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skyofcoffeebeans
Rohan
Jun 1 2020, 8:25pm
Post #226 of 255
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Restraint. It's a powerful tool. The oilphaunt scene works because there's only one oilphaunt scene. There's nothing as over the top from that character anywhere else in the film.
Another key word might be escalation. We see Legolas do things throughout LOTR that are gradually heightened. In contrast, look at his introduction in DOS.
(This post was edited by skyofcoffeebeans on Jun 1 2020, 8:26pm)
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Chen G.
Gondor
Jun 1 2020, 9:02pm
Post #227 of 255
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That said, Legolas CAN have more than just one superhero moment: In The Two Towers he has both the sliding-shield moment AND the leaping on the galloping horse, and it works fine. I also think The Desolation of Smaug works well enough. Its only in the Battle of the Five Armies - especially the extened cut - where it becomes overkill.
As for escalation, while that's very true, there IS escalation across The Desolation of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies.
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Noria
Gondor
Jun 2 2020, 12:23pm
Post #228 of 255
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I kind of like Legolas' superhero moments. I just think they need to be delivered in greater moderation than was the case in The Battle of the Five Armies.
You can have the walking up the crumbling tower moment in isolation (I happen to think its really cool) but when its delivered as the cherry on top of Legolas' bat-riding, tower-leaping, Troll-riding shenanigans, it gets just a bit too much.
But otherwise? I like Legolas having one or two Superhero moments per film: its fun, and it adds a dash of superhero/martial arts into films which are already such an enjoyable cocktail of genres.
Its also nice when occasionally they DON'T go big with him, like when he has what's really just a street brawl with Bolg in The Desolation of Smaug: just one more reason why that film's the best.
This
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 2 2020, 4:26pm
Post #229 of 255
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proportion; how much is in the mix?
In general, I can watch and enjoy fairly long stretches of the LR trilogy, with only occasional shout-obscenities-at-the-screen moments. Whereas with TH the proportion is reversed: occasional good scenes (Good Morning, Riddles in the Dark, Thorin's death) scattered like pearls in a mire of long stretches of unwatchability, whether OTT "action" stuff like Legolas, Goblin-town and the barrel escape, or gag-worthy invented plot nonsense like Radagast, Nazgul tombs, Tauriel, Stephen Fry etc etc etc etc etc etc etc......
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Paulo Gabriel
Lorien
Jun 2 2020, 8:42pm
Post #230 of 255
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It is SO OBVIOUS that the politics of Laketown are the best part of these movies...it is like the SW prequels Senate sequences all over again...also Legolas is Archangel from X-Men, so it's OK for him to do the sort of stuff mentioned in this thread.  
(This post was edited by Paulo Gabriel on Jun 2 2020, 8:43pm)
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Chen G.
Gondor
Jun 2 2020, 9:01pm
Post #231 of 255
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The Laketown politics are imperative for the confrontation with Thorin. By having the clearly-corrupt Master side with our "hero" and resolve his argument with Bard for him, and with mere hand waves no less, the film is telling its unsuspecting audience that Thorin is actually on the WRONG side of the argument.
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The Dude
Rivendell
Jun 2 2020, 9:56pm
Post #232 of 255
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...that Stephen Fry is such a limited actor. Everything about the Master feels like a cut episode from Blackadder: silly, woefully on-the-nose, and completely out of place. Not that I blame him alone. In fact, I would say, Jackson and Co. hired Fry because they had already written the character with Fry in their mind. In the Extended Edition during the "bollocks scene", if the Master suddenly had broken the fourth wall, turned to the camera and said "Just so you know, I am evil and disgusting!" I would not have been surprised.
On paper I agree with you that connecting the Master's greed with Thorin's ambition is a good idea. But there other ways of transporting this message than to turn the Master into a walking, bloated mess of crude cliches.
