-The Lord of the Rings 411-

[Dragon Warrior]

Well, I am aware of there being threads for all of the books/movies, but there isn't one for all of them combined. Close this if you wish, mods, but I was just thinking there are things to discuss that involve all 3 (or 4 if you want to include The Hobbit). Things such as the making of the sets, the actors/actresses, the workers of the movies, the people who worked with Tolkien, and as such. There's more or less a wide variety of dicussion within the combination of these fine literatures and films.

If this allowed to be here, let's talk LOTR. :)

[Kitty]

[color=blue][size=1]So, you're trying to make another thread like the Star Wars one, huh? Actually.... I only [i]read[/i] that one. I wasn't here early enough to actually participate.... or understand it...

If I'm correct, I believe that in this thread I have the option of discussing my opinion on the LOTR stuff. Am I right?! *looks around for any recognition* Yeaaah...

The movies are good. Not great, just good. The animation for Smeagle is cool, too. I'm weird, but I [i]don't[/i] like Legolas. *runs away from Legolas fans with weapons of mass destruction* That's it, from now on I'm keepin' my mouth SHUT!!!

~Scared To Speak Of Legolas *still running from insane Legolas fans, Deedlit in the lead*~[/color][/size]

[Dragon Warrior]

Yeah, but that's okay. My aunt didn't like Legolas because she didn't like his blonde hair-look and stuff, but she loved Aragorn even if her husband is a blonde :P Anyways, she later found out in real life Viggo (guy who plays Aragorn) is blonde and Orlando Bloom (Legolas) is a brunette. Oh, how things are so strange :)

And I'm not trying to make another thread like my star wars one. I just used the 411 part because it was catchy =P

[TheShinje]

[size=1][font=century gothic][color=crimson] This post is all about the effects and sets used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Peter Jackson and his crew deserve an Oscar for their movie, more importantly, they deserve the Oscar for effects and makeup.

The sheer intricacy of every minute detail has to be taken into account. the actor were wearing authentic middle earth gear which the camera's would never see. Every small scratch and detail was molded onto the battle costumes and attention to detail paid to even the furthest Orc from the camera.

The way they did the castle of Gondor scenes, the battle for Gondor, Smeagol, the dragon thingy's (don't mob me Tolkien-Maniacs) Sauron's eye. These are a few of my fav... oh wait... what I meant to say was that these are some of the best CG works I have ever seen.

Smeagol was perhaps one of the most detailed and tricky characters of the whole series. Far outdoing the walking trees (once again, Tolkien-Maniacs, I'm sorry ><) and the physical apparition of Sauron (opening battle, Fellowship) and to think, he looked weird in that suit he wore so that they could track his movements and map Smeagol on to it. I'd burst out laughing if I had one of the parts that interacted with Smeagol.

Peter Jackson and his crew deserve more than a pat on the back for their works in the CG/ art/ sets, I hope I showed that here. [/size][/font][/color]

[Dragon Warrior]

Oh, aye, they do. Good thing Jackson got that Weta Workshop to make the props and costumes for them. I've watched the extended DvD versions for both Fellowship and the Two Towers and all together, that's about 12 hours of behind the scenes junk. It truely is a magical way they make things. To think that lots of the forests (especially the one Treebeard lives in) was made inside a studio and it's a fake forest. They actually redid that forest about 6 or 7 times before they got what they wanted :)

And as for the dragon... you mean Smogg? (Smaug, Smog... God I can't remember how to spell it XD)

[Kitty]

[color=blue][size=1]I agree with Shinji. The CG effects used for Smeagle must have been very difficult, seeing as how they had to replace the actor for the final production. How do those people edit?! I apologize... I've never seen the extended four disc thingees for either movie.

Smogg, the dragon, was/is awesome, but all dragons are awesome to me. I'm a dragon fanatic. *hugs dragon plushie* Hey.. maybe [i]that's[/i] why I'm so obsessed with Dragon Warrior..... No. It's his sexy bod for sure.

I still don't think Legolas is hot or anything. *hides in a box of Lucky Charms*

~Still Running~[/color][/size]

[Dragon Warrior]

Heh. I know [i]all[/i] about how they did Gollum. Not only do I have those extended DvD sets, but I got a book on how they made movie magic with Gollum for Christmas. It's much simpler for them than you'd think. But Andy Serkis (Man who played as Gollum/Smeagol) had his rough points.

