Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

I saw it... I wanted to believe it was just a rumor at first, but when I saw it on both scifi.com and on CNN (television, not internet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ), a few things happened. First I screamed, "NOOOOOO!!!!!!!". Then I went into the fetal position, and tried to think happy thoughts about Star Wars. Then I tried to console myself by saying, "Hey, maybe they'll die!". Then I remembered that Jar Jar is going to be in this one too, and I went back into the fetal position. Then I said, "Screw Star Wars, it's over. Lord of the Rings rules!". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> (from scifi.com)
It's official: Lucasfilm has confirmed rumors that boy band N'Sync will appear briefly in George Lucas' upcoming Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones, according to reports on TheForce.net and E! Online. It's not clear which members of the popular band have cameos in the movie, a Lucasfilm spokesperson told MTV. The popsters will be seen for a fleeting moment in a "big scene with lots of extras," the spokesperson said.

It's also unclear why Lucas agreed to include the band. The New York Post reported that Lucas acceded to a request from his pre-teen daughters, who are big fans of the band. But Lucasfilm representative Lynn Hale told E! Online that Lucas' daughters "didn't have anything to do with it" and that the band's members, who are big Star Wars fans, asked producer Rick McCallum if they could appear in Episode II.

<hr></blockquote>

As far as I can tell, they're just going to be background. I don't see anything about "Jedi Masters" or a new song.

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

Well, it does sorta make sense:
attack of the clones -&gt; attack of the boy bands
where boybands = clones

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

i think that was attack of the clowns

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

This is what I love about this forum...I don't even have to leave it to find discussions on other interesting topics. lol

I simply ADORED this movie. For the most part, I don't remember anything I read of the first two books, so there was nothing to compare it to. As a Tolkien newb, I found it to be an excellent movie that left me full of wonder and awe...something I haven't experienced with a movie for many moons.

One thing this movie made me realize was how bitter a taste the Phantom Menace left in my mouth. Lucas is definitely losing it if someone with half a dozen movies to his resume can outdo him. I saw the trailers for Attack of the Clowns, too, and it was pretty weak. It's sad when you start rooting for the bad guys (when you're not supposed to http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).

Q for the book readers: I don't know if anyone saw the animated Version; my girlfriend showed the Lord of the Rings to me after the movie. Some of the parts were eerily similar (e.g., the ringwraiths standing over the beds)...was the animation an influence on the movie or was Tolkien that accurate in the descriptions that two directors would see it the same way?

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

I'm a big fan of the books, and have read them many times, so here was my reaction to the movie after seeing it Last week:

First thing is: Good Movie! I enjoyed it very much, although I found myself being a little over-critical of changes from the book. Thinking more about it after the viewing, though, most of the changes were necessary when bringing it into a movie format without making it a 7-hour feature. A few other odd points are discussed below.

Parts I liked:

• The scenery. Great mountain and forest scenes, and I liked the river. They definitely helped to give the movie mood and flavor.
• Good depiction of the Nazgul. Both while black riders and when revealed as Frodo put on the ring.
• Overall adherence to the characters, the plotline, and most important elements. Some things were cut for time, but they kept all the important elements of the plot and the quest and even the ending of the first part (although they did include the orc battle which is really in the second book).

Items they changed that worked well for the film:

• Sequence. I liked the way they told things as they happened (Gandalf's imprisonment in Orthanc), instead of just hearing about it all later on. Although the book's method added to the suspense of not knowing where he was or why he was missing.
• Arwen being Frodo's elf rescuer instead of Glorfindel. For a movie audience, the fewer characters, the better. Glorfindel was the son of Elrond, but plays no other part in the tale. To introduce Arwen at this point makes sense, and even to introduce the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen, otherwise audiences are likely to be confused at the end of the 3rd movie when Aragorn weds Arwen. The Last time I read the series, I did the same thing. It was like "Where did that come from? I don't remember them having a previous relationship."
• Compression of time. The movie wasn't hung up on days and dates and lengths of time, at least not like the books were. They didn't give the impression that Gandalf had been away for 25 years between the leaving of Bilbo and Frodo, but I guess that time gap was not really that significant, except to show that Frodo had also not aged with the Ring.

