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Originally posted by: SvevanLindy: My remark is movie snobbery, I won't deny it, but today's audiences could use to be more snobbish. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies are among the best fantasy epic pictures, but there's not much competition, and I only hope something better comes out soon. (If a film ever does top LotR, the Academy Awards will ignore it.)
I don't think there's ANY competition because LotR was the first project of its kind. The material is mind-boggling in scope and content, and to have all three movies filmed consecutively and helmed by a single director is an amazing achievement. I never thought Return of the King would win best picture, but I looked at its win as the Academy saying, "OK, we really don't want to give you this, but since you tackled a project of unparalleled size and scope and did a great job, we can't deny you." I personally think it deserved the award because, as a die-hard Tolkien fan, it left me completely satisfied aside from some plot changes.
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And although the films missed the point of Tolkien's work in several regards
Missed the point? How? The films faithfully recreated the story from the books in spectacular fashion. What other point could there be?
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the major misstep is merely the slapdash narrative style. Certain scenes are utterly incomprehensible because of Jackson's layers of cuts and audio; his methods are proven faulty by the large amount of reshoots and redubs he had to do just to make the movie make sense. In King Kong it is clear he had a chance to plan and breathe: he knew what his themes were and what he wanted to film. A project as massive as Lord of the Rings deserves more respect than having five different "assistant" directors filming entire chunks of important plot. Now, if the final product was cohesive, I wouldn't complain about his methods; however, one look at the pretentiously named "Appendices" on the LotR DVDs shows that Jackson and Co. revel in their mosaic method.
Comparing the plot of LotR to the plot of King Kong is like comparing the plot of the Bible to the plot of a Pokemon cartoon. They aren't even on the same planet. Of course Jackson had room to plan and breathe with King Kong, because the story has the depth of a Bazooka Joe comic. His challenge was to stretch it out the story, not compress it. Agreed, the LotR movies are busy, but I think that "incomprehensible" is much too harsh. Jackson could have added another two hours onto the 9-hour trilogy and still not have done it justice...there's just that much material.
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My major complaints with the film's lack of cohesion, narrative pull, and thematic emphasis can be traced to Jackson's use of his camera. Instead of making an expressive film with a swooping God's-eye perspective, Jackson abuses his ability to place the camera anywhere in space and makes his Middle-Earth look like a diorama or a real-time strategy videogame. Then he uses the most banal of methods to film a conversation with two characters, and it is no wonder we get bored (the first half of The Two Towers is wickedly snooze-worthy).
As for the God's-eye perspective, I can see where you're coming from with that, but Jackson had to straddle the line of allowing viewers to connect on a personal level with the characters while also staying true to the "historical account" feel of the book. Not every scene can be the battle of Helm's Deep. The first half of the Two Towers may have been snooze-worthy to you, but to me it was very necessary plot.
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Finally, too much of the film is shot handheld - much unlike the cinema-verite of French New Wavers Godard and Truffaut, and moderns like Paul Greengrass or even Steven Spielberg, Jackson's handheld camera seems cheap and wasted when compared with the massive CGI landscapes and lush, romantic score that cover the film. Spielberg's Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan have an immediacy through their handheld cinematography, while LotR's reeks of scotch tape and glue. Why, tell me, is LotR shot with more handheld camera than King Kong? Surely King Kong, a film with less ideas and having no real content, should have more whizz-bang action shots. Yet King Kong has far more deliberate framing and composition than LotR. In King Kong, Jackson presents themes of gender, masculinity, and sex that, while still shallow, are deeper than anything found in LotR. King Kong exposes LotR for what it is: a cheaply filmed, overproduced masterpiece of lifeless fantasy film. In satisfaction and depth, it is more akin to the cheap emulations of Tolkien than to his actual work.
LotR also has about 20 more relevant characters than King Kong, and none of them are primates. I think the handheld camera suits the film because it makes the world feel more real. Tolkien's books always impressed me with the degree to which they fill out every detail, practically convincing you that his world did or does exist in an alternate dimension somewhere. A God's-eye view wouldn't convey the carnage of the assault on Minas Tirith or the battle outside the Black Gates, but the handheld camera takes you there.
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