Am I the only one...

[rj_anderson]

...who was distracted by weird and inappropriate thoughts during the movie, such as the bit where Sam and Frodo first appear in their orc-garb complete with clunky face-covering helmets, where I had to suppress a snicker because the only thing I could think of was "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" I also found myself noticing very much when the actors playing the hobbits were clearly on their knees (such as Pippin looking out over the battlements at Minas Tirith, with Gandalf standing behind him) and when the hobbits seen from a distance were clearly child body doubles for the actors. And I don't usually notice or care about such things, so it does seem to indicate a certain lack of engagement with the movie on my part.

Oh, there were bits that were incredibly moving -- I teared up and sniffled at least two or three times, over things like the signal fires and Pippin's song intercut with Faramir's hopeless charge and the armies of Rohan riding off to battle crying "Death!" (um, that was what they were crying, right? It was hard to be quite sure. But anyway, I still got misty-eyed.) And Sean Astin as Sam was utterly perfect, as was Miranda Otto's Eowyn, and I really liked Billy Boyd's Pippin this time, whereas I'd always just found him annoying before. Oh, and Shelob was possibly the scariest thing I've ever seen on film -- I nearly broke my husband's hand with squeezing it, and several times I had to shut my eyes.

But the problem with all the LotR movies for me, including and perhaps especially this one, was that all those big battle scenes just leave me numb. There's just too much sound and fury going on, and it's happening far too fast, with far too many people involved, for me to feel as though I have a stake in it all. Not to mention that in the earlier movies, character development was sacrificed for action to the extent that I didn't have a sense of identification with many of the characters anyway. If I hadn't known from the books which characters I cared about and why, I think it would have been even harder for me to connect to the movie. As it was, I got a visceral thrill out of the encounter between Eowyn and the Witch-King, which I thought was magnificently done, but the rest of the battle? Whatever.

Also, there were parts that just left me scratching my head. Why bother to throw in an apocryphal bit where Merry tells Pippin that Sauron thinks he has the ring, if for the rest of the movie Pippin is not going to experience any added threat or danger whatsoever? And what was all that nonsense with Elrond telling Aragorn that Arwen's life is tied to the fate of the Ring? Why would Arwen be more affected by the Ring's power than any other elf in Middle-Earth? And weren't the stakes quite high enough already, without throwing an "oh, and your girlfriend's going to die if you don't defeat Sauron" into the mix?

Mind you, even with those quibbles, it's not as though I have some idea of another director who would do a better job of LotR than Peter Jackson did. And it's certainly not as though I think I could do a better job myself. If I think of the movies as exceptionally elaborate illustrations for the books, they're pretty amazing. But the fact remains that I really don't have any desire to sit down and watch any of them again. I want to see the scenes in the extended versions that I didn't see in the theatre; I expect I'll be sitting in front of my VCR one of these days with my thumb on the fast-forward button, doing just that. But my desire to start over again from the beginning of the first film and watch the saga patiently through to its end, as a true fan of the movies would do, is nil.

What I do find myself wanting to do again is read the books.

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

...who was irritated (indeed to the point of leaning over and whispering to my husband, "Tolkien is cartwheeling in his grave right now") by the idea of Aragorn not merely walking the Paths of the Dead in order to bring help to the armies at Minas Tirith, but actually coming back with an army of dead people who supernaturally won the battle for them? Like, what was that?

I've been rereading ROTK and haven't quite reached the bit about the Paths of the Dead -- but isn't it understood that the dead army (the oathbreakers) helped Aragorn and the Grey Company seize the Corsairs of Umbar? So PJ essentially moved that action of the dead to the fight at Minas Tirith, which strikes me as less of an abomination than, say, Elves at Helm's Deep.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just re-edited the message because I realized that the Dead were in RotK after all -- they just didn't play as large and definitive a role as PJ assigned to them. Nor, I think, were they so conspicuously gruesome. I think Jackson's horror-movie background got the better of him (again) here...

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd certainly agree that it wasn't the most well-executed part of ROTK. The special effects there were a bit too POTC for me--and I'm one of the rare people on LJ who wasn't a huge fan of that movie.

[meril.livejournal.com]

No, you weren't. What I actually was thinking is potentially too embarrassing to be posting over in your journal, but if you saw my review on my blog you'd probably have the idea of it.

