Peter Jackson, the moron.

[katsaris]

The fannish side of me is fuming.

The item that so angered me is here. The link contains some small spoilers about the ROTK movie, btw. Mainly in terms of revealing what will be *absent* from it, though, not what will be present.

I went to see three times *each* of the first two movies, in the cinema. Bought the tapes. Bought the CDs with the music.

But, I swear it, had I not already promised friends that I'd be seeing the third film with them, I am not at all certain that I would bother to see the third film even once.

As such, I'll probably be biting my lips so as to not rant at the screen and ruin everybody else's fun time.

Peter Jackson, the moron. It makes it all the worse that I *knew* since a year ago that he wouldn't have enough time to fit all the important bits in ROTK, given the incompetent way he edited Two Towers.

*Anyone* would know it who has read the books.

Except Peter Jackson himself, it seems.

Comments

[alternativa.livejournal.com]

You know what? You are absolutely right...
I have to admit that watching the movie thrilled me, but having read the books, actually having read all of tolkien's books, makes me angry when i see them butchered like this. Mr Heavinly Creature might have done good work on the visual effects, but the lack of important bits in the storyline is non-acceptable for older readers of tolkien-literatture.
I will watch the third movie, just out of curiosity. To spot what has been brutally left out...
And a small joke. I was talking to a friend the other day at a cafe, and we were discussing the end of the LOTR, how Saruman dies, and how touching it had been ( the book i mean ) to both of us, when a guy who was sitting next to us turns his head and starts yelling what show-offs we are, and how could we have known the end when the third film is not yet at the movies. Poor ape-man could not believe us that in fact it is A BOOK, and that people have read it over many years before our time.
These people actually loved the film, and thought they had seen it all.
Ti na pei kaneis....

[katsaris.livejournal.com]

*g* Quite amusing anecdote... Can almost not believe there exist people as stupid as that...

Yeah, I will watch the third movie too. Alas, I think I'll be constantly wondering how much greater it could have been had it been made by an actually competent director...

[alternativa.livejournal.com]

Hey, i'm actually starting to think what else i could do with the 15 euros instead of watching the movie... I could rent 10 dvds or just visit Allou Fun Park and spend them on lollipops:P
Though i'm so curious about The paths of the dead, i'd love to watch it WHOLE on the big screen.
Have you actually seen heavenly creatures? Ti patata...

[skaly.livejournal.com]

You sure that the missing material won't turn up in the "special extended edition"?

[katsaris.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure some of that material will turn in those super-duper special extended editions.

I just don't think of it as much of an excuse. The regular version will be seen by a hundred times more people than the "extended edition" version.

And Jackson saw fit to include in "the regular version" of his movies all those stupid warg-chases and falling-off-cliffs and orc-beheadings things that he invented. It shows what kinds of things he deems important.

It's the chapters that actually involve characterisation and confrontation of wills, and those things that might actually help people understand that the LOTR story is *not* about battles, that he sees as unimportant enough to relegate to extended editions.

Oh, damn. He could have made these three movies so much greater than what they'll end up becoming. And he missed his chance, and I doubt anyone else will attempt to do an adaptation of LOTR again for many, many decades.

Ah, well...

[skaly.livejournal.com]

My favorite chapters were the ones that occurred after Mount Doom. The book took on a more leisurely tone, and I also think it's necessary because it shows how much the four hobbits changed over the course of their journey.

I just watched the extended version of "Fellowship" for the first time, and I'm not so sure I liked it as much. It spent so much time developing Bilbo's character, and then dived right into typical "action movie" style. It's a great story, and the audience knows this. People who haven't read the book are drawn in by the great story. But the original story is not an action story. It's more like a travelogue. A guided tour. "The Matrix" is another action movie with a great story. The thing about action movies, though, is that the fights and battles become the centerpiece for the story. And that's not what LotR is about. Unfortunately, everyone who is too damned lazy to read a book will think the opposite. (Actually, for a lot of the female viewers, LotR is not really about the story or the battles, but about all the handsome men. Strange, but I don't see anyone drooling over John Rhies-Davies. Doesn't anyone know that he used to play Macbeth???)

Another complaint about Fellowship: Boromir was too damned sinister. Wouldn't it have been more effective if he started out all noble and heroic and *then* succumbed to the power of the Ring? That was the impression I got from the book anyhow. In the movie he wanted to use the Ring right away! This is what I like to call "dumbing it down for the audience." And Boromir's character was further assassinated in "The Two Towers," when Sam reveals his fate to Denethor. And there's *another* character who got messed up by PJ. A family of assholes, I guess.

[alternativa.livejournal.com]

And what about Faramir?...
(In the movie) He acts like a constipated selfish little boy. When you read the books, you have the privilege of creating the whole world inside your mind and as you read along it enriches itself with valuable details.
Same thing happens in Lovecraft's Necronomicon, King's Shining, King's The It and so many others...

[(Anonymous)]

I do believe the problem with Faramir was that Jackson didn't like the fact that the ring with all its evil didn't effect Faramir in the book and that the drug analogy that Tolkien was using for the ring came off kinda weak.

Q. Vicious

[katsaris.livejournal.com]

It's Peter Jackson's that's making the analogy weak. The Ring (and the desire for it) is meant to be *addictive*.

As such, it becomes dangerous for the former addict to get even a glimpse of the object of his fixation (e.g. Bilbo's reaction), but a person of wisdom can resist the temptation *before* he becomes addicted to it.

That's why the Faramir of the books asks of Frodo to not even show it to him - "keep it hidden, we've talked about it enough as it is". Because he doesn't want desire of it to grow in his mind until the point that it becomes an unresistable yearning.

Boromir on the other hand let desire of it grow in his heart, until he became trapped himself.

Faramir's core as a character is that he's such a man that he would *not* desire the Ring. If you remove that, then he no longer exists as a character -- and that's pretty much what we got from the screenwriters. They didn't believe such a noble character could exist and therefore they removed him. That's a complete violation of Tolkien's moral universe IMO.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes, absolutely! Yes!

I've seen the first two films and I will see the third, but I can't get really excited about any of them. And I'm not even a nitpicker, like my Tolkien-obsessed friend Alec who hates the first movie because he thinks the architecture of places like Rivendell and Moria is all wrong.

But when I see stupid time-wasting stuff thrown in that has nothing to do with the books (like Aragorn falling off a cliff and being kissed awake by his horse in TTT -- btw, was I the only one who thought he had more chemistry with the horse than with Arwen?), while important scenes are left out and characters like Faramir are positively slandered in some idiotic attempt to "humanize" them... grrr!

Faramir is my favorite male character in LotR. If Jackson doesn't do better by him in RotK, and especially if he implies that Eowyn just sort of ends up with Faramir by default since she can't have Aragorn, there will be lots of snarling in my LJ.