The Worst Movies By The Best Directors

[The Firecracker]

DePalma being listed as one of "Best Directors" so in all Peter Jackson counts

Agreed.

The LOTR is pretty crap in my opinion. The only one of interest is the first one.

I like his earlier films.

[Silenzio]

DePalma being listed as one of "Best Directors" so in all Peter Jackson counts

Haha, good point.



But, I disagree, FC, the best one was the last one, and the first two were bad.

[The Firecracker]

But, I disagree, FC, the best one was the last one, and the first two were bad.

No, ROTK was a over fed piece of garbage. There are virtually no battle scenes because the violence is so badly edited due to garner a PG-13 rating. Blades rarely, or never, pierce flesh. Just before a blade makes contact with skin the camera moves away to see more of the same.
Too many stories going on at once. Also these books cannot be transfered to film well.


The first had the best flow and knew where it was going. That was the one that deserved all the oscars.

[Silenzio]

No, ROTK was a over fed peice of garbage. There are virtually no battle scenes because the violence is so badly edited due to garner a PG-13 rating. Blades rarely, or never, peirce flesh. Just before a blade makes contact with skin the camera moves away to see more of the same.
Too many stories going on at once. Also these books cannot be transfered to film well.


The first had the best flow and knew where it was going. That was the one that deserved all the oscars.

yeah, i hardly remember them, I just remember I was unimpressed last time i watched Fellowship.

[Sonny]

Read the thread title again.....

no need to be so mean now... there's no such thing as a "best" anything..people have their own perceptions of things. 

Not everyone likes him and not everyone thinks he sucks!!!

[Silenzio]

no need to be so mean now... there's no such thing as a "best" anything..people have their own perceptions of things. 

Not everyone likes him and not everyone thinks he sucks!!!

Yeah, I know, people have different opinions, etc...

[Banjo]

The first had the best flow and knew where it was going. That was the one that deserved all the oscars.

Thats mine and Mrs Banjo's favourite too and it was probably the least messed about with when considering how much it is faithful to the book.Disappointingly it left out the Barrow Wights and Tom Bombadil and a few other characters but still manages to deliver the spirit of Tolkien.I remember being gobsmacked at how great a movie TFOTR  when i saw it at the theatre but somehow i didn't get the same wow factor with the other two.
     TTT and ROTK were also bogged down by an overlong and extremely  tedious romance(in Elvish subtitles) between Aragorn and Arwen which only appeared in the appendices of Tolkiens book.This totally infuriates me that Jackson had to pander to this Hollywood requisite of including a "romance" to the expense of much more interesting and essential stuff like the "scouring of the Shire"-left out apparently because it was deemed too anti-climatic after the One Ring had already been destroyed.Well if half an hours worth of the sob stories we got instead isn't an anti-climax then i don't know what is?

[Leone Admirer]

Agree with LOST WORLD but I still enjoy it.

And WOTW is bad but the first half is rather good. It has some of the darkest moments of Speilberg's career. It all goes down hill when Tim Robbins shows up and it's a shame about the ending.

Agree with your first point. I kinda like Spielbergs WOTW even though it pales in comparison to Pal's original. The glimpses of deleted scenes that Speilberg made sure would never see the light of day properly (the Camelot sequence for example) show that it could have been a much better movie.

Now the genre that LOTR's belongs to I don't enjoy but I recently sat through the 3 films with my Dad over a couple of nights (He's a big fan) and had an open night screening at one point and I came to the conclusion whilst I still think they are heavily overrated they are entertaining.

[dave jenkins]

In lieu of having seen "Colossus of Rhodes", FOD is definitely Leone's weakest film - I mean, by far. I don't even like it much on a pure enjoyment level, it's very cheap and crappily dubbed, which has never ceased to aggravate me. It has a few trademark Eastwood/Leone moments, a great score, but that's about it.

I wonder if this one isn't better with the Italian dub?

