2000 AD Online Forum

the old threads disappeared ! does this mean all you townies have seen it like ages ago ?

ive booked tickets for town tomorrow & am so exited ! This'll be the first day out , day away from brig o doon in months, yippeee yipppeeeeee yipeeeeeEEE!

do you think i'll be allowed to take my sword into cinema?

>do you think i'll be allowed to take my sword into cinema?

No but some k-rations may be in order given the lenght of the thing

They should edit it down to just a compilation of all the bits with Liv Tyler in them...

Nah... she's too skinny.


In my humble opinion, of course...

Thats a nice sword!

So, um, I thought it was a bit naff really. Like a SF Channel TV movie with an enlarged special effects budget. Still, better than the Two Towers, that bored the ass off off me.

You are crazy !!!!

it was the bestest  film ever. in fact it was made forme, yes they got in my head & made MY film. fantastic ! even the wee sproggy sat still throughout & even cried too ( usually shes busy laughing at me blubbing thru everything )..

i nearly hyperventilated thru some of the battle scenes, & the audience even clapped when it finished, it was the ultimate reality suspension, & now without any more my life is a pale wan empty thing, i think its time i took that last elven boat...sniff

Has to be said, Art, thats the only negative thing ive heard so far about ROTK.

Which must be a good thing!

Yeah. I consider you all mad BTW.

would a sane man amongst the mad, not be considered insane?

or something like that

Yer "philisophical" Slips

Liv Tyler is "Hobbit" of alright.















Sorry.

So you should be.

Though I loved ROTK with all my heart I think the epic scale of everything has meant that little things have stuck in my mind.

Elves bar - Legolas and Agent Smith - are far too fey and wet.

Peter Jackson loves lingering shots of people falling to their doom Eg. All the people the Nazgul pick up, that orc that falls out of the tower in Mordor.

Aragorn goes in for the kill with some serious open-mouthed, full tongue action when he kisses Arwyn at the end.

Little things, as I said.

burst into the pub with big staff saying ' i need men to fight sauren NOW' baaaa

back to the mundane reality !

Elves bar - Legolas and Agent Smith - are far too fey and wet.  

Technically Elrond isnt a full elf.  Hes a half elf that chose immortality, hence arwens death stuff as her human side was dying or something like that...  why the humans werent affected I dunno

Yer Pendantically Slips
 

There's no mention in the film that Elrond is half elven, so in the film he's a full elf.

Nyah!

Baaaah

OK... :)

"Aragorn goes in for the kill with some serious open-mouthed, full tongue action "



oooooooooooo ive just come over all perculiar

Well, I wouldn?t say it was complete rubbish, bits of it were enjoyable in a hoaky Attack Of The Clones type way, and like I say it was better than the total snorefest The Two Towers, but I'm a bit weirded out by all the gushing praise for it.

I think the basic problem is that it?s got a very simple plot (two people walking somewhere, basically) that?s padded out with various subplots that I really didn?t give a toss about, such as whether or not beardy bloke cops off with the chick from the aerosmith videos, or how King Mad doesn?t really get on very well with his beardy son, or how the other king with a beard doesn?t really like King Mad. All of it incredibly tedious.

The big battle at the end is quite nicely done, but undermined by the feeling that nothing very much is at stake apart form the continued existence of some city we've never heard of before that yet again has no visible industry or agriculture. The result is that at times it felt a bit like watching someone else play Age Of Empires. And that bit where it went all computer-gamey so the pointy eared bloke could surf up an elephant was just fucking silly.

As for Frodo and Sam, Jesus, how much staring at each other and saying how frightened can they possibly do?

What else? Oh year, the dialogue all sucks and no one even bothers much with acting. And it goes on for about 8 million years after its ended.

That's about it really.

Good points Art.

I wonder how i would view it if i hadn't read the books?

Though i have to say I thought the acting was of the highest standard.

Yes, and Elrond's brother, who chose mortality, founded the line of the Kings of Numenour (sp?).  So he's Aragorn's great-great(many greats in fact) uncle, so Arwen is some kind of kissin' cousin.

That's cheating Art - you can do that with just about any film:

Citizen Kane - He just buys some newspapers and stuff but cries when he sees a snow shaker - really dull.

Star Wars - some people fly some spaceships somewhere. Bad haircurtted blond boy fancies bad haircutted chubby princess.

Debbie Does Dallas - a fascinating character study which causes the viewer to question the very nature of their existence.

Return of the King had lots of faults (and I really hated the elf and the elephant bit) but I thought it was pretty much what cinema was invented for.

Is there some cunning process to go through before you get to choose between immortality and mortality?  Cos just saying out loud "I chooooose a mortal life" in a breathless huff doesn't really resonate with magical poignancy.

I'm off to sit in a forest and wheeze about choosing an immortal life to see if it works.  Who's WITH me?

