View Poll Results: What did you think of Lords of the Rings

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  • Best Movie of the Century

    5 12.50%
  • Best Movie of the Year

    19 47.50%
  • Best Movie ever made

    4 10.00%
  • The Phatom Menace was better

    2 5.00%
  • The book was better

    9 22.50%
  • Straight to Video trash

    1 2.50%
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Thread: Lords of the Rings - What did you think

  1. #16
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    Eowyn has already been cast, so her part is there for sure

    Also I look forward to the next two movies...heard on an E! bit last ngiht that many of the Rider's of Rohan are women with beards on. LOL!
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  2. #17
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    You're joking right?
    Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
    Fell deed awake: fire and slaughter!
    Spear shall be shaken, shields be splintered,
    a sword-day, a red-day, ere the sun rises!
    Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

    Theoden King: The Return of the King

  3. #18
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    They didn't have enough male riders available to play the extras for the giant battle scenes, so they had to glue beards on female riders for the long shots
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  4. #19
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    Phew...sigh of relief.
    Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
    Fell deed awake: fire and slaughter!
    Spear shall be shaken, shields be splintered,
    a sword-day, a red-day, ere the sun rises!
    Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

    Theoden King: The Return of the King

  5. #20
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    About Galadriel: it was very true to the way it was described in the book, so...
    Nope. All the wrong parts were cut out (IMO of course). For instance, the way Galadriel showed Frodo the mirror. For lack of explanations or counsels from her (counsels she gives in the books), it almost looked as if she were taunting him to look into it, then laughed at his distress afterwards. Call this true to the book? I don't.
    Then there is the "what would be if I took the ring" part. In the book, we are gently lead to understand how wise she is. How powerful too. This makes her menace all the more believable. The film may be true to what she actually says at that moment in the book, but nothing leads us to it, so it just looks silly. Pity, too, because the special effects were nicely done ... it's just that I couldn't force myself to believe it. I was just wondering: <I>If she is evil, why doesn't she actually take the ring? Since she isn't </I>(as we all know)<I>, why does she act like that?</I> I shouldn't have had to ask myself those questions.
    This is really my bigest complaint about the film. As the company left Lothorien, I was still wondering why it (and specially Galadriel) had failed to impress me as (the keeper of) one of the last remaining bastions of hope in middle-earth. Wondering why PJ filmed it that way.

    About Bree ... well, depends on what you want to show ... Tolkien managed to show how ill fitted for such a quest the four Hobbits were long before Bree ... granted, PJ didn't have as much time, but I still think Bree could have been truer to it's book counterpart.

    Frodo's wound? Well, it's not much, but I thought it rather silly of Aragorn to leave the Hobbits alone like that. I don't know why anything needed to be changed to that scene, it seemed already highly cinematic to me as it was in the book. Come to think of it, in the book, they took care not to stay on open ground while traveling to weathertop, whereas the film shows them a nicely in sight a few times before they reach weathertop. Nice panorama on screen, true, but a bit silly also. Oh, and I'd have liked a little bit more of the Trolls . All right, all right, I'm just an old fart or something. When you've read LOTR fifteen or sixteen times (and the Silmarillon three or four times), there are things you can't help .

    I agree that there'll be a bigger role for Eomer and Theoden in The Two Towers, but Eowyn will probably get cut to give Arwen a dramatic role in the final battle against the Nazgul in Return of the King.
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  6. #21
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    Ok,

    Bree, I thought the way it was done had a very medieval feel to it. Which is the general level of most human towns and cities in Middle-Earth IMHO

    The Wizards Duel, I thought this was well done the first time I saw it. Because it wasn't what you expected in a Wizards Duel, no flashy spells, no incantations...Just two wizards trying to kill each other. It was the magical equivalent to two warriors going at each other with long swords.

    Although I have yet to reach that part of the story, but if they do the Arwen-Eowyn thing I think that will ruin alot of the story. I mean she was destined to kill the Which-King not Arwen. I liked Arwen in the movie and if they want to enlarge her part, fine. Just don't do it at the expense of another great character.

  7. #22
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    This Eowyn will make way for Arwen thing seems strange to me.

    Why should PJ do that? Glorfindel was removed because, face it, he (or she?) is totally irrelevant for the rest of the story. Whereas Arwen, Strider's true love, plays an important, though not particularly prominent, role.

    Talk about fans panicking for no good reason.
    No power in the 'verse can stop me.

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  8. #23
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    Originally posted by Phantom
    I think it was only you Michael...Could be wrong of course.

    I have to disagree with you on the negative points. I thought everything was tremendously done. After seeing for my second time with some friends one of them mentioned he was going to see it again as well, and do a little nit-picking. I asked why, as the problems that do exist are so insignificant to be almost non-existant. I thought that the panoramic shots were some of the best parts of the movie, they gave it the epic scope that the books convey and they also show that NZ is probably one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
    I agree that's it's a beaut of a place, been there, loved it greatly, it was just the speed and scope they used. A good deal of the people I was with reported the same quasi-nausea. I'm certainly not claiming it was like Blair Witch, it was just enough that it bothered my (admittedly weak) eyes.


    The close-ups of the ring. OK, maybe they did do too many of them, didn't notice until I thought about it just now.
    I dunno, by half way through the movie I was like, "For crying out loud, you stupid Hobbit, put it away! It's EVIL. Pulling it out is like begging it to go off!" In the books he did play with it quite a bit, but he didn't just leave it in his hand, flat, out for anyone to grab... Or at least not that often. Jeez.

