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nopants posted:Is he still making at the Mountains of Madness? I thought that died a long time ago. Ive heard it was back on then off. From what I understand Del Toro himself really wants to make it, so inbetween every project he does he shops it around. So rumblings surface every once in a while that its back on. Maybe I just have false hope he gets to make it 
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Sep 20, 2012 16:09
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Ratios and Tendency posted:He made billions of dollars and won a dozen oscars out of what was widely regarded as a niche and unfilmable ip. Ignoring the more money/oscars > better than argument, its kind of laughable to call something that everyone and their grandma ended up seeing, the most famous fantasy series in history, 'niche'. The only 'unfilmable' thing about it was its scope, which money solves easy enough. poo poo like Gravity's Rainbow is "unfilmable", epics are just expensive. What seemed like a gamble in the 90s when there was no fantasy in theaters was a sure enough thing for them to dump hundreds of millions into it, thanks to Harry Potter and its ilk.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:11
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I get the criticism for the LotR trilogy, and I actually agree with some of it - like that I feel they really should have been much more focused on being fantasy/adventure films, rather than epic war films. That said, I still think FotR achieved that aim remarkably well, which is why it stands as my favorite of the three films by far. And I find that trailer so exciting largely because I think these films (the first two at least) are going to be much closer to FotR in spirite than the latter two films of the trilogy, which is fine by me. And as to the more technical aspects, I won't get into too much detail here for fear of going overboard with  as I am wont to do, but I will say that I really loved the visual look of the films in many ways, not just because it was aesthetically gorgeous and utilized good, solid, believable CGI for the most part (with some exceptions) but because Peter Jackson pretty much based the entire visual look of Middle-Earth and its characters and locales on the paintings done by Alan Lee for an earlier edition of the trilogy before the films were made, which happened to be featured prominently in the copy of LotR that I owned as a child. So when the films came out everything looked right to me because they drew on the same few images that my imagination did.For example, here's Gollum and the hobbits at the beginning of The Two Towers:  Looks pretty familiar, doesn't it? Or how about his rendition of the battle at Helm's Deep?  To me, that almost sums up the entire battle we see in the film in a single image. I mean, this all makes sense since PJ hired Alan Lee to work on the films, but I always found it interesting, and I absolutely think it's the single biggest reason why I ended up liking the LotR movies so much despite its flaws - because in the end it just felt and looked right, and this is why.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:16
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MANIFEST DESTINY posted:Ignoring the more money/oscars > better than argument, its kind of laughable to call something that everyone and their grandma ended up seeing, the most famous fantasy series in history, 'niche'. The only 'unfilmable' thing about it was its scope, which money solves easy enough. poo poo like Gravity's Rainbow is "unfilmable", epics are just expensive. What seemed like a gamble in the 90s when there was no fantasy in theaters was a sure enough thing for them to dump hundreds of millions into it, thanks to Harry Potter and its ilk. Harry Potter and Fellowship came out the same year. Im sure they made it really fast though, with a big budget based on Harry Potters success.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:18
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jazz babies posted:Maybe I'm nuts, but I just fail to see how anyone could watch his film and not be completely enveloped in the fantasy. Seeing the LOTR Trilogy in theatres was intense. This is exactly it. Every time I sit back and do a comparison between the movies and the books, I get pissed off. Every time I sit back and just watch the movies, I couldn't be happier.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:20
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Bombadilillo posted:Harry Potter and Fellowship came out the same year. Im sure they made it really fast though, with a big budget based on Harry Potters success. Yeah I was totally implying that they had to wait for the Harry Potter MOVIE to come out to discover that fantasy was big with kids again.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:25
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MANIFEST DESTINY posted:Yeah I was totally implying that they had to wait for the Harry Potter MOVIE to come out to discover that fantasy was big with kids again. Its hard to tell what your implying other then "poo poo on Jackson". It wasnt a good movie after all, it was just a popular gerne at that point 
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Sep 20, 2012 16:27
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Before Jackson's LotR, fantasy filmmaking was niche and widely derided. Jackson changed all that. In fact, you can see the effect this had on the Potter film franchise by comparing the quality and tone of the first two Potter films (filmed mostly pre-LotR) to the 3rd and subsequent Potter films (post-LotR). The "gently caress we need to step up our game"-factor is quite amusingly transparent.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:36
