'Lord of the Rings' Reunion Brings Actors, Director, Writers Together on Zoom (thewrap.com) 33
"Just about the entire cast of The Lord of the Rings gathered their Zoom screens together for a reunion nearly two decades after the end of the epic fantasy film trilogy," reports CNET:
io9 notes that it was comic actor-singer Josh Gad who "gathered the hobbits, the wizards, the elves, and the wicked menfolk to go to Isen — YouTube, where they joke, talk shop, reminisce, and just seem to really thoroughly enjoy each others' presence. In this stream are Elijah Wood [Frodo], Sena Astin [Sam], Ian McKellen [Gandalf], Orlando Bloom [Legolas], Viggo Mortensen [Aragorn], Liv Tyler [Arwen], and more, along with director Peter Jackson and, presumably, the kind doting ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien just off-screen."
The Wrap has more details, including the fact that the event was to support No Kid Hungry, a charity in support of ending childhood hunger, and some ways they changed J.R.R. Tolkein's book for the movie: "Gandalf does not say, 'You shall not pass!' in the book," McKellen notes. "He says, 'You will not pass." [Co-writer Philippa] Boyens also notes that Gandalf's first line in the trilogy was one she came up with herself, instead of coming from Tolkien: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
Another moment from the trilogy that gained Internet immortality was Boromir's famous "One does not simply" speech, where he warns the Council of Elrond that trying to sneak into Mordor to destroy the One Ring is impossible. Jackson admits that the speech was written the day before the council scene was filmed and while Sean Bean's speech was done so well that it became a meme, he needed some help to remember it.
"What Sean did, which I thought was really clever, is he got a print-out of the speech taped to his knee," Jackson said, pointing out Bean places his hand to his head to display Boromir's sense of despair. "If you watch the scene now, you'll see every time that Sean has to check his script."
io9 notes that it was comic actor-singer Josh Gad who "gathered the hobbits, the wizards, the elves, and the wicked menfolk to go to Isen — YouTube, where they joke, talk shop, reminisce, and just seem to really thoroughly enjoy each others' presence. In this stream are Elijah Wood [Frodo], Sena Astin [Sam], Ian McKellen [Gandalf], Orlando Bloom [Legolas], Viggo Mortensen [Aragorn], Liv Tyler [Arwen], and more, along with director Peter Jackson and, presumably, the kind doting ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien just off-screen."
The Wrap has more details, including the fact that the event was to support No Kid Hungry, a charity in support of ending childhood hunger, and some ways they changed J.R.R. Tolkein's book for the movie: "Gandalf does not say, 'You shall not pass!' in the book," McKellen notes. "He says, 'You will not pass." [Co-writer Philippa] Boyens also notes that Gandalf's first line in the trilogy was one she came up with herself, instead of coming from Tolkien: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
Another moment from the trilogy that gained Internet immortality was Boromir's famous "One does not simply" speech, where he warns the Council of Elrond that trying to sneak into Mordor to destroy the One Ring is impossible. Jackson admits that the speech was written the day before the council scene was filmed and while Sean Bean's speech was done so well that it became a meme, he needed some help to remember it.
"What Sean did, which I thought was really clever, is he got a print-out of the speech taped to his knee," Jackson said, pointing out Bean places his hand to his head to display Boromir's sense of despair. "If you watch the scene now, you'll see every time that Sean has to check his script."
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Re:Slow news day? (Score:4, Funny)
Hi, welcome to Slashdot. We like complaining about sci-fi and fantasy movies. Just give us an excuse.
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You Cannot Pass (Score:2)
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As if that were the only problem...
Spell check needed (Score:2)
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20 years later, Sena isn't too far off the mark, for those interested in word etymology.
So where was Sean Bean? (Score:2)
Oh, that's right, I forgot - he lost his head.
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Actually, he got shot full of arrows in this universe. Boromir is actually the only one of the nine in the Fellowship who wasn't alive at the end of the saga, so it's somewhat fitting that he was one of the ones missing. I'd have said he was the only one who didn't survive, but that's technically not true, since Gandalf didn't survive the either, though he was alive again by the end.
Also missing from the call were the actors portraying Merry, Pippin, and Gimli.
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Sean Bean seems to get killed a lot - and usually in a gruesome manner. I wonder if he ever gets paranoid about it.
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I doubt it, though he apparently has started turning down roles that involve his death, if only to try to disrupt his reputation for being a walking spoiler because everyone expects him to die.
Why do we care? (Score:1, Troll)
I get that it seemed like it was going to be a big cinematic deal when Fellowship was released, but it was quickly proven by successive iterations that Jackson and his team have no grasp of the warmth and goodness of LOTR. Why stage such an event? In service of what? One promising movie and five overly-actiony risk-free supercool sequels aiming at people who will never read the books? Not interested.
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Right. That's why critics talk about how Peter Jackson broke their hearts and shattered their childhood dreams of what the Lord of the Rings would be like on film. That's why the films have almost no poetry, no songs, no warmth. Because I'm stupid, or pretending to be. I'm curious, had you read the books before you saw these films?
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What bothered me about the movies was the lack of imagination. Right from the start with the Hobbits and the Shire, rather than doing something interesting they just made them caricature Irish. The magic shown was very ordinary and not at all subtle like in the books. The battle scenes were the standard CGI war we have seen before.
Boromir's story is another good example. Great opportunity to do something special, to make it believable and to show the viewer just how the ring corrupts the mind, but instead t
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The end of the books, when they're running around cheering "All hail the ringbearers!" was one of only two times in a book I felt like cheering myself. The movie did not capture this.
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Also, the Tolkien Estate can go to hell. Let copyright expire upon death of the author, at least regarding derivative works.
Re: Why do we care? (Score:1)
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I care. The LOTR trilogy has been worth watching and re-watching over the years. The Hobbit was so bad it took me 10 years just to watch the third(!) one.
Re:Why do we care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Movies don't become popular or classics only if everyone who read the book agrees it was a great adaptation that was entirely true to the original. If that was the case, I don't think any movie based on a book could ever be popular. To pretend you don't know that the majority of people who did or did not read the original books found the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy highly enjoyable and love hearing more behind-the-scenes talk is just silly and, frankly, smacks of an annoying hipster attitude.
The Hobbit trilogy is another story, but this wasn't a reunion of those involved in that movie except by coincidence.
20 years (Score:2)
how the hell are these movies 20 years old already! O_O