Just re-watched The Lord of the Rings, it's a snooze-fest & insanely overrated
Before you get mad at me, when was the last time you watched it?
The best thing I can say about this movie trilogy is that it is kinda comfy
The "Lord of the Rings" is not a character driven book and the same goes wirh the film adaptations. It is plot driven with heavy focus on world building, which can either make it an amazing or a boring experience. Depending on your preferences.
Based on the list of your favourite films (excellent, BTW, some of my own favourites are there) you seem to prefer character driven ones. So I can easily understand why you find the LOTR films boring.
Makes a lot of sense. And thanks btw. I love Tarantino's dialogues.
I love that the top comment isn’t everyone piling hate upon the poster but rather an analysis of why they most likely don’t like the series.
It is my favorite comment
LOTR itself is world building through characters, and building characters through their reaction to the world.
The films are just action with lots of nice views.
You should be grateful, what I remember from the books is something like "and they rode and rode and rode and rode and rode again and kept riding and rode and rode".
And pages upon pages describing mountains. The Hobbit was an amazing book though.
And then sang some songs about trees. For four pages. Again
I can't wait to turn the next page.
Edit: Were they riding though?
I'm a patient and voracious reader. Fuck LoTR. My god it's the most boring shite I've ever attempted to read.
LotR trilogy is an adaptation of an already classic tale, specifically stylized after legends and folk stories. It's seeming naivity and lack of newer approaches is intentional and suggested by it's source material. It is a compelling journey into the Middle-Earth, where said tone is complimented by thosands of competent people in it's production, together creating an extraordinary piece that can hardly be reproduced anytime soon or matched in it's own league of fantasy-aligned stuff.
Favorite movies are: Memento, Reservoir Dogs, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Shining
While LotR wasn't shy of looking older (to buy some ale, eh?), every one of your favorite movie is characterised by explicit use of newest post-modern tropes or approaches.
RD is Tarantino's first mixtape of what he liked in movies with some layers of abstraction and purely staged interactions, The Shining is a theme park of moments where Stanley can go full Kubrik, Memento is an intentional Nolan's sabotage of a plot structure to create a new experience, and EEAaO is an impressive patchwork of gags, drama and trope reversals fit so tightly in it I thought I'm scrolling bits on tiktok. All ace at something they are meant to.
It's not to say that one is easily better than the other, but they are hardly comparable because they don't strive to do the same thing, and if you are into movies that play with your expectations and try hard to keep your engaged and puzzled, you'd obviously have a hard time with movies that paint their own picture for you to observe and vibe with.
That's, like, your taste, lemming.
Wow, are you a professional writer? (I'm not being sarcastic here, because that can be hard to tell sometimes). That was really well written and I don't really have anything of value to add to that.
also all stories are simple if you break them down enough,
"The hero beats the bad guy"
or break them down too much and they all become complicated
"Spot the dog is compelled to sprint after a red ball as a symbol of the pursuit of personal goals by external factors. His name evokes the temporary nature of fleeting desire and functions as a fulcrum for the irony of pursuing mere frippery..."
As someone who had a LOTR wedding theme, take your upvote and get the fuck out of here.
Ours was Portal themed and nobody got it but us. Fine.
Damn, I would have appreciated that. LOTR was huge in Australia and my family/friend group so it worked out.
LOTR is by no means a trilogy for everyone, I hope your guests liked the premise, or at least appreciated it (it was your day though, so the most important thing is that you had a blast).
Pretty nerdy friend group but honestly it was just a light theme for the reception, no pressure to dress up. Made the drinking more fun for all I think
I think the problem is you're not watching the extended versions... All in one showing... Without bathroom breaks... Like a normal person...
I mean it's no Crank starring Jason Statham but don't worry. I'm sure they will release another Fast n the Furious sequel for you soon.
Copied, because you didn't read it:
Favorite movies are:
Memento
Reservoir Dogs
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Shining
You got one of my top three on your list and the rest is probably top 25. I approve your list.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
What a shitter of a movie
I find it believable that this is truly an unpopular opinion.
That said, I watch the movies at least once every year with family and/or friends and a truckload of snacks and beer.
Well ... take you're upvote. Now go burn in hell.
(Watched all extended editions last year).
The only people I've ever met who share this opinion are people who've spent their entire life viewing things that are fast-paced action movies or movies where characters are defined entirely by a handful of quippy one-liners and a melodramatic flash back and then have all of their character development confined to a singular moment of epiphany. Movies where they would be alphabet level predictable if they didn't move onto the next hackneyed trope at whiplash inducing paces.
If you spend your entire life watching the cinematic equivalent of cocaine of course sobriety is going to be boring.
