DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah the romance was suggested and he played it up with new materials, but he also gave Arwen a lot more to do in the movie than she did in the books, too.  Even to the point of making it her rather than other characters.

[zslane]

Indeed.

 

In the books, Arwen was less involved in the War of the Ring than, say, Galadriel, but she was given more to do in the movies, which is irksome. In fact, if the goal was to have another strong female character in the movies, in addition to Eowyn, I would have just eliminated Arwen completely and instead showed the defense of Lothlorien and Galadriel at her most fierce.

[Spence]

15 hours ago, slikmar said:

Yes, but that Sam/Golem tragic "made for Hallmark" romance really seemed forced, though it did prelude the, apparent now, trend of EVERY media must have gay characters.

So.....they were ahead of their time?

 

[Lee]

59 minutes ago, zslane said:

In the books, Arwen was less involved in the War of the Ring than, say, Galadriel, but she was given more to do in the movies, which is irksome.

*cough* Glorfindel *cough*

 

That guy can't get any love from anyone. Bakshi replaced him with Legolas in the War of the Ring back in the 70's and now Jackson with Arwen. I also didn't like the fact that the movie depicted her as causing the deluge that swept away the Ringwraiths instead of Elrond and Gandalf. It made her seem way more powerful that she was (in the "books").

 

Quote

In fact, if the goal was to have another strong female character in the movies,

I think it was this exactly. Eowyn was certainly the strong female character of the "books". Unfortunately, she doesn't really appear until the second "book". I suspect the thought was they felt they couldn't wait that long to show a strong female character.

 

*I used "books" and "book" in quotes because Tolkien never intended for there to be three books. He submitted it to the publisher as 1 book who then broke it up into 3 books (probably for length).

[zslane]

2 hours ago, Lee said:

*cough* Glorfindel *cough*

 

That guy can't get any love from anyone. Bakshi replaced him with Legolas in the War of the Ring back in the 70's and now Jackson with Arwen. I also didn't like the fact that the movie depicted her as causing the deluge that swept away the Ringwraiths instead of Elrond and Gandalf. It made her seem way more powerful that she was (in the "books").

 

Preach it, brother.

 

I get that Jackson didn't want to introduce a character who would suddenly appear, do something heroic, and then just disappear from the story, but I still don't like swapping out Glorfindel for Arwen, or transferring the power of her father (who had Vilya at his disposal for such things) to her.

 

As an aside, Tolkien organized the complete work into six "books", adding further confusion. Moreover, he submitted the material to Unwin over several years, not all at once, so the publisher couldn't have released it as a single volume in any case.

[Bazza]

But st least he finished it...which GRRM has yet to do.  

[Lord Liaden]

With respect, Glorfindel of Rivendell was a throwaway character. Within the constraints of a movie, if Jackson stuck to the books Glorfindel would  barely have gotten any lines. Any time you adapt a long-form entertainment to a shorter form, you try to eliminate extraneous characters to focus the audience on the ones you want them to care about. Yes, Elrond did possess Vilya, but many Elves in Tolkien's stories worked magic through words or songs of power, so Arwen doing that was no great stretch within this world. And after all, she is part Maia.

 

Arwen's presence in the movie was not just to show another strong woman, although that was a plus. Elrond had told Aragorn he would accept no lesser consort to his daughter than the King of Men. Throughout the books and the movies you see Aragorn struggling with self-doubt over his worthiness to be king, to be with Arwen. She was perhaps his greatest motivation to accept his destiny, and crucial to his character arc, which is the true classic hero's journey in this story.

[Lord Liaden]

Just to try to get back to the topic of the thread , Arthur Curry's journey in the movie Aquaman is essentially the same thing. He doesn't want to be king of Atlantis, doesn't think he deserves it, considers himself an outsider everywhere. Over the course of the movie he comes to understand and accept his responsibility to more than just himself, and to believe he can lead in that role.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm baffled what they figure to do as a sequel, he's kind of a one-note character bro without any real satisfying backstory or comic book saga to pull from.

[Spence]

35 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I'm baffled what they figure to do as a sequel, he's kind of a one-note character bro without any real satisfying backstory or comic book saga to pull from.

 

Don't worry.  It's Follywood and I am sure they will think of something, after all look at all the other DC movies they have made......   ummm.....oops.  

We're doomed.

[zslane]

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Within the constraints of a movie, if Jackson stuck to the books Glorfindel would  barely have gotten any lines.

 

I don't see the big problem with that. And I'm pretty confident that audiences wouldn't have had a problem with it either. It's these unnecessary deviations from the canon that just bug me. Farmer Maggot gets so little screen time it is a wonder Jackson left him in the film at all, or that his actions weren't handed off to some other character, like Grima Wormtongue, in some misguided attempt at foreshadowing (and bringing him full circle at the end in case he chose to do the Scouring). Yet Jackson decided that it was important to retain a relatively unimportant and forgettable character like Farmer Maggot anyway. So Farmer Maggot stays, but Glorfindel gets the cut from the cinematic history of Middle Earth as re-written by Peter Jackson.

