Sometime this year I decided that I was going to finally get up to speed with Lord of the Rings to see what all the fuss was about (I did the same thing with Star Wars recently). Honestly I'm very disappointed. At least with Star Wars I could see why it was a huge deal when it came out.
My biggest gripe with the Lord of the Rings is that the story is just plain and boring with a hint of ridiculousness. And for the first 45 minutes to an hour I was totally on board when it seemed like the movie was self aware, but then for some weird reason they decided to take the plot waaaaay too seriously. I mean you need a videogame level of suspension of disbelief to get through the last hour and a half of the movie. My only experience with high fantasy are video games and Game of Thrones. And while GoT keeps my interest thanks to (at least some) unpredictability the Lord of the Rings is just boring in comparison. Now, when it comes to videogames, I feel like they surpassed what the Lord of the Rings is trying to do. The only redeemable quality of this movie is that special effects hold up really well!
That said I will watch the other two movies. Third one won an Oscar so it has to have at least some sort of a twist I'm guessing...
EDIT: I will take a small step back to clarify. The characters are good. They are kind of fun. That's the main reason why I will stick with it... It's just the plot that bugs me. It's so plain and takes itself so seriously...
EDIT 2: There a lot of replies to this thread that are misinterpreting my comments. So just to clarify:
1. Production values in this movie are AMAZING. Way better than what GoT can do. I'm not disputing that.
2. I cannot go back and pretend that I haven't played the Witcher 3 or Dragon Age before seeing LOTR. And I can't pretend that I haven't seen GoT. So, yes, it's an unfair comparison, but that's all I got. And that's how things can feel derivative when obviously they are not.
3. As much as I can buy the story when people give a bit of context the movie did terrible job selling it to me. After watching the first 30 minutes I was trying to convince my wife to watch it with me because it was so much fun and not taking itself seriously. When it got serious, I was not upset about it, I just didn't think that the plot justified it. (i.e. Start Wars manages to stay fun as the plot gets more ridiculous, LOTR gets more serious)
4. People justifying ridiculous plot points (like seeing a fire from miles away) are not really changing my opinion. LOL (Plus, much bigger issue for me was the fact that they kept running into the black horseman without any use of the ring)
EDIT 3:
OK. I'm half way through the second movie and now I'm REALLY pissed at some comments in this thread. It's complete bullshit that I was not paying attention. In fact the characters have the same questions that I had! Sam had no idea how the whole black horse-rider thing works (they can't die). And Gandalf only becomes a God in second movie. In the first one he was still not that big of a deal.
This is getting late so I will keep watching tomorrow, but some of you guys really lack self awareness. Using the facts from the second movie to imply that I'm an idiot is really low.
Unless there are more of insane tonal shifts, the second movie is much better so far. It strikes a good balance between humor and drama. In fact now I'm even more convinced that the first movie just does not work on its own in 2017. The production values are dazzling, but they can't carry 3 hour high fantasy story that starts of as a comedy and ends that dark. Not having Frodo whine in Two Towers is a huge improvement over the first film.
My biggest gripe with the Lord of the Rings is that the story is just plain and boring with a hint of ridiculousness. And for the first 45 minutes to an hour I was totally on board when it seemed like the movie was self aware, but then for some weird reason they decided to take the plot waaaaay too seriously. I mean you need a videogame level of suspension of disbelief to get through the last hour and a half of the movie. My only experience with high fantasy are video games and Game of Thrones. And while GoT keeps my interest thanks to (at least some) unpredictability the Lord of the Rings is just boring in comparison. Now, when it comes to videogames, I feel like they surpassed what the Lord of the Rings is trying to do. The only redeemable quality of this movie is that special effects hold up really well!
That said I will watch the other two movies. Third one won an Oscar so it has to have at least some sort of a twist I'm guessing...
EDIT: I will take a small step back to clarify. The characters are good. They are kind of fun. That's the main reason why I will stick with it... It's just the plot that bugs me. It's so plain and takes itself so seriously...
EDIT 2: There a lot of replies to this thread that are misinterpreting my comments. So just to clarify:
1. Production values in this movie are AMAZING. Way better than what GoT can do. I'm not disputing that.
2. I cannot go back and pretend that I haven't played the Witcher 3 or Dragon Age before seeing LOTR. And I can't pretend that I haven't seen GoT. So, yes, it's an unfair comparison, but that's all I got. And that's how things can feel derivative when obviously they are not.
3. As much as I can buy the story when people give a bit of context the movie did terrible job selling it to me. After watching the first 30 minutes I was trying to convince my wife to watch it with me because it was so much fun and not taking itself seriously. When it got serious, I was not upset about it, I just didn't think that the plot justified it. (i.e. Start Wars manages to stay fun as the plot gets more ridiculous, LOTR gets more serious)
4. People justifying ridiculous plot points (like seeing a fire from miles away) are not really changing my opinion. LOL (Plus, much bigger issue for me was the fact that they kept running into the black horseman without any use of the ring)
EDIT 3:
OK. I'm half way through the second movie and now I'm REALLY pissed at some comments in this thread. It's complete bullshit that I was not paying attention. In fact the characters have the same questions that I had! Sam had no idea how the whole black horse-rider thing works (they can't die). And Gandalf only becomes a God in second movie. In the first one he was still not that big of a deal.
This is getting late so I will keep watching tomorrow, but some of you guys really lack self awareness. Using the facts from the second movie to imply that I'm an idiot is really low.
Unless there are more of insane tonal shifts, the second movie is much better so far. It strikes a good balance between humor and drama. In fact now I'm even more convinced that the first movie just does not work on its own in 2017. The production values are dazzling, but they can't carry 3 hour high fantasy story that starts of as a comedy and ends that dark. Not having Frodo whine in Two Towers is a huge improvement over the first film.
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