Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Do epics get any better ?

[Batmannerism]

Okay, growing up I was a typical LOTR fan - was lucky enough to have the Hobbit read to me by a teacher, read it myself, loved it and then read LOTR. As an adult I saw the movies and loved them.

Of course, down here in NZ the films were a cultural phenomenon (and showcased our amazing scenery, tourism NZ loved them) - and most people know someone who was involved in them in some capacity ( Hell, even I was in the first Hobbit film as an extra. Unlike his famous LOTR alter-ego, Andy Serkis is actually the world's nicest guy.)

Anyway, the LOTR trilogy has been on TV, and once again I've been sucked in by it. I re-watch it every other year or so, but TVNZ has helped me out.

Other than maybe the original Star Wars trilogy I don't think any film trilogy series has conveyed the sense of epic adventure.

Over to you guys, LOTR great, good, average, yawn ? Overrated ? Underrated ?

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

This should be interesting to read.

 

[Iceman]

Overall I think it’s the best film trilogy of them all.

 

[Finarfiniel]

Overall I think it’s the best film trilogy of them all.

Agreed. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, and whilst I acknowledge that the trilogy is not a perfect, page for page adaptation and takes some liberties with both the story and the characterisation of some of the key players (whilst completely omitting others), I still adore the movies beyond belief and feel that they ultimately do the book justice. The Fellowship of the Ring is in fact my favourite movie of all time. I firmly believe that a perfect and completely loyal adaptation of LotR will never be made, and indeed isn't even possible due to the sheer breadth and magnitude of the book.

I have never experienced any other movies that have so flawlessly transported me to another world, through incredible and lovingly created sets, costumes, music (Howard Shore's score is the greatest of all time) and epic set pieces. I don't think the battle scenes in this trilogy will ever be bested.

So, in short, no, Epics do not get any better in my opinion. These films are landmark entries in cinematic history and they always will be. Peter Jackson may never make anything else that lives up to them, but his incredible work on LotR will never be forgotten.

 

[Quasimod0]

I think it's the best trilogy there's ever been. Just rewatched all 6 movies, extended editions.

 

[sueb1863]

I was just wondering if they might do a theatrical rerelease of some sort because it's the 15th anniversary of the release of The Return of the King. Guess we'll see...

I guess Netflix just added Fellowship!

 

[Lord]

Few fantasy epics can rival Lord of the Rings. Game of Thrones might be the only recent film or show to do so, and even then, it has started to crumble when near the finish line, while Return of the King never realy falters. Even that 40 minutes epilogue makes sense in the context of concluding an entire trilogy.

 

[The Guard]

I'm sure somewhere out there is an epic fantasy series where the elves and men have the correct hair color.

We can dream.

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

I don’t even necessarily view LOTR as a trilogy. Just as one huge 12-hour long movie.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Absolutely love the movies and have been meaning to do a re-watch of them along with the Hobbit movies for a while. But it getting the time todo so unfortunately. Especially when the EE of ROTK s 4 hours long.

 

[OutOfBoose]

If we view LOTR as a trilogy, other trilogies are at disadvantage, because they didn't have a finished source and had to develop themselves along the way. LOTR was filmed back to back basically as a single film. 9.5-hour saga. And sort of split in 3 parts. Almost the way the books are split.

All things considered, the theatrical version of LOTR trilogy is the best trilogy ever, imo.

 

[Pennywise]

My favourite film trilogy!

 

[MadderMaximus]

I don’t even necessarily view LOTR as a trilogy. Just as one huge 12-hour long movie.

That's how I see it.

 

[Batmannerism]

Agreed. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, and whilst I acknowledge that the trilogy is not a perfect, page for page adaptation and takes some liberties with both the story and the characterisation of some of the key players (whilst completely omitting others), I still adore the movies beyond belief and feel that they ultimately do the book justice. The Fellowship of the Ring is in fact my favourite movie of all time. I firmly believe that a perfect and completely loyal adaptation of LotR will never be made, and indeed isn't even possible due to the sheer breadth and magnitude of the book.

