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Ultiville posted:I agree he was well-cast, but ACOUP has a good critique in the Helm’s Deep series pointing out that he’s vastly less competent in the films, in part because Jackson messes with the military details and in part because he seems to have wanted to make Aragorn look better. I’m also not sure how much that really comes across to a casual viewer though. OTOH the series makes the point that the film version of Theoden has Gandalf advising him to not go to Hornburg when that's the correct strategic decision, so maybe it's all relative.
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Sep 24, 2020 11:51
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I dont know, the film certainly frames decisions made by Theoden as being wrong to make Aragorn look better, but even with the framing trying to put Theoden in a negative light he still makes good decisions of you look at them without the bias of film language.
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Sep 24, 2020 13:04
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Arcsquad12 posted:I dont know, the film certainly frames decisions made by Theoden as being wrong to make Aragorn look better, but even with the framing trying to put Theoden in a negative light he still makes good decisions of you look at them without the bias of film language. The movie shows that Theoden barely has an army and that reaching out to Eomer will take days. From that perspective it makes sense to hole up in a place that has kept them safe for generations and if Saruman didn't have loving gunpowder there's a good chance it would've worked too.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:31
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Alhazred posted:The movie shows that Theoden barely has an army and that reaching out to Eomer will take days. From that perspective it makes sense to hole up in a place that has kept them safe for generations and if Saruman didn't have loving gunpowder there's a good chance it would've worked too. In the film he's in no position to go on the offensive so he moves to Helms Deep and immediately sets to prepping for a siege, building off of the refugees and men at arms currently holed up in the Hornburg. The only time he really screws up is by tempting fate by mocking Saruman or distracting Aragorn at the gate, and that again is film language working against him.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:40
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Alhazred posted:The movie shows that Theoden barely has an army and that reaching out to Eomer will take days. From that perspective it makes sense to hole up in a place that has kept them safe for generations and if Saruman didn't have loving gunpowder there's a good chance it would've worked too. Even if Saruman does have a means to breach the walls it's still the most defensible location Theoden could have picked to survive Saruman's army.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:45
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It also helped that Theoden had an auxiliary force of non canon elves to preserve his fighting strength by taking the role of redshirts.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:51
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God bless those elves. They all fuckin died.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:57
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They not only died, they sexy died. Oh, Haldir... that's it, thousand yard stare over the piles of elvish bodies, die with your eyes open.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:59
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Theoden is basically dealing with an unprecedented situation. Everybody is used to deal with bands of orcs but not super-orcs that moves in sunlight and is backed by a powerful wizard.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:27
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Yeah, it's kind of weird, I think it's a good critique, and film language might mean someone who saw the movie before reading the books got a bad impression of Theoden. But I barely noticed because Two Towers was enough of a mess I didn't get that Theoden was supposed to look inept, especially because as you say it seems like some of the advice he gets is supposed to be good but is actually bad, like Gandalf telling him not to go to Helm's Deep. Or, well, given how weird the maneuver of taking refugees towards the enemy is maybe Gandalf is right, but it's not clear what the better alternative is. It ends up reading strangely compared to the book where everyone is competent and working together on reasonable plans.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:37
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Arcsquad12 posted:They not only died, they sexy died. Oh, Haldir... that's it, thousand yard stare over the piles of elvish bodies, die with your eyes open. Elves at Helm's Deep was one of the more egregious violations of the entire story the films committed.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:53
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Honestly the way they made Treebeard a simpleton who had to be tricked into doing the right thing and then gave short shrift to the march of the ents -- I wanted to hear the marching song! -- was my biggest disappointment in The Two Towers. I wanted to hear modern effects try to convey voices that could crack stone with their sheer sound, dammit. That's what movies are good at!
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Sep 24, 2020 20:06
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Oracle posted:Elves at Helm's Deep was one of the more egregious violations of the entire story the films committed. Yeah it’s was cool. Better if Galadriel had been there but oh well
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Sep 24, 2020 20:07
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Oracle posted:Elves at Helm's Deep was one of the more egregious violations of the entire story the films committed. Forget the Three Hunters crossing 200 miles in three days, the Galadhrim covered 900 miles in an afternoon.
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Sep 24, 2020 20:25
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Imagined posted:Honestly the way they made Treebeard a simpleton who had to be tricked into doing the right thing and then gave short shrift to the march of the ents -- I wanted to hear the marching song! -- was my biggest disappointment in The Two Towers. I wanted to hear modern effects try to convey voices that could crack stone with their sheer sound, dammit. That's what movies are good at! yeah that part sucked the most of that movie. the way treebeard intones "saruman" when he gets pissed off sounds like a child throwing a temper tantrum
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Sep 24, 2020 21:13
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I just rewatched extended edition TT and the battle scene in helms deep is like legitimately perfect cinema
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Sep 25, 2020 02:28
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Imagined posted:Honestly the way they made Treebeard a simpleton who had to be tricked into doing the right thing and then gave short shrift to the march of the ents -- I wanted to hear the marching song! -- was my biggest disappointment in The Two Towers. I wanted to hear modern effects try to convey voices that could crack stone with their sheer sound, dammit. That's what movies are good at! I would have loved to see Treebeard's awesome house as it's described in the book.
