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mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2494
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 2:45 pm: |     |
A gang of friends went yesterday, and they said the special effects were great, but the plot dragged on. Meanwhile, critics are raving. Anyone been yet? |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 2595
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 3:16 pm: | |
Haven't seen it (yet), but I did have the fast food ...
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Dave Ross
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5973
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 3:24 pm: | |
I saw it, but it was a midnight showing and I got out at 4am and don't remember that much. 
Except for the ending being too long. |
Phil
Citizen
Username: Barleyrooty
Post Number: 728
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 7:31 pm: | |
The ending was indeed too long, but the battles were worth every extra minute of weeping hobbits. It was too melodramatic, but then so were the books! Much better than Two Towers!
I came out feeling like I'd walked all the way to Mt Doom, but very satisfied, like a good meal that leaves you feeling over-full. |
blackcat
Citizen
Username: Blackcat
Post Number: 142
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 22, 2003 - 8:28 am: | |
Went to a late show Saturday night....got there as the movie was starting and had to sit in the very front row. Now we have to go back and see it again because it was really hard to watch at that angle.....but it was great....didn't even realize three and a half hours past! |
Jackie Day
Citizen
Username: Zoesky1
Post Number: 216
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 22, 2003 - 11:56 am: | |
It's all anyone at my office talks about...I won't be able to see it until next weekend, but the guy is the next cubicle over has already seen it four times - including once on opening night. Everyone stops by his cubicle to discuss it, since he's the residence LOTR fanatic. Everyone has pretty much raved about it. |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 791
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 22, 2003 - 1:13 pm: | |
Amazing. Colossal. Stupendous. LOTR supplants Star Wars as the greatest movie trilogy, imho. |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2519
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 29, 2003 - 3:10 pm: | |
i saw it over the weekend and it was amazing. I am going to see it again this week. However, someone sent me this link, if you can believe it:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106818,00.html |
sportsnut
Citizen
Username: Sportsnut
Post Number: 807
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 29, 2003 - 5:09 pm: | |
saw it too. was it really over three hours...didn't notice. |
nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 29, 2003 - 5:50 pm: | |
I took the kid to see it at Essex Green on Saturday. We made sure we had lunch beforehand and made a bunch of trips to the bathroom and got in with three stashed away small bottles of water and bought one huge bag of popcorn and a box of Milk Duds. Drank all the water and ate all the Milk Duds; but never finished the popcorn.
Great movie too!
I was so relieved that this time they did not overdo it on the orch drool. The second one really went over the top on orc drool. There is just so many frothy-mouthed orch a person can stand to see. Especially when eating too much popcorn and Milk Duds.
I agree that the ending was too long and did not make sense and seemed tacked on. What's the Sam getting married thing really all about? And that scene where Sam and Froddo are stranded on the rocks surrounded by Lava. For some reason I kept thinking of people stranded on the top of the World Trade Center. I don't know why. I was so happy when the eagle came and rescued them.
I read the book in the 1970's and I don't remember the ending. Can someone comment how it compares to the movie?
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Hank Zona
Citizen
Username: Hankzona
Post Number: 904
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 8:40 am: | |
Saw the movie last night...it was really good, really well done. The ending does drag sort of, but its nice to have a "cool-down" period too after three hours of battle scenes. The special effects are great, but I have wondered lately with all the use of computer imaging in use in so many movies now, if we are seeing "real images" on the screen. I also read the books ages ago, and having seen all three movies in the trilogy, seemed to recall the details of this last episode best while viewing the movie. As for comparing it to Star Wars, the third (sixth) Star Wars movie with the ewocks was weak and cartoonish, this third installment was the strongest of the three movies.
Will Peter Jackson be given Best Director finally as a cumulative award? Other thoughts...could they have given Viggo Mortensen a hairclip? Is Orlando Bloom more appealing as a blond elf or brown haired pirate? It's interesting too to see how in all these allegorical tales, how much is "borrowed" and how much homage is paid to the books and movies that came before. Id also have liked to have seen the recent showing where all three movies were shown consecutively without edits (was it 14 hours of film I think I read?)...not that I have the time to do it, but to see the sequence of events in one day would be interesting. Finally, I wouldnt take my kids (third and first grade) to see this movie. In a couple of years, they can rent it, or see it on re-release.
