PJ talks about the sequels...not good news.

[Snaga]

Ged

You're right. I'd rather have a non-fan with the ability and the money to do a good job, than... Bakshi.

I mean for crying out loud he can't even make up his mind whether its 'Aruman' or 'Saruman'. I am finding hard to type I am laughing so much imagining the posts we would have had if PJ had produced something Bakshi-esque. Total outrage... with a few die hards desperately saying 'Yes but at least we kept Glorfindel...'

Whoops Bakshi changed that to Legolas didn't he. The apostate!!!

 

[Grond]

Originally posted by Variag of Khand
Ged

You're right. I'd rather have a non-fan with the ability and the money to do a good job, than... Bakshi.

I mean for crying out loud he can't even make up his mind whether its 'Aruman' or 'Saruman'. I am finding hard to type I am laughing so much imagining the posts we would have had if PJ had produced something Bakshi-esque. Total outrage... with a few die hards desperately saying 'Yes but at least we kept Glorfindel...'

Whoops Bakshi changed that to Legolas didn't he. The apostate!!!

Of the two, only PJ captured the essence of Middle-earth; unfortunately, he was only slightly more successful in capturing the characters of Middle-earth. It could and should have been better and would have been had he not dickered with the plot line and characters so much. Still, it was a great movie and the next two will be just as good... just not Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

 

[ReadWryt]

Lets be objective here, how much of this lauded "essence of Middle-earth" was due to his wisely hiring two of the best known and most loved illustrators of Tolkien's works to do the Art Direction? Had they hired someone with original ideas who created an equally stunning world that was not as FAMILLIAR to people and not as well associated with Tolkien's writings as Allen Lee then you might well be singing a different tune!

Before these artists the Hildebrandt Brothers were the standard. They had a habbit of portraying Hobbits as looking like 6 year old kids, much like Bakshi's film seemed to do, and if you scratch the surface and examine the design of the rest of the characters you will see definate parallels between them and Greg and Tim Hildebrandt's renditions of the characters, so in a way you could make the argument that the character design of the Bakshi thing was closest to what the Tolkien Community viewed to be the definative look and essence of Middle-earth at that time in much the same way that Allen Lee and John Howe have in recent history.

Bakshi was not well known for his artistic originality, most of his work is derivative if not out and out rip offs of the work of real artists. The movie "Wizards" used character design that ripped off Bode's "Cheech Wizard" with near felonious abandon! And throughout his "Movie" career he continued to display his laziness by insisting on filming live actors playing roles and drawing over them (Rotoscoping), sometimes only painting over them with a wash of water color. When he finally made "Cool World", in which he had actors interacting with "Animated" characters, it was as if he had finally found justification for this "technique" and hoped to prove that it really was a valid way to make "Animation", until "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came along and showed that live humans could be shown interacting with truely animated characters and stole any thunder that Bakshi might have generated. That was when he left Motion Picture for the truely stellar and much lauded and appreciated realm of Saturday Morning Cartoons to do the updated "Mighty Mouse" series...

 

[Grond]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
Lets be objective here, how much of this lauded "essence of Middle-earth" was due to his wisely hiring two of the best known and most loved illustrators of Tolkien's works to do the Art Direction? Had they hired someone with original ideas who created an equally stunning world that was not as FAMILLIAR to people and not as well associated with Tolkien's writings as Allen Lee then you might well be singing a different tune!

Before these artists the Hildebrandt Brothers were the standard. They had a habbit of portraying Hobbits as looking like 6 year old kids, much like Bakshi's film seemed to do, and if you scratch the surface and examine the design of the rest of the characters you will see definate parallels between them and Greg and Tim Hildebrandt's renditions of the characters, so in a way you could make the argument that the character design of the Bakshi thing was closest to what the Tolkien Community viewed to be the definative look and essence of Middle-earth at that time in much the same way that Allen Lee and John Howe have in recent history...

