Poll of the Day > the lotr movies aren't good

(+) Yeah! (+)

The only good scenes in that whole trilogy were Bilbo finding smeagol/the ring and Bilbo talking to Smaug

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Muscles posted...

The only good scenes in that whole trilogy were Bilbo finding smeagol/the ring and Bilbo talking to Smaug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubynOv3VKB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17kvIcRtMhM
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I like to think that I enjoyed the 1970s Hobbit movie more than the Peter Jackson ones but honestly it's probably just childhood nostalgia.

The Peter Jackson Hobbit movies should have been 2 movies, not 3.

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Yeah, the riddle scene and the treasure room scene are the only parts I really liked in the Hobbit movies.

I did think Martin Freeman was a good choice for Bilbo, but there were times when Bilbo was actually supposed to show confidence, and Freeman just kinda stuttered through his lines nervously

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I thought they were all boring af. I wasted my time reading the books too and they were a slog to get through as well. There is such a thing as having too much detail.

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MeteoricBurst posted...

I thought they were all boring af. I wasted my time reading the books too and they were a slog to get through as well. There is such a thing as having too much detail.

you are correct

Ill never forget reading the books as a teen and just getting fucking readers block at one point where he spends like three and a half pages to describe what part of a forest looks like

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I can't believe people don't like the pacing of LotR, too me it was a perfect show burn and most books seem rushed in comparison

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Mead posted...

just getting fucking readers block at one point where he spends like three and a half pages to describe what part of a forest looks like

Never read Lovecraft. Most of his stories are like 27 pages of description and 4 pages of story.
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the tom bombadil part in the books is what made me stop reading because it was so fucking disgustingly boring

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helIy posted...

the tom bombadil part in the books is what made me stop reading because it was so fucking disgustingly boring

To be fair, the books really only got super-popular in the 60s, when everyone was high on drugs. And Bombadil is pretty much the living avatar of hippie stoners.

So if you didn't like him, you clearly just didn't smoke enough pipeweed.
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Muscles posted...

I can't believe people don't like the pacing of LotR, too me it was a perfect show burn and most books seem rushed in comparison

Muscles, have you ever read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy (really only the first two will do)?

It's slow-paced... fantasy? series that takes place in a massive castle built onto a mountain. The descriptions are extraordinary. It feels more like poetry than prose, as he describes these incredibly bizarre characters and scenes. You can listen to an audio sample on amazon that gives you a decent idea of some of it.

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Okay I was just reading some stuff on Wikipedia about The Lord of the Rings (don't fucking judge me) and found this.


This...doesn't seem accurate at all, lol. I feel like whoever came up with that was just looking for a connection and loosely made one.

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helIy posted...

fucking disgustingly boring

Literally the most fun and lighthearted part of the book but okay

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faramir77 posted...

Okay I was just reading some stuff on Wikipedia about The Lord of the Rings (don't fucking judge me) and found this.
This...doesn't seem accurate at all, lol. I feel like whoever came up with that was just looking for a connection and loosely made one.

Pft... I mean... that's a massive stretch, no pun intended. Shelob and her predecessor, Ungoliant, are embodiments of gluttony more than anything else, great devouring defilers of light. Their roles in the story revolve entirely upon their ability to consume and poison whatever they please. You can see it in pretty much every description of both characters.

I think Tolkien probably made them female because female spiders tend to be larger than male spiders.

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Metalsonic66 posted...

Literally the most fun and lighthearted part of the book but okay

Being lighthearted doesn't necessarily prevent it from also being boring. And fun is incredibly subjective.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

fun is incredibly subjective.

So is boredom

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Metalsonic66 posted...

So is boredom

True, but that doesn't alter or contradict my statement in the slightest.
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I wasn't trying to alter or contradict anything?

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If you want to read Lord of the Rings, but stop wanting read it when you start, just read The Sword of Shannara instead. It's a wholesale ripoff of Lord of the Rings condensed into one book.
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GanonsSpirit posted...

If you want to read Lord of the Rings, but stop wanting read it when you start, just read The Sword of Shannara instead. It's a wholesale ripoff of Lord of the Rings condensed into one book.

Lol, that's true. I remember reading that book and being very confused about how the writer managed to get away with such a shameless copy of LotR.

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GanonsSpirit posted...

