fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3346 ]

[ SECRET POST #3346 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3346 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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(Donald Trump / Milo Yiannopoulos)

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[Pathologic]

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[Legends of Tomorrow]

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[Tom Hiddleston in Crimson Peak]

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07.

(How to be a Serial Killer)

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10.

[Pretty Little Liars]

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11.

[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #478.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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What are people's favorite things about them, and what are your least favorite things about them?

(Also it would be nice if this thread didn't have people calling the movies stupid/abominations or calling the books boring/unreadable. Just pick the individual bits you liked/didn't like.)

Favourite thing - the beacons racing along the mountain chain.
Least favourite - what PJ did to Denethor.

Oh don't even get me started about what he did to Denethor!

(I was a member of the Society for the Protection of Canonical Denethor back on lj. I obviously still have feelings on this subject.)

I like both the books and movies, but I love the pacing of the movies and the overall presentation (visuals, music, etc). I think they really benefited from Jackson needing to cut material, and therefore work hard to string things together efficiently and leave only the good bits (as opposed to the Hobbit where he desperately tried to make them as long as possible).

I do think the third movie gets a bit too... Peter Jackson-ey. Watching it now, it's the only movie where I get a bit cringey at some parts. Like, you can tell the CGI is going a bit overboard, and the stuff with Arwen being tied to the Ring was ridiculous (though previously I had loved that her role was extended).

Seriously though, overall the casting of the Fellowship is so perfect. Aragorn, Boromir, Gandalf and the hobbits especially.

The music
The grittiness
The beacons are lit!
Really, the music

Con? It's both a pro and a con: I love the extended series but it is really long!

I've seen the films, but never finished the books so I can't compare them.

I really loved the balance in the The Two Towers. The humor with Merry and Pippin, the battle at Helm's Deep, and the journey with Sam and Frodo. I just thought The Two Towers was so epic visually.

I didn't like the ending of Return of the King because you'd feel like the movie was ending BUT WAIT 30 MORE MINUTES HERE! Overall, it was an epic series and I rewatch them every so often.

Favorite: breathtaking scenery, incredible details in the costumes and places like Edoras. I, too, loved the beacon lighting scene, but also the first glimpse of the Shire brought tears to my eyes. That sounds so corny, but it's true.

Least favorite: I'm not a book purist and some of the changes in the adaptations, I didn't mind at all. I'm cool with skipping Tom Bombadil, I liked Arwen's expanded role. But some of the changes felt pointless and time wasting, like Faramir's conflict re: the One Ring and Elrond showing up to tell Aragorn that Arwen's life is in danger, etc. etc.

I really liked being able to visualize some of the battles. I had a hard time wrapping my head around what Helm's Deep even looked like. I also liked a lot of the casting. I thought they did a good job with Boromir and Pippin and Treebeard and some others. And some of the locations/weapons/armor/etc. looked very nice.

Negatives:
What they did to Faramir, Elrond, and Denethor. Also, the whole Arwen subplot was badly handled. That Galadriel-wraith thing. Gimli as comic relief.

Nitpicks:
I understand why they didn't, but I would've loved if they kept Eomer at Helm's Deep. Eomer's friendship/rivalry with Gimli trumps Gimli's with Legolas for me. I'd also like if they'd been truer to the books with regards to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields because I don't think Aragorn's coming gets the impact it deserves. And I would've loved for even more of the Houses of Healing, since that was my favorite part of the book.

I really like the pacing. I am totally fine with the books' pacing in book form, but it wouldn't have worked in a movie at all. But the movies really made the events of the book work as well-paced movies very impressively.

Going off of that, I also really like the scenes that were combinations of multiple book scenes or served to replace long or fragmented explanations in the book with a vivid visual or pointed dialogue. I think those was really well chosen almost all the time.

I also frickin' LOVE the soundtrack.

And the original or appendix-inspired stuff with Arwen, especially in the first two movies.

