Question:
Boring? Check out the lampoon’s sequel, Bored of the Rings, fun at first, but a bit overworked. That’s a book from the 60’s or 70’s, not a movie. But, no, I didn’t find the book boring. Like any movie based on a great book, it never meats your expectations, but this one was so much better than Dune that I couldn’t muster a complaint, and I will see the next two. Chas Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ?
Fix underscore in address to reply
Response:
Boring? Check out the lampoon’s sequel, Bored of the Rings, fun at first, but a bit overworked. That’s a book from the 60’s or 70’s, not a movie. But, no, I didn’t find the book boring. Like any movie based on a great book, it never meats your expectations, but this one was so much better than Dune that I couldn’t muster a complaint, and I will see the next two.
Your use of Dune as an example of how a movie can disappoint the book reader is a good one. But there are two versions of Dune out there. The first one is about 2.5 hours with rumors of enough material on the cutting room floor to a) fill in the gaps for those who had not read the book and b) double its length. Then there’s the later version which IS about 5 hours in length and is much truer to the character types & plot development of the book. I somewhat enjoyed the first, but had to keep whispering to my wife about who that sudden new character was, why the seemingly arbitrary shifts in plot elelments, etc. The second is far better both as cimematography and as book adaptation – but it’s not up there with Casablanca, Schindler’s List or The Wizard of Oz. Likewise the current 1/3 of LOTR; it’s fairly good entertainment but on the long haul only so-so. Yours in the north Maine woods, Pete Hilton aka The Ent — Second-ratedness, unfailing law of: Never be the first to try anything. anon.
Response:
It seemed to be more of a preteen movie. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Boring? Check out the lampoon’s sequel, Bored of the Rings, fun at first, but a bit overworked. That’s a book from the 60’s or 70’s, not a movie. But, no, I didn’t find the book boring. Like any movie based on a great book, it never meats your expectations, but this one was so much better than Dune that I couldn’t muster a complaint, and I will see the next two. Your use of Dune as an example of how a movie can disappoint the book reader is a good one. But there are two versions of Dune out there. The first one is about 2.5 hours with rumors of enough material on the cutting room floor to a) fill in the gaps for those who had not read the book and b) double its length. Then there’s the later version which IS about 5 hours in length and is much truer to the character types & plot development of the book. I somewhat enjoyed the first, but had to keep whispering to my wife about who that sudden new character was, why the seemingly arbitrary shifts in plot elelments, etc. The second is far better both as cimematography and as book adaptation – but it’s not up there with Casablanca, Schindler’s List or The Wizard of Oz. Likewise the current 1/3 of LOTR; it’s fairly good entertainment but on the long haul only so-so. Yours in the north Maine woods, Pete Hilton aka The Ent — Second-ratedness, unfailing law of: Never be the first to try anything. anon.
Response:
Yup. Instead of parts of the book, it WAS one cliffhanger after another. After four or five they began to run out of dramatic soundtrack…..but I will give them credit for the old college try….better than seeing it butchered I guess. They definitely put some thought into it. I’m out on the sequels…… john
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ? Are you old enough to remember that great satire, Bored of the Rings? The books were so boring I never got past page 3 of the first one. I’ve heard that the movie is just one cliff hanger followed by another. Take heart, Greg. You won’t have to waste your money on the next two movies, which are already in the can. — visit my web site: http://home.earthlink.net/~royalwulff/
Response:
Boring? Check out the lampoon’s sequel, Bored of the Rings, fun at first, but a bit overworked. That’s a book from the 60’s or 70’s, not a movie. But, no, I didn’t find the book boring. Like any movie based on a great book, it never meats your expectations, but this one was so much better than Dune that I couldn’t muster a complaint, and I will see the next two. Chas
I loved the Lord of the Rings movie. I have read the books many times and the movie did a pretty good job. The problem is that with such an epic book any movie nearly always ends up as a series of vignettes that communicates the plot in the shortest way possible. This is at the expense of the ambience and magnificence of the book. Dune, the TV Series on SciFi, is much better than the Dune movie. Definitely captures the middle-easterness of the book and the effects are excellent. Gary
Response:
Don’t get me started about the visual effects . . . granted I still have the taste of sour grapes still in my mouth [I worked on Pearl Harbor, and it beat us out for the Visual Effects Oscar]. My best description of the movie . . . fight, fight, run, close-up of Frodo crying, fight , run, close-up of Frodo crying, fight, fight, fight, close-up of Frodo crying, run, fight, fight [you get the idea]. The movie moves at a snails pace in my opinion. After the last scene in the movie (where they are looking towards their ultimate goal), I turn to my wife and said . . . "It’s going to take them 2 more movies to get over there?". But, on a side note . . . If I was young and single . . . I wouldn’t think twice about heading down th N.Z. and working on the other 2 movies . . . that way I could fish on my one day off. snicker snicker -Marshall – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Yup. Instead of parts of the book, it WAS one cliffhanger after another. After four or five they began to run out of dramatic soundtrack…. Agreed. I was trying to figure out how much of what I was seeing was actual NZ vs computer generation vs good old fashioned special effects. Some of it was quite obvious but much of it was quite difficult.
