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More and more I appreciate that the LOTR dialogue wasn't dumbed down...

BossAttack

BossAttack

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Oct 27, 2017
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Seriously, how the fuck did this happen in modern Hollywood? Even when Game of Thrones was still pretty great and respecting the source material well enough, it never attempted to adapt the speech pattern of the books. Rather, characters speak far more like we do in modern day (even when it makes no sense). Yet, the LOTR films actually did attempt to adapt the dialogue/speech pattern from the books lending itself to feeling more like a "Ye Olde" fantasy tale than some Hollywood production. People say things like "folly" instead of "dumb" or "I seek the comforts of solitude" as opposed to "leave me alone." It's great and made even better by the great performances, it makes the dialogue just as rich as the action scenes. Anyone else really appreciate the care the dialogue is given in these films?

Examples:




Just listen to how Gandalf eviscerates Wormtongue, if this were typical Hollywood he would've just called him an "ugly worm" or something.



Theoden Speech said:
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
spear shall be shaken, shield shall be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world's ending!
Death! Death! Death!
Forth Eorlingas!
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Aragorn Speech said:
Hold your ground! Hold your ground!
Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers,
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.
An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!
This day we fight!!
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!!!
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Small Great Examples:

"Why do you recoil, I am no thief." -Boromir.

"Nothing more than a broken heriloom." -Boromir

"You think you are wise, Mithrandir. Yet for all your subtleties, you have not wisdom. Do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind? I have seen more than you know. With your left hand you would use me as a shield against Mordor. And with your right you'd seek to supplant me. I know who ride with Theoden of Rohan. Oh, yes. Word has reached my ears of this Aragorn, son of Arathorn. And I tell you now, I will not bow to this Ranger from the North last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship."- Denethor
 

SpokkX

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Oct 27, 2017
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The 3 lotr movies are great in this aspect especially. Really nails the feeling if the books - the dialogue is a great part if it

The hobbit crap never happened as far as i am concerned - it became a parody of lotr
 
-Pyromaniac-

-Pyromaniac-

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Oct 25, 2017
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Perfect trilogy really. Perfect as an adaptation can get. You can tell by watching it how much respect for the material, the actors, the viewers, the story, etc... there was.
 
Prolepro

Prolepro

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And a lot of that was just Fran Walsh too, it shouldnt go unsaid that credit for the trilogy should also go to her.
 
bionic77

bionic77

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Oct 25, 2017
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You can do that in LOTR because the writing was really good to begin with.

Game of Thrones would not translate as well to the screen. You can only say cock and tits so often before it kind of becomes a little silly.
 
CKOHLER

CKOHLER

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Oct 25, 2017
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Tolkien was an Oxford English language professor (and invented several fictional languages). Say what you will about his overall writing but his command of language is self evident.

Like jaecry said, Fran Walsh pulled most of the best lines directly from the books.
 
El Bombastico

El Bombastico

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Oct 25, 2017
36,261
Hot take: The movies are better than the books. They keep almost everything that was great while cutting out the shit.
 
dabig2

dabig2

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Oct 29, 2017
5,116
Fully agreed. Here's some more Theoden who really got a chance to shine in these movies for a side character. 1:45 of packed and pure emotion, characterization, and empathy.


To whatever end.

Where is the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
They have passed like rain on the mountains. Like wind in the meadow.

The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into Shadow.

How did it come to this?
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Just amazing. And a good example of them "dumbing" down the language but still coming up with something good and memorable. Oh, also helps that Bernard Hill is the GOAT. If script and/or actor wasn't good enough, then you get Game of Thrones.
 

Deleted member 17658

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GoT sporadically had moments when they spoke differently than we do now but they are not memorable because they are too few in between.
 
TechnicPuppet

TechnicPuppet

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SpokkX said:
The 3 lotr movies are great in this aspect especially. Really nails the feeling if the books - the dialogue is a great part if it

The hobbit crap never happened as far as i am concerned - it became a parody of lotr
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I wonder if there is a good movie in there somewhere waiting on all 3 of them being edited to 2 hours.
 