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Sep 25, 2020 03:03
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euphronius posted:I just rewatched extended edition TT and the battle scene in helms deep is like legitimately perfect cinema Absolutely one of the top highlights of the trilogy.
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Sep 25, 2020 03:42
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euphronius posted:Yeah it’s was cool. Better if Galadriel had been there but oh well Better if there had been far fewer of them and they hadn't died. Elves being at Helm's Deep isn't totally awful (though I'd prefer they not be), but elves being chump blockers for a Rohirric levy isn't great. Also I get that this is largely because I am not an action scene buff in general, but I think Helm's Deep was significantly too long and the movie would have benefitted from more time to tell the rest of the story in comparison, particularly developing Legolas and Gimli.
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Sep 25, 2020 04:00
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Arcsquad12 posted:Forget the Three Hunters crossing 200 miles in three days, the Galadhrim covered 900 miles in an afternoon. It’s not even that, it’s that the entire underpinning of the end of the Third Age is it’s the Age of Men and the time of the elves is over. Most people have never seen an elf, they’re all going West and hiding out in their little secret enclaves and their numbers (and, Galadriel hints) their powers are waning. They all steadfastly refuse to deal with this issue hands on. Elrond sends his sons (descendants of a half-elf so still part man) with the Dunedain and Legolas is the emissary for the elves in the Fellowship and that’s it. I mean Galadriel outright says ‘we have no need to march to war, war marches upon our own lands soon enough’ or something to that effect. The last Alliance of Elves and Men was centuries ago. Their time is past, the old world is fading, it’s up to men to fix their poo poo. Having Haldir and a company of Elves ride out to Helm’s Deep and just show up makes that whole repeated claim a lie and the elves look like assholes who just don’t feel like helping defeat the biggest threat to the world instead of worn down fading relics of a time that’s past who are doing all they can to just have a few places of sanctuary they can defend before they have to go West or fade into faeries out of children’s books. It just cheapens the whole plight of a changing world that’s losing its magic for spectacle and completely misses the tone of the entire series.
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Sep 25, 2020 05:25
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The Second to Last Alliance
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Sep 25, 2020 12:28
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The One More For The Ride Alliance.
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Sep 25, 2020 12:54
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Yeah, there was absolutely no rationale or benefit for the Elves turning up at Helm's Deep, but I will forgive Peter Jackson and the team as they were probably trying to juggle some mad 5-dimensional poo poo in their heads to deliver such a huge production. The Two Towers, is of course, really a lament for bygone days when you could get totally hammered down the pub and your horse would pick you up and carry you home.
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Sep 25, 2020 14:27
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They look cool and that is a benefit.
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Sep 25, 2020 14:40
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So cool, in fact, that the Bad Wiki is individually enumerating and naming each elf depicted??? https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Thandronen https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Anendel
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Sep 25, 2020 14:46
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perc2 posted:Yeah, there was absolutely no rationale or benefit for the Elves turning up at Helm's Deep, but I will forgive Peter Jackson and the team as they were probably trying to juggle some mad 5-dimensional poo poo in their heads to deliver such a huge production. The Two Towers, is of course, really a lament for bygone days when you could get totally hammered down the pub and your horse would pick you up and carry you home. They initially intended for Arwen to lead the force at Helm's Deep, and even went so far as to shoot scenes with her in them. This was how they originally intended to bring in Anduril. However Jackson decided to remove Arwen at the eleventh hour to avoid weakening the plotline with Eowyn and added Haldir instead. If it was Arwen leading a force to help Aragorn it actually makes sense. But once they removed Arwen, nothing about it makes sense.
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Sep 25, 2020 15:54
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For all my defending ive never said that poo poo was good, my only thought is its mostly pointless and does not harm the overall narrative much. The elves get mulched and the events play out as normal. I do not think many people felt the Rohirrim were lessened by the help from the elves.
