What went so incredibly right here that studios struggle to replicate 20 years later?
What went so incredibly right here that studios struggle to replicate 20 years later?
What went so incredibly right here
Did it? By all accounts it’s a rather piss poor adaptation of its source material.
The source material
25 years, and the creative team had a level of creative control that would be unthinkable today, they also had a lot of really talented people and a lot of really big fans of the source material in the staff, cast, production team, etc.
After listening to the commentaries for all 3 movies I think it boiled down to:
1. A large amount of creative freedom for Jackson and his team to be given so much money to do the trilogy without that much interference from the studio, the whole project was a major gamble
2. The actual people involved had an immense amount of love for Lord of the Rings and put their hearts and souls into all aspects of the production, from the writing to the prop designers
3. Having it entirely filmed in New Zealand made it a more closed connection where all the workers and crew members had a stronger kinship and therefore more creative confidence in what they were making
welp time to watch the appendices again
All white cast
they couldn't have shot the whole thing on a green screen and done it in post if they wanted to, so they were forced to have actual skill and care in the work they did to produce a good product.
lord of the rings movie was so bad that i fell asleep. and i like the fantasy genre and read the books
It had aura
they couldn't have shot the whole thing on a green screen and done it in post if they wanted to
the thing is anon, a ton of the trilogy was made in this way, especially return of the king. most of the movie was done in pickups after the first 2 where jackson tried to make it a bit more action-packed. fellowship was the only movie where it was 90% shot in the late 90s. but they had a good skeleton of what the trilogy was going to be, so the pickups went very well instead of being aimless
the perfect storm of money, artistic freedom, and talent
hollywood can only afford 2 of those at a time
no unions
The Fellowship of the Cast
Nothing will ever be this comfy.
Only white people (and some white passing Jews)
Director doesn't openly hate the source material
The only flaw is the girlboss moment where she quips at the witch king.
Director doesn't openly hate the source material
this is a big one. i mean they certainly went against some things in the book, and the writers actually state they believe they improved some things from the book (boromir's death) but they did it out of love for the source material, they really respected Tolkien and always referred to him as "Professor." today these directors just hate their audience and their material.
Appendices playlist
youtube.com
Indeed, the contrast between the LotR trilogy and RoP is stark. In the latter they made every effort to YAAAASSSify it while running thinkpieces stating that Tolkien was a racist fascist and they needed to rethink his vision and rescue it for the sake of modernity.
this + the film industry was also all white
the real answer is jackson spent four years in preproduction. there was a guy who’s job it was, for like six years straight, every day for five or six days a week, his job was joining metal links by hand to make chainmail. that was this dude’s life for half a decade. movies are simply not made this way anymore at all whatsoever. paying some dude a whole salary to hand make chainmail all day
Imagine if they let Kubrick direct Napoleon in the 70s.
Maybe Tolkien would've found it distasteful, turning his works into big blockbuster action movies. It was still well done and the best adaptation we'll see.
Best behind the scenes ever produced. Gave me a whole new appreciation for these movies.
They were shit compared to the books. Take off your nostalgia goggles. This is as much Hollywood slop as any other movie for the last few decades. They rape the lore and make a mockery of the characters, story, and legacy of Tolkien. The Hobbit is even worse.
little to no blacks involved in acting and production
i remember seeing the first in theaters, and it was one of the most boring movies i've ever seen
They weren't forced to shove a bunch of blacks into a fundamentally European story.
No browns which is strange to see as almost every fantasy after it has to be multi-racial for no reason whatsoever.
running thinkpieces stating that Tolkien was a racist fascist and they needed to rethink his vision and rescue it for the sake of modernity
You are fucking kidding me.
the people who worked on it genuinely loved and believed in what they were doing
excellent source material
minimal executive meddling
excellent actors
best score of all time
No mandated wokeness.
A movie should stand on its own and be self-contained, it doesn't have to "adapt" anything. These movies are arguably more famous and beloved than the books they were based on.
Bunch of talented people working and loving it together
This and it's literally made for tv quality.