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Bombadilillo posted:Its hard to tell what your implying other then "poo poo on Jackson". It wasnt a good movie after all, it was just a popular gerne at that point Nowhere did I ever say that. Jackson's LotR trilogy is variably good to serviceable. Since I enjoy the books, and Jackson dutifully puts whats in the book onto the screen with enough competency, it was fun to watch the first time. My whole thing in this thread, if you read it, is that I don't think Jackson understands the qualities that set apart the kind of fantasy adventure in The Hobbit and why they're worth preserving. LotR, compared to Hobbit, is a very somber and direct tale of war, and Jackson directs it that way. Its a pretty no-frills rendition, it doesn't exhibit a lot of stylization, it doesn't really attempt to cram in much subtext or nuance to any of its scenes. Its very easy to ignore that because it IS trying (and succeeding) to cram as much of the book onto the screen as it can. Honestly to me that's fine for an adaptation of a book like LotR, but its not for Hobbit. Hobbit is a much different beast, in ways I've gone over repeatedly here and don't feel like doing again. What was fine to good for LotR is not nearly sufficient for Hobbit, and it disappoints me that Jackson doesn't see that. Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:Before Jackson's LotR, fantasy filmmaking was niche and widely derided. Jackson changed all that. In fact, you can see the effect this had on the Potter film franchise by comparing the quality and tone of the first two Potter films (filmed mostly pre-LotR) to the 3rd and subsequent Potter films (post-LotR). The "gently caress we need to step up our game"-factor is quite amusingly transparent. That's mostly on Chris Columbus, he's just not that great a director even in a vacuum, then to put him next to Alfonso Cuarón directing a darker book to begin with...its a big shift yeah, but I don't think LotR was as much to blame for that as Potter's own success was. MANIFEST DESTINY fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 16:42
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MANIFEST DESTINY posted:Ignoring the more money/oscars > better than argument, its kind of laughable to call something that everyone and their grandma ended up seeing, the most famous fantasy series in history, 'niche'. Sorry, but you're completely wrong here. LotR was a well known fantasy book, but in 2000 it was not in the mainstream cultural radar. Pure Fantasy was also not a genre the studios were interested in making because they didn't think it had a wide enough demographic to justify large budgets. The LotR DVDs talked about that at length, with studios wanting the whole series in ONE film. And you can't say something was a surefire hit because everybody ended up seeing it; not unless you're Nostradamus. At the time it was considered a big risk. Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:Before Jackson's LotR, fantasy filmmaking was niche and widely derided. Jackson changed all that. In fact, you can see the effect this had on the Potter film franchise by comparing the quality and tone of the first two Potter films (filmed mostly pre-LotR) to the 3rd and subsequent Potter films (post-LotR). The "gently caress we need to step up our game"-factor is quite amusingly transparent. That had way less to do with LotR than with they fact that the director of the first two movies was Chris Columbus, who had a horrible sense of design for the series. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 16:44
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Bombadilillo posted:Ive heard it was back on then off. From what I understand Del Toro himself really wants to make it, so inbetween every project he does he shops it around. So rumblings surface every once in a while that its back on. He's no longer planning on making Mountains of Madness. After he saw Prometheus he said they would have been too similar and abandoned it. Right now he's making Pacific Rim and has a few dozen projects lined up after.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:49
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Crackbone posted:Sorry, but you're completely wrong here. LotR was a well known fantasy book, but in 2000 it was not in the mainstream cultural radar. Pure Fantasy was also not a genre the studios were interested in making because they didn't think it had a wide enough demographic to justify large budgets. The LotR DVDs talked about that at length, with studios wanting the whole series in ONE film. I know that it was a big risk, I said as much at length in one of my earlier posts, I even cited it as a reason why I think Jackson directed the movie in such a "safe" way. I was responding to the notion that just because Jackson got the film made and it was successful, that it was the be-all end-all adaptation. As to your point here though, Jackson tried for years to get this started. By the time he came around to New Line, fantasy was already on the up-and-up (Harry Potter was 97, remember). It would be a complete gamble to take one of the new fantasy works from the Harry Potter class and dump 300 million into it, but we're talking about the most famous fantasy work of all time. Film studios don't gamble this kind of money blindly. It required some faith but lets not blow it too far out of proportion, LotR even in 2000 was a big enough deal that the news that it was getting done made the front page of my local newspaper.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:55
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Bombadilillo posted:Gollum says he's going to eat Bilbo in the same way I tell my 2 year old I going to "eat her belly" then zerbert her. Not only is it not threatening, its freaking cute.
