One thing LotR does very well: lets men show emotions that aren't anger. Frodo smiles, shouts Gandalf's name excitedly, cracks a joke with him, and gives him a hug. That's how you know they're old friends.
I can only tell if men are friends if they share a bicep-flexed hand clasp.
You son of a bitch! 🤝💪
They need to shoulder bump too, otherwise they could just be former colleagues or perhaps two men who met for the first time yesterday.
And a solemn nod that sums up everything they both experienced in the 10 years since they last saw each other.
"My man." "My man." (In unison) "Hurrah"
"What are we doing today?"
"We're going hunting. Because we're men. Because we like to do it. Stop being a bitch"
Go back, Sam! I'm going to Mordor alone.
Of course you are. And I'm coming with you!
It always makes me tear up. Fantastic films.
Conversely, the worst film I've seen in recent years must be the third(?) fantastic beasts film. I still have no clue what actually happened or what it was trying to tell. It was such a jumbled mess, and them changing out the actor of the main villain for the third time didn't help much.
Yeah, if made in last 10 years, they might have turned Aragorn into some kind of Conan the Barbarian ripoff. Not necessarily, for example, RDJ’s Iron Man has a lot of complex emotions and nice arc. But, they could. I mean, look at Galadriel in Rings of Power.
One thing I've noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more "tell, don't show" than old movies.
For example, compare the live action Disney Cinderella to the original animated version. The live action version is mostly a voiceover telling the story of Cinderella. They literally say "Her stepsisters weren't very good at art or music" and then have a scene showing them being bad at art and music. The animated version spent the first 20 minutes or so like a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
And this is across movies. I watched Predator recently and there wasn't a lot of exposition about how they're there to fight communists or whatever. You pick that up in snippets of dialog in between the action.
It really does feel like movies are dumbing down.
One thing I've noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more "tell, don't show" than old movies.
Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn't my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven't seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if "HE" returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.
I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It's the only movie I've seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me
But Lord of the rings is a modern movie?
Is a movie that came out 23 years ago still modern?
Yes, the word we are searching for is contemporary. Technically all films are modern, but not contemporary. Though modern has expanded definition to include it generally as well but I like to explore language :)
I mean it was filmed 25 years ago, I guess it depends on your definition of 'modern'
What do you mean? Of course it isn't a modern movie, it was filmed during the Third Age.
good writing. :|
Gandalf's actor really helps.
Sir Ian Mckellen is great, I love that him and Patrick Stewart and good friends as well.
Howard Shore is the answer
This is an answer I'm not seeing here enough. The score for LotR just FORCES you to feel the feelings. Don't wanna be happy? Too bad, we're in the Shire bitch.
I think the biggest reason is that the actors were allowed to act together. Modern movies use so many digital effects that actors aren't even on set together sometimes. It's hard to have the same emotions looking at a green screen and a guy in a morph suit.
Show, don't tell
It works wonders
the problem is that a lot of modern shows/movies spend 2 hours explaining a characters backstory before you give a shit. there’s also a lot of “tell, don’t show” going on
Execs thinking everyone's as vacant as they are.
It's worth noting that the Lord of the Rings in book form is very long because it goes into so much depth about each character's history. One of the things that the author intentionally did was world building. If you wanted to get the whole plot line in, you could do so in a third the length.
So then when it was adapted to movie format, you had three things going for it. First, a lot of people read the books and loved them, second, the cast and crew had a lot to work with, and third, there was ample budget.
They'd rather have the protagonist run around screaming like a moron for 20 minutes for comedic effect instead instead of putting any effort into developing characters
This is how I felt when I tried to watch Rogue One. It's part of one of my favorite franchises yet it is also an entire feature length film without one single character in it who I give a shit about.
It's maddening.
Rogue One was better than most of the drivel Disney has put out. Thank god there were finally some new characters. anitnal revolves around the same 3 fucking families.
I actually did enjoy Andor a lot. That was why I tried watching Rogue One again, since I thought I might like it better with the added context, but I still just got bored
They are the archetypes all other fantasy archetypes are based on. Of course you know them.
a lot more care was taken with movie production in general in prior years than now and it shows
Eh, I think it's more related to survivorship bias of the movies we remember. Most movies from decades ago were utter trash then too, we mostly remember the good ones while most of the rubbish fades away and is forgotten.
It helps that Sir Ian McKellen is a huge teddy bear with a heart of gold and he would hug anyone that sincerely, whether he knew them or not.
I'd say most of the time it's an age thing the younger we are the easier impressed/amazed we are. growing older makes us sometimes cynical sometimes overloaded with imagery. The more you've seen the harder it gets to be impressed by stuff, cause you have seen so much. And we keep fond memories of the things we liked as kids and teenagers.
Good acting.
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