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Mine is Return of the King!

Looks like a draw so far - one vote for Fellowship, one for Towers, on for Return and two can't decide (like me)... All three have too many things I love and too many I don't to decide :/

Two Towers. Return of Gandalf, introduced us to Rohan and the Ents and the battle at HD kicked ass. I even liked the license PJ took by having Elven archers there. Glad he did'nt use the scenes with Arwen in it though. That would have been TOO much of a departure. Still love the other two though

Mine favorite are The Two Towers & Return of the King

My favorite of the trilogy is The Return of the King.

Fellowship for me. I loved the tone and subtle grit, the theme of innocent hobbits venturing out from their warm and friendly shire into the cold and dangerous world.

Two Towers is my favorite.

The return of the king hands down was the better movie, but in my honest opinion it's one of the greatest trilogies out there, not one of those movies are below 8/10

Toss up between Fellowship and Return.

Two Towers is a fantastic movie, it just isn't as strong as the beginning of the story movie and the end of the story movie to me.

Poll results say it all.

http://i68.tinypic.com/512g4y.jpg

It is ONE movie in three parts after all.

Fellowship by far.

Really? I can't see them as separate movies.

The poll has been ruined by some bastard...

I always felt the Fellowship was the weakest of the 3. I actually remember falling asleep during it because I found the beginning so boring. I realize the parts in Hobbiton were meant to show you everything Frodo and the other hobbits were fighting for, but I just found it really dull. The movie does pick up once they leave Hobbiton. The movie also has scenes that actually make me cringe. The love scene between Aragorn and Arwen is basically the scene that does that for me.

Two Towers for me is my favorite film. You have the ents, you have helm's deep, you have Rohan and the introduction of Faramir. You have the introduction of Gollum as well.

Return of the King was also a good film and comes in a close second. I realize it had a battle larger then Helm's Deep, but for me Helm's Deep just seemed more intense and personal for some reason. The way the ending dragged on was a negative for me also. On top of that some other cringe worthy scenes. Specifically the scene where Eowyn fights the Witch King and defeats him. Yes I realize in the books there was more context, but we didn't get that in the film so it was just plain awful and made no sense. This is the person Gandalf seemed afraid of...and that is the guy who fought and killed the Balrog.

Also didn't like the ghost army thing and felt it was a lame deus ex machina. I feel it undermined all the sacrifices various characters made by bringing out this unstoppable army to save the day at the last minute. I realize this doesn't happen in the books. Also certain choices to me made no sense, like Sauron basically emptying out his entire army to go meet Aragorn at the black gate even though Gandalf says he will never take the bait and yet it takes all of 20 seconds for him to decide to take the bait without any real explanation as to why. Wanting Aragorn dead isn't a reason to send out your entire army, especially when there isn't a valid reason for Aragorn to deliver himself to your doorstep unless he has some kind of plan.

As for Aragorn, wouldn't it of made more sense for Aragorn to keep the invincible ghost army under his control? I know people are saying "he gave his word to free them" but he could of simply waited until the defeat of Sauron before doing so...the fate of the world was at stake. He could of sent them through the black gate to kill every orc. I would expect a guy who is supposed to be King-like material to do what is best for the people, even if it means breaking his own word by keeping the army under his control until he can get rid of Sauron's armies.

Now if you asked me which of the Tolkien movies contains the coolest action for me it is hands down the final film in The Hobbit trilogy.

Wha??? Really??? That ridiculous CGI fest?

The Hobbit was a major overblown disappointment compared to LOTR.

Originally posted by queeq
Wha??? Really??? That ridiculous CGI fest?

The Hobbit was a major overblown disappointment compared to LOTR.

It might of been CGI but..it made Sauron actually a bad ass. He did bad ass shit like his fight with Gandalf and he's destroying a bunch of shit and then he's fighting Galadriel.

In the original trilogy we see him in armor swatting away some soldiers. Then we just see his flamed eyeball and hear his voice. The Hobbit movies showed us just WHY Sauron should be so damn feared. The original LOTR movies showed us why his armies should be feared, but not the man himself. They told us why we should fear him, but as my math teacher always said: show your work.

Sauron was never depicted in the books as some badass hulk of a super-soldier who knows how to f*ck things up, brah! Magic and the concept of "power" in that universe is subtle. Like the Ring is powerful, but not in the Superhero way of "it can't blow up the galaxy!"


The Hobbit films' preoccupation with fight scenes ignored that. There was nothing subtle about them. Sauron didn't need to be seen, he didn't need to be fighting the heroes physically and directly. That entire side-quest is only mentioned in the book, and it kept it mysterious and enigmatic. But because these are prequel films, the producers felt no nevermind about blowing that wad and just showing us more Sick Action, Bro! It's f*cking sweet!


It was kinda lame.

Yup. Same problem with the PT lovers. A great film is something with totally awesome CGI fest fights and sweet action, weird acrobatics (SW lightsaber fights - Legolas in The Hobbit), unrealistic nonsense, because it's so awesome those fights that lasts many minutes and have many CGI fighters from kazillion armies... The best fights are the ones that are so dense, that they have so much going on in every frame...

And more crap like that. .

ROTS is my favourite SW movie and I thought the Hobbit movies were no where NEAR as good as the LOTR movies. Sauron is much better as an evil presence in the background that looms over the entire trilogy imo, like he was in LOTR.

Boom.

Explosive.

g81PoGKO0qA

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Sauron was never depicted in the books as some badass hulk of a super-soldier who knows how to f*ck things up, brah! Magic and the concept of "power" in that universe is subtle. Like the Ring is powerful, but not in the Superhero way of "it can't blow up the galaxy!"

