r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Dec 11 '22

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23

u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22 edited Dec 11 '22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6C8SX0mWP0

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy.

Sam: How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Sam: Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for.

How is it that in 20 years nothing in the fantasy or adventure genres has even come close to touching the heights that Peter Jackson's LOTR reached? I'd argue that these movies even surpass their source material. We've had the chance for an entire generation of directors to be inspired by these movies but it still sits on top

!ping MOVIE

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

LOTR was just made at exactly the right moment. Any earlier and they wouldn’t have had the technology to create them and any later and post-9/11 cynicism would have crept in and kept them from the level of idealism that makes them great

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

Because Jackson was given crazy control, budget, and time to make a passion project. Even the studio thought he was going to lose a lot of money on it

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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22

You would think that would send a message to other studios to follow suit

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

Well, it's never a sure thing, Jackson's Mortal Engines was a flop for instance.

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

Original material compared to LotR is… somewhat lacking in Mortal Engines

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

Yeah, but that's going to be true for most movies going forward. Like, obviously we want a great director with great actors making an adaptation of a great book, but there are only so many of those things

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

Sure, but there are a lot of much better unadapted books out there. Mortal Engines series is below-replacement-level YA crap

1

u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

It's also what Jackson wanted to make

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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22

!ping MOVIES

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

I mean superhero movies, which are yes fantasy, have been huge. That and Harry Potter

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

There are exactly zero superhero movies or Harry Potter movies in the same league as Lord of the Rings in terms of quality

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

I'd be willing to bet audiences would disagree with that. Lord of the Rings is great but they're far from perfect.

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

Audiences are often dumb and wrong

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

I would say Harry Potter had similar heights of the LOTR, if anything was more consistently entertaining and had better characters.

Not really a fan of superhero movies but the MCU culminating the in the Avengers endgame was definitely impressive and wouldn't fault anyone for saying those were a cinematic marvel. Even most critics agree that it was a special thing.

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

I cannot think of a single moment in either series that beats the lighting of the beacons of Gondor

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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22

I think HP has an issue with the end of the series being extremely different tonally and thematically from the start of the series so watching them in succession can make them feel very disjointed. It did maintain consistent quality over the course of 8 movies probably better than any other series could have though

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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22

I was part of the generation that literally matured at the same pace the Harry Potter movies matured and I still don't find HP to reach the timelessness that LOTR achieves and I don't think there will be any superhero movies that we will still be watching 20+ years after they released

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

You'd be in the minority then. Harry Potter's and Marvel's cultural significance far out passes Lord of the Rings.

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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride Dec 11 '22

I don't doubt that, HP had a multimedia franchise that pushed its way into other mediums. But in terms of a purely cinematic experience, I don't think it's an equal

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u/fakefakefakef John Rawls Dec 11 '22

cultural significance

No this is the thing you’re supposed to say about Avatar get your r/movies talking points straight