Interview with Peter Jackson on LoTR Bloopers 790
erth writes "Newsweek has an interview with Peter Jackson asking him what he thinks about some of the most famous and/or obvious bloopers in the LoTR series. Moviemistakes.com has more Fellowhip of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King bloopers as well for your snickering pleasure." I just wanted to give my props to Jackson and all- we took off early yesterday to see the final film. It was everything I hoped for... except for the bits that I expect I'll have to wait for the extended edition DVD to see. And I was to busy grinning ear to ear to notice any serious bloopers.
SD'd (Score:3, Informative)
Damn dude, what can I say.
be kind (Score:0, Informative)
I'm looking forward to Jackson doing the Hobbit (Score:5, Informative)
Here is more info:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/3977.html
Usurper_ii
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:5, Informative)
Gandalf cannot touch the ring or he will be corrupted by it. The ring would use gandalf's power against everyone and very bad things would ensue. The reason that Frodo is able to hold the ring and not instantly turn bad is because hobbits have no inherent powers of their own, also, hobbits seem to be more resistant to the rings corrupting influence. All things that you would know if you had ever read the books.
Google cache to the rescue! (Score:4, Informative)
Fellowship of the Ring [216.239.57.104]
The Two Towers [216.239.57.104]
Sorry, Return of the King isn't cached yet...
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:1, Informative)
I suppose you're trolling, but here's my answer:
Gandalf can't carry the ring. He's too powerful and knows he must resist the temptation. This is dealt with early on in FotR (both book and movie version). Also the need for secrecy is great. If Nazgul can fly then you don't draw attention to yourself by flying right into Mordor. Notice the eagles go to Mt. Doom only after the war is won.
Re:be kind (Score:5, Informative)
use this one instead [216.239.57.104]
Mods: please mod parent down, and this up.
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Speaking of bloopers (Score:5, Informative)
Dupe it is! I thought it was another interview about the third movie, it's not!
It's the same Dec 1's article form the previus post
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:5, Informative)
And, there was much more to Gandalf's reluctance to touch the ring. Remember, Gandalf was no more human than Sauron or the Balrog were human -- he was an immortal. He was also part of the last song; it was impossible for him to fight directly against Sauron. He moved, he shaped, he cajoled, he prodded, but he took no direct action. Ever. That was the fate laid out for him at the dawn of the world.
Well, except against the Balrog. I guess Immortal Beings Created at the Dawn of Time can fight each other directly.
Some spoilers here (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. It's supposed to occur in our "prehistory".
A lot of people seem to ask this.
The short answer is obviously "because then there's no story". Even if this is the only answer, it doesn't have to be an issue. For example, a lot of people enjoyed the first Matrix movie, even though its premise violates physical laws (since human bodies cannot generate more energy than is put into them).
However, there are perfectly reasonable justifications for why the "just fly an Eagle into Mordor" isn't going to work.
In your scenario, Gandalf flies an Eagle over Mount Doom and drops the Ring in. If you recall, Gandalf was unwilling to even touch the Ring in the first movie because he felt he would be unable to resist the temptation to use it. He felt that hobbits in general and Frodo in particular would be better able to resist the temptation. This is because they have very little ambition or desire for power, as well as having relatively little innate power.
However, even Frodo, when it came down to it, was incapable of throwing the Ring into the fire! Gandalf would have been even more unable to.
What would probably happen in your scenario, given how Tolkien has set up the story, is Gandalf would take the Ring, mount the Eagle, make it most of the way to Mount Doom, and say "Forget this throwing away business, you can all call me Lord Gandalf now." There is no way he (or anyone else, I would argue [except perhaps Bombadil]) would be capable of dropping it in.
Another difficulty with the Eagle scenario is that it's extremely blatant. There is no secrecy possible. This means Sauron would have perceived it immediately. His significant psychic/spiritual power would instantly been focused on preventing the destruction of the Ring, either by destroying, cowing, or deceiving the bearer.
These first points are derivable from the movies alone. The following one requires knowledge of the books.