Actually the only thing I really dislike is PJ's approach to most fight scenes. They have a very *insert fight scene here* feel. Meaning - they don't really feel connected to anything outside of the fight scene. The internal sequence of events within the fight scenes aren't flavored or spurred on by the context or the events that led up to the fight scene, and the fight scenes don't really change the tone or momentum of the narrative that comes after them. The worst example that comes to mind is the fight in Balin's tomb room in Fellowship. Everything that happens in that scene is not only utterly irrelevant to anything important like narrative flow or characterization or tone. It brings the creeping horror of being forced to relive the fate of the dwarves they just read in the book to a screeching halt and completely dissapates the atmosphere and claustrophobia.

However, the actual large-scale battle scenes like Helm's Deep and the Siege of Gondor are quite well done.

I liked almost all the casting a lot. I did, however, have problems with some of the characterizations, even for characters I thought were well-cast.

Focusing mostly on the movies as opposed to the book...

Fellowship:

Favorite: the momentum/urgency of the trek between Hobbiton and Rivendell
Least Favorite: that really shitty fight with the cave troll

Two Towers:

Favorite: Helm's Deep
Least Favorite: Elves being at Helm's Deep...sigh

Return of the King:

Favorite: Eowyn, also Pippin and Gandalf's conversation about death
Least Favorite: Arwen's thing (I liked her thing in the first two movies, just not in this one), and Denethor being too one-dimensional

I could honestly talk for hours about how much I love these movies.

Likes:
Most of the casting is spot-on or at least really close.
It just looks so pretty. The scenery and costumes (yes, New Zealand was not the best choice possible, and things look too new, but I still do love the way it looks)
the music
the visuals in general and the style of filming
Gandalf vs. Balrog
everything in Lothlorien
everything in Rivendell
everything in Moria
all of the battles at Minas Tirith and at the gates of Mordor in ROTK. Actually battle stuff in general. The movies do a good job of that (in a way the Hobbit movies don't).
all the little references
the extended editions
honestly pretty much everything. I could go on and on about how much I love them. My favorite movies. I love this world and I love these movies.

Dislikes:
I don't think the elven culture was captured exactly right. And the humor of the elves was lost and the music. They are portrayed as far too serious.
I think some of the changes in Two Towers were a bit too much
The destruction of the ring, I think, where Frodo goes after Gollum rather than Gollum falling off the ledge misses the point of the scene a bit, I think.
I know why they took out the stuff with Saruman in the Shire, but I think tone-wise that is sort of important and losing it makes the ending more optimistic than the book is
I get why they increased Arwen's role. I didn't mind it in Fellowship, but the extra Two Towers stuff didn't work for me. And in ROTK I didn't like that they made her choice to stay about her son rather than her love for Aragorn.

Edited 2016-03-03 02:19 (UTC)

I agree with the last sentence of what you said completely. You KNOW some parent had to have written that part.

Sorry, but this is going to be... pretty negative.

What I disliked most about the movies is that I never felt that they came even close to capturing the aesthetic or the tone of the movies. Aesthetically, they feel empty and sterile. The landscapes are, like, desolate and inhuman, and the buildings and inhabitations are like tiny little costume sets. The world has no sense of lived weight outside of a few scenes. It was just... grey. When there was grandeur, it wasn't meaningful grandeur, it was just like empty slo-mo with no weight behind it.

Tonally, I just don't think that Jones really did a great job understanding and translating the operation of the characters or the emotional or moral tenor of their choices. In particular I don't think he did a great job with Frodo or Aragorn - both had a weird soft-touch presentation that didn't grasp the way the characters function in my mind.

I understand that just about no one agrees with me on these things, but hey

As for what I liked - I liked the music a lot. I like the bits in the Shire and in Bree but part of that is because I just love the Shire. I liked Theoden.

I don't know, man.

Because I just watched a Japanese tv spot...

Fry, you hulus!

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