Rewatches movies
Complains there's no surprises
Haha, right! Gandalf straight up falls into a pit with a demon-being and then comes back. If someone predicted that then that would be incredible.
I watched it 20 years ago when I was a kid mate
I'm just saying, what, did you expect the movie to change each time you watch it?
I’m all for valid criticisms, but mediocre dialogue and one-dimensional characters? And your fave movies are Momento and Reservoir Dogs? The math ain’t mathing.
Like what you like, but I call bullshit. Logging this under “I said some controversial shit to stir up online discourse.” Enjoy my downvote, sir.
My family watches it every year
-the dialog is pretty iconic
-story is simple, it's fine though
-the characters are pretty simple, but they are still interesting in their own way imo
-the ending to return of the king does undeniably drag
Honestly I think it's a pretty polarizing film series. It takes some huge gambles in including a lot of pretty deep lore and details that most people probably don't care about. Most people i know who've seen it say they either love it or found it boring. I've never met someone who said the series is "pretty good".
I will say, the lack of reliance on plot twists makes it more rewatchable. That and the absolutely beautiful sets and costumes. In today's age of CGI and now AI, we will never see the like of it again. EDIT: How could I forget the soundtrack?
I worked in a theater when Return of the King came out and there were often audible groans from people after the 2nd or 3rd fade to black then opening on another scene after 3 hours
Thanks! :)
Agreed.
The books are even worse, every other page is a fucking song or extended poem.
Most over rated shit I never finished.
I'm listening to Andy Serkis reading it for the forth or fifth time, while reading your comment (him singing at this moment as Tom Bombadil). One of the very few things I dislike is all the fucking songs or extended poems.
Yeh it was the audiobooks that I tries out, I gave it a good 10 hours or so, so I think I gave it a fair go but fuck me the singing was like nails on a chalk board for me.
I started skipping through the songs after the first couple but then as time went on I realised just how often it was going to happen and I couldn't stand it.
I thought I was getting into an epic fantasy adventure and instead I got a wanky musical about walking!
Yeah they were way too emotional in the movie. I much prefer the seriousness of the book where they acted like mature adults. And Gandalf was more badass in the books, and Gimli wasn't just comic relief in the books. But the visuals were amazing in the movie. 10/10 for visuals.
The soundtrack is also amazing. But yeah, the movies did the characters dirty. And it's not like the character building is particularly compelling in the books to begin with, it's very much a "the good guys are good and triumph over the bad guys who are evil because they're evil" kind of story.
I'd argue the movies went a long way to humanize the characters and make them more nuanced, like Aragorn doubting himself, Gandalf worried he's sent Frodo to his death, Faramir Sam and Aragorn all being more tempted by the ring then they were in the books, etc. Aragorn in particular is much more compelling in the movies imo.
In the books they acted like saga characters with some transcendent (in otherwise medieval surroundings) knowledge of the ideals of French revolution and Catholic distributism mixed in strange ways.
In the movies they acted like entertainment park animators. Too much superficial glossiness, too little of the feeling of the book, say, Barrow-Downs, I still remember how the descriptions of the rain and the sun and the stones felt.
Never felt compelled to see the movies, but the books were some of the most pompous, boring things I ever read. Multiple pages of battle songs, crap like that? I read the entire trilogy and The Hobbit, waiting to get to the "good part", for it to click in. But it never did.
It seems some people here think it is impossible to dislike the movies and I am just talking shit on purpose, so thank you for being a breath of fresh air. Here have some dino nuggies:
Last month. I'd tried watching them many times before and always fell asleep, but this time I was engaged the whole time.
OP, did you read the books? By today's standards, they may be a tad boring, but these were the books that created the clichhés in the first place. The movies were pretty decent for their time (although RotK was waaaayyyyy too long), but I did not feel that the books were done much justice. And there was too much 'humorous' dialougue shoehorned in. The Legolas-Gimli-Bromance was hard to watch, even then. That in and of itself makes the movies overrated.
Also, as for 'there are no surprises', the story of the movies differed from the books. LotR fans were unpleasantly surprised by that.
Off-topic: the Hobbit movies were abonimations. I fucking hate them.
Nope I didn't read the books and sure LotR made fantasy somewhat mainstream, I can't deny that.
I agree that a story so iconic that spawned endless imitations in the last 70 years might feel a little clichè...
About the dialogue, what did you expect? Frodo and Sam talking about the real meaning of Like a Virgin while climbing mt. Doom? Of course it is plain, the script isn't triyng to present something unexpected like a Tarantino movie, it's all about each character's lore and world building and the dialogue serves this purpose very well
I share the same unpopular opinion.
I enjoyed the animated LotR movie, but not the "live action" ones.
They are too slow, too much fighting (especially in the last one).
I thought the films were long and sometimes boring, but the books are something else. I gave up near the end, the part with the big spider.
