Mr. Underhill wrote:

Aelfwine wrote:

"The canons of narrative in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies."

— J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #210

Hard to argue with The Man himself ?

*exaggeration* - That is PJs fundamental failing as a film-maker. He simply doesn't have self-restraint, and doesn't get that being able to do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

Denis Villeneuve could have done a wonderful LoTR, I think.

Stu wrote:

*exaggeration* - That is PJs fundamental failing as a film-maker. He simply doesn't have self-restraint, and doesn't get that being able to do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

Denis Villeneuve could have done a wonderful LoTR, I think.

That is an interesting thought, Dune part one was fantastic as far as book adaptations go. First film I had seen in a while that lived up to the hype. I liked what David Lowery did with The Green Knight story (even though it was nowhere near the book version)

Of course, I would've also liked for Bakshi to get a shot at finishing his adaptation so...

Stu wrote:

*exaggeration* - That is PJs fundamental failing as a film-maker. He simply doesn't have self-restraint, and doesn't get that being able to do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

This is my biggest issue with PJ's adaptation of The Hobbit. Everything is so over the top that there's no sense of tension, making the excessively long action sequences a chore to sit through. Even if thinking of films as separate entities from the source material, these are mediocre at best.

On the other hand, I do consider PJ's LOTR to be great films in their own right. However, they could have been better by exercising restraint (and probably just as financially successful).

Bias disclaimer: I watched PJ's LOTR before reading the books. I read the books before watching PJ's TH.

Morinehtar wrote:

Stu wrote:

*exaggeration* - That is PJs fundamental failing as a film-maker. He simply doesn't have self-restraint, and doesn't get that being able to do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

This is my biggest issue with PJ's adaptation of The Hobbit. Everything is so over the top that there's no sense of tension, making the excessively long action sequences a chore to sit through. Even if thinking of films as separate entities from the source material, these are mediocre at best.

On the other hand, I do consider PJ's LOTR to be great films in their own right. However, they could have been better by exercising restraint (and probably just as financially successful).

Bias disclaimer: I watched PJ's LOTR before reading the books. I read the books before watching PJ's TH.

I don't think much extra restraint was required in the LoTR, but where the restraint was missing, it was quite glaring. I remember watching FoTR the first time and was loving it right up until the scene in Moria where a large stone set of stairs rocked from side to side before toppling. That single bad physics scene took me out of it. And that's the problem, it only takes one or two things like this (or shield-surfing elves) and the moment is lost. Still, a very small amount of cutting/re-editing and LoTR is really pretty damn good, with RotK being the weakest in terms of restraint.

With the Hobbit movies to get anything even passable as a movie in its own right, you have to cut *67* hours of this garbage. There are a couple of reasonable fan-edits that do this and actually make something watchable, if not necessarily enjoyable.

Stu wrote:

I don't think much extra restraint was required in the LoTR, but where the restraint was missing, it was quite glaring. I remember watching FoTR the first time and was loving it right up until the scene in Moria where a large stone set of stairs rocked from side to side before toppling. That single bad physics scene took me out of it. And that's the problem, it only takes one or two things like this (or shield-surfing elves) and the moment is lost. Still, a very small amount of cutting/re-editing and LoTR is really pretty damn good, with RotK being the weakest in terms of restraint.

With the Hobbit movies to get anything even passable as a movie in its own right, you have to cut *67* hours of this garbage. There are a couple of reasonable fan-edits that do this and actually make something watchable, if not necessarily enjoyable.

To me the worst part of the LOTR films is Gollum being beaten by Faramir. I really wish they'd edit that out. Also, as you mentioned, instances of bad physics could be removed, as well as some unnecessary moments of Hollywood battle tactics.

I wonder what the runtime of The Hobbit films would be after an edit to make them more Tolkenian. Maybe 2 hours?

Morinehtar wrote:

I wonder what the runtime of The Hobbit films would be after an edit to make them more Tolkenian. Maybe 2 hours?

Someone on Reddit called JohnHobbit did an edit that took the movie down to around 3 and a half hours and it worked really well. What was really clever though was that he extracted all the White Council stuff and presented it as an entirely separate episode of around 46 minutes.

I unfortunately had a hard drive crash and that version was lost and I've struggled to find it again but anyone who can should, it was well worth a watch. Tauriel was not included other than being on the back of the horse with Legolas when they met Gandalf, all the love stuff was therefore obviously removed, all the dwarfs and Smaug stuff was almost entirely removed and it ran so much better.

I have two fan edits of the films, but still can't watch it, would much rather watch the animated Hobbit instead.