Stuff they changed that I wasn't so sure about:

• The "Sword that was Broken". Well, first Strider shows up with a sword that looked just fine. Then in Rivendell they showed the broken sword but really made no reference to it's prophecy concerning the returning King, only to it's history as the weapon that cut the ring off Sauron's hand. They did not show any re-forging, and Aragorn certainly had a sword for the rest of the movie, but I couldn't tell whether it was his original "normal" sword, or the broken Narsil reforged as Anduril. If you're not going to follow through, why introduce the Sword that was broken? And if you introduce it, why don't you follow through with the rest of the prophecy? Perhaps they will revisit this in a later film.
• The escape from Moria: what was with that gap in the stairway? That was NOT in the book, but maybe it should have been, because it gives us such memorable lines as "Nobody throws a Dwarf!" and "Lean this way." (...so our 200 pound bodies can effect the balance of a 2000-ton rock stairway.) What a joke.
• The attack at Weathertop. A little long and dramatic, and what's with Frodo not stabbing the Nazgul King? I guess they couldn't say that any weapon that touched the Nazgul was destroyed if they were then going to have Strider attack them with his sword (which was supposed to be BROKEN. hmmm, maybe some of these are related...)
• Saruman. A visible enemy is better than an invisible one, so I do like how they played up his role (or at least the VISIBILITY of his role in this first book). Ultimately we learn that Saruman is in league with Sauron, but isn't his real purpose to have the One Ring for himself? I just looked it up, and on p341 says "...Saruman was mustering a great force on his own account, in rivalry of Sauron and not in his service yet." The movie plays it like he is just a pawn of Sauron, creating an army for him and sending troops to capture the Ring. Maybe they'll deal with that differently in the second movie.
• And what was with the Wizard Battle? The book simply says: "They took me and they set me alone on the pinnacle of Orthanc." I guess you gotta spice it up a bit for the movie, or maybe Gandalf was embarrassed at being whomped by Saruman and didn't tell the complete story at the Council of Elrond. (NOW we find out the truth...)
• Singing and stories. Obviously, you can't include it ALL, but at least you could put SOMETHING in. They only reference at ALL to singing or poems was in Lorien, as the elves were singing (behind the dialog) about the fall of Gandalf.

Other comments:

• Leaving out the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-downs made sense, because you could remove it as an entire unit and leave the adventure as a whole mostly unchanged. They only change they had to make was Strider bringing the hobbits their swords. It works, but it removes the significance of the weapons and their effect upon the Nazgul, which wasn't a problem because Frodo didn't use his on Weathertop! (I wonder if Merry will use his on the battlefield in book 3).
• The Ring itself "wanting to go back to its master." I simply got a much stronger impression of this in the movie than reading the books. Maybe I just missed it while reading; I always assumed that when Frodo's hand "crept toward the ring" that it was the power of the Nazgul or the Unblinking Eye and not the Ring itself willing Frodo to wield it.
• The 4 hobbits leaving the shire. Didn't it seem like Merry and Pippin were "accidental companions?" In the book, they were aware of the Ring, the quest, the danger, and made a conscious choice to accompany Frodo and Sam. Not at all the same in the movie. It's like "Whoops, hello! Quiet, there's a Black Rider! Hey, goin' my way?"
• Battle scenes. These were OK. Very well filmed and FX'ed, but I didn't come away saying, "Man, did you see those battle scenes!" The Orc-chieftan in Moria (or rock-troll, if that's what it was), also, was very drawn out, with an over-dramatic "death" scene where he stabbed Frodo.

You should also check out www.movie-mistakes.com. They've got some pretty funny mistakes, including a CAR driving by in the background of one of the scenes, a bouncing rubber Frodo on the horse as Arwen charges across the river, and a "dead" orc lifting his head to watch Strider run by at the end of the movie.

