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vaneramosThe girls and I came home a few minutes ago from ROTK, their second viewing and my first. We got into the theatre short minutes before it started and had to sit near the bottom righthand corner. I wasn't too concerned about that since they had seen it before, and I will likely see it again.
My feelings are mixed. It entertained, sometimes even provoked awe, but the story was mostly carried by association with a piece of great literature. On its own the movie fails to evoke the depths of character and psychological themes that Tolkien so masterfully explored.
Most disappointing of all is Gollum's personality. In the books he is complex, ambiguous and sympathetic, embodying Bilbo and Frodo's dark side. He has a lonely hobbit heart that craves nothing more than a life's supply of raw fisheses, but which has been overcome by the lure of power, something we can all relate to. In the movie he is nothing more than pure greed and hate.
Comparing the movie and book is inevitable, but it is also unfair. At the point where I realized Gollum had no compassion for Frodo, as he does in the book, I realized I had to stop comparing and get on with enjoying.
So I tried. But much of the movie was carried along by endless, sensational battle scenes. Several of the most suspenseful episodes were designed to exploit vertigo, a sensation which mostly made me uncomfortable. Special effects and visual thrills are great, but when the screen has nothing else to offer for minutes at a time, I resent spending so much money to take myself and my kids. Quite apart from knowing how the book goes, I would have preferred a movie that stopped the crunching, maiming and killing for even five minutes and instead gave the cast more time to act out complex and fascinating characters like Denethor and Eowyn.
Even the action itself was unimpressive compared with the superior FOTR. The scene in which Arwen and Frodo were pursued by the Black Riders was visually the most stunning action sequence I can recall from any movie. It relied on dramatic filming rather than special effects. ROTK offered nothing to compare to that. Obviously it needed to exceed the visual impact of the previous two movies, but it only succeeded in going over the top. Most of the action was digitally manipulated to such an extent that I could not for instant suspend disbelief.
ROTK has its moments. Most stunning for me was the one in which an unexpected character sings with accompanying scenes from a battle charge. It gave me goose bumps and a lump in my throat.
I doubt that a better job could have been done of translating the books to film. The big marvel is that it has even been done, evoking some of the story's richness. For the sake of that story I will probably go see the movie again. But far from being one of the best movies I have ever seen, it is an average movie, enjoyable chiefly as an interpretation of Tolkien's masterpiece.
My feelings are mixed. It entertained, sometimes even provoked awe, but the story was mostly carried by association with a piece of great literature. On its own the movie fails to evoke the depths of character and psychological themes that Tolkien so masterfully explored.
Most disappointing of all is Gollum's personality. In the books he is complex, ambiguous and sympathetic, embodying Bilbo and Frodo's dark side. He has a lonely hobbit heart that craves nothing more than a life's supply of raw fisheses, but which has been overcome by the lure of power, something we can all relate to. In the movie he is nothing more than pure greed and hate.
Comparing the movie and book is inevitable, but it is also unfair. At the point where I realized Gollum had no compassion for Frodo, as he does in the book, I realized I had to stop comparing and get on with enjoying.
So I tried. But much of the movie was carried along by endless, sensational battle scenes. Several of the most suspenseful episodes were designed to exploit vertigo, a sensation which mostly made me uncomfortable. Special effects and visual thrills are great, but when the screen has nothing else to offer for minutes at a time, I resent spending so much money to take myself and my kids. Quite apart from knowing how the book goes, I would have preferred a movie that stopped the crunching, maiming and killing for even five minutes and instead gave the cast more time to act out complex and fascinating characters like Denethor and Eowyn.
Even the action itself was unimpressive compared with the superior FOTR. The scene in which Arwen and Frodo were pursued by the Black Riders was visually the most stunning action sequence I can recall from any movie. It relied on dramatic filming rather than special effects. ROTK offered nothing to compare to that. Obviously it needed to exceed the visual impact of the previous two movies, but it only succeeded in going over the top. Most of the action was digitally manipulated to such an extent that I could not for instant suspend disbelief.
ROTK has its moments. Most stunning for me was the one in which an unexpected character sings with accompanying scenes from a battle charge. It gave me goose bumps and a lump in my throat.
I doubt that a better job could have been done of translating the books to film. The big marvel is that it has even been done, evoking some of the story's richness. For the sake of that story I will probably go see the movie again. But far from being one of the best movies I have ever seen, it is an average movie, enjoyable chiefly as an interpretation of Tolkien's masterpiece.
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Date: 2003-12-27 08:45 am (UTC)The director and writers have acknowledged as much.
As to Gollum, I'm not sure I agree. It seemed to me that they did try really hard to show the conflict within Gollum, although the technique they used (the repeated dialogues between his two "aspects") was admittedly a little crude.
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Date: 2003-12-27 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-27 10:00 am (UTC)