I kept wishing that I was reading the books too.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Sam and Frodo first appear in their orc-garb complete with clunky face-covering helmets, where I had to suppress a snicker because the only thing I could think of was "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

While I was watching the movie, I leaned over to my friend and said, "Aren't you a little short for an orc?" And on the other side of her, a split second later, her husband said the same thing. You aren't alone with the Star Wars brain. ;)

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

[theatresm.livejournal.com]

...who was distracted by weird and inappropriate thoughts during the movie, such as the bit where Sam and Frodo first appear in their orc-garb complete with clunky face-covering helmets, where I had to suppress a snicker because the only thing I could think of was "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

*Oh-Eee-Oh -- Yoh-Oh! (cut to shot of the Cowardly Lion's tail swinging out from the bottom of the guard's stolen uniform*

It's aaaaaaalllll been done before.

Sorry. Wiz of Oz is my point of ref, not Star Wars.

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

I also felt disconnected from the battle scenes. I thought they were well done, but I didn't feel much tension or even sympathy for the little CGI men dying - I felt much more concerned over Helm's Deep.

Also, since the Arwen thing is so perplexing - I was reading discussions in which people who remember a lot more about LOTR than me wrote out trivia, and one person pointed out that in the books Elrond's condition on Aragorn getting Arwen is his becoming the King of the Southern and Northern kingdoms, and I thought maybe it was some kind of weird shout out to that?

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

Totally agree about the threats to Pippin and Arwen - if you're going to do it, it has to make sense and there has to be some sort of dramatic tension. Perhaps that's in the EE. :)

I do respond to battle scenes, myself, in several different ways - maybe it's having a budding military historian for a son, but the techniques interest me, and at the same time the slaughter (even if it's of little CGI people) sickens me - I suppose it's a matter of identifying with one of those little guys. And I thought the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was very well done (much better than the Helms Deep one), moving fast enough to be engaging but comprehensively enough that you could figure out what was going on. And it's not like you could get away with skipping the battle; it's pretty important in the book too.

But the Arwen thing was just weird, yeah. Who cares if she dies if everyone else does too? Especially as she hasn't engaged us much as a character up to that point, aside from looking pretty and speaking Elvish very nicely.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Well, Elrond does. The Fate Of The World is undeniably important, but sometimes it's someone you know personally being in direct danger is what really brings it home. Perhaps he thought Aragorn needed poking. (One hopes that even if some viewers were not particularly taken with her, Aragorn was, and it's rather obvious Elrond was fond of her.)

Or maybe what he meant to convey was, "She's chosen the mortal path as my brother did, refused to go to the Grey Havens, and basically sentenced herself to death sooner or later, and it's all for you. You'd better make yourself and the world worth it!"

[ann-mcn.livejournal.com]

The Smeagol/Deagol scene at the start of ROTK wasn't one that grabbed me emotionally; that is not a criticism, I think the scene was good and just right, but I did not care about either of the characters there, unlike the start of the two earlier films. That detachment stayed with me for a long while, but the charge of the Rohirrim as they cried "Death" had me weeping.

I will gladly rewatch all three films in extended edition, but the books are still the best.

BTW, I've just setup a Livejournal account, and added you to my list of friends, if you don't mind.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I've just setup a Livejournal account, and added you to my list of friends, if you don't mind.

Not at all! Thank you very much!

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

No, not at all. In fact, I found the whole movie disengaging, yet exhausting. I literally went home and fell asleep afterwards.

The last movie that left me that way was The Phantom Menace, my Least Favourite Movie Ever.

It's not a good association.

Truth is, I kept looking at all the pretty scenery and thinking, "Yes, if I made Curse of Chalion, it would look something like that..." and mentally scouting locations in New South Wales and Victoria.

Although I liked Faramir a lot better, this time around. Even unconscious, David Wenham looks good doused in oil... *refrains from really awful "light my fire" jokes*

[jamesbow.livejournal.com]

A couple of times. Like, when Elrond came to Aragorn to deliver Anduril, I half-expected him to say, "this is from my daughter" and kiss him, followed with, "and this is from me," and punch him in the nose. But the scene that had me quoting Monty Python was Aragorn riding up to the Black Gates and calling out Sauron. Big words. What's he going to do if the Black Gates *don't* open? "Sauron's father was a hamster, and his mother smelled of elderberries!" :-)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

*giggles*