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Trying to distract myself last night, my mind stopped on the clothing designs for Galadriel and Arwen's costumes that Paula described in her excellent story - Fashion Star. Now, I haven't seen the movies so I don't have a clue what was designed for them but I have read the novels and I just couldn't picture the need for crinolines with the sort of outfits Tolkien described. So like anybody these days, I turned to Google for the answer.
Alright, never mind the crinolines now. Seeing the stills from LOTR, I have to say this: "Who the hell cast Cate Blanchett as Galadriel!!!!!" MY god, she looks like death warmed over in the stills! These is no way I would ever be tempted to describe her as Tolkien did Galadriel: "the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth". Arwen as portrayed in the movie is far more lovely than Cate Blanchett's Galadriel. Even her hair looks wrong. I envisioned a shining straight mass of long hair (which seems to be common among the various artists that have portrayed her), not the over-processed mess of curls Cate Blanchett has.
This makes me wonder now if it is even worth seeing LOTR. If they screwed up the casting this badly on one of the primary characters, what else did they screw up?
Comments
Cate must have brought something to the table
Pete Jackson must have thought that she was the best for the part. I can't think of who I would have wanted to see as Galadriel. As long as it isn't Lindsey Lohan.
Or Paris Hilton
Carey Mulligan in a beautiful white Dior at the Cannes Film Festival opening would look much better; maybe Elizabeth Debicki who also looked beautiful in white at Cannes. Or Gwyneth Paltrow. Any of them would look better than Cate Blanchett.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Ian McKellen...
..is brilliant as Gandalf. There's a scene toward the end of Return of the King where he's reassuring Pippin that captures not only the wisdom of Gandalf but also a gentle kindness. The score by Howard Shore is fantastic. I rather think Cate Blancett may have done some of her best work as Galadriel, but maybe that's just me. I thoroughly enjoyed all three films.
Love, Andrea Lena
She brings more to the role than just looks.
I'll admit, Kate isn't my first choice for the role either. From a beauty standpoint alone, that is.
From the standpoint of screen presence, however, she really is a perfect choice once you see her in the role. She carries herself amazingly, and while she isn't necessarily a classic beauty in the purest meaning, she does give the role that ethereal quality that Galadriel more than any other elf in the films definitely needed.
The movies are more than worth watching, in my opinion. I have no less than three copies of each of the core LotR books, two of The Hobbit, and one each of The Silmarillion, The Book(s) of Lost Tales, The Tolkien Miscellany, and even the Middle Earth Dictionary, yet Steve Jackson's movies are my favorite way to experience the world. The pacing is infinitely better than the books, and for the most part the casting is actually quite good.
This is speaking of LotR, mind you, not the Hobbit, on which I'll be reserving absolute judgement until he finishes it, though the first part was very enjoyable as well.
Melanie E.
Steve Jackson????
I think you might have meant Peter Jackson?
Eh.
Perhaps :P
Though a Steve Jackson Games take on LotR would be pretty awesome.
Melanie E.
LotR
I have read LotR at least once a year since 1973 and own a first edition American edition of the Silmarillion so I guess I can be concidered to be a Tolkien fan. I have watched the movies and while I was dissapointed with a lot of the changes I did think that the movies were well done. However, they are not amongst my favorites for movies done due to too many changes that I feel break Canon. As for Cate being casted as Galadriel I did not really have a problem with it. The stills don't really do much justice to her playing the part. I think she did a pretty good job concidering the script that she had to follow.
Appearances
This is the problem of making a movie from a popular book, everybody has an idea in their head about how a character looks. To me, Blanchett looks wrong, and that would make her entire portrayal of Galadriel a tough sell. In some of the stills I found she looks like the bride of Frankenstein in her face, and the hair reminds me of Merida, the redhead in the Disney movie. Not at all elf-like and beautiful.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
There's a difference between films and books...
When it comes right down to it, none of the LOTR/Hobbit films have been all that closely congruent to the text, except on the broadest of strokes and outlines. Producing a film involves selling little pieces of one's "concept" to many people, at least some of whom are accountants and care nothing for any sort of literature that isn't liberally peppered with dollar signs. Cate Blanchett had the enormous advantage that she was available, had a history of proven box office success, yet wasn't so instantly typecast and/or famous that the actor overwhelmed the role.
The facts are that Tolkien wrote a crappy script for a movie, meandering, badly paced in parts, in love with words, rather short on actual descriptions, and leaving a lot to the imagination, something films are not, as a general rule, since film doesn't really allow for anything other than specific "shots" with exact detail paced second by second through the entire length of the film. One doesn't normally watch a film for a bit, then go off to lunch, perhaps returning to it the next time, or in bed with the reading light on.
Apples and oranges...
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
All I'll say here is...
Cate had a presence in the movies that the stills don't show. Did I like the movies? Must have since I possess the three extended versions on blu ray. I agree that they only followed the books in broad strokes but the scene with Eowyn and the Nazgul on the battlefield was pretty close to how I have always pictured it. Oh, I discovered LOTR back in the sixties and have reread it a lot since then.
But the movies are well worth watching. An Aside, the scenery is breath taking. New Zealand is a beautiful place to see.
Maggie
Book versus Screen Play
Two entirely different species of theater. In general 1 page of script in a movie = 1 min of film time. Thus a 120 page script = 2 hours movie. So at best you only get the highlights of all the fantastic writing JRR created.