I have never experienced any other movies that have so flawlessly transported me to another world, through incredible and lovingly created sets, costumes, music (Howard Shore's score is the greatest of all time) and epic set pieces. I don't think the battle scenes in this trilogy will ever be bested.

So, in short, no, Epics do not get any better in my opinion. These films are landmark entries in cinematic history and they always will be. Peter Jackson may never make anything else that lives up to them, but his incredible work on LotR will never be forgotten .

I'm not sure he ever will. The Hobbit trilogy falls far short of LOTR , and I have a bunch of theories as to why that was - which I won't bore you with. Whatever the reason it just doesn't suck you in the way LOTR does.
I mean, I'm in the first Hobbit film for about 6.5 seconds ( I tell people it's 7) but I only saw it once in the cinema and couldn't be bothered owning a copy ( although I still bring it up enough to be tedious, sorry everyone).

My point is that for whatever reason the Hobbit films aren't that good. Jackson absolutely knocked it out of the park with LOTR, and may never replicate that success ( of course 11 Oscars....)

Like the above poster I have a special fondness for the Fellowship of the ring. I go back and forth between whether Fellowship or Return of the King is the best film.

In Fellowship we really get to know the characters, such that when Gandalf and Boromir die, it's really emotional.

I remember when I saw Fellowship the first time, when Gandalf fell, someone in the audience started crying.

Of course Howard Shore' s score is pure magic ( again something that was lacking in the Hobbit) there are a wide variety of motifs and themes (
The Hobbits, Rohan, Isengard, Gondor, Mordor even the ring has one) and they're all really memorable - one of my faves has to be the "lighting of the beacons" sequence, in part because it's a shameless tourism ad for the South Island, but mostly because the music is so stirring.

I could go on about these films for days....

 

[TheVileOne]

I think the difference is that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was more of Jackson's vision onscreen. With The Hobbit, the project had already had stops and starts, so he took on the directing job to keep it going. It sounds like he didn't have enough time to plan out what he wanted to do, and used a lot of what was Guillermo del Toro's planning when he was originally on board.

Also, while the LOTR production had plenty of its bumps in the road, it seemed like Jackson had enough time to achieve what he needed in the extended production and post-production.

 

[Iceman]

Agreed. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, and whilst I acknowledge that the trilogy is not a perfect, page for page adaptation and takes some liberties with both the story and the characterisation of some of the key players (whilst completely omitting others), I still adore the movies beyond belief and feel that they ultimately do the book justice. The Fellowship of the Ring is in fact my favourite movie of all time. I firmly believe that a perfect and completely loyal adaptation of LotR will never be made, and indeed isn't even possible due to the sheer breadth and magnitude of the book.

I have never experienced any other movies that have so flawlessly transported me to another world, through incredible and lovingly created sets, costumes, music (Howard Shore's score is the greatest of all time) and epic set pieces. I don't think the battle scenes in this trilogy will ever be bested.

So, in short, no, Epics do not get any better in my opinion. These films are landmark entries in cinematic history and they always will be. Peter Jackson may never make anything else that lives up to them, but his incredible work on LotR will never be forgotten.

There are characters I really wanted to see who didn't make it at all. But regardless of omissions and changes, Jackson captured the spirit of the books and that is a huge feat. It's 3 films of total escapism with high quality filmmaking in all areas. I look forward to the day a series of films matches it.

 

[Marvolo]

I think the difference is that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was more of Jackson's vision onscreen. With The Hobbit, the project had already had stops and starts, so he took on the directing job to keep it going. It sounds like he didn't have enough time to plan out what he wanted to do, and used a lot of what was Guillermo del Toro's planning when he was originally on board.

Also, while the LOTR production had plenty of its bumps in the road, it seemed like Jackson had enough time to achieve what he needed in the extended production and post-production.

Jackson redesigned a lot. He said in the docs that after Del Toro left he decided he wasn't going to try to make Del Toro's films because those were Del Toro films and not Peter Jackson films. He redesigned all the dwarves, Thranduil and his kingdom and elves, Smaug, and with the films becoming three films a lot was added and restructured.

