Message in a Battle 460
The WP has a tale titled The Messages in a Battle about the recent growth of computer-generated battle scenes in movies, now that you don't have to pay all those extras. RotK clearly wouldn't have been much of a movie if the battle scenes hadn't been so good.
Quality of RotK (Score:5, Interesting)
Matrix (Score:4, Interesting)
You know... things just don't amaze me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
I guess my standards are just too high.
The battles would have been a lot better (Score:5, Interesting)
Why must directors put such painfully lame moments in films, anyway? It's like in Minority Report, when Tom Cruise is fighting the other guy wearing a jet pack and they 'accidentally' cook the hamburgers on the grill to perfection... why? WHY???!
Re:It's the *story* that makes it a good film. (Score:2, Interesting)
To the writer of the article.... (Score:5, Interesting)
With that, I'll say his opinion is lame.
Thats my thought..er,
Re:Matrix (Score:5, Interesting)
cgi porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Down this path are all sorts of questions...
My personal complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshite! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My personal complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
Charging into Oliphaunts was not the best idea, but hey, it was the first time most of them had EVER seen oliphaunts! Beginner's mistake eh... :)
Credit to Casting (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, they found some actors from relative obscurity (Merry and Pippin come to mind) who perform remarkably well. Every single character in the LotR series is acted out almost flawlessly, and I for one can clearly relate their on screen portrayals to those characters from the book. And that's certainly what makes the battle scenes that much more *real* and closer to home. Someone watching the movie can really get a feel for the characters and sympathize with them. No character gets lost behind the face of some huge actor and no one actor steals the show from any other.
As for the CGI effects, I had no trouble believing that those oliphaunts and huge armies of Orcs were real, they might as well have been. The graphics were more than convincing enough and the fact that the movie is indeed in a fantasy setting allows for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the "willful suspension of belief." I had a harder time believing that Tom Cruise's character could take out four or five samurai before even getting any samurai training.... not to mention he somehow managed to hold them off with a flagpole of all things...
5 year olds in the cinema (Score:5, Interesting)
We're *not* talking Harry Potter or Peter Pan here, there's massive amounts of blood and guts but they seemed to think fantasy equals gentle fairy story. About half of them were led out in tears.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me. (Score:3, Interesting)
I also thought the graphics in Final Fantasy were interesting. But they went from hot to cold. Some scenes were fluid. Some were... robotic.
All in all, I thought Shrek had more "real" looking characters than FF. In fact, I remember a comment from the animators saying they had to conciously work to make sure their characters didn't look too real - this being a fairy tale and all.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll bet you a dollar that some significant percentage of the CG shots flew by you without you ever noticing, precisely because you could not tell the difference.
Re:Quality of RotK (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem I have with this article (Score:3, Interesting)
Did michael even read the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Could the article have been more misleading?
The World's Worst LOTR Film Review (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My personal complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
You are correct that if they break the line cavalry are very good at breaking ranks. However, you miss two things. One, breaking ranks doesn't mean the cavalry have really caused much in the way of casualties to the infantry.
One Waterloo cavalryman reported, "Many threw themselves on the ground until we had gone over, and then rose and fired." Keegan points out, "To lie down was usually enough to put one beyond a swordsman's reach, and those who shammed were already safely behind the cavalry, whose attention was focused on the enemy lines to which their impetus was carrying them." Thus cavalry can easily break lines but those lines can be readily reformed by good commanders. There is no indication that the orcs armies have poor commanders, poor organization, or poor morale.
More importantly, however, Keegan points out that cavalry are in actuality completely ineffective against trained infantry. "And indeed if the story of Waterloo has a leitmotiv it is that of cavalry charging square and being repulsed...The feat of breaking a square was tried by the French cavalry time and again at Waterloo -- there were perhaps twelve main assaults during the great afternoon cavalry effort -- and always with a complete lack of success."
Cavalry break the line of infantry not because of anything particularly irresistible about cavalry. They break the line because the infantry fear the horses riding down on them and give up the line voluntarily.
Keegan's examination of cavalry versus infantry at the battle of Agincourt, which might seem more germane to Tolkiens technological levels, finds essentially the same thing. The French cavalry charge of the British archer lines failed completely. "The 'shock' which cavalry seek to inflict is really moral, not physical in character...The charge, momentarily terrifying for the English...had stopped only a few feet distant, had been a disaster for the enemy."
I don't see any reason why Gandalf's cavalry charge would have worked out as anything but a similar disaster.
Re:Your loss (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that he was older than any other resident of Middle-Earth, and was the only character the One Ring (or any of its effects) held no power over. I think he serves as an important contrast to the immortality of the elves and the temporality of the humans involved in the last struggle of the Third Age.
Re:LOTR (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Matrix (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately for the Matrix that meant that neither movie got enough votes for a nomination.
Re:Quality of RotK (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me. (Score:3, Interesting)
According to what I remember from the "making-of" snippets, it was Princess Fiona [celebritywonder.com] who caused them the most trouble with that issue - their first version was apparently too realistic [digitalmediafx.com] for believable placement and interaction within the film's world. They couldn't have a "real" looking character interacting with obviously "cartoonish" characters without making the disparity noticeable and interrupting the flow of the movie and setting.
my biggest beef with the RotK battles (Score:3, Interesting)
I would have rather scene some wider shots of the battle instead of two or people right in your face fighting it out. It all flashes by too fast then. It does help to relay the idea that war is chaos...makes you wonder how much "friendly fire" there is, but on screen it is just a blur.
Re:My personal complaint (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that's completely stupid. If the cavalry pull up short to play around like that, they've given up their speed advantage, and will die. Roman-style techniques work when you have Roman-style phalanxes- you can't do that from a horse: if you inch up to a foe expecting him to jab you in the shield, your horse will be dead long before he turns attention to the rider.
Their only hope is to hit fast and hard, accepting some losses as the cost of breaking over the line. Fortunately, they were not facing a displined front of spearmen, but the rear of a distracted army that had only recently noticed a new foe. Not one of the orcs had a weapon long enough to be honestly called a pike. Some spears, a few halberds- no pikes. They hadn't the organization to be pikemen.
Re:Credit to Casting (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not believable? Do you believe that somehow, if you are Japanese and a samurai that you are invincible and superior to every other person in the world? Why? Just because you train in an art does not make you immediately "better" in the areas of combat. In fact, it might be said that regimented training, if enacted as dogma, could be detrimental to training. See the plethora of McDojo's around America: kids learning strictly katas and going through motions who think they're somehow transferred into "bad ass" status get their asses handed to them by hardened kids who learned how to fight on the street. There are great fighters/warriors all over the world and not all of them were formally trained. Also, just because you train every day doesn't mean you're a master. There were samurai who sucked.
Re:The problem I have with this article (Score:3, Interesting)
From FotR: From Tony Blair [nytimes.com]: