Did anyone dislike the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Tolkien's family hated them and they have a point. Too much action and character assassinations. Read the book it's 1000 times better.

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

Tolkien's family hated them and they have a point. Too much action and character assassinations. Read the book it's 1000 times better.

I think a lot of that was down to the fact none of them got any money out of the LOTR films or Hobbit becasue Tolkien sold the copyright to them away years ago.

I really enjoyed the first one but after that it went down hill. The last one was poor. I read the hobbit when I was younger but not the rings.
they elf slow (liv tyler in particular) motion shot really got on my wick,


the new hobbit is desperate. There is no character you can warm too

I watched them all, and really didn't enjoy it. I read the first book, and The Hobbit, when I was younger. liked The Hobbit, thought LOTR was boring as Hell. Didn't bother seeing The Hobbit movie, and I probably never will.

watched the trilogy three times now I think and I am sure that I could happily sit through all three of them again, it was a joy introducing my stepson to them

I didn't like the films at all - 9 hours of people walking, even the trees walked

I enjoyed the at the time but I watched the extended boxset recently and it was just too long.

Can't say I'm a fan.

I tried - I really did - but I kept switching off the first one about the point they get to the elves.. it was just boring and while I'm a sci-fi fan, fantasy isn't my thing. [heresy] I didn't like the Terry Pratchett books either as a kid [/heresy]

Of course with them being on Sky every 5 minutes at the time I did eventually see (most) of all 3 but aside from the visual effects which were very impressive, the whole story did nothing for me and the Sam/Frodo "bromance" was just cringe-worthily awkward at times.

Would not watch again - didn't even bother with the spin-offs.

Films are rarely as good as a book you have read, particulary if you've read it as a child. When you're reading a book you construct the "movie" in your own imagination, so when you see some directors take on it I think your mind invariably rebels and says "that's not how it was"

I thought LOTR was pretty good and not too drawn out. Tolkien spent a lot of the book setting scenes and imagining a history which I remember skipping past reading the book, and I end up doing the same with the film.

Now the Hobbit. A short childrens book. As a trilogy. Now that's a disaster of a movie.

In one of the documentaries in the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set, there's a telling contrast between folks talking about Tolkien writing the book and Jackson & co. writing the movies.

On Tolkien they say no novelist would set out to write a book this way as it couldn't possibly work, but Tolkien did, and it works brilliantly anyway.

Then Jackson & co. come out and say no-one would make a movie like the book because it couldn't possibly work, so we did all this Hollywood bullsh!t instead.

I still like the movies, there are whole chunks which are lovely illustrations of the books: the Shire, Edoras and the Rohirrim, Orthanc, Minas Tirith is interesting (if not exactly accurate), and the costuming, armour and detaill in the settings is remarkable.

Perhaps they are the best LotR adaptation possible at the time. Certainly from seeing the Hobbit, they are better than what Jackson would make today, if turned loose.

folan wrote: »

plenty of people didnt like the lotr trilogy. Some people just cant get into that type of fantasy genre film at all.

I've no issue with them being fantasy films. The problem is that they're just really bad. Some of the cinematography is beautiful but that says more about New Zealand than it does about the movies themselves. The pacing of the first two films is way off, the acting and direction are poor and a lot of the effects are horribly dated already and will only look worse in five years time.

I've tried to force myself to enjoy them and recently watched the first two again as a prelude to finally watching the third film but they're just findamentally unenjoyable films.

Valmont wrote: »

Not at all - Eowyn could not have killed the Witch-King without Merry there to help her and Tolkein didn't write it as if it was the new ad for Gillette Venus razor blades.

I'm a bit lost here - Merry did exactly what he does in the book (distracts and injures the Witch-King by stabbing him in the back of the knee - the main difference being the dagger used, which is Dunedain-made in the book), Eowyn what she does in the book, beheading the fell-beast, getting her shield arm broken, having a good quip about not being a man, and dispatching him. Glorfindel's prophecy at the Battle of Fornost that "...not by the hand of man shall he fall" is fulfilled, since it is a Hobbit and a woman that do for him.

I love the books dearly, and much about the films frustrated me, but Jackson makes some clever compromises and delivers some terrific imagery. But it's hard to see how he could have made that specific scene much closer to the source material than he did.