"I looked at his designs when he took over and a lot of his designs are very Guillermo . . . it was very much stuff that you would recognize from Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy," Jackson said. "It was his artistic vision and I couldn't make that movie. I looked at his designs and I said the only person who can make a Guillermo Del Toro movie is Guillermo. It shouldn't be me. I can't put my head into somebody else's idea — I have to generate it from the beginning."

"There were some things he did that I thought were pretty cool and I've taken bits of pieces of his stuff — kind of altering it and changing it as I saw it. But the film was largely redesigned."

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

One Movie Trilogy to rule them all!

 

[Abudefduf]

Amazing movies (especially Fellowship, which is one of my favorite movies ever), overall okay adaptation of the book(s), but they could've been a lot worse. They could've been like The Hobbit trilogy, for example.

 

[TheVileOne]

I recall, the extended cut of Fellowship felt like a much more satisfying adaptation of the book.

I recall being pretty impressed with how Jackson also had to condense all that history and lore into that opening prologue sequence.

 

[Black Narcissus]

Ehh, these films were alright.

 

[jmc]

The book is in many ways unfilmable, which is why Tolkien gave the films rights away fro next to nothing. The books are structured so strangely that any adaptation was going to be difficult. Fellowship of the Ring is fairly straight forward, it's when you get to Two Towers and Return of the King the issues arise where there are two stories being told over different periods of time. The best thing Jackson did was fix the story to be linear, hence why part of The Two Towers story was moved over into the Return of the King film.

But it was still a monumental effort to do, and a big gamble on two fronts. If Fellowship failed the rest of the trilogy was doomed, if Gollum failed to be a believable character the last film would be ruined. So much could have gone wrong with that trilogy of films, and yet Jackson and co pulled it together and rightfully won an Oscar for that achievement. What came out of it also was Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, who are now the go to place for movie effects worldwide.

 

[sueb1863]

PJ's Hobbit movies are a real mess. Too long, too much added stuff, too much CGI. Bilbo seemed like a secondary character. The focus of the simple children's story got lost. It didn't help that it had to live up to the reputation of the awesome LotR movies, which wasn't really fair. The Hobbit was never meant to be a massive epic the way LotR was. A real shame because he had a fantastic cast and incredible resources at his disposal.

 

[TheVileOne]

The book is in many ways unfilmable, which is why Tolkien gave the films rights away fro next to nothing. The books are structured so strangely that any adaptation was going to be difficult. Fellowship of the Ring is fairly straight forward, it's when you get to Two Towers and Return of the King the issues arise where there are two stories being told over different periods of time. The best thing Jackson did was fix the story to be linear, hence why part of The Two Towers story was moved over into the Return of the King film.

But it was still a monumental effort to do, and a big gamble on two fronts. If Fellowship failed the rest of the trilogy was doomed, if Gollum failed to be a believable character the last film would be ruined. So much could have gone wrong with that trilogy of films, and yet Jackson and co pulled it together and rightfully won an Oscar for that achievement. What came out of it also was Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, who are now the go to place for movie effects worldwide.

Eh, more filmable than Watchmen . And Dune for that matter.

 

[InCali]

I will begrudgingly give PJ a lot of credit for the trilogy. Part of my Tolkien memorabilia includes the extended versions of the LotR, a statue of Minas Tirith, The Argonath (Pillars of the Kings), and Gollum.....THAT BEING SAID.....it could have been done better and I probably wouldn't ever be completely satisfied with anything other than a completely faithful retelling of the facts related to Middle Earth. I would include Farmer Maggot, Old Man Willow, Barrow Downs, and Glorfindel instead of Arwen in Flight to the Ford....those are for starters.

The cinematography was spectacular and even though I was disappointed by parts of the trilogy, I enjoyed it.

Don't, however, get me started on The Hobbit. I hope PJ is on a vacation to Titan if we get any stories from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Ages.