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Jun 4 2020, 8:47am
Post #233 of 255
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One thing i did like about DOS
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And regarding Legolas was when he was beaten up by Bolg. I thought it quite nice to see one of the tougher Elves discomforted. And to see that some of the bad guys can be tough, they where not all wimpy goblins to be wiped by the dozen-load. I think this is the only time in all the movies where Legolas gets hurt. PS I realize that his doesn't really answer the point in hand but the subject was a bit mentioned in this thread, but i have difficulty in locating the precise sub-sub-sub thread.
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Chen G.
Gondor
Jun 4 2020, 11:28am
Post #234 of 255
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Yeah, the first fight with Bolg is really good
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because its really just a street brawl. Works very well.
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 4 2020, 12:50pm
Post #235 of 255
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I would say it's a jarring inconsistency: Jackson just removes Legolas' Plot Armor without explanation, simply because he thought a "street brawl" would be neato-keen: as if Superman suddenly loses his powers without even the handwave of Kryptonite.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 4 2020, 3:20pm
Post #236 of 255
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...that Lake-town brawl did serve to acknowledge that for all Legolas' skill, he should not be as over-powered as he is generally portrayed in the films. Legolas is not on the level of Glorfindel, and shouldn't even be in the same ball park.
#FidelityToTolkien
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Paulo Gabriel
Lorien
Jun 9 2020, 5:33pm
Post #237 of 255
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Last time I looked you were a defender of "The Hobbit" films. Your line of argument here seems to be that "nothing dumb" exists in those films (1) but if it did it would exist in equal measure in the "LotR" trilogy (2), so everyone who prefers the latter over the former must then be a hypocrite (3).
It's not so much ''hipocrisy'' as it is ''inconsistent criteria''. I feel that there is a double standard going on here.
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Paulo Gabriel
Lorien
Jun 9 2020, 6:12pm
Post #238 of 255
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for Rohan, not Gondor--though he doesn't seem to have continued on with King Theoden's forces to Gondor).
Isn't Dunharrow in Gondor?
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 9 2020, 6:41pm
Post #239 of 255
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for Rohan, not Gondor--though he doesn't seem to have continued on with King Theoden's forces to Gondor). Isn't Dunharrow in Gondor?
Dunharrow is definitely in Rohan. About 20 miles upstream from Edoras. Entrance to the Paths of the Dead, whose southern end opens into Gondor on the other side of the White Mountains. It was there that the Muster took place (of course, in the book not only was Elrond never there, but Aragorn and Theoden were never there at the same time).
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 9 2020, 7:02pm
Post #240 of 255
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To put Elrond's journey into perspective: according to Tolkien's chronology, he left Rivendell with Arwen on May 1 and arrived at Minas Tirith on 1 Lithe: the trip took sixty days. It took the Company the same length of time, if we subtract the month spent in Rivendell. Subtract the distance by road from Dunharrow by horse (it took the Rohirrim five days): So if the Muster took place on March 10 (never mind that Aragorn had been gone for two days by then), Elrond would have had to set out on January 15, while the Fellowship was escaping the Balrog.
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skyofcoffeebeans
Rohan
Jun 9 2020, 7:27pm
Post #241 of 255
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It would almost make sense for Gandalf "dying" for movie Elrond to come to his senses and get on a horse.
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 9 2020, 7:53pm
Post #242 of 255
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It would almost make sense for Gandalf "dying" for movie Elrond to come to his senses and get on a horse.
....and anticipate that Aragorn would be at Dunharrow in two months' time.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 9 2020, 8:49pm
Post #243 of 255
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Isn't Dunharrow in Gondor?
No, it's in Rohan. Elrond caught up with Aragorn near where the Rohirrim mustered for their ride to Gondor.
