I believe I should explain my reasoning for not liking this movie fast before everyone tries to burn me. I understand what is great about this movie, but it does not mean we can neglect the little things that it does wrong. LOTR is the most famous movie with the most glitches I have ever seen. I understand that making a fantasy movie like this is not easy to be glitch free, but there are way too many. I have only seen the first part, the big battle of the 2nd part, and I decided not to watch the whole and the third part. Since what’s good about this movie is found everywhere, I’ll just talk about why I don’t like it. I’ll include the parts I’ve seen on the 2nd one too since it’s convinient to do so.
First lets give some point values:
Video: 92
Audio: 90
Scenes: 92
General Plot: 87
Specific Plot: 83
Intensity: 82
Consistency: 88
Glitches: -12 (avg is -3)
As you seen all the stuff are pretty solid. The only thing I can pick out of the movie, besides the glitches is the slow pace. The movie doesn’t seem to have a fast pace, and with 3 hours of this, you get quite tired watching it.
Yea, I’ll get to the point, what are all the glitches that I am talking about? Well, first, glitches are more oftenly seen the 2nd time watching the movie, I have only seen it once, so ones I didn’t identify doesn’t mean it’s not there. But I can already tell you a plethora of it:
(Yes, I realize this is just a movie and meant to just entertain, but it is also art and make-believe, so it should not constantly remind you that “Yo, I’m just a movie! I don’t need to make sense!” Even Muholland Drive made sense.)
1. During the first part, there was a place where the big fire devil(pardon me for not remembering much names, I’m not aquainted to Tolkiens’ book and only seen the movie once. But one should not let the book influence a movie rating) was chasing the fellowship. They were running on the stairs and the place is so crappy that their weight made the stairs fall down. So the question is, if those little guys can make the stairs fall down, HOW IN THE WORLD DOES THAT FIRE DEVIL RUN AROUND AND CHASE THEM!???? Oh, maybe he can fly…but wait! He fell down with Gandolf! He can’t fly, he just magically appeared to catch up to everyone. It looked more like a video game to me at that part where you keep running in one direction and someone is chasing you and will never catch you, when you finish the level, it catches up and you have to fight the boss….^^||
2. Wraiths suck!!! From the description in the movie, wraithes are described as super powerful beings. There’s 9 of them in the world and it seems like each one of them can defeat a thousand men. What I saw in the movie is…. The only thing they do is ride horse and scare short people. They are afraid of fire, they are afraid of water. Six of them were trying to kill Frodo and one human with a torch scared them away…. I don’t know what kind of definition of suck would you use, but they suck. My friends told me they’re better in the book; the book doesn’t count in the movie. My friends also said: “What makes them so powerful is that they can’t die! You just can’t kill them! Anything that can’t die is scary and powerful…” Then i bring up my favorite analogy. You’ve played Super Mario 3 yea?(best Nintendo game ever) In it there’s this skeleton turtle that when you step on it, it turns into bones and then it revives a few seconds later. Even though they can’t die, they are still WORTHLESS!(Sincere Apologies for those who suffer from these creatures in the game, but then it just means you suck too.) They have no threat. (I know you can find ways to kill them, but not my point). Anyway, the wraiths suck. Then my friend told me in the 2nd and 3rd one they become more powerful, and I said “Good! That’s more like it!” But then I discovered they are more powerful just because they are riding on dragons!!!! Frodo can be more powerful when he’s riding on a dragon too. Oh yea…finally, I heard one or some died because the girl stabbed a dagger in them…….point made.
3. The fact that the elf guy constantly have like 8 arrows left all the time and has time (explained in the book….) to pick them all back when surrounded by thousands of orc is just a little glitch.
4. The Dramatic place where the Dark Lord got his finger chopped off, starting the whole thing is pretty dumb. The human had a broken sword, he hit the dark lord’s finger. The dark lord loses all the power and dies… This does’nt make sense. The dark lord has all his powers, perhaps because the rings fulls his body with energy. The guy slashes at the dark lord, his finger, close to the ring, is suppose to be one of the lords toughest places. Yea they made it dramatic, but in reality situations, the guy would slash at the dark lord (first the dark lord is powerful enough not to let the guy touch him) and then when he hits the finger, the broken sword will instantly turn to dust and the dark lord will laugh and all is to a end….yea, atleast they should make the dark lord fall in a more probable way. If this was the ending of a great epic itself, wouldn’t the view/reader be pissed? Why can’t the Dark Lord just trip, hit his head, and die, hoping he has insurance?
