune" all over again -- seeing a stream of identifiable scenes and situations from the books, but missing out on the extraordinary (and unfilmable) level of detail that made the books excel in the first place.

Hell, I'm still waiting for an authentic "Fletch" movie. LOTR is several orders of magnitude more complex than that.

Sorry to disappoint OnyxCougar but from what I hear Peter Jackson never filmed the Scourging of the Shire, as he never liked that chapter, so it won't be in the extended version. Saruman will be in the extended version, though.

I went and saw it yesterday. I have to say I liked it - for what it was. I'm a huge fan of the books. And I'm also a huge fan of the movies - but I consider the movies Jackson's interpretations of the books. I have really tried to keep them separate.

I'm neither a huge fan of the books nor the movies.

When I saw the Two Towers, I was really enthused and thought it was awesome, but I thought about it the next day and I decided that it seemed too thin. I was also disappointed that the 'big thing' of the movie, Helms Deep, was hardly even mentioned in the book (I did manage to find that chapter, though!).

I stopped reading The Return of the King about fifty pages after the Ring was destroyed. Aragorn and whomever walked through a garden for nearly all of those fifty pages, and I became bored.

I didn't see The Matrix Revolutions, I have no plans to see The Return of the King (although I might see it), and I will not see Star Wars 3. Does that make me a heretic?

--
Griff: Perhaps people will witness the Scouring of the Shire when they read the books -- although that limits it to the people who can/will read.

Re: LOTR
 

Actually, you may be disappointed, but you shouldn't be surprised. Nobody said anything about Matrix Revolutions for quite a while, until Elspode started a thread entitled "Isn't Anyone Going to Say Anything About Matrix Revolutions?".

I thought Return of the King was <i>the</i> coolest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. It's a perfect 10 in my book.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wait a minute...I haven't seen the movie yet but the big complaint about it is that it's long??? WTF people? When you jump in a swimming pool do you complain that it's wet? You go to a movie that you know is longer than most double features and what? You're surprised by its length? People are frigin' weird...
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Me? I like a long movie. Probably why I own as many anime series as movies. Length adds a lot of character development, as well as a sense of familiarity. Though, I think it should be a given that a lot of the scenes simply aren't necessary.

YAY Dune!
Lynch mangled it, but you have to admit the damn thing couldn't have been done right in less than 10 - 11 hours. So the stupid Sci Fi did it in a mini-series and fucked it up again! Grrrrrrrrrr. The later books would make righteous movies.

I really like David Lynch's Dune ... with this caveat. I like it as a David Lynch film, but NOT as an adaptation of Dune.

But I think it was way better than the SciFi Channel's miniseries of suck.

I have previously ranted on my dislike of the books, but was told by several people that the movies were a different experience, and that I should watch them just for the special effects, etc.

Seems as though they were wrong.

I tried to watch LOTR:FOTR last night.

I became bored and fell asleep, apparently at a fairly exciting bit (that big battle in the castle and 2/3 of the way through).

I did like the way that they handled the ringwraiths, though. Cool. Almost could feel the evil oozing off them.

I am forging ahead, despite my rising gorge, and increasing boredom.

Finished LOTR: TTO last night.

Might not proceed with LOTR: ROTK until late Sunday or early next week. One of my coworkers reviewed it by saying "I just had to look away. There was just too much killin'!"

Johnson is not one to be put off by too much killin' usually, so I'm mildly intrigued.

As with FOTR, there was one bit that stood out as being cool ... you know when Isengard is being set upon by the ents, and they let the dam go, and there's that one ent that had burst into open flame and he runs up to the rushing waters and sticks his head in? That was cool.

Unfortunately, given that the movie is about three hours long, 3 seconds of really cool doesn't cut it.