RW, I quite agree... but the visualizations of Middle-earth that I speak of are composed of both the set design and the unique landscape of New Zealand. I applaud PJ's intelligence in hiring Lee and Howe to give the movie it's "feel" of Middle-earth. For me, he was very successful in that mode whereas Bakshi failed miserably. Bakshi's landscape of Middle-earth was one of darkness... and not darkness coming but as in darkness has already arrived. In the Bakshi film it was like Middle-earth's landscapes were already under Sauron's dominion. And I, for one, never approved nor appreciated the Hildebrandt representations of the characters of Middle-earth. I thought that they derived entirely too much from the time of chivalry, which was a parallel that Tolkien himself hated. He never meant for any of his characters to appear Arthurian or medieval. Hey... but that's just my opinion.

 

[PRH]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
When he finally made "Cool World", in which he had actors interacting with "Animated" characters, it was as if he had finally found justification for this "technique" and hoped to prove that it really was a valid way to make "Animation", until "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came along and showed that live humans could be shown interacting with truely animated characters and stole any thunder that Bakshi might have generated.

You make a lot of good points RW. However, just let me point out that Roger Rabbit came out 4 years earlier than Cool World.

 

[son of bilbo]

Does anybody live in Canada?

I was wondering. becuase Canada is cool.

I hope that PJ stays as true to the book as possible, and I hope he doesn't make up some stupid scene and wreck the whole thing. I don't think he will, but. anyhoo

 

[ReadWryt]

This movie doesn't HAVE the "feel of Middle-earth", it has the look of the most recently popular artist's renderings of what Middle-earth would look like if Tolkien had set it in Medieval Europe!! Anybody who is really interested in the differences between Medieval Europe (Peter Jackson's Interpretation) and what Tolkien actually wrote should read the essay at this link by Michael Martinez, the author of "Visualizing Middle-earth"...


http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/tolkien/26924

PRH:
"just let me point out that Roger Rabbit came out 4 years earlier than Cool World."

It DID?? Sheesh, my mental timeline is getting off. I think my Biological Clock needs a new battery!!

 

[lilhobo]

for those that complain about Bakshi's version, i say wait till you see PJ's TTT without guidance from Bakshi and you will see how closely PJ ripped Bakshi's version in the FOTR for the better !!!

every time Pj diverged from the Bakshi's version he flopped!!! eg. developing Aragon as late as Amon hen was totaly useless (why 3 hobbits would follow a molestor into wild is beyond me)

did the "luncheons, and elvenses" speech seem funny to anyone??? "noone throws a dwarf" was an australian colloquialism that we understood, but did anyone else find it funny??

Just to make everyone aware of the fact but Bakshi was hamstrung by money and time constraints.....you can really tell by the time in Moria! they didnt even have enough ink to give poor Pippin his hair color!

Is rotoscopy an indication for laziness??? i doubt it in Bakshi's LOTR, the attention to detail and the articulate body language and hand movements is extraordinary eg. note what hand movement Gandlaf makes when he tells Gimli of balin's death!

Yes, Baskshi cut corners latter with so much rotoscopy to save money but it would have worked if he animated the "good" guys and rotoscoped the "bad" guys

Also regarding the appearance of ME??? by the time of Saruman, his wizardry would have made the appearance and atmosphere darker! Pj just made a mistake of making Rivendell wooden!!! LothLorien was wooden, the other elven stronghold would have been better off made of marble to make it grander.

in reality it was just a rushed adventure movie without any atmosphere!!! Rivendell looked crap, lothlorien looked crap, Moria looked crap, only Minas Tirith looked promising and we had so little!!

Orthanc just passed the test and the Dark Tower looked like the telephone pole out the front door!

All in all, i never felt i was transported into a fantasy world but rather just giving a glimpse of a foreign country that could have been NZ, Canada, Scandinavia as in a tourism video!!!

the more time i see the film the more disappointed i get, to see such a wasted opportunity!!! $US300 = $NZ 600 and we got that???

without bakshi to guide the rest of the books, i have little hope fpr the last to movies

 

[PRH]

Here's another story where PJ talks about Gollum, Shelob, and Helm's Deep:

...While Jackson and Co. are mum on specifics, here are some details EW gleaned about Towers--which will boast about 600 F/X shots (about 80 more than Fellowship). Warning: This may get kinda geeky.

BURDENED BEASTIE

One fave Towers creation is Gollum, former owner and current coveter of the One Ring, who is forced to march Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) to Mount Doom. But Gollum's anti-Hobbit plotting makes him a menace a trois. "It's an unholy trinity,"

Jackson says. "We play psychological games more intensely than the book does." In addition to providing the sticky rasp of the computer-animated Gollum, actor Andy Serkis played his scenes with Wood and Astin while wearing a black Lycra jumpsuit covered with hundreds of pinhead sensors. Serkis' movements were then replicated to become the CGI Gollum. "Andy's physicality is a big part of what Gollum will look like on screen," says exec producer Mark Ordesky.

CREATURE COMFORTS

Quel scandale! Shelob, the she-spider that battles Sam at the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, has been booted to the third movie. "If we started Return of the King after Shelob--the way the books do--there'd be very little for Frodo and Sam to do," says Jackson. Right now, good guy Treebeard, the oldest being in Middle-earth, is getting the final CGI touches on his bark and leaves, with a voice by John Rhys-Davies (who also plays dwarf Gimli). And look for Brad Dourif as creepy Grima Wormtongue, double agent of Saruman (Christopher Lee). "[Brad] doesn't play him as a groveling creature," Lee says. "He kind of slithers along beside me with a soft, husky voice, whispering."

FIGHTING SPIRITS

Jackson has between 15 and 20 hours of footage of the key battle of Helm's Deep, in which an army of elves and humans spar with 10,000 Uruk-hai (those uber-Orcs Saruman created). "Helm's Deep is one of Tolkien's most vivid pieces of prose," Jackson says. "You really feel his blood boiling." What does an army of crazed Uruk-hai sound like? A stadium of Kiwi cricket fans, turns out. In February, Jackson made a half-time appearance at a New Zealand-England match and asked the crowd to beat their chests, march in place, and even perform a tricky bit of dialect work. "There's this Black Speech battle cry the Uruk do," Ordesky says. "We wrote it out phonetically on the Diamond Vision screen and Peter directed 25,000 people going 'Rrwaaa harra farr rrara!"' Which just might translate to "Oscar, please."

 

[Snaga]

ReadWryt

The article you posted was an excellent exposition of why Middle Earth should not be thought of as a mediaeval or feudal society. I am inclined to agree, although I would need to give it some thought.

However his only complaint about the film, based on previewed material (since the article predates the release of the film) is that Bree doesn't have stone-built houses. I think he has picked a valid nit, but I don't view this as interpretative crime of the century. Since in all the 100s of posts noone has yet moaned about the architectural falsity of Bree, I conclude its not on anyone else's mind either.

His fears may be proved right when the next two films emerge, and we get a good view of Rohan and Gondor. There appear to be two ways to err: architecturally, and sociologically. It seems more likely that for example the Golden Hall at Edoras doesn't look especially like a nordic long-hall, than PJ will create lots of feudal vassal-lord relationships.

But surely this is an open question still?

 

[Shadowfax]

maybe, this is a very big maybe, to get a cliff hanger PJ will show a sillouhette of Shelob pouncing on Frodo as Sam starts to run towards him, the screen goes dark. Then they wouldn't be "showing" Shelob, but still having a cliffhanger. (my opinion is that it would be a better cliffhanger if it ended with Sam pounding on the doors of Cirith Ungol, but that's just me)

 

[son of bilbo]

that would be cool. I think pj is nuts cuz there has to be plenty of material in both books to make fully beautiful films.

 

[Grond]

Shadowfax, your scenario has merit but don't forget that Frodo confronts Shelob twice, once in her lair (where he defeats her using the Phial of Galadriel) and once outside her lair after Gollum ambushes Sam and when Frodo runs out of the lair Shelob ambushes him.