5. This is more of an understanding part. Frodo puts on the ring and becomes invisible, where is the dark POWER? How come the dark lord doesn’t become invisible?
6. The magicians fight…is funny. Goes like this. A shakes staff, B hits wall. B shakes staff, A hits the wall, so on. What the hell are they doing?? Are they playing RPG? I’m sure they are desperate on waiting their bar to fill and regret that they didn’t put more points in speed….WHAT ARE THEY DOING? It should go like this, A makes B hits the wall, and does it again, and again, and again, and again, and makes him spin in the air until his bones shatter, and then make him hit the wall 10 times more…that’s realistic fighting if they really have those powers! They are like, “Go hit the wall! Ok, now it’s your turn.” And then the bad guy suddenly gets smarter and wins….wow, best fight I have ever seen.
There’s some really minor ones that I’m just too tired to talk about them now.
We’ll move on to the 2nd part. Realized I just watch about 20 minutes of it and I can pick out a few.
1. The Ent tree thing was carrying the 2 halfings for a whole day, and then he suddenly saw all the dead trees and got mad (He should kill humans too), he cried out loud and in 2 seconds the whole Ent race appeared ready for battle. Ummm…if the whole Ent race can appear in 2 seconds, WHAT WAS HE DOING WALKING FOR A WHOLE DAY WITH THE HALFLINGS ON HIS BACK?? Yea, maybe all the Ents were stockers.
2. The elf guy can shoot a orc in the head when it’s half a mile away. When it really matters, when he should kill the orc with a torch 500 ft away, he shoots the shoulder, and then the other shoulder, and watches the kamakazi succeed….
3. The dwarf jumped up and landed into the mass of Orcs…who had spears! This is butt and leg first. I’m surprised there was place for him to land. Does no one know what a spear is for? Maybe they just wanted to make the movie less violent so they don’t want to show raw dwarf on a stick…..
4. When they were on the bridge filled with orcs, they rode horses through the bridge like knife thru butter and the orcs all fell off the bridge. Wait….horses are more powerful than orcs? One horce in front can knock aside 30 orcs? Well, maybe they are more powerful, but then WHY DOESN’T THEY JUST TRAIN 1000 HORSEMEN AND JUST CONSTANTLY RIDING BACK AND FORTH, BACK AND FORTH? That way all the orcs will die(if not damaged) no? Oh, I later heard that’s kinda what happened. Orcs are war creatures designed to kill.
Well, anyway, those are the ones I still remember. Probably lots more. LOTR is really a good movie, but the glitches pulled it down alot, so it can’t make my collection.Too too many…. If you can refute me, plz do. I like being convinced wrong, though there might be some inevitable resistence. Feel free to msg me.
Last thing to keep in mind, this review I wrote in my 12th grade, but I have brought it back up again and again when people ask why I don’t think it’s the best movie ever. I thought I’d just bring it onto facebook. If you read up to this point, eprops to you.
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Hey Evan,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my points on this post. Here are my responses to yours:
First of all, I want to let you know that I was being fair by saying I was just rating movie 1 and “a bit of movie 2”. I wasn’t judging the entire series by just what I saw. I was judging what I saw. And individual movies should be good standing alone by themselves. Also, at this time I have watched all three. I think the other content did not make me feel any better about it but worse (which would be another huge post about all the other parts in #2 and #3 that is illogical).
Anyway, lets tackle the things in discussion:
1. I guess you could say Balrog could climb the walls at the place where things are falling apart. From his movements and how the environment was shown, it seemed very unlikely, but I’ll that one to you 🙂
2. Wraiths are a big part of a movie, so if I cared about the movie, I do care about them. In the 2nd and 3rd part, yes they do get stronger, but that’s just because they were riding a dragon. They did nothing themselves. The only wraith that actually fought was the wraith leader, who is supposed to be super powerful. He was going to kill the girl, but “Ah! How is it possible that within a huge battle field there would be a random arrow that shot me on the ankle??” and then the girl killed it because she was not a man… Dude, you gotta admit. The wraiths by themselves suck.