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VinnyM
Citizen
Username: Frodo
Post Number: 50
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 10:44 am: | |
Nan-the ending of the movie was pretty consistent with the book. Maybe the ending was a possible opening for a book on Samwise or maybe Tolkein wanted his readers to know that life(not just humans) in Middle Earth went on. |
ril
Citizen
Username: Ril
Post Number: 146
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 1:11 pm: | |
Needs more elves. |
nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1071
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 2:18 pm: | |
Vinny--thanks for the report! I think Hank Zona makes a good point that the ending does provide some kind of cool down period after the battle scenes. It's just not at quite the right pace and with quite the right images. But, still I thought it was a great movie and not too long.
As far as appropriate ages for bringing kids, I think you have to consider the kid more than the age. My second grader (who was a first grader when I took him to see the Two Towers) loves adventure fantasy type material and he was not scared or upset at all--which is more than you can say for me. He laughed when I got all creaped out by Shelob, the spider.
But I have friends with kids the same age that had nightmares after watching the first Harry Potter on tape.
BTW -- there's a funny review of ROTK by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker this week. Here's a bit of it:
". . .The nub of the "The Return of the King" is a ring of simple design but unrivalled potency, which must be destroyed before it falls into the grasp of Sauron--a character so purely villainous that, under union rules, he is played not by an actor but by a single eye, blazing from the top of a tower. Frodo Bagins (Elijah Wood) and his sidekick Sam (Sean Astin) are two-thirds through their appointed mission, which is to bear the ring to Mordor and cast it into the maw of Mount Doom, at which point the power will cut out completely in Michigan, Cleveland, and other parts of Middle-earth up to and including New Jersey." |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2532
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 2:32 pm: | |
Though I read the books years ago, I forgot what happened at the end. I kept waiting for Sam and Frodo to hook up together (they were VERY attached - my gardener - Mr. Gomez - would NEVER take care of me like that), then next thing you know they would have "Queer Hobbit for the Straight Elfs, Wizards and Men" episodes and they would redecorate and redefine the masculinity of Middle Earth. |
ashear
Citizen
Username: Ashear
Post Number: 890
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 10:01 am: | |
Actually, there is a lot more to the ending of the book. The Hobbits return to find that Saruman (who Treebeard allowed to leave his tower) has taken over the Shire, cut down all the trees, and created a facist state. Merry and Pippen lead the Hobbits in a revolt. It is after all this that the stuff in the movie happens. I think Tolken's point is that no one is immune from the evils of the world and that you have to take responsibility for defending yourself from them. The evil in the East had spread to the Shire and, while the Men of the East protected them from the worst, they had to do some of it on their own. I can understand why Jackson would leave all that out (it would have been another 1/2 hour at least) but it did make the end a bit off.
WARNING POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
I was also not crazy about how wimpy he made Arwen. She is not such a limp flower in the books and in the movie it was hard to see why Aragorn would pick her overy Eowyn.
Gandalf was turned into more of a warrior than a wizard. The scene in the book where he confronts the king of the Nazgul at the gate of Minas Tirith would have been great in the movie (wonder if its on the cutting room floor).
The continued Elrond as bitter mean guy thing, which bothered me in the other movies, sitll does.
Denthor is a complicated and tragic figure in the books. In the movie he's just a bitter wacko.
But I regard these largely as quibbles. I enjoyed the movie and thought the scenes outside Minas Tirith were particularly awesome. |
mfpark
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 113
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 12:07 pm: | |
Ashear, I agree with all of your quibbles--excellent points. I hear that the DVD version will restore the Sacking of the Shire by Sharkey ending--supposedly due out in June.
I am thrilled that my 12 year old son already had the idea of running all 3 DVDs in succession one day. Bring on the popcorn and no bathroom breaks (I never saw Aragorn jump behind a bush)! |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 2025
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Friday, January 2, 2004 - 7:25 am: | |
This website offers some insights into what the nine companions were thinking on the quest.
http://anghara.envy.nu/Diaries.html#Top |
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