Biggest apprehensions to FOTR and the other two

[Kyote Fields]

These are the things that keep me up nights wondering if they'll royaly screw-up this movie.

1. Arwen. I'll really miss the "You shall have neither me nor the ring!" at the end of the flight to the ford. This "Come and get him!" stuff I don't buy. I wish they would have stuck with the love story that Tolkien wrote for those two. It's really beautifull.

2.Sam Austin. I don't know if he can burst into tears at the drop of a hat. I hope that by him not calling Frodo "Master" that it doesn't interfere with the great loyalty that makes their companionship strong enough to carry the ring through Mordor.

3.Sauron getting impaled. What the ****!!! Are there any redeeming values to this?!??!

4.Lurtz. He does't look as Orcish as the other pictures I've seen (could be because he's made by Sauron and they all look like that). I just hope he dosen't have any huge monolgues or anything like that. And along with Lurtz I read that Sauron's Orcs were going to be birthed all "Alien" style - out of eggs. I saw that the sign for the Orcs is going to be a spider. I pray they don't try to make some connection between Orcs and Shelob.

5.The scouring of the Shire. If it's still going to be in ROTK then why kill off Sauron?

In any case I will thoughly enjoy watching these movies because I've decided to see them as stories in and of themselves that closley resemble a little story I once read called "Lord of the Rings"

So what do y'all think will ruin these movies?

[Wayfarer]

"1. Arwen. I'll really miss the "You shall have neither me nor the ring!" at the end of the flight to the ford. This "Come and get him!" stuff I don't buy. I wish they would have stuck with the love story that Tolkien wrote for those two. It's really beautifull."

Amen.

"2.Sam Austin. I don't know if he can burst into tears at the drop of a hat. I hope that by him not calling Frodo "Master" that it doesn't interfere with the great loyalty that makes their companionship strong enough to carry the ring through Mordor."

I doubt that will be a problem.

"3.Sauron getting impaled. What the ****!!! Are there any redeeming values to this?!??!"

Sauron getting impaled might ot be a terrible thing. But I hear it was saruman. Maybe he falls and is impaled on some strange part of sandyman's mill?

"4.Lurtz. He does't look as Orcish as the other pictures I've seen (could be because he's made by Sauron and they all look like that). I just hope he dosen't have any huge monolgues or anything like that. And along with Lurtz I read that Sauron's Orcs were going to be birthed all "Alien" style - out of eggs. I saw that the sign for the Orcs is going to be a spider. I pray they don't try to make some connection between Orcs and Shelob."

Lurtz is just crappy addition. The ugluk/grishnakh rivalry was much better than this.

Pod orcs are... how do i put this delicatley... 'a pointless and unesscesarry addition'?

As for the spider... there was a major orcish encampment in the tower of Cirith Ungol. The Spider's Pass. I can imagine a spider standard for them.

"5.The scouring of the Shire. If it's still going to be in ROTK then why kill off Sauron?'

Saruman! Saruman!

"In any case I will thoughly enjoy watching these movies because I've decided to see them as stories in and of themselves that closley resemble a little story I once read called "Lord of the Rings"

Bah!


So what do y'all think will ruin these movies?

One Word: 'Xen-Arwen'

Two more words: 'Artistic Liscense'

[Darth Tater]

Wayfarer, do the world and favor and calm down. You haven't seen the movie yet, wait till you see it before passing judgement.

[Wayfarer]

You... Right...


...Must...have...medication!...

*/begins to giggle maniacally.

[samwise of the shire]

Oh come on you wet blankets, like Tater said loosen up but I'm going nuts too so maybe we should find some of the actors and bombard them with questions Wayfarer.
And you DO have to admit that some of the scenery is BEAUTIFUL, Rivendell is BREATHTAKING and Lothlorien is just.....mmmmmmmmmm. And a couple of kids at my church saw the preview at Harry Potter and freaked out over it, apparently the Balrog scares Frodo half to death and it scared the kid half to death so I'm looking foward to it.
And I dont care if "Master"is in any of Sams dialogue just as long as he his loyal and would follow Frodo to the ends of the earth. And I think that the problems in the Scouring Of The Shire will be caused by Lotho or maybe someone who has a grudge against carrot and cabbage snatching hobbits.
Sam

[IronParrot]

I'd take a risk-taking interpretation over an adaptation enslaved by the source material any day.

It doesn't matter how well something works in the book. It's already been said that this film is being done from the perspective of a historical epic. Nobody complained in Braveheart when the Battle of Stirling Bridge became simply the Battle of Stirling (open field, no bridge) in the most memorable sequence in the film, or in The Sound of Music when the timeframe between Maria's arrival and the Anschluss was compressed by several years.

True faith in adaptation lies in appropriate tone, mood and sweeping themes, not the details. Cutting the Scouring of the Shire is a major setback to how the theme of the corruption of innocence is approached, but from a film storytelling perspective it's almost a necessity. And if Arwen wasn't at the Fords of Bruinen, where else would they put her? She needs to be expanded in order to make the Aragorn-Arwen romance plausible, simply because the movie doesn't have the luxury of an Appendix A.

Anyway, we'll see about all this when the film is released... but I will see it from a purely filmmaking/filmwatching perspective. At least, I'll try.

[arynetrek]

been thinking about this since i was last here (about a week & a half ago) - how to include more of JRRT's world into the movies, but still make a good (maybe even salable) movie. if this was a straight-to-DVD it might be possible, include the appendices w/the miles of commentary they're so fond of putting on DVDs, but for a movie theater? hmm...

i'm making myself wait until the movie comes out before i judge it - i know, on Old Entmoot i ranted a lot about what they're doing to these precious books, but i want to enjoy the movie for what it is, if i can. right now my main interest/concern is how two certain actors play two certain human roles.

aryne *

[Bjarki]

Given the contraints of making a movie on this scale, isn't it actually more remarkable how few changes Peter Jackson has apparently made to the story. Many books emerge almost unrecognisable when transferred to the screen. You only have to read Tolkien's letters relating to the screenplay he received in the 50s to see that by comparison Peter Jackson has been almost slavishly faithful to the original by Hollywood standards. When you consider that Miramax wanted him to condense the whole thing down to one two-hour film, the fact that New Line were prepared to let him run to three films with a total running time of c.9 hours (probably more for the DVD) and stump up $300M for the privilege ought perhaps to warrant at least a small cheer! When you add in the immense care that seems to have been taken to get so many details 'right', I think that we can at least give him the benefit of the doubt on the changes until we have seen the result.

As far as the death of Saruman is concerned, I seem to remember reading recently that Peter Jackson has actually shot two versions of this: one, as in the book, where Wormtongue cuts Saruman's throat, and another where Saruman is impaled on a millwheel or something similar. The reason given for this, is that there was a concern that the throatcutting scene would be too violent, bloody, whatever to allow the film to achieve its essential PG rating (a condition of New Line's financing of the films). I don't know if this is true, though it sounds plausible. Unfortunately we may have to wait another two years to find out.

[Pailan]

I wonder if it's me or just the photos I have seen. Lurtz looks an awfull lot like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. But I expect to be very impressed on December 19.

Pailan