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Sep 20, 2012 18:51
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kaworu posted:I get the criticism for the LotR trilogy, and I actually agree with some of it - like that I feel they really should have been much more focused on being fantasy/adventure films, rather than epic war films. That said, I still think FotR achieved that aim remarkably well, which is why it stands as my favorite of the three films by far. And I find that trailer so exciting largely because I think these films (the first two at least) are going to be much closer to FotR in spirite than the latter two films of the trilogy, which is fine by me. I feel exactly the same way, and I'm worried that this trilogy will follow a similar pattern -- gradually decreasing emphasis on the central characters in favor of huge epic war scenes.
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Sep 20, 2012 20:12
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The trailer looked awesome, but it looks too... bright and colorful. Too cartoony, and too CG, to me. Does anyone else feel this way? I liked the "realistic" vibe that the LoTR movies had going.
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Sep 20, 2012 23:41
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BobTheSpy posted:The trailer looked awesome, but it looks too... bright and colorful. Too cartoony, and too CG, to me. Does anyone else feel this way? I liked the "realistic" vibe that the LoTR movies had going. Rock and a hard place. Do you make a colourful kid's fairytale like the book, or a murky realism-fest like the LotR movies. Whichever you choose, you'll piss off one group or another. It looks to me like a compromise between the two, which is probably the most sensible choice.
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Sep 21, 2012 00:11
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Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:Rock and a hard place. Do you make a colourful kid's fairytale like the book, or a murky realism-fest like the LotR movies. Whichever you choose, you'll piss off one group or another. It looks to me like a compromise between the two, which is probably the most sensible choice. Compromise is a very sensible thing in very many instances. Compromise in art is almost never a good thing.
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Sep 21, 2012 00:59
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ChickenMedium posted:Compromise is a very sensible thing in very many instances. Compromise in art is almost never a good thing. Applying generalisations like that to art also comes with its own set of problems, but I do kind of see your point. However, that said, do tell me why either of those extremes is a good choice for a film of The Hobbit that also has to function as a prequel to the LotR films. Mr. Gibbycrumbles fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 01:03
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Skeletron posted:Gratuitous wide shot sequences of our heroes running theme-park-ride style through conspicuously CGI environments If you're talking about the helicopter shots of people running through majestic landscapes then I'm kinda confused. CG effects were occasionally added to those shots in LotR but those were REAL places. They took the effort in both LotR and the Hobbit to actually trek their entire production out into the middle of nowhere all across New Zealand just so we could get breathtaking establishing shots of Middle Earth. It was and is fundamental to why these movies are such a cinematic accomplishment. Also I want to visit whatever theme park it is that you get to run around in beautiful untouched parts of the planet.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:04
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ChickenMedium posted:Compromise is a very sensible thing in very many instances. Compromise in art is almost never a good thing. A mainstream film is already a compromise between art and entertainment so that ship has kinda sailed.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:05
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ChickenMedium posted:Compromise is a very sensible thing in very many instances. Compromise in art is almost never a good thing. This is the absolute polar opposite of the truth. Compromise is vital to art.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:08
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ChickenMedium posted:Compromise is a very sensible thing in very many instances. Compromise in art is almost never a good thing. This isn't really true at all. Much of the best art out there involves compromise and the tempering of ideas. This is why even singular products like novels have beta readers and editors and so-on. Untempered ideas can be good, but they often suffer from the creator not having someone to balance them out.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:31
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ImpAtom posted:This isn't really true at all. Much of the best art out there involves compromise and the tempering of ideas. This is why even singular products like novels have beta readers and editors and so-on. Untempered ideas can be good, but they often suffer from the creator not having someone to balance them out. I don't think The Hobbit or the LOTR had an outside editor. Tolkien wrote and edited the whole thing. Having other people involved does have a tendency to make things more marketable to widespread appeal, but I definitely agree that it takes away from some of the personal artistic qualities of the work. When it's just one person involved in creating a work, there's definitely more of the creator's personal artistic vision showing through. LOTR is often accused of being too long winded and in need of editing. But Tolkien was a professor at Oxford, no one would think of editing his work. And I'm glad no one did, because part of the uniqueness of the book is in its enormous depth and attention to detail. Had a lot of that been edited out, I don't think it would have had the same impact and cult following it has.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:54
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Tolkein was his own editor, and he was a merciless one at that. The compromise on Tolkein's part was getting it published in the first place. If he wasn't dragged kicking and screaming and told it was good enough by his contemporaries (only slightly exaggerated), then he would have never finished it. Look at how long he worked on the Silmarillion in it's different forms, and it still wasn't finished.