Despite some of these criticisms, I did enjoy the movie very much, and play to see it again soon. I did get to the theater late and miss the first few minutes, though. Was it just a retelling of the story of the Ring? I arrived as they showed Gollum under the mountain and Bilbo finding the Ring. Did I miss much?

[edited UBB code]

[ 08 January 2002: Message edited by: MegaTrain ]</p>

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by MegaTrain:
Despite some of these criticisms, I did enjoy the movie very much, and play to see it again soon. I did get to the theater late and miss the first few minutes, though. Was it just a retelling of the story of the Ring? I arrived as they showed Gollum under the mountain and Bilbo finding the Ring. Did I miss much?

[edited UBB code]

[ 08 January 2002: Message edited by: MegaTrain ]<hr></blockquote>

The first few minutes was Galadriel narrating a little background. There was the whole "The world is changed" introduction, which some people just HAD to ruin by saying "They did that for the terrorist attacks!" (It was in the movie long before that, not everything has to be about suicidal maniacs diving planes into buildings...). Then, it tells of the forging of the Three, Seven, and Nine rings for the Elves, Dwarves, and Men; and the trechery of Sauron in forging the One Ring. Next was a mini battle sequence, showing the Elves and Men marching to Mordor, almost defeating Sauron's armies, then Sauron himself comes out (There's a comment below something to the effect of, "So THAT's what a +200 magic weapon looks like"). Isulder takes a swing at Sauron with the broken sword, cuts off the hand with the Ring, and there's a cool explosion of light that knocks everyone over, and Sauron's empty helmet falls to the ground. After that, it shows a brief sequence of the Orc ambush that killed Isulder and the Ring falling to the bottom of a stream, and it's finding by Gollum. Then you entered the theatre and saw the rest http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And to answer the question, no, you didn't really miss much except the cool FX in the mini battle scene. It was mainly an introduction for those poor souls who haven't read the books yet (I have a one-volume of the trilogy, and a boxed set of the trilogy + hobbit; the one-volume, the hobbit, and the fellowship are all lent out, two towers probably will be lent out in a week... I'm doing my part to help those who have lived in the darkness for so long http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Q for the book readers: I don't know if anyone saw the animated Version; my girlfriend showed the Lord of the Rings to me after the movie. Some of the parts were eerily similar (e.g., the ringwraiths standing over the beds)...was the animation an influence on the movie or was Tolkien that accurate in the descriptions that two directors would see it the same way?<hr></blockquote>

Tolkien wrote incredibly detailed descriptions in his books. That's part of what makes his books so great.

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

Great analysis, Megatrain! A pic of the epic battle scene you missed is at:
http://www.theforce.net/rouser/revie...-fight-big.jpg

For those of you interested in the CG of it, each of the warriors had a primitive AI...within a proprietary program, the agents would "...respond based on rules that use fuzzy values to approximate the way people make decisions", according to Computer Graphics World; "...thousands of warriors that, once set loose on a battlefield, would find an enemy, pick a fight, and fight to the death." They could even tell what type of ground they were standing on and when to strike, like an exposed front when the enemy hefted his weapon overhead, for example.

I had no idea they created the equivalent of a mini-game just for the battle sequences.

zen

Re: Off Forum - Lord of the Rings
 

Written by MegaTrain:

"Glorfindel was the son of Elrond, but plays no other part in the tale."

Where did you get this from? Glorfindel was in no way Elrond's son. He was a very powerful Noldorian prince from the first age. I'm almost sure he was also older than Elrond, most likely more powerful as well.

I'm sorry for this nitpicking...

You had vey good points in your review. I hated the Uruk-hai thing though. It wasn't included in the books nowhere near in the way it was presented in the movie. My opinion is that the whole super-orc thing was meant for stupid and illiterate people who just wanted to have some badass guy to whack head of in the end of the first movie.