One scene in the Two Towers, I recall from the behind the scenes junk, where Gollum is chasing a fish through a small stream, Andy actually did all that in the freezing cold water and on all those hard rocks. He most likely was bruised a bit.

Though he was wearing a warm suit over the one he has to wear for the computer to work, he was still very cold after it and they ended up wrapping him in aluminum foil and a blanket to keep him warm XD

[Kitty]

[color=blue][size=1]That scene you were talking about, I've seen the 'behind the scenes' on my Two Towers DvD. (I have the regular one disc thingee. Not the four disc thingee.) He had to repeat it several times. I forget why...

Poor him, being wrapped up in aluminum foil. That stuff gives me hives... I think.. *scratches head* Anywayz, I've been planning on seeing LOTR: ROTK, but I haven't gotten a chance to yet. *places a curse on her mother*

~Waiting To See Return Of The King~[/color][/size]

[Dragon Warrior]

Oh, it's an amazing film. In the first week, they made, like, 22 million dollars or so. I was amazed :) It's also one of the only trilogies ever made that the sequel to the last movie makes more. What I mean is the TT made more than FOTR and ROTK made more than the TT. :) Yays!

[KKC]

Weta Workshop was awesome, I mean, they were awesome on Gollum (Smeagle) and the ents, but they said making the ents was pretty difficult for them. I could take 2 hours to 48 hours to finish an ent.

Yeah, they said that Andy probably had the best part acting wise because he had to switch from Smeagle to Gollum in personality. I thought that was really awesome.
My favorite Andy moment is when he yanked Sean Astin's Wig off, has anyone seen that on the extended TTT DVD?

Arg! I can't stand Legolas either! I thought he was a pretty cool elf with his bow and arrows and all, but I was never "Squeel every Freeking time he comes on screen" person. He was never my fav. character and i'm afraid he has moved down near the bottom of my list.

[Dragon Warrior]

Pippin's my favorite character. Ye,s it use to be Legolas, but after every got all giddy about him, I didn't like him that much. In other words, goofy fan-girls ruined it for me XD

Say, I was reading my Gollum book last night and I read about how Andy figured out how to do Gollum's voice and it was quite a crazy experience. Ya see, he was thinking Gollum was in pain and misery all the time, which he was, but he needed to sound like it. So Andy believed he should have some kind of choking sound in his voice. As he pondered that in his kitchen, his cat, Diz, waltzed in and coughed up a huge furball on his kitchen floor.

Not a charming sight, if you know what a furball looks like. So he cleaned it up. But later on when he was in bed thinking, he thought of the sound the cat made when it made it's "excretion". And BAM! That soon became the voice we now relate Gollum to.

So, he was now with a voice and had to go to the audition for Gollum, which he was told to go to by his agent. When he performed his audition act for John Hubbard (casting director), John was amazed and asked "How did you do that?"

I can do a Gollum voice, but Andy will always be the true Smeagol in our eye :)

[Guest Inuyasha7575]

My fav. character is Gimili in every LOTR movie he always finds a way to make you laugh and is always challenging Legolas to see who can get the most kills he made me laugh in Return of The King when he was ashamed of himself about being to afraid of going underground when Legolas was not.

[Dragon Warrior]

I liked Gimli too. John Ryes Davies was an excellent choice to play as him. Though, the funny thing is he's such a big man and dwarves are smaller than the average human size so it's just a crazy thought. If any of you know what I'm talking about, John played as that arabian friend of Indiana's in the Indiana Jones series. He's the one big dude with the fez. So yeah, he's big. He also does the voice of Treebeard :)

[KKC]

I really loved it how all the characters had scale doubles (Midgets or little kids who were the size of hobbits)! Expesially the scale double of Sean astin who was part indian and could kick his *** in chest. Ah... behind the DVD is so great...

Pippin is my fav. as well. He just reminds me of myself so much I guess, but I did like Gimli as well, because of his stubborn attitude. But Pippin is just... a fool, which reminds me of DW too, lol.
I think they chose the actors really well, even if Orlando just got out of school. Billy Boyd is awesome.