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Sep 21, 2012 02:19
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Recursive Expanse posted:Tolkein was his own editor, and he was a merciless one at that. The compromise on Tolkein's part was getting it published in the first place. If he wasn't dragged kicking and screaming and told it was good enough by his contemporaries (only slightly exaggerated), then he would have never finished it. Look at how long he worked on the Silmarillion in it's different forms, and it still wasn't finished. This. Also Tolkien made plenty of compromises and changes and reconsiderings based on things people he respected told him. You only have to read his published letters to see plenty examples of them.
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Sep 21, 2012 02:56
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I believe Rayner Unwin, who was his publisher's son, played a big part in critiquing LOTR while it was being written.
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Sep 21, 2012 03:32
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MANIFEST DESTINY posted:What was fine to good for LotR is not nearly sufficient for Hobbit, and it disappoints me that Jackson doesn't see that. Okay, I get where you're coming from now, but it's a bit much for just a trailer, isn't it? Yeah, the movie looks the same as LOTR, not surprising cause it's the same director and everything, but that doesn't mean the heart of the movie won't be vastly different from LOTR. We can only judge so much by a trailer, we can't say anything definitive until we see the full movie, which I think is why people are getting mad at you; you're talking about this movie like you've already seen it when really you've just seen a trailer. This is why I wanted to see more of the dwarves, because I want to know how they talk to each other. If they can capture that sense of comradeship between all 13 dwarves that the hobbits in Fellowship had with each other than a lot of my worries about this film would disappear, because that's the closest to the tone of the Hobbit that the film LOTR got, and if they can manage that across three films I will be a very happy viewer, but I probably won't know until the movie is out and I can see it myself.
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Sep 21, 2012 04:31
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SatansBestBuddy posted:Okay, I get where you're coming from now, but it's a bit much for just a trailer, isn't it? Yeah, the movie looks the same as LOTR, not surprising cause it's the same director and everything, but that doesn't mean the heart of the movie won't be vastly different from LOTR. We can only judge so much by a trailer, we can't say anything definitive until we see the full movie, which I think is why people are getting mad at you; you're talking about this movie like you've already seen it when really you've just seen a trailer. Like I was saying earlier in the thread, splitting it into 3 films and spreading the narrative focus across multiple perspectives outside of the questing party changes the genre from adventure to epic. Its objectively not a simple story about leaving home and having an adventure from the perspective of a single outsider anymore. Might the film try to mitigate that a bit? Sure, it might. But we know enough about the film already to conclusively say that the genre, focus and tone have all shifted away from the novel and towards that of the LotR film trilogy, and that's all I've been directing my criticism at.
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Sep 21, 2012 06:58
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The only thing i didn't like about lotr was how old they made Bilbo after he gave up the ring. It just didn't make sense. It made sense in the book, since something like 20 years had passed between giving up the ring and leaving for the gray havens. But in the movie, only a year passes between those events. Bilbo just gets suddenly old. Yet Gollum has been without the ring for 50 years and is till the same spry creepy looking creature.
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Sep 21, 2012 10:54
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That's in the book too, and a major plot point. The Ring's very existence was what was keeping him from aging. As soon as it was destroyed, his body suddenly remembered it was like 131 years old.
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Sep 21, 2012 11:26
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I guess you could chalk that up to the difference between having the ring for a few decades or quite a few centuries.
