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Owlwise's Replies
Eloquent response & heartfelt truth.
This, precisely.
It's a very good movie, intelligent & thoughtful. Ignore comments about it being dated, and look at it rather as a window into the America of the late 1950s: social, political, cultural. If you weren't a child of school age then, you can't really understand how powerful & overwhelming the prospect of complete & utter nuclear destruction was to the world. And the pettiness & stupidity of many social aspects prevalent then is demonstrated simply by the survivors persisting in them, until they wise up & break every taboo surviving from the dead past.
There is the creative genius of Tolkien: not just intellect & scholarship, astonishingly complex & convincing as they are, but heart & soul. Is it too much to say that what he gave us <i>is</i> real in some sense, just as the deepest & most powerful emotions we experience are real, however intangible & immeasurable?
I pretty much agree with your well-explained points. The humor I didn't care for was something like Legolas surfing down the stairs while shooting arrows—but humor is a highly personal thing, I know. As for changes, Faramir was the most egregious change in character, I'd say.
Yes, we did need to see more of Arwen, and I didn't mind swapping Glorfindel for her presence in the films. A good example of how what works in a book doesn't necessarily work as well in a film, and vice versa.
Definitely agree with you about the mishaps awaiting a mini-series of LOTR made today. Now, I'd love to see fantasy films with diversity—and there are quite a few fine fantasy novels that offer exactly that as an organic part of their stories—but forcing it where it doesn't belong & never did belong isn't the way to do it. As I've posted before, a really good Conan film would lend quite naturally itself to such diversity, because the different races & cultures are already an integral part of the Hyborian Age. But Middle-Earth is a different matter entirely.
The spiritual aspect of the books is what I really miss in the films. It's never preachy or overt in the books, but it's always there, woven into the experience & the very being of Middle-Earth & its creation. Still, I celebrate what Jackson got right, which was most of it, rather than dwell too much on his few missteps.
Well said. He offered what they wanted, and they couldn't or wouldn't see that they'd wind up being his servants & under his domination, far more so than they had imagined themselves to be under the rest of the Valar. The weaker ones submitted to Melkor, the stronger & smarter ones (like Sauron) waited for their chance to take Melkor's place.
What's important about Tom Bombadil is that he presents an ancient being of clearly immense power who has chosen a different path than Sauron, one who is immune to the lure of the Ring because of that choice. Also, Tolkien was concerned about more than just advancing the plot, as much as he desired to tell a gripping & compelling story. Which he did, all right! But everything is informed by Tolkien's spiritual beliefs & worldview. Who or what is Tom Bombadil precisely? Tolkien leaves him as a bit of a mystery, a reminder that not everything is known or can be known, even by the wisest of the wise. Both Saruman & Sauron are examples of those who want & need to know everything, in order to control everything. Even Gandalf & Galadriel admit to the lure of power & knowledge, even if well-intentioned. But Tom has freely rejected that, and is truly his own person, fulfilled in being himself.—Or so it seems to me, anyway.
The only problem longtime fans of LOTR have with the films is when Jackson alters characters (Faramir, for one), and when he throws in more contemporary humor & pop culture references, presumably to make the films more user-friendly to those who haven't read the books. When he follows Tolkien closely, he does a fine job.
While I would love to have seen Tom Bombadil & the scouring of the Shire, I understand the pacing reasons for leaving them out. A mini-series would have allowed for them; but at that time, no-one was going to make a mini-series of LOTR.
I always took those episodes more as lighter ones myself, using the old idea of the gentleman thief so popular in older detective fiction.
Tati is timeless & wonderful.
I just watched it again, and the answers in this thread are absolutely spot on. Cameron is emotionally detached by his life as an unloved homeless person, barely able to express his own suppressed & undeveloped emotions, barely able to function emotionally among other human beings. Lack portrays this perfectly.
And it's also interesting to see a movie hero who doesn't fit the movie hero template of being strong, resolute, forceful. In fact, I think that's what gives him his advantage in the final confrontation with Revok. Because Revok is all of those things, familiar with & comfortable with fighting against another person & overwhelming them with sheer brute force of will. Cameron uses a sort of judo trick on him, by not fighting as expected & instead opening himself up, even being willing to sacrifice himself--note that he starts the fire that engulfs him & that Revok must feel while scanning--he's willing to endure its horrible pain once Revok is locked into his mind--Revok only knows how to attack, because it's always worked before--but Cameron can remain calm, detached, and let Revok pour into his mind, even as he (Cameron) transfers into Revok's body & mind.
Well said!
I read the comics when they first appeared on the stands, and you're absolutely right: Kirby did <b>not</b> want the series to be part of the Marvel Universe. Nor was his vision of the series in any way like what later writers & the film made of it. Frankly, they severely twisted & diminished his vision, turning the Eternals & Deviants into just one more batch of generic superheroes & supervillains. But lesser writers have always done that to Kirby's work, so this latest travesty of it is no surprise.
Curt can't be in it because he's living in exile in Canada.
And it's a far better film that it gets credit for being. Taken on its own terms, it captures that middle period of the 1960s beautifully & accurately, with appropriate film styles for each of the different stories.
Young countercultural people didn't think in terms of "not in so-&-so's league" back then. They considered the whole person, not just surface appearance.
I'll go with:
- some movies don't hold up like space odyssey 2001 (2001 is a model of films which hold up)
Plenty of films made today don't hold up to 2001, for that matter.
If they actually do make this series, I can hardly begin to imagine just how awful it will be. But the utter lack of imagination in the entertainment industry these days keeps foisting this sort of thing on us.
It wasn't Kirby's vision at all. Every iteration of the Eternals after Kirby has gotten the concept wrong, and this movie is built on those wrong-headed concepts. Kirby envisioned the Celestials as equivalent to gods, unknowable & incomprehensible by anything human. They had visited Earth long, long ago & experimented on the native primates, creating three species: Human, Deviant, Eternal. The return of the Celestials was to observe the results for 50 years & decide if they were worthy of preservation or destruction. The series was about the need for the three species to learn to trust one another & work together in order to prove their worth to their creators.
Even in the few issues published, it was clear that the Deviants were more than faceless monsters, while the Eternals were sometimes a bit too above it all, with humanity caught in-between. There had been a relationship between the Deviant Kro & the Eternal Thena in past ages, one that Kro wished to revive. He could be ruthless, but he also showed passion, genuine desire, ambition, and the ability to be far more than just a villain. And Ikaris, who normally would have been the alpha male superhero in any other series, was a bit of a dunderhead, even to his fellow Eternals. It was a nuanced series with enormous promise, one that Kirby wanted to be kept separate from the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately, Marvel immediately pressured Kirby to link it to the Marvel Universe, and they finally cancelled it before Kirby could begin to explore all the ideas he had for the series. Those who followed thought they could "improve" on Kirby by turning his concepts upside-down & making it just one more good guys vs. bad guys comics series. Alas.
Ride A White Swan as well.
Looks like it! :)