[Spence]

Hey now..... I liked Farmer Maggot

[Lord Liaden]

I may be mistaken, but it seems your objection is to something being in the novels and then either being excluded or changed for the movies, simply because it was excluded or changed. You appear to feel that was arbitrary, but as someone who's witnessed some of this process, I assure you that it's not. When you're dealing with a project this big, this important, and this expensive, there are reasons behind all these decisions. You may not recognize the reasons, and if you do you may not agree with them, and that's fair. But they're no more arbitrary than some of the things Tolkien himself did. Tom Bombadil was based on the appearance of a doll the Tolkien family had. The character did nothing to advance the story, in fact Tolkien had to later invent a reason why Tom couldn't just solve their ring problem himself. He admitted that when he introduced Strider to the story he had no idea of who the character was -- that came into focus much later. JRRT loved trees, and as a child he was bitten by a spider and became seriously ill. Guess what?

 

LOTR is a great novel, a landmark in the evolution of the fantasy genre. But it isn't perfect, and it isn't sacred. As someone who appreciates Professor Tolkien's work I thought Jackson and his team did an exceptional job preserving the essence of the story in its transition to another medium, all practical constraints considered. But it isn't perfect either, and I don't agree with all of it. That doesn't keep me from respecting the effort and result.

[slikmar]

4 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I'm baffled what they figure to do as a sequel, he's kind of a one-note character bro without any real satisfying backstory or comic book saga to pull from.

What they seemed to be setting up for a sequel was him also becoming an ambassador to the air breathing part, something they did in the comics. And also, creating a group using the professor and of course Manta as the start to try to create a war from the other side, IE the air breather side.

[Lord Liaden]

For decades Aquaman was treated as a joke by people outside the comic reading community, and even some within it. Nobody's laughing now.

[drunkonduty]

Back on Lord of the Rings - it certainly suffers from character overload. A modern publisher would probably reject it on that alone. Me, I love the world building as much as the story. But it does lead to a long waffling narrative that, in all fairness, needs to be cut down if you want to make some movies out of it.

 

I think the earlier parts of the story suffer from a distinct lack of direction. It's more a series of unlinked episodes. It's probably not until Rivendell that the plot actually comes into focus. The movies hurry it up by cutting out the unnecessary stuff. I can't fault Jackson on that, even if it means he had to cut out such essential characters as Tim Benzedrine. Er, Tom Bombadil.

[Pattern Ghost]

I thought that Jackson made a fair and decent attempt to distill LOTR into movie format. Overall, the good outweighed any negatives for me.

 

On the other hand, what he did to the Hobbit was nothing less than an abomination.

[Lord Liaden]

The Hobbit movies, and Jackson's King Kong, demonstrated to me that when he has the freedom to do what he wants, to invent, Jackson tends to excess and indulgence. The sheer scope of LOTR forced him to be restrained and economical, to prioritize what was necessary to show, resulting in a tighter, tidier film.

[Pattern Ghost]

King Kong would be OK if they cut out 99% of the boat trip BS.

[Lord Liaden]

I can just imagine Peter Jackson's pitch to the studio for King Kong: "You know how the original was the greatest monster movie ever? Well this is going to be just like that, only MORE! In the old one Kong fought a T-Rex, well in mine he'll fight three! The first movie had one brontosaurus, but this one'll have a whole stampeding herd! With a flock of raptors from Jurassic Park thrown in! And it'll have a native village like the first one, but I'll use a lot of Lord of the Rings sweeping overhead shots to make it look enormous! And the natives won't just be natives, they'll be traumatized psychotic zombie natives! Who pole-vault through the air like Spider-Man! And, and...."

[Bazza]

continuing on...

 

...and it will be as long as Return of the King.

[Starlord]

5 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

For decades Aquaman was treated as a joke by people outside the comic reading community, and even some within it. Nobody's laughing now.

 

Wait till he's skiing on the backs of dolphins.

 

 

Aquaman ideas:  

-  cut off his hand

- give him a water camo suit

- teenage twin sidekicks with magic rings 

[mattingly]

Now they laugh with the fishes.

[Greywind]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

For decades Aquaman was treated as a joke by people outside the comic reading community, and even some within it. Nobody's laughing now.

 

"Fish jokes. All I ever get are fish jokes." Arthur 'A.C.' Curry, Smallville

[Bazza]

Re: LotR. IIRC it took JRRT 12 years to write it. His aims/purposes from my experience was: 1) an example of what he called ‘subcreation’, what gamers would call world-building, 2) to give the British people back their Celtic/Fairy heritage. And Tolkien was influenced by what came before, cf E. R. Eddison The Worm Ouroboros: this was the first (or one of the) fantasy novel to include appendices. 
 

and for what it is worth, I like the Lord of the Rings films, with preference given to the extended length edition on Bluray.