The (giant) Eagles are not at the command of anyone in Middle-Earth. They are the servants of Manwe, who in Tolkien's legendarium is the head Vala (arch-angel kind of figures), the ruler of Middle-Earth. The Valar felt that defeating Sauron was the responsibility of the peoples of Middle-Earth themselves. They sent help in the form of the Wizards (including Gandalf and Saruman), but even they were not supposed to act directly, but only advise, guide, and prompt. So while it's acceptable for the Eagles (as Manwe's representatives) to assist the effort against Sauron in minor ways, they cannot act more directly.
Slashdotted (of course) (Score:5, Informative)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 29 mistakes
Revealing: In the first scene in Edoras (the capital city of Rohan). The first pan over Edoras: You can see the pan is shown in reverse, with the smoke going into the chimney and the fire at the end is burning backwards. The flags are fluttering oddly as well.
Revealing: When Theoden is talking to Eowyn before he dies one can see that he is wearing contact lenses.
Factual error: Hobbits can't grow beards, yet Samwise Gamgee has stubble in most of his close-ups in Return Of The King. Even if they could grow beards, it seems unlikely they would be in a position to be shaving on that journey.
Continuity: In one of the final scenes of the movie, Frodo is writing in the book "There and Back Again," adding his own story. As he is finishing, he clutches the wound he received from one of the Nazgul in "The Fellowship of the Ring." In the hand that he uses clutch the wound, he still holds the quill pen. At the same time, Sam is entering Bag-End. When the camera angle changes, Frodo is still clutching the wound, but the pen has found its way into the ink jar.
Audio problem: In the scene where Gandalf enters the chambers of Gondor to speak with the Steward of the throne, the sound of his staff striking the floor matches the action in sporadic patches only. In the shot where he departs, that specific sound is consistent.
Continuity: When Gollum drops the lembas from the ridge, you see the leaves it was wrapped in fluttering away, and the wafers fall roughly straight down. However, when Sam finds it later, the lembas is still mostly wrapped in the leaves, with only a few morsels broken off and laying around unwrapped.
Revealing: In the scene where the paciderm animals of Mordor are introduced in the battle, there's a shot that pans the front of the line of them. One animal has wood connecting its larger tusks, complete with barbs jutting out from the wood. As the orcs flee to regroup behind the animals, several run through the contraption unharmed.
Continuity: In the scene where Frodo is helped by Galadriel in Shelob's lair (in the "dream sequence") he lays on the ground. In his hair on HIS right side (viewers' left) is what appears to be some clovers or leaves or grass. The camera cuts to Galadriel then back to Frodo, the thing in his hair is gone. The camera cuts to her again and back to Frodo, the thing is back in his hair.
Continuity: In the scene where Frodo is tied up in the Tower, part of his face and hair is partly covered in spider webbing - the only opening is his face where Sam parted it to see that he had "died". After a few scenes of orcs, the next shot shows that Frodo has clean hair/face and his hands are still tied up.
Continuity: When Gandalf enters the castle of Rohan, the shot of his back shows him holding his staff in a vertical position. When the shot turns to his front, he is holding his staff in an horizontal position. The shot turns to his back, and the staff is again in the vertical position. Then the shot turns again to his front, showing his staff in a horizontal position.
Continuity: The scene where Pippin and Gandalf are talking about "the end" in Minas Tirith, during the battle of Pelenor fields. In one close-up shot, Gandalf's sword blade is shiny and silver. In the next shot, it's coated in black orc blood, then in the next shot, it's silver again.
Continuity: In the scene where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli enter the cave where the dead army resides, Aragorn pulls a torch seemingly from nowhere (especially interesting considering that his horse, and consequently all supplies, have run off in the scene before).
Continuity: When Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, Gimli etc, ride up to the gates of Mordor, the main characters go up to the gate on their own to demand it opens. The trails the horses leave on the way towards the gate are different to those that you see in the shot when they retreat after the gate ha
Re:I'm looking forward to Jackson doing the Hobbit (Score:5, Informative)
If you've actually read The Hobbit, the Dwarves are basically all about comic relief. Everything from their names alll being similar to each other, to the silly songs they sing. They are rather comical. I always assumed that Peter Jackson used The Hobbit as a reference to flesh out Gimili's character for the movies.
you have to admit, in The Hobbit the dwarves are definitely silly.