[Dragon Warrior]

Well, it's not so much as to when they graduate from a school or whatnot, it's more of how well they act and as we've all seen in LOTR and Pirates of the Caribbean both, he's a splendid actor. I for one want to be an actor when I grow up and I recieved good news a couple of months ago about a large play for 14-19 year olds called "The Hobbit".

No coincidence there. It's the Tolkien book! I almost died because I just had to have a part in there. I was aiming towards more Bilbo Baggins, at first, but then my friend Matt kept telling me I'd make an excellent Gollum. I was like "Damn Gollum! He's not like me." But dangit, when I tried the Andy Serkis version of his voice, I could do it! Everyone was like, "Dude! That's his voice!"

So I said "Meh, I'll audition for him too." Now, a few weeks ago, my mom revealed a paper that had news on the auditions for The Hobbit since long ago when I first heard about it, they didn't have a scheduled date.

I felt kind of down since the auditions were done on tape and had to be sent in and after my last (and I must save terrible) experience with taped auditions, I was afraid it may turn out bad. But I put that aside and said to myself, "You can do it, Gavynn! You're a sexy beast!" Then another thorn broke the skin when I saw the performers had to be able to SING! Damn, my voice! I can't sing worth shizzle. I moped about that, I did. Today, I asked for that paper about the auditions, but it turns out my mom threw it away ;_;

I must figure out how to get an audition in before it's too late! Gollum doesn't sing pretty anyways O.o I'll be doing his voice.

[dd protector]

Aside from the awesome characters and plot in both the books and the movies did anyone else pay atnction to the cutlture?

In the books tolkien developed many diffrent languages and cultures. I mean he had a history for every character even most of the minor ones. He developed whole written languages and codes.

They did an awesome job of showing that in the movies. Did you know that they handcrafted every outfit and every piece of metal. It was amazing the detail they went into to get the set for the woodland elves. And the shire? They spent a year growing the gardens in that place. Its an actual place! Im no sure if they actually burned it down though for the fire scene showing Frodo the future though ...

hmm...

Anyways amazing peice in just the setting. The graphics are a whole other ball game and cheers to Andy for Golem. ^^

[Dragon Warrior]

No, they didn't burn it done, but they did take it done for the purposes of not being allowed to keep it up :) Like so many other sets. Rohan was built on Mt. Sunday, but the owners said they had to leave it the way it was. So they scooped up squares of the ground to make roads and such and then preserved the pieces of ground and plants in a special garden until they were done with the scene. They actually did burn one set, but mostly by accident XD

And yes, Weta Workshop made all the props and such by hand. Even some guys worked for 3 years by doing nothing, but chainmail. They had to put little plastic rings together everyday. Eek. They didn't have fingerprints on their thumbs and index fingers after that!

[haruno_sakura]

What I really loved about the movies that didn't quite happen in the book was the added scenes between Aragorn and Arwen. I think it helped added a deeper dimension to Aragorn's character, to see what he was willing to let go in order to see his loved one sail on to Valinor to escape Sauron's possible rule over Middle Earth. It added to the mental conflict he had between choosing to take his proper role as King or to stay as an annonymous Ranger of the North.

The special effects were amazing, and they greatly surpassed anything that I imaged whenever I read the Lord of the Rings.

And for the record, I love book Legolas more than movie Legolas. I got a greater sense of his character when reading the books because there was more written about his interactions with Gimli while in the movies, there were only a few snippets, and it seemed PJ only used movie Legolas to dazzle the audience with his looks as well as his ability to pull off amazing stunts. I admit that I was smitten at first when FOTR came out as Orlando Bloom is an amazing looking fellow, but fangirls have ruined my movie-watching experience during The Two Towers, The Return of the King, as well as Pirates of the Carribbean, so, I do get annoyed whenever I see him, though it's not his fault. Sigh.

~Haruno Sakura

[Dragon Warrior]

I tried reading through The Hobbit and got rather bored so I never finished it. I never started reading LOTR because of that. Though, there's rumor that The Hobbit was the most boring of the bunch, anyways. I should probably give that good ole trilogy a good whack, then, aye? :)

[DeadSeraphim]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Dragon Warrior [/i]
[B]I tried reading through The Hobbit and got rather bored so I never finished it. I never started reading LOTR because of that. Though, there's rumor that The Hobbit was the most boring of the bunch, anyways. I should probably give that good ole trilogy a good whack, then, aye? :) [/B][/QUOTE]

The Hobbit wasn't the most boring of the bunch, it just wasn't aimed at the same audience. Tolkien originally wrote it as a children's story for his son. The Lord of the Rings, while spectacular, is only really an exceptionally large (and considerably darker) extension on that plot.