Response:
Don’t get me started about the visual effects . . . granted I still have the taste of sour grapes still in my mouth [I worked on Pearl Harbor, and it beat us out for the Visual Effects Oscar].
I obviously don’t pay enough attention to the Oscars, but having seen both movies Pearl Harbor beat Rings hands down in the visual effects category IMHO. Every time there was a group of people walking in front of matted scenery I kept thinking that they were purposely trying to make it look like a bad B-movie from the 50’s. - Ken
Response:
Yes, they have been "shot". But they are in what is called "Post Production" now – Meaning the visual effects are being created as we speak. I know this because several of my co-workers have taken the option to go down and work on the second and third movies. The visual effects will not be completed for the second movie until at least November. This is a very labor and computing intensive business. I just finished working on Star Wars – Eposide II – Saturday, [they actually called me out of a flyfishing seminar with Mel Krieger at the Golden Gate park casting pools, to tweak a final shot
]. And this Star Wars movie has been "shot" for a few months now. The next project I start in May, will not be completed until next June. Cheers, Marshall – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – The other two have already been made (tho I assume that they will be tocuhed up/recut a bit in response to critiques of the first one). But, on a side note . . . If I was young and single . . . I wouldn’t think twice about heading down th N.Z. and working on the other 2 movies . . . that way I could fish on my one day off. snicker snicker
Response:
I somewhat enjoyed the first, but had to keep whispering to my wife about who that sudden new character was, why the seemingly arbitrary shifts in plot elelments, etc. The second is far better both as cimematography and as book adaptation – but it’s not up there with Casablanca, Schindler’s List or The Wizard of Oz.
I didn’t like the first at all but your assessment of the second is on the money, IMO. Especially considering that it was a made for TV movie, I thought it was well made. After my disappointment with the first movie, I almost didn’t watch the second. Willi
Response:
Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ?
My wife found it rather boring. She felt it did deserve an Oscar nomination however because obviously it was an example of grand moviemaking. I found it entertaining. But I’m a geek. Mu
Response:
Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ?
I read the books passionately when a child, but haven’t for a long time. Went to the movie in dread, and utterly loved it. i thought it was terrific. LC — Lazarus Cooke
Response:
OTOH, it was rather non-pc to exclude gay Tom Bombadil, don’t you think
?
I thought he was married? But then …. Lc — Lazarus Cooke
Response:
Also, their problem domain scales nicely, so their test data can be much smaller inputs resulting in much smaller scenes, and if those go well the giga-pixel scenes probably will too, just with lot’s more computer time…
I’m copying this out, and learning it off by heart, so as to know what to say when people ask me what I thought of the movie. LC — Lazarus Cooke
Response:
It may be that those who’ve written the engines have been careful about these issues, but even then my guess is that their "validation" consists of looking at the scene and deciding whether it looks good or not. (I suppose one might consider that to be the ultimate validation, anyways).
I also thought that the math libraries were a bit smarter in how they handled floating point calculations as well, such that a lot of the "fun" was buried to the point of not being considered by "modern" programmers…
Response:
I assumed that there would be a lot of iterative floating point calculations and that there would be some concern about values wandering out of precision after a large number of iterations, but that’s based on guessing at what actually goes on with this stuff.