3. Alright, that’s just a little detail and not plot-altering, so I’ll let that one go 🙂
4. Hmm, I don’t know the power of the ring enough to argue against that. It seemed like it would give you mass powers that allows the dark lord to kill enemies by the dozens in one swoop and be invincible to other attacks. The laws of physics says if one things is super strong and powerful and is struck by something that is a lot weaker, it will be unharmed 😛
5. Ah, that’s actually a super good argument! I’m hands down on that one. I like the anti-theft explanation. Although a better anti-theft system would be instead of causing the person to be invisible but still lust for the ring, it should be a mind-control where the person just wants to return the ring 🙂
6. Well, here’s what I have in question. Is this the Tolkien way of fighting (in the books), or is it just like that in the movie. I still just think if they have their abilities, they should be use it more often.
PART 2
1. Haha, yea I realize for movie practicality they can’t show the entire time, but it was pretty immediate and no cut screen for the plot. It’s good that the book took the right time. However, the Ent did say that the ENTIRE Ent race was there, so it can’t just be a small group of them.
2. I agree.
3. OK, I guess he was so amazing that he had the keen eye of spotting where to land safely where all else would fail. I guess that’s consistent with the logic(or illogic) that they could take on hundreds of enemies unharmed.
4. Hmm, it could say that, but I don’t think it’s convincing. None of the horsemen were harmed, while the orcs were pathetic. Again they had spears and it doesn’t take a genius to pull-off a Brave Heart spear assault against horsemen.
Anyway, I respect that you actually read the book a few times. My review was only plainly on the movie and what bothered me. I also made it extremely fair by saying “Why I think” instead of “Why it sucks”. I will say you have held the best arguments up to this point.
Anyhow, I like your style. We should chat more. You probably know where to find me on Facebook since you’re on my blog.
Yu-kai
How can you judge the entire trilogy without watching the entire movies? Its an incomplete story unless you see them all but even if you just want to assume that its possible to watch them as individual stories (which you cant) how can you review “the big battle of the 2nd part”. Admitting you only watched one scene of a movie before reviewing the entire thing gives you no credibility at all
Now lets go over the points you made
1. Maybe the Balrog (the fire devil) climbed his way up the walls? The point you made never bothered me and just because one section is not structurally sound doesnt mean 10 feet away its as weak.
2. Who the hell cares what you think about the wraiths and their fear of fire, you havent seen the third movie and how effective they can be on an open battlefield
3. Cmon man, how many movies have you seen where they dont run out of ammo? And Legolas does have swords which he uses when they get too close
4. Hes still a physical body constrained by the laws of the physical world
IF a sword goes through his finger its going to come off regardless of whether he has wizard like powers that enable him to control hordes of orcs or tie his soul to a piece of jewllery (hey i just realized JK Rowling totally ripped Tolkien off)
5. The Dark Lord created the ring for himself. We can only infer from the source material what happens when someone else puts on his ring. It seems that the Dark Lord has put in an anti-theft device that allows him to see the thief wherever he might be in Mordor but by doing this he rips the thief out of existence somehow to a plane of existence where only Sauron and the thief exist. Invisibility is a side effect of this anti-theft device.
6. This is Tolkien’s idea of a wizard fight, you dont like it? Well nobody cares.
In physical fights you see people get hit in the face and just gt right back up and fight back. The Wizards are as strong at defending as they are at attacking. They are evenly matched and when tired out from fighting each other have to take a breath and recharge themselves.
PART 2 (which you didnt even bother to watch all the way through before reviewing it)
1. The movies are already like 4 and half hours long together. Just shut the hell up. You want to see them wait a few days like they do in the book for them all to get there? Do you also want to see the whole Ent convention in the Entish language? The movie can be two weeks if you like? Or maybe Treebeard just walked to an area where a bunch of them already lived, is that simple enough for you?
2. I have nothing to add here except plot device. It had to be done.
3. Gimli is supposed to be one of the greatest dwarf warriors around, thats why he volunteered for the Fellowship. They also didnt except a little man to jump ON them.
4. Orcs may be trained to kill from their [hatching?] but the Rohirrim are trained to ride war horses from childhood. And yes they do some serious damage at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the third part (actually 5th part but you dont really care about the story at all do you?) They are also travelling downhill on the bridge meaning they have a serious upperhand. And lets not forget that the Battle at the Hornburg (the big one in part 2) was won when Gandalf rides with the Rohirrim from behind the Orcs
I dont think its the best movie ever, and frankly I enjoy Sci Fi, Zombie and Gangster movies way more than fantasy movies. I dont like fantasy anything, I dont play Warcraft or Warhammer or any of that stuff but when I was little I read the trilogy. Then I read it again before the movies came out and I recently read em again. They are just awesome and no fantasy work willl ever trump it.
Some people might have said owned at the end of their response but I just want to say I highly recommend you try again.