The ring is powerful though. Maybe not in a "can blow up a galaxy" way, but it is powerful in a "can turn a bunch of dudes into an unstoppable ghost army" way.



It has nothing to do with them being prequel films. I mean Sauron didn't actually have a glowing fire eye of doom in the books, the movies added that. Why? Because movies are supposed to be visual.

A lot of things were amped up for the films, not just in the Hobbit movies. You really can't pretend like it wasn't Fellowship, Two Towers, and ROTK doing the same type of crap. Hell just look at the Balrog and how amped up and intense the thing was compared to the book. This may shock you but certain concepts that work for books don't actually work too well in films.

Originally posted by queeq
Yup. Same problem with the PT lovers. A great film is something with totally awesome CGI fest fights and sweet action, weird acrobatics (SW lightsaber fights - Legolas in The Hobbit), unrealistic nonsense, because it's so awesome those fights that lasts many minutes and have many CGI fighters from kazillion armies... The best fights are the ones that are so dense, that they have so much going on in every frame...

And more crap like that. .

Except you seem to be getting mixed up. Nobody said the Hobbit movies were great because of CGI action. I said I enjoyed the action in those movies more, there is a difference. I also said it wasn't just flashiness, but it was overall how they made the villain actually more intimidating. Legolas does crazy shit in the original films too: skateboarding down stairs at helms' deep whilst shooting arrows at various people. Or taking down the huge elephant by himself.

Originally posted by Surtur
The ring is powerful though. Maybe not in a "can blow up a galaxy" way, but it is powerful in a "can turn a bunch of dudes into an unstoppable ghost army" way.



It has nothing to do with them being prequel films. I mean Sauron didn't actually have a glowing fire eye of doom in the books, the movies added that. Why? Because movies are supposed to be visual.

A lot of things were amped up for the films, not just in the Hobbit movies. You really can't pretend like it wasn't Fellowship, Two Towers, and ROTK doing the same type of crap. Hell just look at the Balrog and how amped up and intense the thing was compared to the book. This may shock you but certain concepts that work for books don't actually work too well in films. I'm not concerned with "preserving" the book, or anything. They cut Tom Bombadil right the f*ck out of Fellowship, and the film was so much better for it.

My point was that the Hobbit novel's mention of the Necromancer and Gandalf's absence was very subtle and underplayed. It gave a sense that, despite the big adventure we'd just gone on with Bilbo, there was still a larger, more mysterious world out there with new and different dangers and obstacles. But because the Hobbit films were made post-LotR (hence, prequels), there was no way to preserve that sense of enigma and looming grandeur.

That's not to say they couldn't have done it, but it just wouldn't have fit in to the giant epic trilogy Jackson was trying to create with the Hobbit. And that's where my beef stems: the Hobbit films should not have been done in the style of the Lord of the Rings films. The source material doesn't lend itself to a massive, epic quest in the slightest. But because that's what the bulk of the movie-going audience is familiar with when it comes to the world of Middle-Earth, they had to pander to popular perception for the sake of money. The Sweet Green.

And in so doing, they transformed a simple, single-narrative story about a Hobbit who goes on a charming, exciting adventure of a lifetime... into a wannabe epic that's bloated beyond measure with side-quests, made-up characters, characters from the later Tolkien lore, stories from the lore, CGI filler fight scenes (and CGI filler in general), and the downgrading of the Hobbit himself to a bit-player in his own movie. And the lore itself (which I love outside of the film studios) is used---and very obviously and jarringly so, IMO---as padding and filler for the runtime that the studios demanded of poor Jackson. And the parts that they did leave in from the source material, they robbed of all charm for the sake of either A.) utter goofiness---the ball sack troll king scene, for example, or B.) dark and dreary doom and gloom where once there was joy and fun--see the meeting of Beorn. And that's to say nothing of the problems with the characters, dialogue, pacing, plot direction etc.




F*ck, there's so much more wrong with the Hobbit films than a simple "Oh, you just don't like cuz it didn't perfectly match the books." I could fill several posts with these paragraphs of what stood out as bad, and awful, and out-of-place, and pandering, and shlock... and I have before when the films first came out. There's so much wrong with them.

So much more... they just suck.

I did talk to people who preferred Battle of the Five Armies because of the 'great CGI'.

But for me there's a major difference between LOTR and The Hobbit.

The LOTR movies are a compact and streamlined version of the books. Which actually makes them better than the original books as a narrative, I think. Ditching Tom Bombadil, speeding up the action, especially in Fellowship (that book is quite boring) were excellent choices. Less is more.
I even like the Aragorn-Arwen plot, because it gave Arwen more of a purpose in this story, which she did not have so much in the book.

The Hobbit is a very short novel that got blown up to such epic proportions that what they added was a lot of hot air. The point that Sauron is coming makes it all very heavy...it takes a lot of movie time which isn't very interesting. For some reason they felt it should be exactly LIKE LOTR but it's not. It never was, it never will be. It's a very simple story about a treasure in a mountain guarded by a dragon, but now it's overblown beyond any proportion. More is less.

There is also the fact that while the Hobbit is a fun and quirky piece of fiction, it still pales terribly compared to the LOTR trilogy when it comes to quality, structure and depth.

Indeed. In fact the real problem is described by Bilbo himself in Fellowship: "thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

Or in this case: thin, like a short story scraped over too much screen time.

The first book was always the best (in part because it had the Fellowship together), the first movie was the movie that got things closest to the book, as well as being the best movie as a movie.

Fellowship on all counts, really.