#FidelityToTolkien
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 9 2020, 8:56pm
Post #244 of 255
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To put Elrond's journey into perspective: according to Tolkien's chronology, he left Rivendell with Arwen on May 1 and arrived at Minas Tirith on 1 Lithe: the trip took sixty days. It took the Company the same length of time, if we subtract the month spent in Rivendell. Subtract the distance by road from Dunharrow by horse (it took the Rohirrim five days): So if the Muster took place on March 10 (never mind that Aragorn had been gone for two days by then), Elrond would have had to set out on January 15, while the Fellowship was escaping the Balrog.
Agreed that Elrond's timeline for reaching Dunharrow/Harrowdale makes no sense, but it is an easy one to ignore given everything else that's going on. It's one of the things that only comes to my attention after the movie is done, and only if I'm specifically thinking about it. Maybe the difference is that, by the time of the second and third Hobbit movies I was very conscious and sensitive to Peter Jackson's excesses, much more than when the LotR films were released.
In a related matter, it is possible that Jackson's Battle of the Hornburg takes place around or before Aragorn's birthday of March the First. That would be an explanation for him telling Eowyn that he's 87 years old when he would have turned 88 by this point in the book. Either that or Peter just screwed up his age the same way he screwed up Bilbo's year of birth.
#FidelityToTolkien
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jun 9 2020, 9:03pm)
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 9 2020, 9:12pm
Post #245 of 255
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had turned 88 the day he met Gandalf the White in Fangorn, before he ever came to Edoras.
(This post was edited by Solicitr on Jun 9 2020, 9:12pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 9 2020, 9:33pm
Post #246 of 255
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[Aragorn] had turned 88 the day he met Gandalf the White in Fangorn, before he ever came to Edoras.
Obviously, though, that is not the case in Peter Jackson's version unless Aragorn had lost track of the days and didn't realize that his birthday had passed. The only oher two possibilities are that either 1) Aragorn was only 86 years old when he met Frodo and his companions in Bree; or 2) the Three Hunters and Gandalf reach Edoras at least two or three days earlier than they did in the book.
#FidelityToTolkien
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jun 9 2020, 9:39pm)
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Solicitr
Gondor
Jun 9 2020, 11:29pm
Post #248 of 255
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Or 3) Jackson was sloppy
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 10 2020, 1:30am
Post #249 of 255
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Option 1 is the way to go
That's my best guess for determining Aragorn's year of birth in the films, starting with the stated date for Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday (September 22, T.A. 3000):
- The War of the Ring: 3001-3002
- Aragorn's age during the march to Helm's Deep (March 3002): 87 years
- Aragorn's year of birth: 2915 (3002 - 87 = 2915).
Option #2 results in a birth-year 2514. Either year is consistent with the idea of an adult Strider at the time of the Battle of Five Armies.
#FidelityToTolkien
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jun 10 2020, 1:38am)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 10 2020, 4:58pm
Post #250 of 255
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Elrond from Rivendell to Rohan.
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To put Elrond's journey into perspective: according to Tolkien's chronology, he left Rivendell with Arwen on May 1 and arrived at Minas Tirith on 1 Lithe: the trip took sixty days. It took the Company the same length of time, if we subtract the month spent in Rivendell. Subtract the distance by road from Dunharrow by horse (it took the Rohirrim five days): So if the Muster took place on March 10 (never mind that Aragorn had been gone for two days by then), Elrond would have had to set out on January 15, while the Fellowship was escaping the Balrog.
Yes, in the films Elrond's journey is extremely problematic. We see him in The Return of the King still in Rivendell seeming about the same time that Gandalf and Pippin depart Edoras for Minas Tirith (March 5th in the book). It is only at this time that Narsil is reforged.We next see him on horseback approaching Aragorn's camp in Rohan (the morning of March 6th according to Tolkien). Even allowing Elrond the possibility of an extra day, he had to make a journey of maybe 600 miles or more in less than two days without benefit of the Eagles. And he couldn't leave Rivendell until after Narsil was remade.
I really wish I did have something useful to add about the main topic, but sadly I am tapped out.
#FidelityToTolkien
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jun 10 2020, 5:04pm)
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