Walter White Walker

Walter White Walker

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Oct 27, 2017
21,760
It was great in LoTR and made the movie better with how they talked.
I wouldn't have worked on GoT, though. Hearing people say crap like "Nuncle" all the time would have drove me nuts.
 
Tbm24

Tbm24

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Oct 25, 2017
17,324
OP gave me flashbacks of the the Rohan speech both in the movie and reading it in the books. Gives me fucking chills thinking about the ride out.

LOTR trilogy was made by absolute mad men and I'll be shocked the day someone even matches that achievement.
 
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Wackamole

Wackamole

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Oct 27, 2017
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It's fantasy (as in it doesn't reflect real The Middle Ages) so it doesn't really matter much to me. But those movies are fantastic. And extremely well written of course.
 
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Disclaimer

Disclaimer

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Oct 25, 2017
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Agreed, OP.

A Feast for Crows said:
"Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
"Then the get a taste of battle.

"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.

"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner thatt they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world...

"And the man breaks.

"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well."



"How old were you when they marched you off to war?"



"Why, no older than your boy," Meribald replied. "Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. William said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he'd stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape."



"The War of the Ninepenny Kings?" asked Hyle Hunt.



"So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was."
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smurfx

smurfx

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Oct 25, 2017
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wonder how the movies would be received if they added a lot more of the singing.
 
samoyed

samoyed

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The "good" dialogue was copied verboten from the books, no?

ASOIAF is great but it's actual dialogue-prose is not particularly special except with some idiosyncratic characters like Syrio or Jaqen. The dialog in ASOIAF is meant to invoke "things real people might say". The dialogue in LOTR is meant to invoke "things you might read in mythology".
 
Deleted member 21339

Deleted member 21339

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I love this excerpt for some reason:

Saruman:
"What is the house of Rohan but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek and their brats roll on the floor with the dogs? Victory at helms deep does not belong to you, Théoden, horsemaster! You are a lesser son of greater sires."

 
Burrman

Burrman

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Oct 25, 2017
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JB1981 said:
I love this excerpt for some reason:

Saruman:
"What is the house of Rohan but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek and their brats roll on the floor with the dogs? Victory at helms deep does not belong to you, Théoden, horsemaster! You are a lesser son of greater sires."

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Love that too.
 
OP
OP
BossAttack

BossAttack

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Oct 27, 2017
43,547
JB1981 said:
I love this excerpt for some reason:

Saruman:
"What is the house of Rohan but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek and their brats roll on the floor with the dogs? Victory at helms deep does not belong to you, Théoden, horsemaster! You are a lesser son of greater sires."

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I was going to post this scene too. Such a savage burn.
 
Anton Sugar

Anton Sugar

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Oct 27, 2017
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My sister and I still say "I care not" on a regular basis.

Part of me wonders if we'll ever get something equal to LOTR, in the sense that it perfectly merged all these different factors that had to work together. A deep reverence for the source material, a studio willing to play ball, and characters who not only took it seriously, but also seemed to really believe in the project.
 

dudefriend

Banned
Apr 27, 2019
416
BossAttack said:
Seriously, how the fuck did this happen in modern Hollywood? Even when Game of Thrones was still pretty great and respecting the source material well enough, it never attempted to adapt the speech pattern of the books. Rather, characters speak far more like we do in modern day (even when it makes no sense). Yet, the LOTR films actually did attempt to adapt the dialogue/speech pattern from the books lending itself to feeling more like a "Ye Olde" fantasy tale than some Hollywood production. People say things like "folly" instead of "dumb" or "I seek the comforts of solitude" as opposed to "leave me alone." It's great and made even better by the great performances, it makes the dialogue just as rich as the action scenes. Anyone else really appreciate the care the dialogue is given in these films?
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Yes, I really appreciate it. It contributes to the verisimilitude and the overall atmosphere. It makes Middle Earth feel like a lived-in world.