[dave jenkins]

Thats mine and Mrs Banjo's favourite too and it was probably the least messed about with when considering how much it is faithful to the book.Disappointingly it left out the Barrow Wights and Tom Bombadil and a few other characters but still manages to deliver the spirit of Tolkien.I remember being gobsmacked at how great a movie TFOTR  when i saw it at the theatre but somehow i didn't get the same wow factor with the other two.

In terms of plot, yes, the first is the most faithful to the books (but too bad about Tom Bombadil). But overall, the look of all three films was terrible. Really bad CGI, making the action scenes look like those in every other film made in the last 10 years. Also, relying on the hacks who paint those awful paintings for the calendars and whatnot to provide the visual motifs of the series: big mistake. But the worst element was the music. I consider the scores to be nothing less than obscene.

I hope, in my lifetime, that someone else will take a crack at the series (perhaps within 20 years). The best strategy would be to do it for TV. That way you would have time to do episodes that digress (like the Tom Bombadil one), and you could vary the pacing from week to week.

[Silenzio]

But overall, the look of all three films was terrible. Really bad CGI, making the action scenes look like those in every other film made in the last 10 years. Also, relying on the hacks who paint those awful paintings for the calendars and whatnot to provide the visual motifs of the series: big mistake. But the worst element was the music. I consider the scores to be nothing less than obscene.

Having not read the books, it's these technical aspects that get me the most about the series.



I agree with you, the score ain't good.  Maybe not obscene.... but not good.

[dave jenkins]

I find kitsch obscene.

[Banjo]

Though i wouldn't play this sort of music on my hi-fi (i prefer my folkie stuff to be more earthier) i think  the score is varied and perfectly compliments the poignant and joyous parts of the trilogy as well as bringing out the high drama of the meaty bits of the film.

My only real gripe about the trilogy is that its not faithful to the book but then again how many movies are faithful eh?We picked up all 3 extended edition dvds for about £4 each from Amazon the other week on the FOTR disc,
when interviewed Christopher Lee felt that in many ways the alterations shown in the film were an improvement to the books which is a big surprise considering the apparent contempt Lee showed for the Hammer Dracula series for deviating away from Bram Stokers novel.

Anyway most negative thoughts i had about Peter Jackson evaporated after sitting through many of the special features(i've still got a few to get through),and he was so obsessively involved in every nitty-gritty detail of the making of the movie such as making pencil drawn storyboards covering every frame,the pre-viz sequences,location searching,minatures,costumes,make-up.Everything in fact and its a miracle that he managed to wangle getting 3 films made before any of them were released.

I'm not a fan of CGI,i haven't seen any other fantasy films(or much else) from the last 10 years to compare LOTR's look but undoubtably they had to be used to make Middle Earth appear as real as possible and to me the effects blend in brilliantly  with the awesome sets that were built.The two Tolkien artists are highly regarded specialists of bringing Tolkiens visions to life in all sorts of book and other illustrations.On the dvd was shown footage of them siiting on the grass sketching Hobbiton on visiting the site for the very first time and from those very sketches the Hobbit holes etc were reproduced.Many of the films locations like Minas Tirith looked so unbelievably gigantic in proportions and detail that i had assumed that it was all computer graphics but to the contrary they were real built sets and therefore it seems to me that the CGI's were used to fine tune(other than when there was no alternative like the Wargs and Oliphants) rather than dominate the look.And who can possibly deny that the Gollum creation was absolutely tremendous.

I don't like the hype surrounding these modern blockbusters especially with Oscars involved,but i have some newly found respect for Jackson who so painstakingly and meticolously(i would've thought Leone fans especially would relate to this) spent (i think) 8 years of his life bringing this previously thought "unfilmable" trilogy to life.Overall he did an admirable job and he's definately the man for the job of making The Hobbit when they eventually sort out their legal squabbles.

[Banjo]

The best strategy would be to do it for TV. That way you would have time to do episodes that digress (like the Tom Bombadil one), and you could vary the pacing from week to week.

That is an excellent idea and hopefully a mammoth budget would be provided to give Jacksons trilogy a run for its money looks wise,though the fantastic New Zealand locations would be extremely difficult to match.

[dave jenkins]

Not if NZ TV was in on the deal.