[haruno_sakura]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Dragon Warrior [/i]
[B]I tried reading through The Hobbit and got rather bored so I never finished it. I never started reading LOTR because of that. Though, there's rumor that The Hobbit was the most boring of the bunch, anyways. I should probably give that good ole trilogy a good whack, then, aye? :) [/B][/QUOTE]

As CrH has said, the intended audiences were different, but I honestly found the Hobbit and LOTR quite stimulating. My question is, did you find the Hobbit itself [i]as a story[/i] boring, or did you find Tolkien's STYLE of writing boring? He does tend to write pages upon pages of descriptions, which I absolutely adore, though some may find quite tedius.

In any case, I would highly recommend reading The Lord of the Rings, as there are actually a few differences between the movies and the books, and [spoiler]they even having different endings. ROTK (the movie) ended a little too peacefully, but the ending of ROTK (the book) is a lot more darker, and you finally get to see what happens to Saruman, who only gets a passing mention in the ROTK movie, which I found a little disappointing. Also the Shire ends up MUCH different[/spoiler]. I actually enjoy distinguishing a few of the differences between the tomes and the films. If you really want even more 'historical facts' about how evil actually began to settle in Middle Earth and how Elves and Dwarves and Men all came to be, I'd also suggest grabbing a copy of the Silmarillion.

~Haruno Sakura

[Dragon Warrior]

I already know plenty on how evil came to it, but this Silmarillion sounds intriguing, nevertheless. But as such, I may read The Hobbit again. Parts of it I adored greatly, but sometimes, it was the same rubbish over and over again so that's what bored me. Maybe now that I'm older, I can enjoy it :)

[haruno_sakura]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Dragon Warrior [/i]
[B]I already know plenty on how evil came to it, but this Silmarillion sounds intriguing, nevertheless. But as such, I may read The Hobbit again. Parts of it I adored greatly, but sometimes, it was the same rubbish over and over again so that's what bored me. Maybe now that I'm older, I can enjoy it :) [/B][/QUOTE]

To tell you the truth, I didn't enjoy the Hobbit when I was younger either, but I've learned to truly appreciate Tolkien's unique story-telling after reading it several years later when I had the patience to read through his descriptions. What exactly do you mean by the same rubbish over and over again? ^_^ I can't quite understand what you found so repetitive in the Hobbit because that description is quite vague ^_^

~Haruno Sakura

[Dragon Warrior]

Oh. It's travel through forests, then mountains, then forests, and so forth. But remember, I was a kid.

Now, I like C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books. I only read the first two and a little of the third. He has decent writings. Turns out Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were good pals back in their day. But the thing was they wanted to read the same type of book, but could never find something to their taste. So they decided the only way to get what they want was to write it themselves.

So in a way, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's writings are similar. They both did create famous worlds of great fantasy.

[Semjaza]

I have two sets of Narnia books and love them. Too bad the movie versions of Narnia are a little dated, not to mention goofy. I've had them on tape for so many years now heh. The first book isn't hard to find on tape, but there are a couple others that I never see anywhere. I managed to get c opy eventually. I guess not much can be expected from a made-for-TV BBC movie though. What's there is good enough. Narnia rocks.

It sounds like a lot of people here have seen those Extended Version DVD sets? I got the first one for Christmas and found myself watching Disc 3 (From Book to Vision, it says). Generally I never bother with extras, but I really enjoyed this.

It spoke of all this Weta stuff people are bringing up and showed it all in action. The movie is amazing visually in and of itself, but when you see all the effort that went into these things it makes it so much more impressive. I couldn't believe how great the miniatures they made were and they're integrated so seemlessly into the film (I previously just assumed that was all CG -- I wouldn't put it past them after Gollum).

As for the Hobbit, I actually enjoy it more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy because it's so self contained. You can pick it up, read it and that's that. Lord of the Rings is so much more involving and I think, in some senses, overwhelming to get into. The Hobbit is one of my favorite books... plus it's nice that it doesn't contain as many unnecessary descriptors as the trilogy.