I think as the writing on thrones has gotten lazier this whole suspension of disbelief has just totally fallen by the wayside. For some reason Dany's dialogue in particular always makes her sound like a modern day person, probably because her opposition to slavery and sexual exploitation, etc., also make her seem like a modern person displaced in time.

If you appreciate this kind of thing, HBO's Rome does a good job of combining these "Ye Olde" speech constructions with contemporary swear words and earthy dialogue. It's clever because it uses slang that sound like they could come from Ye Olde times, while still sounding like appropriately filthy stuff soldiers or peasants would say, e.g. saying "cunny," in the place of the C-Word or Pussy, or "Mumping" in the place of "Fucking," although they weave in contemporary slang as well.
 
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Anton Sugar

Anton Sugar

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Oct 27, 2017
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JB1981 said:
I love this excerpt for some reason:

Saruman:
"What is the house of Rohan but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek and their brats roll on the floor with the dogs? Victory at helms deep does not belong to you, Théoden, horsemaster! You are a lesser son of greater sires."

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It's fantastic writing, elevated by Lee (who had a deep love for the series) and Bernard Hill. I've realized, as time has gone on, that Hill probably gave the quintessential "tragic king from a dying house" performance. There is regret, honor, sadness, bravery, and cowardice embedded in his performance. He's stubborn but understands his stubbornness. It would have been easy to play that as a hothead, grumpy, unlikable king, but Hill always somehow has you on his side, even if it's just a little.

JB1981 said:
Elrond's dialog over this scene is beautifully melancholic:

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Arwen and Aragorn's relationship is another example of how they threaded the needle. Their actual relationship is pretty paper thin. We don't really get an idea of how they would actually function in a relationship, we don't really know what they have in common, etc. Despite this, they did a great job in convincing you of this eternal bond/pairing of the two characters.

I think a lot of Arwen's scenes are really ones that you can look at and easily see "this would have been awful in anyone else's hands".
 
El Bombastico

El Bombastico

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Oct 25, 2017
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Anton Sugar said:
It's fantastic writing, elevated by Lee (who had a deep love for the series) and Bernard Hill. I've realized, as time has gone on, that Hill probably gave the quintessential "tragic king from a dying house" performance. There is regret, honor, sadness, bravery, and cowardice embedded in his performance. He's stubborn but understands his stubbornness. It would have been easy to play that as a hothead, grumpy, unlikable king, but Hill always somehow has you on his side, even if it's just a little.


Arwen and Aragorn's relationship is another example of how they threaded the needle. Their actual relationship is pretty paper thin. We don't really get an idea of how they would actually function in a relationship, we don't really know what they have in common, etc. Despite this, they did a great job in convincing you of this eternal bond/pairing of the two characters.

I think a lot of Arwen's scenes are really ones that you can look at and easily see "this would have been awful in anyone else's hands".
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And its still miles ahead of the book, where Arwen and their entire relationship was literally a footnote in the back.
 
OP
OP
BossAttack

BossAttack

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Oct 27, 2017
43,547
Anton Sugar said:
It's fantastic writing, elevated by Lee (who had a deep love for the series) and Bernard Hill. I've realized, as time has gone on, that Hill probably gave the quintessential "tragic king from a dying house" performance. There is regret, honor, sadness, bravery, and cowardice embedded in his performance. He's stubborn but understands his stubbornness. It would have been easy to play that as a hothead, grumpy, unlikable king, but Hill always somehow has you on his side, even if it's just a little.
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"Eh Theoden, you're a horse. A fucking horse. You're the worst."
 

dudefriend

Banned
Apr 27, 2019
416
omg I just thought of one particularly ridiculous line of dialogue from thrones, as I was re-watching earlier seasons.

When the slavers crucify the slaves and put them at each mile marker Dany asks Jorah something to the effect of 'how many miles are there from here to meereen?'

and jorah replies with like '137' lol wtf how did they come up with that number
 
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