I never found the movie length to be a problem. I really liked the book series and I liked the movies fairly accurate interpretation of it. Some liberties were taken (especially in the second one) but overall the length of the movie was justified by the amount of material in the books. Did any one read the books but hate the movies? I find it hard to hate a movie for its length, although I have read some books that definitely needed serious trims for the movies (*cough, cough* Tom Clancy *cough, cough*).

I hated the books too.

I like all three movies and I'm a sucker for epic pre-modern weapon battles, especially when there's clever battle tactics or nicely choreographed weapon-play used. (Troy had some NICE ones). I also like the story itself. I plan on taking a Saturday and watching all three movies at once, but not in the theater, oh no. Marathon will happen in the comfort of my living room, with a heapin' pile of chinese food, maybe a rack of ribs in the oven and some cornbread, and enough generic fruit punch soda to swim in. Oh yes, with a pause button and my own private bathroom. :D

When RoTK cam out in theaters, ten of us went to New Orleans and did all three in one day.

We left the house at ten in the morning and came back at two AM.

FoTR: extended version
one hour intemission
TT: extended version
one hour intermission, free pizza
RoTK lite

We got dollar refills on the large drinks, dollar hotdogs, pass on a lanyard and a small statue with a couple of film cels in it.

All that for the bargain price of 25 USD.

All that for the bargain price of 25 USD.

That would have cost me my sanity. How do you not develop deep vein thrombosis and suffer a stroke from sitting that long? What, out of curiosity, encouraged you to sit for that long to watch that many hours of movie in a row?

1) I've read the books once a year for, well, quite a long time,
2) Sitting a long time, in the dark, doesn't bother me, I'm in IT,
3) I'd waited the above-mentioned quite a long time for the movies to come out,
4) I enjoyed the movies with their changes, mistakes and all,
5) Some movies you have to see in the theater,
6) I'm a masochist.

I bought the dvd of RoTK, left it on the kitchen counter for 2 days planning on watching it asap. jinx didnt want to watch it when i did, so i waited.....now my kids have hijacked it, and 3 weeks later, it's still missing. damn kids.

I'm waiting for the extended version to come out before I actually pay for it.

Getting up for food/drink/bathroom breaks keeps the blood moving! :sweat:

All three movies were really cool, but I definiitely agree that they were too long

Not me. I'm waiting for the extended version of ROTK.
:corn::corn:

how long is that going to be?

5 hours long.

He said the theatrical release was a 3 and a half hour trailer for the extended release DVD.

Now THAT is interesting

Okay, so which film was the best one? I personally liked the 3rd the best, and that was always my favourite book. I'm really hoping they fix the disjointed pseudo-endings in the extended edition, and I suppose it's too much to hope to see the scouring, but all in all, I felt RotK captured Middle Earth in a way that the first 2 didn't. I didn't much like TT, it felt kind of sluggish. FotR was amazing when I first saw it, but the polish on RotK just kind of took the luster out of it.

I personally like HP better. And while were on series, the other two Matrices sucked

My order of favorites is 3-1-2 (oddly, the reverse of my Star Wars order). I'd say that the most annoying departures from Tolkien were in The Two Towers: Treebeard being tricked into fighting, Gimli being a walking joke, and Faramir dragging Frodo, Sam, and Gollum into that ridiculous encounter with the Nazgul.

yeah, i liked the 3rd one the best

A-fucking-men. Gimli was always my favourite character, and while I enjoyed the banter he and Legolas had throughout the film, I was fucking pissed that he was chosen as the comic relief character, especially in TT. I mean, isn't that what Merry and Pippin were meant to be, at least through until near the end. Gimli was a whirling ball of bladed death, I could care less if he was a "natural sprinter".

Yeah the movies def. were somethin else.. but would have been heavenly if they had done it right and made 4 so that they could tell the full tale that is encompassed within the books. But aside from the first Harry Potter (not a fan but i respect it), these were definitley the best book to film adaptations i have seen in a while.

FYI, Peter Jackson is making a remake of King Kong and then going back to making The Hobbit , that's what I heard.