It’s basically a matter of projecting virtual light rays from pixels in the virtual film plane out through the virtual focal point and into the 3D model, determining what surface in the model the ray intersects, and then using a lighting model and the reflectance properties of the surfaces in the model to determine what the color and intensity of the pixel should be. There are lots of special hacks to make things realistic. For example, how do you render fog? It wouldn’t be feasible to model every little water droplet. It’s essentially a simulation of the physics of actual photography, with a few added hacks. This is a very parallel computation — every pixel value can, in principle, be computed independently. It’s pretty easy to put lots of processors to work on the problem with good efficiency.
Response:
This is a very parallel computation — every pixel value can, in principle, be computed independently. It’s pretty easy to put lots of processors to work on the problem with good efficiency.
which is why a significant portion of Toy Story could be done using a bank of Quadras. Mu
Response:
I loved the Lord of the Rings movie. I have read the books many times and the movie did a pretty good job. The problem is that with such an epic book any movie nearly always ends up as a series of vignettes that communicates the plot in the shortest way possible. This is at the expense of the ambience and magnificence of the book.
Ditto on loving it! I resisted watching the movie for months because the books were so important to me as a kid. I lived in the woods of Maine, and one Christmas break, I read them a lot of times. A lot. Probably some sort of record. You gotta keep in mind, I was an insecure, alienated little kid, was snowed in miles away from neighbors, and I fell in love with the fantasy world of Middle Earth. Pretty much memorized the books. So when the movie came out, I refused to go because I didn’t want to superimpose the visual images over my rich imaginary images. But yesterday, feeling particularly middle-agish and lost in another land, I went for a walk and happened across a movie theater just as LoTR was starting. Bought the ticket and went in. The movie didn’t have to ‘fill in the blanks’ for me, or have a particularly integritous plot: I still have the books memorized, and I know the characters like I know my own relatives. Instead, the images were like a photo album from my childhood, with characters I’ve been missing, and places I wish I could see IRL. That old adventurous spirit. Anyway, I sat there for the whole freaking movie with tears creeping down, one at a time. I felt like a nostalgic old idiot until I noticed the guy next to me doing the same. I loved the movie. I won’t see it again, because I want to keep my old mental images intact, but it sure was nice to see those old friends again. Oh yeah, I also cried because I’ll NEVER get to lay Liv Tyler. riverman
Response:
I found a couple of disturbing gaps, like the pc move of changing Glorfindel
<SNIP OTOH, it was rather non-pc to exclude gay Tom Bombadil, don’t you think
? — Gary M
Response:
Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ?
No. I loved every minute of it. I’ve read the trilogy dozens of times, and found the movie to be strikingly true to the original text. It was spellbinding to this old hippie.
Response:
says… Does anyone else think that the new Lord of the Rings movie is boring, in spite of the outstanding care and expertise that went into it ? No. I loved every minute of it. I’ve read the trilogy dozens of times, and found the movie to be strikingly true to the original text. It was spellbinding to this old hippie.
I found a couple of disturbing gaps, like the pc move of changing Glorfindel (I believe…as I DON’T have the books memorized
) into Arwen, making Arwen more of a warrior than depicted in the books. The battle with Gandalf and Saruman was botched as well. It’s more accurate, I believe, to say that the movie is in the same spirit as the book. Rob
Response:
I remember seeing a very short sequence from the last Star Wars movie which apparently took several months’ computer time to generate. Validating the software for something like this must take a lot of time.
I may be a few years out of date, and maybe someone can correct me, but I believe one program is used for the overwhelming majority of 3D computer graphics in films: Pixar’s RenderMan. Rendering images (that’s what it’s called) with a computer is routine, but expensive. The hard part is building the models. The coolest special effect I’ve seen in a long time was in a recent Blockbuster commercial. Two animals in a pet store across the street from the Blockbuster were trying to get attention. The cool thing is that the filmmakers rendered fur convincingly. Fur is hard. — visit my web site: http://home.earthlink.net/~royalwulff/
Response:
My wife found it rather boring. She felt it did deserve an Oscar nomination however because obviously it was an example of grand moviemaking. I found it entertaining. But I’m a geek. Mu
you are also a wonderful creator of flies. mine arrived this afternoon. i will probably keep a couple just to admire. thanks, mu. yfitons wayno – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –
Response:
Good question. The parts with actual scenery are pretty obvious if you have been or lived here, if not I guess it would be hard to tell. Having said that my fianc