Retards who like this trash have zero standards
You're not allowed to make movies without black people anymore. You're not allowed to have female characters shut the fuck up. Roasties came up with the "bachdell test" and require all media to have 2 femoids talk to each other solely to fulfill feminist ideology.
If this movie was made today:
multiple members of the fellowship would have to be niggers
there would be manufactured scenes with female characters speaking to each other solely to say that they made a scene where 2 vagina-havers spoke to each other
potentially a member of the fellowship would be turned into a woman
background characters would be a mix of all races, filled with Indians, blacks, with a pitch of Asians
Just look at Rings of Power, they literally have a black elf with short hair because brown men can't grow normal straight hair. They have asian and black elves. They have down-syndrome hobbits, terrifying Indian hobbits, the places that are supposed to look like kind and warm places look like third world countries and give you anxiety.
What's funny is Christopher Tolkien fucking hated it.
return of the king has a scene where a woman kills the witch king of angmar because "she is no man", if you're going to be a pissy baby then your original trilogy was already pozzed.
Care to name a scene in the books where Éowyn talks to another woman?
no because this is a discussion about film
When she talks to the Witch King of Angmar bigot.
They fucking cared.
When I was in highschool I had no idea of LoTR was. I was incredibly fit, varied circles of friends and had some dork ass friends that invited me to see the two towers, I had never seen the first, didn't even know there was fellowship and already got theaters. I figured it would be some gay shit I'd seen from my gay ass video game friends like world of Warcraft So I figured why not, they just wanted to spend time with me so I obliged even though I had no idea what I was going to see, I even brought a date.
Holy shit. Seeing that opening in a theater, the aerial pan shots of the Misty mountains. Hearing the voices and yells echoing, progressively getting louder, seeing the balrog, seeing gandalf fall and froto scream, then cut to gandalf falling to catch his award to change the fucking demon down and shank him. That woke something up in me and never went back to sleep. Those dorks have been my best friends for decades after that and it's the movies that have my wife and I common ground and have an excuse to come over to my apartment. Thank you Peter Jackson and cast. I watch all three every season change and read the books every time I go camping or backpacking.
The actors actually liked each other and it bled into their performances
white people make the movie, jews provide the funding
how it should be
I think a lot of this hate directors feel for source material likely stems from the idea that they most likely worked hard for decades in the movie industry working their way up to the director chair. Kissing butt, fetching coffee, whatever. They finally, FINALLY get to their dream job and... Oh. Your job is follow up JJ Abrams spineless, bland Force Awakens. Make Iron Man 3. Oh make Captain America 5 but make him black and gay too. Also we got 80 year old Harrison Ford, he hates these movies by the way. He will surely be a beacon of optimism and charisma on set. Oh and the suits want you to make sure you include some fags and trannies too. Oh and all the female characters need to be independent, strong willed, intelligent, and the center of attention. If you do well on this project, we need you to do the live action Lilo and Stitch movie next. Don't worry if it bombs, you can get a job at Netflux. Maybe doing live action One Piece!
Or they are just a nepo jew, notorious for being wellsprings of talent and creativity. It's like working your ass off to be a surgeon, you finally get the job, but instead of heart or brain surgery, you need to do nonstop colonoscopies. What else would you do in that position but make shit until you might someday be given more agency over your projects?
This. So much this.
Where the hell was ironman, hawkeye, spiderman, thor, hulk, dr strange, etc?
Maybe, just maybe the movies could've been if some of the characters had real superpowers. I didn't even bother buying any lotr funko pops cause the movies were that shit.
Is the Arianist Canon.
Tolkien covered it because he was a religiously conflicted man that understood something important about christianity was inherently interwoven into the norse myths.
The battle of Helms Deep for example is when Skadi's dad lost to the Macedonians.
Bilbo and Frodo wrote the LOTR from the british POV, covering the (pre)christian story from the non-roman perspective. Sauron is the story of how the antichrist manifested as the leaders of Rome, predending to be their Baldr of the underworld.
Tolkien had too much respect for the Catholic church to go full throttle, so he fleshed out the case for why the outlawing of Arian Christianity was, perhaps, not christian. From the POV of nordic myth.