    Gollum=ET?

    I wholeheartedly agree with you on the positive points.
    Yeah, ET. He looked like ET. I saw him, and I thought, "ET."

    I'm not saying I hated the movie, I didn't. I really liked it. I'm just not gonna pay to go see it again, I'd rather re-read the book, and when it comes out to Video/DVD, I'll buy it then.

    I think my mistake was re-reading the series before I went to go see it. Normally, when there's a book-and-movie, if I've read the book, I just don't go. If I've not read the book, I go see it, and then read the book. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone held pretty true to the book, and I enjoyed it on the silver screen, and ditto Lord of the Rings. That's pretty rare for a book I have read before seeing the movie, I just didn't walk out of either going "Wooooah."

    The Doc
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    Dance a Tango to Hell,
    at least I'll have Tangoed at all.'
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  9. #24
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    Originally posted by Joe Dizzy
    This Eowyn will make way for Arwen thing seems strange to me.

    Why should PJ do that? Glorfindel was removed because, face it, he (or she?) is totally irrelevant for the rest of the story. Whereas Arwen, Strider's true love, plays an important, though not particularly prominent, role.

    Talk about fans panicking for no good reason.
    But isn't that a good reason for Arwen to play a bigger role than in the books. She's Aragon's true love and she appeared for a few paragraphs in Fellowship of the Ring then didn't reappear until Return of the King to marry Aragon. So she should be given an expanded role so that the audience won't loose sight of her. She appeared for about fifteen minutes in Fellowship, going by the book she won't appear in Two Towers and will only appear again in the last ten/twenty minutes of Return of the King. Write out the principle love interest from approximately six hours of the movie...too difficult to contemplate. So while Eowyn is set to appear will she play a prominent role in the death of the Wraith King, well we have to wait and see. Just remember, you heard it here first.
    Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
    Fell deed awake: fire and slaughter!
    Spear shall be shaken, shields be splintered,
    a sword-day, a red-day, ere the sun rises!
    Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

    Theoden King: The Return of the King

  10. #25
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    Eowyn is in the house...

    Just visited lordoftherings.net. They have Miranda Otto portraying Eowyn "niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer."

    That would seem to indicate Eowyn still has a large part to play in the movie as she did in the book, otherwise why include her?
    AKA Breschau of Livonia (mainly rpg forums)
    Gaming blog 19thlevel

  11. #26
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    The shards of Narsil have not yet been reforged into Anduril. (Aragorn's sword has a rounded pommel, very different from the distinctive triangular pommel of Narsil.) When Anduril is reforged, Arwen will probably bring it to Aragorn. That's how they'll keep her involved in the story.

    Why wasn't the sword reforged before the Fellowship set out? Because Narsil was a symbol of the path that Elrond said Aragorn had turned from, the path to the throne of Gondor. When Boromir died, Aragorn swore to protect Gondor, so he has just turned back to that path. As he embraces his kingship, he'll want the heirloom sword of Isildur, and who better to return it to him than Arwen.

    I wonder if Arwen will join Aragorn on the Paths of the Dead.
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  12. #27
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    Something else I forgot to mention: Did you notice Aragorn strapping Boromir's leather bracer to his forearm after Boromir's death? Boromir's bracer bore a white tree, the emblem of Gondor. By putting it on, Aragorn is proclaiming to the world that he is the rightful heir of Gondor.

    I'm not sure why PJ thought Aragorn would have turned away from his heritage, but it is an interesting vision of the character.
    + &lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;<

    Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. Psalm 144:1

  13. #28
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    Originally posted by Sarge
    Something else I forgot to mention: Did you notice Aragorn strapping Boromir's leather bracer to his forearm after Boromir's death? Boromir's bracer bore a white tree, the emblem of Gondor. By putting it on, Aragorn is proclaiming to the world that he is the rightful heir of Gondor.

    I'm not sure why PJ thought Aragorn would have turned away from his heritage, but it is an interesting vision of the character.
    Hey someone else noticed that Aragon didn't have the broken sword with him.

    IMO its obvious that Aragon had turned his back on his heritage. He's the rightful King of Gondor yet he's content to wander the world as a ranger and leaving Gondor under the control of a viceroy, the Steward. Go figure huh.

    Its also a good redemption story, Aragon is forced to confront such things as the burden of leadership (after Gandalf's death) and confronting the statues of his ancestors (I agree that do look like they're singing Stop in the Name of Love ) and ultimately the faith of one man who didn't originally think he was King.
    Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
    Fell deed awake: fire and slaughter!
    Spear shall be shaken, shields be splintered,
    a sword-day, a red-day, ere the sun rises!
    Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

    Theoden King: The Return of the King

  14. #29
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    While Jackson makes Aragorn's "fear of kingship" explicit, I do believe that was indeed Tolkien's intent. According to either the Simarillion or the Book of Lost Tales (forget which - I've only really flipped through both of them, never read them in their entirety) Aragorn spent some time in Gondor under another identity (one of many it would seem). Given he has a legal claim to the throne, it would seem he was nervous about claiming that right. Quite likely he recalls the last time a king of Arthedain tried to claim the throne of Gondor, after a marriage briefly united those two kingdoms shortly before the fall of Arthedain.
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  15. #30
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    Thumbs up I laughed, I cried, I cheered!

    Despite some minor quibbles with character interpretation (Galadriel) and plot changes (Narsil/Anduril not being re-forged, and the break neck chase out of the Shire), I was thoroughly impressed and amazed by the film.

    Two thumbs up (and two big toes too).

    Steve

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