If you want to read Lord of the Rings, but stop wanting read it when you start, just read The Sword of Shannara instead. It's a wholesale ripoff of Lord of the Rings condensed into one book.

Wheel of Time starts out the same way as well. As do about a thousand other fantasy novels from the 70s and 80s.

People here probably won't like Shannara if they're completionists, though, because there's like three dozen books in the series now.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

People here probably won't like Shannara if they're completionists, though, because there's like three dozen books in the series now.

I only read the main trilogy and didn't bother with the others. The 2nd and 3rd books are pretty damn good.
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GanonsSpirit posted...

I only read the main trilogy and didn't bother with the others. The 2nd and 3rd books are pretty damn good.

I read the first seven. I actually liked the Heritage of Shannara quadrilogy better than the original three.

It feels like it goes rapidly downhill after that, though.

Never got into Landover (Terry Brooks' other fantasy series). The first couple books never really grabbed me.
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rexcrk posted...

I disagree.

I appreciated that the entire book was in those movies, as well as extra world building and events alluded to in later works (such as driving Sauron out of Dol Guldur). AND all those songs

Some of the actions scenes couldve been trimmed a bit (I still hate the chase on the way to Rivendell, for example), but overall Im very happy with how the Hobbit movies came out and I still believe they wouldve been better received if they came out in 04, 05, and 06.

Plus, lets not pretend like the LotR movies dont have their faults in terms of adapting the books

The problem is that they could have done it in two movies but purposely dragged it to three just for the money.

faramir77 posted...

Okay I was just reading some stuff on Wikipedia about The Lord of the Rings (don't fucking judge me) and found this.


This...doesn't seem accurate at all, lol. I feel like whoever came up with that was just looking for a connection and loosely made one.

That entire section should be removed. I bet the "sources" are all blogs.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I read the first seven. I actually liked the Heritage of Shannara quadrilogy better than the original three.

It feels like it goes rapidly downhill after that, though.

Never got into Landover (Terry Brooks' other fantasy series). The first couple books never really grabbed me.

I might have to try reading all of these. I do have more freetime now.
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That entire section should be removed. I bet the "sources" are all blogs.

You made me curious so I went to check.
A couple of the sources are from the 70's and 80's (one was reprinted in the 2000s, I think). The newest one is from 2013. They all have ISBNs. I'd guess just based off of the citations that they're from collections of themed literary lenses, since most famous works get picked apart through pretty much every framework imaginable.

But yeah, I don't see this one. Like... yes, Sam killed her with a sword. He also killed several orcs with a sword... because his weapon is a sword. Like... none of these analyses touch on the most important parts of the encounter with Shelob, like the Phial of Galadriel, the choice to make Shelob a spider of all creatures, the fact that she is guarding an entrance to Mordor, Gollum luring them to her, etc... it's all the most insignificant details... "oooh tunnels." :-/

What's odd is that even within the citations at least one of them points out that Sam defeating Shelob is comparable to the slaying of monsters in stories like that of Sigurd, but then mentions Ariadne, who has absolutely nothing to do with this scenario... it comes off as just shot-gunning possibilities. Well, it's hard to tell without reading the full text in question, which I am, uh, not going to do.

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Revelation34 posted...

I might have to try reading all of these. I do have more freetime now.

If you're looking for light fantasy I could throw David Eddings into the pile (his two main series are 10 books and 6 books respectively), but a lot of people have gone off him in the last year or two, because of some personal issues that have come out about him and his wife/co-author that have kind of squicked a lot of people. Depends on whether or not you can separate the art from the artist, or if knowing there's some dark shit in his life will ruin your ability to ever look at his work unbiased.

Roger Zelazny's Amber novels (10 books - two series of 5 and 5 - but they're all fairly short) are another option, but they're generally a bit of an acquired taste (basically, you'll generally know by the end of Nine Princes in Amber if you're really excited about continuing or bored enough to want to stop).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

If you're looking for light fantasy I could throw David Eddings into the pile (his two main series are 10 books and 6 books respectively), but a lot of people have gone off him in the last year or two, because of some personal issues that have come out about him and his wife/co-author that have kind of squicked a lot of people. Depends on whether or not you can separate the art from the artist, or if knowing there's some dark shit in his life will ruin your ability to ever look at his work unbiased.