Me.

Bou: who's 'all peculiar'? heh heh

I won't hear another word against Legolas (drool, drool etc) on pain of gettin me crossbow out

Eowyn kicks ass!

oh, and finally - flying masonry -woohoo!

...i'll be off then.

Hey, if Citizen Kane had great big long sections of boring dialogue, boring interchangable bearded characters, a completely lifeless "romance", and had a plot revolving around Citizen Kane climbing everest to sledge down the other  side, but actually focused mainly on Citizen Kanes brother who went off to fight dinosaurs in a series ofvisually spectacular but ultimately empty battles then maybe I would dismiss it that easily...

But the boring interchangeable bit is only as seen through YOUR eyes.  I thought quite the opposite.  Except for the elf and the elephant as previously noted. And the overlong ending(s).

Have you seen the extended DVD version of Citizen Kong with the dinosaurs and giant spiders (Willis O'Brien's best work) in it?

I Chooooose immortality, might give me enough time to sort my faaamily & business out, couple million years....


go Tips go Tips !

but i liked the elephant bit! you must remember that legolas is a fleetfooted gorgeous swifty yumshious elf, and if you know anything about lovely warrior elves you'll know that that scene is entirely plausable.

and come on ! what about all the set & costume design !! f**cking gorgeous man !

Yo Bou.  I'm sure it is entirely feasible for the droolsome elf to do this to an elephant in a completely unconvincing CGI manner, I just thought that it rather underminded the hard work that all those nice riders of Rohan had put into the battle.  Why sacrifice yourselves when all you need is half a dozen elfs on your side?

Incidentally one of the bits I was looking forward to was Gandalf squaring up to the Witch King (liked it in the book, saw it in the trailer and sneak previews) but it wasn't in the film. Looks like another scene destined for the extended DVD...

The "I am no man!" scene was another that made me cringe.

its an Oliphuant. not an elephant.

I am no man either. Best thing since Buffy!

Yes - I felt "I am no man" was a terrible line that you could see coming from about fifty miles away but just couldn't get out of the way of.  If the Witch King has said "Well, duh!" after it, I would have applauded!

I think Mister Spurrier said it best; sometimes it's hard to beleive that the sheer genius of some bits came from the same pen as the sheer crap of other bits.

Incredibly, Art, Pauline Kael's exhaustive study of the genesis of Citizen Kane turned up an early plot treatment along these exact lines.  Herman J. Mankiewicz's earliest version of Kane (pre-dating even the time when it was called 'American') was for a story he had called 'Big Trouble On Dinosaur Island'.

Kael's scholary tome reproduces the original typewritten pages for it, including Welles' handwritten notes in the margins.

"My god!!!  Are you drunk again, Mankiewicz?" they say.

Fascinating stuff.

I loved the bit in Citizen Kane, where he drove the Lotus off the pier and it turned into a submarine.



And I thought the Oliphant bit was totally cool, and it also gifted Gimli with one of the best lines in the movie...

hmmm well she was no man, but i hated her thru the two towers, then the first half of RotK, all snivelly, pre-raphaelity, sulky, puppy doggie eyes, big forheady quivery lippy... But once she snuck off & donned her armour i felt her character kind of made sense, okay so its a cliche, but it has to be remembered this is a very MANly film all about the heroics of MEN, the age of MEN blah blah, so this one girlie breaking out of the girlie role was a good & big thing, also i liked that she seemed pretty terrified going into battle, none o yur macho bollox, well they all looked bloody scared, bits like that was what made it such a great heart-thumping adventure.

Playing devils advocate and in the book its equally ambigous (sp), is that the withking wasnt killed by Eowyn but by Merry (or pippin - I get the two confused) who isnt a man either....  :)

Yer Feminist Backlash Slips

Loved almost all of the trilogy, except...

They felt they had to speak the title of each film at some point in the script,

Merry and Pippin got bigger in the Two Towers extended cut with the Ent-draught, but are normal size again in ROTK,

Arwen chose a mortal life with Aragorn, but when Elrond looked into her future he saw her remaining alive '...till the years of her life are utterly spent..' or something. Didnt understand that.


Still loved the trilogy though, as all the above are only minor niggles which dont in any way spoil or ruin anything!!

Hurrah for Peter Jackson and all involved!!

Slips,

Merry wounds The Witchking in "his mighty calf" and then Eowyn does him in.

It's the "mighty calf" bit that makes me remember so.

Neither are "men" but it's still a victory to girl power. In the books mind Eowyn is a big burly shield maiden; who is a match for any man and with her hair cut short fools everyone that she's a man - even Merry who rides on the same horse as her.

Well, Aragorn is already 80, and thanks to the little bit of Elven heritage he has he'll live for another two hundred years or so.  I'd expect Arwen, 3/4 e;ven would live a lot longer than that.