There are no surprises
The characters don't even learn anything from the last time I watched them!
I didn't remember anything. I was a kid when they originally released.
I watch the extended versions regularly, at least once a year. I disagree with everything you said. They are masterpieces. But, this is Unpopular Opinion, so bravo.
For me it's the pacing. The movies are like 11 hours long, and 8 of those hours is just reaction shots of Sam and Frodo gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.
Seriously, you could shave a few seconds off of every shot and lose nothing. It's just how Peter Jackson directs. His King Kong was the same way. You're supposed to use long reaction shots to let important moments sink in, but he does it after every line.
The music was great. I'll give it that.
I was in a dark place when those films came out. They kept me going for a number of years. It's full of manly men in touch with their feelings who care for and fight for others. But they were also ordinary people who kept going despite being overwhelmed by despair. We should be so lucky to have such influences in our lives. Might have to give them a rewatch again soon.
You might think this is an unpopular opinion, but for many it is a reality, I don't know anyone in real life that liked the movies for example (my sister loved HP and Twilight but fell asleep with The Fellowship of The Ring).
Here in Lemmy is definitely an unpopular opinion.
Idk why you're getting downvoted. I loved LOTR, but thought HP and Twilight were boring, so obviously it can go the other way around too.
I liked LOTR and HP. Twilight (the books and the movies) were utter shit. I won't pay for any HP stuff now though, since she came out as a bigot.
Exactly, one needs to understand people near around you might have different tastes, is not so complicated ¯(ツ)/¯
Lol bullshit. You’re either lying or live under a rock.
Huh?
Tolkien stans burn me out so much. I'm fed up with them only slightly more than the faux Dominion over fantasy that everyone else gives to Tolkien himself.
I spent my teenage years reading, playing DnD and overall just being a huge dork. I was gifted the movies a few times by relatives who didn't know I found the movies boring as hell.
Did you like the DnD movie?
The two from the 2000s were trainwrecks that my friends and I mocked pretty hard. They had a few fun moments, but even then I knew they were objectively bad movies. Saying that, a 13-14 year old me would've been delighted to get those as a gift instead of the LoTR nap inducers.
But the new one?! Honor Among Thieves? Love it SO much. Goofy barely serious characters with hammy backstories living in a world that has both serious consequences and detailed history. Finally nailed it!
Wife and I are just about done with our 3rd-ish Baulders Gate 3 run and we are planning on giving it a rewatch soon. :)
OMG thank you, I hate them and get so vilified for it. I might have deemed them mediocre had each one been at least half an hour shorter but as it is they’re just a Peter Jackson wankathon.
Full disclosure fwiw:
Star Wars don't even count as sci-fi in my opinion.
It is a fantasy movie that happens to have galatic backdrop.
honestly i struggle to even call it fantasy, to me it just feels like a normal-ass movie with whatever justifications they needed to make things happen
like how back to the future isn't scifi or fantasy either, it's just a movie about going back in time and how they do that is entirely arbitrary and exists only to justify time travel and to be cool.
Totally agree. I like this thread, I think I’ve found my people.
Ah. It's more scientific than Star Trek. At least no transporters\replicators. Hyperdrive malfunction is like a small nuke, Jedi are no more magic than, eh, telepaths in Star Trek.
But as a Star Wars fan I agree it's clearly fantasy set in space. That's not an insult, rather its clear self-positioning.
If you don't consider Star Trek sci-fi too, then it's all fine. I also love Babylon V and also don't think it's sci-fi.
Star Wars is Science Fantasy.
(I think the assumption that "fantasy" means "medieval Europe" is worth criticism though.)
Peter Jackin'son
Last year. If you're into nonstop action, then yes, they're probably not for you.
Favorite movies are:
Memento
Reservoir Dogs
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Shining
And here I'd call most of these over rated 😉. The Shining in particular I found incredibly boring and barely creepy or unsettling.
There are various reasons that both LOTR and many of your favorites remain so popular but a big one (other than nostalgia) is that they were ground breaking at the time of release. Now, they seem tropey and what have you, but that's because everyone based their subsequent movies/books/etc on those originals, and then improved upon them.
I like the movies because the world is cool and they are comfy. There are also a few cool moments. I don't think it's peak cinema or something, but it's a nice watch. Planning to watch them again soon
Dude I just had this same experience recently. Hadn't seen them in at least a decade or more. They are not aging well. I know they are older tech but I even feel like the cinematography and special effects are pretty rough around the edges. And i love watching old movies. I love LOTR but yeah probably not gonna watch those again.
It was pretty unique for its time. Now everything is just yet another fantasy world. I'd argue it's mediocre when comparing it to the rest of what's out there now.
Always has been