Roger Zelazny's Amber novels (10 books - two series of 5 and 5 - but they're all fairly short) are another option, but they're generally a bit of an acquired taste (basically, you'll generally know by the end of Nine Princes in Amber if you're really excited about continuing or bored enough to want to stop).

I have no problem with that. I might just get a reader instead of buying physical. But I would want it to have internet access so I could read stuff on other sites too.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Roger Zelazny's Amber novels (10 books - two series of 5 and 5 - but they're all fairly short) are another option, but they're generally a bit of an acquired taste (basically, you'll generally know by the end of Nine Princes in Amber if you're really excited about continuing or bored enough to want to stop).

Ah, I own that series in a single large book, but I never got through it. Maybe I should pick it back up again.

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Revelation34 posted...

I might just get a reader instead of buying physical. But I would want it to have internet access so I could read stuff on other sites too.

I know a friend of mine just used to use his iPad and would use some site or another to download books. So it should be possible to do even without a Kindle/Nook/etc.

It likely only matters how/where you want to go to get access to books.



Gaawa_chan posted...

Ah, I own that series in a single large book, but I never got through it. Maybe I should pick it back up again.

Yeah, most people who read it these days buy The Great Book of Amber from Barnes & Noble (which is basically all 10 books in one). It's pretty much the only Zelazny book they still stock/in print.

...which is a shame, because Zelazny is a great writer. He was a huge influence on the New Wave scene in sci-fi/fantasy, and he wrote a ton of short stories as well as novels.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I know a friend of mine just used to use his iPad and would use some site or another to download books. So it should be possible to do even without a Kindle/Nook/etc.

It likely only matters how/where you want to go to get access to books.

Yeah, most people who read it these days buy The Great Book of Amber from Barnes & Noble (which is basically all 10 books in one). It's pretty much the only Zelazny book they still stock/in print.

...which is a shame, because Zelazny is a great writer. He was a huge influence on the New Wave scene in sci-fi/fantasy, and he wrote a ton of short stories as well as novels.

I didn't mean books for that. I meant more comics/manga off certain sites. I also own a few due to Humble Bundles that involved books/comics that were thrown into some game bundles.
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They are as good as the books.

It will take another decade or so for most to agree on this but it will happen.

For the Hobbit though, this will never happen, most of those movies were garbage.

For that matter, the first few Harry Potter movies are better than their respective books, though for the last few this swaps and the books are better.

Game of Thrones/Ice and Fire book 4 and 5 are WORSE than the show...and objectively even beyond that the show is better (even if it's hot trash) because it at least exists and will ever exist.


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DrYuya posted...

and objectively even beyond that the show is better (even if it's hot trash) because it at least exists and will ever exist.

I think I'd rather have a non-existent book than the second half of that show.
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DrYuya posted...

They are as good as the books.

It will take another decade or so for most to agree on this but it will happen.

For the Hobbit though, this will never happen, most of those movies were garbage.

For that matter, the first few Harry Potter movies are better than their respective books, though for the last few this swaps and the books are better.

Game of Thrones/Ice and Fire book 4 and 5 are WORSE than the show...and objectively even beyond that the show is better (even if it's hot trash) because it at least exists and will ever exist.

I would have preferred them to actually have kept the show exactly like the books. It's HBO they could have afforded it.
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DrYuya posted...

at least exists and will ever exist.

I think I would have rather kept whatever imagined ending I had in my head TBH.
DrYuya posted...

first few Harry Potter movies are better than their respective books

If they had included the ghosts more in the story, maybe. Casting John Cleese and then only giving him like two lines seemed like a huge misstep

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DrYuya posted...

Game of Thrones/Ice and Fire book 4 and 5 are WORSE than the show...and objectively even beyond that the show is better

absolute garbage opinion

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what happened with david eddings? i used to love his books and was thinking about rereading them for a nostalgia hit.

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Lotr >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>got

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Nade Duck posted...

what happened with david eddings? i used to love his books and was thinking about rereading them for a nostalgia hit.

Ummmmm....

Maybe don't read this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eddings#Child_abuse_conviction_(1969-1970)

Definitely don't read this:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/05/it-has-been-revealed-that-fantasy.html
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Never liked them, too boring.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Ummmmm....

Maybe don't read this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eddings#Child_abuse_conviction_(1969-1970)

Definitely don't read this:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/05/it-has-been-revealed-that-fantasy.html

is anyone not a piece of shit anymore

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i aren't

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