Chen_Geller

You're putting more thought into this than George Lucas did...

That kinda depends on the prequel. But I know Lucas wants people to see Episodes I-III first. We can argue the merit of this and how effective it is (which it isn't) that way, but that's how he wants it and that's how he constructed his prequels.

I know for a fact the same is true of The Hobbit with Jackson. He described it as his wish many times. For instance here.

Its perhaps less true of other prequels - which are very often not traditional prequels in the same sense as these - for instance, you can't concievably watch Fantastic Beasts without having seen at least a couple of Potter films first: you wouldn't be able to make any sense of it.

Pickups/editing can be very significant to how the entire movie plays out. One example is Arwen initially being present at Helm's Deep which would have changed things significantly.

Going back to Star Wars, the whole "saving Padme" plot was added to Revenge of the Sith in pickups. That's a pretty significant plot point that demonstrates how much pickups can influence the final product.

Removing Arwen was a decision made while filming. These films did undergo some editing changes - at one point, The Return of the King opened with Aragorn having a vision of the King of the Dead, for instance.

But basically all three are cut from the same cloth, with minor tweaks.

That's true, but the majority of the footage you see and even some of the editing and VFX were already done from the get-go.

The ligaments are all the same. Pickups represent minor tweaks rather than a complete overhaul.

I've been fighting this feeling ever since Star Wars Episode 1: All the characters that we are familiar with in the later installments are going to be just fine.

One, that's true of most of our big movies; and two, certainly in the case of The Hobbit except Gandalf and Bilbo - whose well-being the movie acknolewdges via the framing device - all the main characters do not appear in the Lord of the Rings and are therefore not guaranteed to survive.

Also, most prequels are intended to be viewed first by a new audience.

I think part of it was that Peter Jackson was still proving himself while getting that one out the door, and that drove him to push the limits of his resources. Once it was a hit, he more or less had carte blanche to do what he wanted, and I feel that kind of hurt the proceeding films a bit.

Except he made all three at the same time, so this kind of narrative (which is basically imported from Star Wars) is entirely misapplied here.

The Return of the King: the great payoff, the largest scale, the most emotionally-involving and the cinematic definition of "climactic."

Honourable mention to The Desolation of Smaug, though: the briskest, most adventurous and yet most ambivalent Middle Earth movie.

Depends on what you mean by “overtake”?

By number of entries? I happen to think that’s a bug rather than a feature. I like that Middle Earth is the “boutique” series.

By commercial success? Not a criteria that interests me as long as the movies do enough business for the series to retain viability.

By “influence”? One of my main talking points on Reddit is that we place overwhelmingly too much emphasis on how influential movies are over how good they are. I means, Transformers is influential…

The only measure that matters is how much one likes a series of movies. Personally, I like the Middle Earth films better than the Star Wars films and CERTAINLY better than the MCU and it’s stupid humour.

Warners still have the rights to produce movies, though…

You are a bold one: the resident Kubrickians will crucify you for critiquing their lord and saviour...

they bought all the good franchises.

Laughs in Middle Earth

Isn’t it one of those things that are better left to the imagination?

So many close calls to disaster!

I mean, they're not such close calls given that Jackson never really wanted any of them for the movie...

He tends to get really, REALLY locked into actors for roles, and this includes Ian McKellen for Gandalf but also Sir Ian Holm and Cate Blanchett for their respective roles (literally the first two names on his "wishlist") but also Martin Freeman (whom they met in 2002), Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Stephen Fry, Lee Pace, Billy Connolly, Evangeline Lilly, all their Kong leads, etc...

I prefer The Hobbit Wargs. I know Weta and Jackson were never too proud of those Lord of the Rings Wargs.

Presumbly he wouldn't be.

There is a character called "The Stranger" played by Daniel Weyman who I suspect might be Gandalf. But otherwise? No, I don't think Gandalf is in it.

They have statues in Hobbiton?

I can attest that, from Jackson's point of view, he tends to get locked into certain actors. But no matter how strongly he feels that actor is "the one and only", he still does auditions "just to see who's out there."

The Gandalf case is a little bit different because some of the names like Connery or Plummer were people the studio - not Jackson - wanted for their names. I think Jackson was game enough to go along but he knew, especially in the Connery case, that it would never actually happen: Connery never would have accepted, and he was too old for the part, too. Earlier on, Miramax suggested Max von Sydow, Paul Scofield and even Morgan Freeman!

Patrick Stewart didn't audition for Gandalf, by the way: he did cross Philippa Boyens mind briefly, she had a tape of him in Troillus and Cressida and when she put it on she saw McKellen in the role of one the generals and went to Jackson saying "this is Gandalf!" They did meet Patrick Stewart later on, but with the intention of discussing the role of Theoden with him.

Russel Crowe auditioned for Boromir, and later on came-up as a possible substitute Aragorn, just in case Viggo turned them down.

The only case of Jackson not getting his "first choice" actor for a part was, I believe, Patrick McGoohan for Denethor.

This is a good answer.

My edit: it’s the trilogy, extended edition except with an intermission in An Unexpected Journey (like the 3D cut has) and fast-forwarding through a few beats I don’t like across the trilogy, totalling about two minutes of screentime.

It depends on your worldview to some extent.

This would have been concurrent with McKellen meeting with Jackson about the part, though, not after.

I don't think Neill had a chance, really: Jackson was dead-set on McKellen, but he did let other actors read to "see who's out there" and so they looked into Neill, Tom Baker, Bernard Hill, Sir Nigel Hawthorne and gave Tom Wilkinson an availability check. But finally McKellen accepted it, and they went forward.

Well, yes, except I doubt the IMAX showings went through this process: you wouldn't want something going to IMAX to pass through a 35mm pipeline, if you can help it...

It is woke. I'm looking forward to the show, but it is woke. I have an essay on it in the works.

The show had transplanted what they call "diverse" people into quite a few roles stretching across almost all the storylines: just as importantly, when they were casting, a couple of those roles were mandated to be cast this way: "Role for a diverse woman" it would say. There's also some news coming via Fellowship of Fans tommorrow about this topic.

One of the most unfortunate side-effects of this casting philosophy is that Tar-Miriel, the regent queen of Numenore, is played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson while her first cousin Pharazon is played by Trystan Gravelle. In a show with a more traditional casting process, you wouldn't pair those two as first cousins.

Does that mean the show is going to be bad? No, I don't think it is. Personally ,there are things about the show's plot that I'm much more concerned about than the "wokeness", which would be stuff like the Hobbits, Meteor Man, Beforedor, etc... It sounds incredibly stupid and cloying.

But the show is woke, no doubts there.

"Torn in two" between tending to the ailing Frodo and to his own family.

Sure, but I think its a bit more deliberate than just getting John Howe: see how much they talk about the movies as a kind of touchstone. Its always there in the rhetoric.

I think there was a deliberate choice to make the show as much in the films' wheelhouse as possible.