Middle-Earth is supposed to be our planet (Score:2, Informative)
Here's what the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings says:
Tolkien is clearly saying that a lot has changed since the Third Age, but Middle-Earth is our world.
More discussion of this question can be found here [slimy.com].
Re:Wait a minute: Eomer wasn't sentenced to death. (Score:2, Informative)
Presumably the commenters thought they were on
On a related note... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:2, Informative)
I can't believe I'm replying to this. I'm such a geek.
Sigh.
Google cache links :) (Score:5, Informative)
The Two Towers [google.com]
Unfortunately there is no cache of the Return of the King.
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:2, Informative)
Actually Gandalf can and did touch the ring in the beginning of FOTR. In order to determine that Bilbo's ring was the one, Gandalf cast it into a fire. He then retreived the ring and read the famous inscription in the mordor language...
Re:On a related note... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blooper? (Score:2, Informative)
>easily proven by looking at pretty much any
>dramatic scene in the movie (especially the ones
>where elves are present). They are all horribly
>framed, overlighted in an horrible, cheesy manner,
>and the music is always way overboard
Most of the things you are talking about have got very little to do with the director and writer. It's the cinematographer and lighting people who frame and light the shots, and the music director who chooses the music.
Re:Some spoilers here (Score:3, Informative)
Actually if you read "The Hobbit" there is significant mention of the eagles not being at anyone's command. The only reason they help Gandalf and the dwarves escape the goblins in the Misty Mountains is to repay Gandalf for aiding them, not because they felt it was the "right" thing to do or were asked to do it out of the kindness of their hearts.
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, I am a nerd.
P.S. The origin of trolls is not clear. What Treebeard says is what Treebeard knows, not absolute fact. Tolkien puts forth many theories but does not claim one is true. One story involves Maia (like balrogs, but not spirits of fire) taking on an orc-like form when entering earth to command armies of orcs. They all eventually died in battle with the elves, but had crossbread with orcs, creating trolls.
Re:Joke in Topic! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the likely problem here is that the site is making use of PHP's ability to hold the connection to the database open, rather than doing an open/close on every query. This saves the overhead of establishing the connection on each page view, and is often a good thing.
However, each instance of Apache will open and hold the connection, so if you have a config that allows more Apache child processes than you've allowed concurrent connections under MySQL, you see this. The aggravating thing is that neither Apache nor MySQL are necessarily swamped when this happens -- you've just got more Apache processes than the configured number of concurrent MySQL connections.
Re:Blooper? (Score:3, Informative)
Since there's so much work in post production (editing, CGI etc), it only makes sense to film all the live stuff for all three movies at once, so you free up your actors so they can get on with their careeers while you sit in a room with geeks and computers for two more years turning your dailies into three actual films.
Re:The geeks that clapped during the movie/review: (Score:3, Informative)
Fellowship, p12. (Concerning Hobbits): ... The Stoors lingered long by the banks of the Great River Anduin, and were less shy of Men.
Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somwhat different breeds: Harfoot, Stoors, and Fallohides.
Return, p414. (Appendix F):
Footnote 1: The Stoors of the Angle, who returned to Wilderland, had already adopted the Common Speech; but Deagol and Smeagol are names in the Mannish language of the region near the Gladden.
Re:Joke in Topic! (Score:2, Informative)
Joshing (Score:2, Informative)
He's clearly joking. The post-production commentary track for the same scene says how they removed the car.
Re:Joke in Topic! (Score:5, Informative)
Most people who use PHP/MySQL use something like mysql_pconnect() to use persistant connection to speed the site up. However, that backfires on you when your site gets heavy load and you run out of connections. There is a warning about this in the PHP docs mysql-pconnect [php.net]
A better solution would be a resource pool manager for PHP/MySQL that starts to free the connections when a certain numbers of configurable connections get in the pool to try to help with the infamous "Too many connections in /usr/XXX" MySQL error. Though, in the end, there are only so many connections you can get through a little box. Put the www.moviemistakes.com [moviemistakes.com] site on a nice 4-8 way box with the same setup and see how well it can do against Oracle. I am not knocking Oracle, I think it is the best Enterprise class DB out there. It comes down to using the right tool for the right job. Orcale for a dynamic web site is overkill and too expensive. Orcale for financial, e-commerce, data warehousing is a much better fit IMO.