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Sep 21, 2012 11:28
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Mahoning posted:I believe Rayner Unwin, who was his publisher's son, played a big part in critiquing LOTR while it was being written. Even more, Christopher Tolkien during the war. And then Tolkien rewrote it. And then typed it out. And retyped it out. And that was before he proofread it. Data Graham posted:That's in the book too, and a major plot point. The Ring's very existence was what was keeping him from aging. As soon as it was destroyed, his body suddenly remembered it was like 131 years old. That was the nice touch with Gollum in the trailer. The Ring was still keeping him relatively young.
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Sep 21, 2012 11:37
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eh4 posted:Even more, Christopher Tolkien during the war. And then Tolkien rewrote it. And then typed it out. And retyped it out. And that was before he proofread it. He didn't look particularly much younger in the trailer. Data Graham posted:That's in the book too, and a major plot point. The Ring's very existence was what was keeping him from aging. As soon as it was destroyed, his body suddenly remembered it was like 131 years old. But he doesn't suddenly age 20 years in the course of a year. In the book, it actually takes him 20 years to age 20 years. The book never describes him as having aged rapidly, just that he started aging naturally after he gave up the ring and after it was destroyed and that age was "catching up to him". Gianthogweed fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 12:19
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Gianthogweed posted:He didn't look particularly much younger in the trailer. I thought he did. He had some actual black hair, noticeably more than in LotR. He also definitely looks a bit more well-fed, a bit more "muscular" which really just amounts to being slightly less scrawny. I thought maybe his eyes appeared a tiny bit larger too, which can give off a more youthful look in pretty much any animated character. Also, I just wanted to say something here - it seems like hardly anyone has barely even discussed Martin Freeman in this trailer, even though we definitely get a better sense of him as Bilbo. And I just think it's a remarkable credit to him, and how unbelievably natural he is in that role. It's honestly kind of amazing, he just IS Bilbo. I don't even give it a second thought, he's that perfect. I would go so far as to say he's the best casting decision that's been made in any of these Tolkien films next to Ian Mckellan as Gandalf, and I haven't seen the movie yet. I suppose I could be wrong, but I doubt it. I think having Freeman as such a capable Bilbo will go a long, long way in making these films work on some of the more basic levels. This entire Hobbit trilogy ultimately succeeds or fails based on that one role - which is a very different situation than the one we had in LotR. So again, I'm so glad it's worked out with Freeman, and it's honestly kind of stunning to see that nobody has a single bad thing to say about him. Not even Manifest Destiny!
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Sep 21, 2012 12:59
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kaworu posted:I thought he did. He had some actual black hair, noticeably more than in LotR. He also definitely looks a bit more well-fed, a bit more "muscular" which really just amounts to being slightly less scrawny. I thought maybe his eyes appeared a tiny bit larger too, which can give off a more youthful look in pretty much any animated character. I think he's great too. And he sounds quite a bit like Ian Holm as well without it being an impersonation.
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Sep 21, 2012 13:06
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Lizard Combatant posted:I think he's great too. And he sounds quite a bit like Ian Holm as well without it being an impersonation. The bit when he yells that he's going on an adventure definitely sounds like Ian Holm to me for some reason. That, and the short glimpses we see of his mannerisms really feel like a younger Bilbo from LotR. So good.
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Sep 21, 2012 14:04
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I'm really looking forward to Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin. It seems like a ridiculous casting decision but it could really pay off.
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Sep 21, 2012 15:23
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Lizard Combatant posted:I think he's great too. And he sounds quite a bit like Ian Holm as well without it being an impersonation. A bit!? For a second I honestly thought he was being dubbed by Ian Holm! Amazing.
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Sep 21, 2012 16:14
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teagone posted:The bit when he yells that he's going on an adventure definitely sounds like Ian Holm to me for some reason. That, and the short glimpses we see of his mannerisms really feel like a younger Bilbo from LotR. So good. Just thinking of the parallel between that line and Bilbo's "I think I'm quite ready for another adventure" line from LOTR is just sooo 
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Sep 21, 2012 16:49
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Do you think Jackson is going to pull a Lucas and release a special edition of LOTR that replaces Ian Holme's young Bilbo with Martin Freemen?
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Sep 21, 2012 20:38
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