Just saw it

that's great to hear!

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

onthetrail wrote:

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

Waiting for the small screen for this unless it ends up at my local independent cinema. I think I'll be more forgiving of the animation on a TV (or smaller screen). I definitely feel the lack of publicity for the movie and limited distribution does point to this having mostly been made to satisfy rights retention for New Line.

The late Stu wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

Waiting for the small screen for this unless it ends up at my local independent cinema. I think I'll be more forgiving of the animation on a TV (or smaller screen). I definitely feel the lack of publicity for the movie and limited distribution does point to this having mostly been made to satisfy rights retention for New Line.

I don't think you'll lose much from the shift to a smaller screen. Daylight scenes are quite rough to be fair. As I said I enjoyed it, though I don't believe it really was a movie which needed to be on the big screen at this time. Especially coming up against other movies which are far more interesting visually.

Daughter #1 and daughter #3 took me to see it. Struggled to stay awake the last 30 minutes....boring movie with little to say of any interest beyond action and more action. The animation was reasonably well done in the 'anime expression' and there were a couple of really nice visual nods to the Bakshi adaptation.

Watched it on the small screen over a couple of sittings. The animation wasn't too bad on the 55" TV (basic animated TV-show level stuff, I guess). I can see how it wouldn't be suited for a Cinema screen (or possibly even a decently large TV). I didn't find the story very compelling. Unfortunately, just because a few paragraphs of source-material/back-story exists for the purposes of world-building in a larger story (i.e. LotR), doesn't mean it makes for particularly enthralling storytelling when expanded out (tbh, this goes for some of the things that Tolkien himself expanded on -- yeah, I'm a philistine...).

Definitely not garbage like RoP - more something to watch on a rainy day when you really have nothing better to do and can watch it for free. If I had to pick up some animation to watch, I would pick Tron Uprising over this every time (loved that show! -- Damn you Disney for killing it after one season).

northman wrote:

Daughter #1 and daughter #3 took me to see it. Struggled to stay awake the last 30 minutes....boring movie with little to say of any interest beyond action and more action. The animation was reasonably well done in the 'anime expression' and there were a couple of really nice visual nods to the Bakshi adaptation.

I enjoyed it at the cinema, but when I watched it again I found little to get excited about. I still maintain that it was enjoyable enough, but I found it very shallow.

On your mention of Bakshi, I enjoyed the night time scenes, especially the storm and snow effects, those reminded me of the Bakshi film and I enjoyed that. For the timescale that the makers put it together, I thought that they did well, but overall it lacks depth.

If I had to give it a rating, I would say 3/5 is fair. It wasn't terrible, but has no teeth on repeated viewings.