The mistakes (Score:2, Informative)
Audio problem: In the scene where Gandalf enters the chambers of Gondor to speak with the Steward of the throne, the sound of his staff striking the floor matches the action in sporadic patches only. In the shot where he departs, that specific sound is consistent.
Continuity: In the final battle scene, when Aragorn and crew are creating a "diversion" outside the gates of Mordor, everyone is on horseback. Later in the scene, when Aragorn and the other warriors charge the enemy, they are on foot. Even if they did dismount, where are the horses?
Continuity: When Gollum accuses Sam of eating the lembas bread, the crumbs on his shoulder don't appear until the shot when Gollum brushes them away.
Continuity: In the scene where Frodo is helped by Galadriel in Shelob's lair (in the "dream sequence") he lays on the ground. In his hair on HIS right side (viewers' left) is what appears to be some clovers or leaves or grass. The camera cuts to Galadriel then back to Frodo, the thing in his hair is gone. The camera cuts to her again and back to Frodo, the thing is back in his hair.
Factual error: Hobbits can't grow beards, yet Samwise Gamgee has stubble in most of his close-ups in Return Of The King. Even if they could grow beards, it seems unlikely they would be in a position to be shaving on that journey.
Continuity: When Gandalf enters the castle of Rohan, the shot of his back shows him holding his staff in a vertical position. When the shot turns to his front, he is holding his staff in an horizontal position. The shot turns to his back, and the staff is again in the vertical position. Then the shot turns again to his front, showing his staff in a horizontal position.
Continuity: When Gollum drops the lembas from the ridge, you see the leaves it was wrapped in fluttering away, and the wafers fall roughly straight down. However, when Sam finds it later, the lembas is still mostly wrapped in the leaves, with only a few morsels broken off and laying around unwrapped.
Continuity: When Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, Gimli etc, ride up to the gates of Mordor, the main characters go up to the gate on their own to demand it opens. The trails the horses leave on the way towards the gate are different to those that you see in the shot when they retreat after the gate has opened.
Continuity: In one of the final scenes of the movie, Frodo is writing in the book "There and Back Again," adding his own story. As he is finishing, he clutches the wound he received from one of the Nazgul in "The Fellowship of the Ring." In the hand that he uses clutch the wound, he still holds the quill pen. At the same time, Sam is entering Bag-End. When the camera angle changes, Frodo is still clutching the wound, but the pen has found its way into the ink jar.
Other: As Aragorn leads the army from Minas Tirith towards the Black Gates, look at "Pippin" sitting in front of Gandalf. Rather than the usual scale stand-in actor, it is a rather stiff dummy.
Revealing: In the scene where the paciderm animals of Mordor are introduced in the battle, there's a shot that pans the front of the line of them. One animal has wood connecting its larger tusks, complete with barbs jutting out from the wood. As the orcs flee to regroup behind the animals, several run through the contraption unharmed.
Continuity: In the final scene of the film, as Sam returns home and his children rush out to meet him, the cows in the background change position each time the camera goes back to Sam.
Continuity: In the scene where King Theoden is dying under his horse after Eowyn has slain the Witch King, there are three spots of mud on Theoden's right cheek that are so clear that they almost appear to be a tattoo. The camera cuts to Eowyn, then back to Theoden, and the spots on his face are faint, smudged, and in different locations. The camera cuts again from Theoden to Eowyn and back, and the sp
Um, which book did you read? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted (of course) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bloopers or not... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Someone who read the books.... (Score:2, Informative)
Denethor [glyphweb.com], Steward [glyphweb.com] of Gondor [glyphweb.com] was set to burn himself and his son, Faramir [glyphweb.com], on a funeral pyre. While Pippin [glyphweb.com] ran to get help from Gandalf [glyphweb.com], Beregond [glyphweb.com], a Guard of Gondor, prevented Denethor's servants (killed 1, wounded 2 I believe) from giving him a torch to set himself and his son ablaze. When Gandalf arrived, he pulled Faramir from the pile of oil-soaked wood. Denethor then revealed a palantir [glyphweb.com], grabbed a torch and set himself afire. The palantir would then only show two aged, burning hands to anyone who would use it.
Yeah, I read the books a time or two. Or 14.