[ SECRET POST #2527 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2527 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #361.
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.

Comments

[lex_antonia]

Tauriel could shoot Smaug's ball off with a shotgun, and it still wouldn't be as bad as "a red sun rises - blood has been spilled last night."

I'm not entirely sure Peter Jackson & co understand elves. I mean, I'm pretty sure I don't entirely understand elves, but I don't think Jackson does, either.

[(Anonymous)]

"a red sun rises - blood has been spilled last night."

did you have to bring that up? lol

[(Anonymous)]

LOL explain that quote to me, why is it so bad?

[lex_antonia]

It's bad because Peter Jackson seems to think it passes for wisdom.

[(Anonymous)]

Jackson really, really does not understand elves.

John Dolan wrote a really fantastic review in which he absolutely eviscerated the films, in large part because of how badly he felt Jackson treated the elves, and crazy bastard that he is, I think ultimately a lot of what he was saying was spot on - the elves are supposed to be this extraordinary sublime thing, and they simply aren't in Jackson's movies.

Jackson's next piece of miscasting is the most unforgivable of all: Kate Blanchett as Galadriel, elf-queen of Lothlorien. Galadriel is Tolkien's greatest female character, the sum of virtuous female power as understood in Teutonic Europe: subtle, at once tactful and playful, using her power to protect and nurture, seductive yet chaste. You non-fans probably don't realize how important Galadriel was to hundreds of thousands of us lonely Tolkien loyalists. I loved Galadriel. I wanted to die for her and Lothlorien. Lothlorien -- the name alone was sacred. For example, there was a student coop at UCB named Lothlorien; it had a permanent waiting list, just thanks to the name. But now that I've sat through Jackson's maiming of her, Galadriel's dead for me. Blanchett shows up in stoner soft-focus, looking crosseyed as she sleepwalks across what seems to be a Santa Cruz treehouse festooned with Xmas lights. Then she puts on the Ring and turns into a solarized chick from some Joplin poster circa 1968. Averting my eyes, I upped the charges against Jackson on the spot. From there on, it was a capital offense. Messing up Aragorn was one thing, but to turn Galadriel to farce -- that I will not forgive.

[lex_antonia]

I like Cate Blanchett's performance a lot, although I agree that the special effects were unintentionally funny (as was Gandalf and Saruman's fight). I'm just happy someone else thinks Aragorn was messed up, yay. (Nothing against Viggo, though. Viggo is flawless. It's the script I have issues with.)

As far as the movies are concerned, I actually really like The Hobbit a lot more that LotR. Strange, but there you go.

[(Anonymous)]

If you read the essay (and I encourage reading it - even if you disagree with him, he makes interesting points), he's likes Viggo as an actor, he just doesn't think he was right for the part of Aragorn.

Yeah, I think the Hobbit was decent for what it was. I also think part of it is that I like the Hobbit the book a lot less than LotR the book - I just don't care as much about it.

[lex_antonia]

Viggo Mortensen is a smart guy who, imo, really gets Tolkien, and a lot better than Peter Jackson, too. I think he did a good job steering Aragorn away from the Hollywood action hero cliché they wrote him as and back to what he was like in the books. Generally, I get the impression that this Dolan fellow doesn't know how to differentiate between script and acting and blames the cast for things they have nothing whatsoever to do with. Imo, Peter Jackson owes a lot to a fantastic cast that makes up in many, many ways for a phenomenally weak script.

So yeah, I disagree. :D

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I like Viggo a lot personally, he seems like a really cool dude. Like I say, I don't think Dolan is right 100% of the time.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't get this complaint. PJ was understandably fettered by havign to use human actors, for Pete's sake...I don't think it's POSSIBLE to make film elves as 'sublime' as our imaginations can create from the book. It's like bitching that Aslan was just a talking lion in the Narnia movies--well of course he was, they did the best they could with the tools that were available to them, divine talking lion actors being thin on the ground.

[(Anonymous)]

Dolan's answer to the question of whether anyone could have pulled off the elves is "probably no one - maybe Sergei Eisenstein." So I think he gets that it's difficult, but his point would be that if you can't pull an adaptation of LotR off, why are you adapting it in the first place?

For me... well, I agree that the problem is inherently difficult, but the fact remains that the elves in the films are not sublime, that in fact they're kind of tawdry - their dwellings, their costumes, they themselves have always seemed that way to me. And if that kind of sublimity is difficult to attain, I still think that Jackson could have done a lot better - I think he fundamentally just misses the point, the central aspect of elves, what they are and what makes them function. And if the portrayal of the elves was doomed to be a failure, that doesn't mean his attempt was any good. Anyone would have failed, but Jackson doesn't even start in the right place.

For me, anyway!