[HPFGU-Movie] Re: Oscars, HP Directors!

[Shannon]

At 03:28 PM 3/2/2002 -0500, Vin wrote:


>    1- I'm sorry to be the one to point it out to all the fanatical LOTR
fans, but about 45 minutes of the movie was 
>travelling of some sort. Introducing the Hobbits, walking along the
mountains, etc..

Well, at its most surface level, LOTR is the story of a quest.  They spent
most of the first of it traveling. They have to, if they want to complete
their quest.

>    2- Yes, I know it was written that way, but the movie explains nothing
about the plot. NOTHING, We as viewers see essentially a 3 hour promotional
video for the ring. ring this, ring that. We see no storyline at all. I had
one person trying to tell me that the story was the storyline of the group
of warriors (sorry, the name slips my toungue at the moment),

The Fellowship. And they weren't warriors...only one or two of them could
rightly be called a warrior.  

> and how they form to protect the ring but how the ring breaks this group
up. Now, just as a for instance of the LACK
> of communciation and any worthy plotline in the movie. 'cept for the
setup of the rings, The warrior(forgive me, i
> forget his name, but he was head of the clan of warriors who were
decimated protecting the borders), HATED and
> LOATHED the idea of using the hobbits to protect the ring. Then, they
climb the mountains, and without AN explination he is suddenly playing with
the Hobbits and teaching them to fight. Then, on the other side of the
mountain he suddenly hates them again. And there is NO communication to
explain anything at all. 

Boromir...Steward of Gondor. He did not hate the hobbits.  He wanted to use
the ring, not destroy it, but was overruled at the Council of Elrond.  He
went on the quest as a representative of Gondor.  If there was any enmity
at all, it was for Aragorn. As for the hobbits, he was very fond of them,
Merry and Pippin especially (and the movie shows this, as they are the ones
he is teaching to fight).  The ring corrupts him, which is easier because
of the misgivings that he already has. So when he attacks Frodo it's not
because he dislikes him, but because he's succumbed to the lure of the
ring.  Galadriel warns Frodo of this.  And Boromir, at the last, realizes
how badly he miscalculated the danger and that he is wrong, both about the
ring and about Aragorn, and is redeemed. He dies trying to protect the
hobbits. (Don't anyone get me started on my "Boromir was NOT a villain!"
rant).


>There is a seriously large lack of a storyline here. Maybe it's because of
the way I was taught, but as I was lead to >understand it, a story consists
of three parts, without which it is not complete.The three parts being: A
beginning(or >buildup), a climax, and an ending. As I said before, this
movie felt like a 3 hour promotional video for the ring, all >buildup. No
climax, no ending. The way the movie was filmed, it should then have been
released as they were tlaking 
>about releasing HP 4- that is, one movie a month for three months. 

Well, it IS a trilogy...the story is far from over.  The first part of the
story is the forming and breaking of the Fellowship.  It's not going to end
as neatly as movies usually do because the end is still two years away.
The storyline *is* there, and consistent with both the overarching story
(the quest to destroy the One Ring before Sauron can recover it and cast
Middle Earth back into Shadow), and for the smaller story of the
Fellowship.  Sam and Frodo are on their own now...Merry and Pippin are
carried off.  Boromir & Gandalf dead.  The initial plan is in ruins, and
the remainders of the Fellowship must regroup and carry on.  It's a
convenient lull in which to end the movie...more satisfying than when the
first book ends, actually.  And it left me salivating for The Two Towers.


>I know a lot of LOTR fans will probably want to flame me for this post; I
sincerely hope that you can at least send an >intelligent response back
through HPGFU-Movie instead of feeling the need to flame my email address.
Also, I would
>wish that anyone wishing to respond to this letter also stop for a moment
and try to take a very objective viewpoint. 

I have a quite objective viewpoint.  I didn't read the books until the end
of last year and the beginning of this year. My aunt has tried to get me to
read it for 20 years, but I could never get into it. I wanted to; there was
a story in there that I could sense and that I knew I would love, if I
could just find it.  The movie brought it to vivid life for me.  I totally
understand your comment about Tolkien's writing style, it's dense and a
very difficult, tiresome read. But the movie is breathtaking.  One two
minute scene, in which Merry & Pippin are incredulous that Aragorn doesn't
know about 'second breakfastes' or 'elevensies' sums up pages and pages
Tolkien used to establish that yes, the hobbits quite like to eat. :)


>   1- It is a complete story. See abov,e but this has a buildup, a climax,
and an ending. I feel walking out of the movie that I actually saw a movie
that I could enjoy, and that had at least some sense of completion.

I suppose this is just a matter of taste. I walked out of LOTR thinking "Oh
my God. How will I survive until next Christmas?" not "I can't believe it
ended like that, what kind of ending is that??"

>since, now onto my 4th time straight and the first with the british
versions). But I was able to understand the setup, >see most of the hints
that the movie dropped, and enjoy my experience. All, while walking away
wanting more- because 
>they told a story with a lot of buildup for 70% of the movie, offhand,
climax and ending the movie for about  25% of the movie, and left enough
questions unanswered so as to leave us wanting more at the end of the
movie(the remaining 5% of the flick). That is how a setup movie should be
done, IMO. And I know as I stated above, they were meant to be one
novel/film. Well, if so, they should have been released as such. 
>

See, this is one of the reasons I hate when people compare HP and LOTR.  As
you correctly pointed out, LOTR was intended as one novel by Tolkien.  HP
was intended as a seven part series.  You say that LOTR should have been
one movie if it was just one book.  Well...let's look at this logically.
The first HP book is, what, about 300 pages?  LOTR, as an entire novel,
would run about 1000 pages.  Then there is the scope of the two books.  HP
concerns three children and a handful of other characters and takes place
almost entirely in one location.  LOTR involves, off the top of my head, no
less than 20 major characters, traversing the whole of Middle Earth from
the hobbits in the idyllic, peaceful shire, through the forests of the
elves, into the mountains of the dwarves, across Rohan and Gondor and into
the wasteland of Mordor.  To condense such an epic story into something
that would fit into a 3 hour film would be to cut out nearly everything
about it that makes it resonate.  Having not read the books, you don't
realize how much of even the first ~300 pager was left out.  Tom Bombadil,
the barrow wights, the Old Forest, most of Bree, about half of
Lothlorien...it would be a disaster to try to make the entire story one
movie (and Peter Jackson had an offer to do just that, and refused. he was
prepared to sacrifice his chance to do the project altogether rather than
destroy it like that).  It is an epic...HP is not.  The two movies, as far
as I am concerned, cannot be compared.

This is not to imply that I didn't love HP.  I did.  I think they adapted
the book as well as they possibly could have done.  My complaints for that
movie, like my complaints for LOTR, are virtually non existent.  I simply
don't think that they are two movies that can be fairly compared.  There is
just too much of a fundamental difference between them.

Shannon
who got tired halfway through this post and wonders how much sense it
makes... :)