I must get myself one of those leaf brooches at some point…
#Fantasy science fiction top movies from 2017 movie#
On the whole, I think my favourite (from the LotR series) would probably be the first movie (theatrical or extended). Radagast doesn’t exactly help, nor does the strange depiction of the relationship between Galadriel and Gandalf. Jackson actually makes some decent decisions in approaching the material, but it just doesn’t click. I’m not even sure why they ended up like that. The recent adaptations of The Hobbit were…they weren’t awful, to be fair, but they weren’t good. (The exception is a scene in the extended version where Faramir appears to have his soldiers beat up Gollum, which I thought was over the top.) If you watch the extended version and look at the scenes that were cut, you’ll know what I mean. One of my biggest criticisms is that Jackson left out important Faramir material in the theatrical version of the second movie. The Battle of Helm’s Deep struck me more in the movie than it did in the book. The music, for example, is gorgeous, and the acting is great. I know a bunch of book fans really dislike the movies, and I can understand this perspective to a point, but I think there are plenty of great things in them too. The whole thing feels even odder when Saruman comes back into the story. There is also something disturbing about the whole ‘Scouring of the Shire’ stuff…I think it’s because you suddenly see Hobbits fighting and dying. That is a frankly astonishing moment, considering the general tone of the books. Frodo actually failed right at the end, when he decided to take the ring for himself rather than destroying it. I don’t think the books are as simplistic as I first thought either. Why? It’s hard to really be sure, but there is an undeniable escapist charm to it all.
Now, years later, I definitely regard myself as a fan of the LotR books. (I think this is because it had a smaller, more personal feel.) I was still a fan of the movies, and oddly enough, I also quite liked the book version of The Hobbit. It doesn’t have a heavy emphasis on the characters, and I thought that it didn’t have any real moral murkiness. Looking back, it’s easy to see why I was so critical of the three books Tolkien’s work isn’t really the sort of thing I usually like. I used to dislike Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books.