I'm convinced the Two Towers will end with the Hobbits lost in the maze of Shelob's Lair and Frodo will use the Phial of Galadriel to give light and they will be confronted with Shelob right in front of them and then... fade to black. But, of course, I'm just guessing.

 

[fantasydude]

in retrospect ,PJ followed TFOTR pretty strictly, with few changes, save the arwen travesty, so before you get your panties in a bunch, lets see what happen, and not enough material? puhleaaze!

 

[Thorin]

Originally posted by fantasydude
in retrospect ,PJ followed TFOTR pretty strictly, with few changes, save the arwen travesty, so before you get your panties in a bunch, lets see what happen

The Arwen travesty (though by far the worst) was the least of the botching that Jackson did....The trip from the Shire to Bree alone was almost unrecognizable from Tolkien and horribly compressed....Bree to Rivendell was badly done (though with the exception of that amazing hobbit line "Back you devils!", Weathertop was done alright.

Boromir fingering the ring on Caradhras, Lurtz, the hobbit shenanigans and Aragorn and Frodo on Amon Hen were all foreign to LoTR. And the list goes on and on and on....

 

[fantasydude]

yeah i guess your right but it was a darn good movie anyhow. well lets see what he screws up in the next one, i wonder...

 

[son of bilbo]

What I'm scared of is that PJ will make up a bunch of dumb scenes that will mess everything up.

I read somewhere that he "Had to write some scenes" because there was simply not enough stuff in the TT. (Which I think is balderdash)

 

[Glaurung]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
Once again I will say it, the penultimate truth about this matter...it's not so much what is being cut as it is what is being INVENTED. On the one hand we keep hearing statements about what has been left out being supported by the Cinematic Time Constraint defence, yet we keep hearing the same sources stating that there are new scenes created for the movies that never existed in the story. Lets face it, this should be refered to as "A film by Peter Jackson, loosely based on a book by J.R.R. Tolkien". It's the hubris of a man who has repeatedly claimed that he was going to be true to the "spirit of Tolkien", yet when it comes down to it the cutting of the scouring is actually self admitted ignorance of Tolkien's spirit, a man who repeatedly claimed he was making no "Major Changes" to the characters yet he displays his liberties with the characters at every turn, and who stated on several occasions that he was shooting all three movies at once, and act which he loved to point out "nobody" had ever performed in the past and yet now he informs us that "which will require "pick up" filming both this year and next, to complete scenes as yet unwritten, to flesh out both TTT and ROTK.". I don't see where he is doing anything but leading people to believe that he is more then he really is, a second rate Horror Movie director trying to do more then he is capable of...

Geez you are so damn critical. I'd really like to hear how you would have brought LOTR to the screen had it been your responsibility. I'm sure that your film would have been absolutely perfect. No, really. Tell me how you would have done it.

 

[ReadWryt]

I'd really like to hear how you would have brought LOTR to the screen had it been your responsibility. I'm sure that your film would have been absolutely perfect. No, really. Tell me how you would have done it.

This is moot. I could, like other directors have done, say ANYTHING that I thought might please you and in the end do as I pleased with the story and characters. My point is that talk is cheap, and Jackson's talk is cheaper still as there is physical evidence in the form of a major released motion picture that continually flies in the face of the things he says. I'm not a movie director, but were I one making this movie I would have been up front from the start and said that changes were being made in characters, that I was inventing whole cloth things that were not in the books and that this was going to be a long project that would require lots of shooting over the course of 3 years, instead of making promotional hay out of claiming that all three were shot at once and that *I* was the first and only person to have done this...

 

[Taran]

Bravo, ReaWryt! Wonderfully said! But I think we should stop bashing PJ. I know the thing he said about not having enough material for TTT was a bunch of (balony). But this is a movie. We still have the true books! The movie is PJ's own cration. It could just as easily be called 'The Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson.'