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Sep 25, 2020 15:57
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The movies just don't make any of the kind of ethnological/political distinctions about Elves that are necessary for a viewer to understand why any of the things the Elves do are significant. To get why it's crazy to think that a bunch of provincial Moriquendi from Caras Galadon would decide on a whim to come help out some armies of Men in a recapitulation of how the remnants of the Noldor teamed up with the castaways of Numenor to take down Sauron at his own front door, you'd need to have sat through another half-hour of unfilmable mythic history that they didn't have the rights to anyway. Far as a movie watcher is concerned, Haldir and Galadriel and Celeborn and Elrond are all basically the same character with the same motivations. But ELVES had been set up in the first 5 minutes of the first movie as a great big huge deal and they needed a spectacular visual payoff
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Sep 25, 2020 16:01
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Haldir even says Elrond sent him which is fine in the movie but lol if you are reading the book
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Sep 25, 2020 16:13
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Admittedly the armor is loving dope as poo poo, and yeah Data, that's kind of my opinion, i mostly just ignore it as the kind of noise that arises when you adapt from one media to another. they need visuals and will change things around to get them
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Sep 25, 2020 16:15
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The elves showing up at Helm's Deep was dumb but imo the elves in general have a subtext of being assholes even if you don't know anything from Silm. When elves talk about how their time is over it feels like a cop out. I think Galadriel/Elrond mentions that if Sauron gets the ring then strongholds like Lorien and Rivendell are going to be crushed eventually so its like shouldn't these dudes be more invested?? Sure they're on their way out but they still live in ME in the meantime. They're faffing around and not moving terribly fast towards the Gray Havens. They couldn't put together some boys and send them to help out? Then you read the Silmarillion and you realize the elves are just like that. They're huge selfish assholes.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:18
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euphronius posted:Haldir even says Elrond sent him which is fine in the movie but lol if you are reading the book So many problems could have been solved if the elves had just let the others in on their psychic Skype calls.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:24
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Also just kind of fatalistic, and getting tired of being alive and being crushed under the weight of thousands of years of personal memory. Tolkien's later writings are all about how Elves live exactly as long as Arda does — till the end of the world, literally, and then they die with it. But Men, while they "die" in a hundred years or so, they get to be truly immortal after the world ends and is remade and they get to chill with Eru and his son Jesus playing harps forever *v-signs to elves* Surprised they didn't have even more attitude toward one another
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Sep 25, 2020 16:26
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The problem with billionaires is you have to be an insanely boring psychopath to end up getting that much money, so you just end up doing philanthropy and poo poo. But if I were a billionaire, I would absolutely fund the production of The Silmarillion. It would be like 20 3-hour films or whatever and I would enforce strict adherence to the story by employing every available Tolkien scholar to advise the production, and they would all sit in a big room and argue about how best to depict Balrogs. gently caress the casual/general audiences and ratings
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Sep 25, 2020 16:27
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Admittedly the armor is loving dope as poo poo, and yeah Data, that's kind of my opinion, i mostly just ignore it as the kind of noise that arises when you adapt from one media to another. they need visuals and will change things around to get them Yeah it’s a movie It looked cool
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Sep 25, 2020 16:28
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HIJK posted:The elves showing up at Helm's Deep was dumb but imo the elves in general have a subtext of being assholes even if you don't know anything from Silm. When elves talk about how their time is over it feels like a cop out. I think Galadriel/Elrond mentions that if Sauron gets the ring then strongholds like Lorien and Rivendell are going to be crushed eventually so its like shouldn't these dudes be more invested?? Sure they're on their way out but they still live in ME in the meantime. They're faffing around and not moving terribly fast towards the Gray Havens. They couldn't put together some boys and send them to help out? It’s a selection effect. pretty much all the elves who ever thought to themselves “drat, I oughta get proactively involved in a continent spanning war against a god” already did it and got smoked. whats left over but the guys who were instead thinking “I should buy a boat”
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Sep 25, 2020 17:03
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They got involved against a God not once, not twice, but three times before they finally said "gently caress it, im sticking to the trees or renting a swan boat." (I mean it's a lot more than that if you count the War of Wrath as a separate thing and you mark the Beleriand conflicts individually, but still.) Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 17:08
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skasion posted:It’s a selection effect. pretty much all the elves who ever thought to themselves “drat, I oughta get proactively involved in a continent spanning war against a god” already did it and got smoked. whats left over but the guys who were instead thinking “I should buy a boat” all of the actiony elves are dead now you got elves who have their bass boots and just want to grill for god's sakw
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Sep 25, 2020 18:40
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Chilling in the woods, penning beautiful hand-written invitations to my Lembas Party
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Sep 25, 2020 18:52
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Oracle posted:It’s not even that, it’s that the entire underpinning of the end of the Third Age is it’s the Age of Men and the time of the elves is over. Most people have never seen an elf, they’re all going West and hiding out in their little secret enclaves and their numbers (and, Galadriel hints) their powers are waning. They all steadfastly refuse to deal with this issue hands on. Elrond sends his sons (descendants of a half-elf so still part man) with the Dunedain and Legolas is the emissary for the elves in the Fellowship and that’s it. I mean Galadriel outright says ‘we have no need to march to war, war marches upon our own lands soon enough’ or something to that effect. The last Alliance of Elves and Men was centuries ago. Their time is past, the old world is fading, it’s up to men to fix their poo poo. yeah this is why i hated that scene too
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Sep 25, 2020 21:10
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