The Director managed to accomplish what no one else before was able. Tell on film the story with in a framework of what the market in the movie world would swallow. Please remember that most of us here are rabid fans of LOTR and would gladly sit through weeks of film time to watch this epic story unfold. In the end the nature of film has both a liberating aspect to it and a limiting aspect to it.
No I do not like the Compromises made and I do not pretend to know why they were made. But I am very happy with the overall project being as best to date that could be done. Many attempted to do this before and failed miserably lacking both the vision and the technology to pull it off.
Shooting this film like it was one film divided into 3 parts was brilliant and no one ever did this before, but the director admitted that he now knows why they had not done this before because it was so darn HARD.
I did enjoy the casting as every body performed there role very excellently. And no one should be judged by there still promo shots that is one trick that the tabloids do to make people look badly.
Sorry for my soap boxing all that has been said is but my opinion and not the rules of the universe. And unlike the Goddess I have been wrong before.
Huggles
Michele
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
One thing
These were stills released by the studio, not some tabloid shot. That would indicate that the studio/director/PR Dept thought they were the good views.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Casting
I can agree with you that Cate Blanchett did not look the part in many ways.
But she had something in her face that I think the producers wanted, a quality of otherness that substituted for elfishness. Look at the faces of the three principal players of elves and you will see it, cheekbones and eye shapes. The very offputting oddness of her face was a deliberate choice of the casting director, I believe.
As an actress, I don't think Blanchett can be faulted much, she did a very effective job of playing the part. She's not a model, she's an actress, I've noticed before that she does not take a good still shot--many people don't look at all the same in still photos that they do when moving.
Every scene she is in her appearance startled me because she is not the ethereal beauty described in the books. But by the time she had delivered her second line, she had sold me again that she was Galadriel. It's not the first time she has played a Faerie Queen. :)
In contrast, every time Viggo Mortensen appeared, I kept wondering who he was supposed to be. :) My problem there is that I have always imagined a youngish Sean Connery as Strider. I'd also pictured Leonard Nimoy as Elrond but Hugo Weaving covered that nicely.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
>> gladly sit through weeks of film time...
Uhmmmm... Maybe not. I've stopped going to the cinema entirely because, as I've gotten older, I need to take ‘breaks’ every fifteen to twenty minutes, and they don't stop the film for me*. I don't have that problem with a BluRay or DVD, so I quite prefer them, although I used to feel strongly about superiority of the theatrical experience.
How many people have sat through the entire (Der Ring des Nibelungen) Ring Cycle? It's only fifteen hours; to do the literal LOTR would be... let's see, at 1216 pages, heck, let's forget about the Appendices, make it a thousand pages even, converting that to script pages, which are mostly double-spaced with huge margins, would be four to five thousand pages of script, let's say between seventy and eighty hours, the equivalent of a full-time job for half a month or so. Then we could shoot the appendices as a documentary, hosted by an Oxford Don sort of actor, for another week or two with individual practice scheduled in the multimedia lab.
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* I'm reminded of a Whoopi Goldberg joke: When I was younger, I used to tuck an extra pair of panties in my purse, in case I ‘got lucky.’ I still do, but now it's in case I sneeze.
P.S. Although it doesn't seem to be available for LOTR yet, I've noticed that an increasing number of Kindle titles are available with synchronised narration (Not text-to-speech!), which is really a lovely way of reading one's self to sleep... or at least to drowsiness.
P.P.S. Oooh! Amazon Whispersync for Voice is available for The Hobbit at a reduced price if one purchases the book on Kindle. One supposes that they'll get around to LOTR eventually.
P.P.P.S. Whoops! The same deal is available if one purchases the individual volumes of LOTR! US$3.99 for the entire volume, so all four would be a tad less than sixteen US dollars. It's spooky, watching the screen highlight the text as you're being read to by an invisible human being. Unlike CD "audiotext," with integrated "Whispersync" technology, one can adjust the reading rate without too much distortion in pitch. It's rather cool.
P.P.P.P.S. One does have to have a multimedia-capable Kindle reading device or application. I'm not bothered, as I use a Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and a regular Kindle with audio. The "Paperwhite" version doesn't do audio, which is a shame, because one can load a CD album or two onto the Kindle for background music, if one likes such things.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Galadriel
I think that an important thing to remember about Galadriel is that when she's introduced, Frodo and Co. have been surrounded, captured, blindfolded, and brought to her "court" with the distinct impression that if Galadriel doesn't like their explanation of why they've trespassed into her realm, they won't live to see the next day. Also, she can tell what a person is thinking just by looking at them. Galadriel is very powerful, and more than a little bit scary. Not evil scary, just powerful. I don't think Cate Blanchett would have been the first person I would've thought of in the role, but she does "regal and somewhat distant" very well. Gwenyth Paltrow might have made a good Arwen (if Liv Tyler hadn't been around to do it so well), but I couldn't have seen her pulling off the scene where Frodo offers her the One Ring. The one that ends with the line: ALL SHALL LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIR! Come to think of it, the other elf ruler, Elrond, played by Hugo Weaving, wasn't exactly what you would call cute, but he brought a presence and solemnity to the role. I couldn't see anyone having the courage to attempt to tell either Galadriel or Elrond a knock-knock joke, braving Mordor would be preferable.
Watch These Movies!
I hope there's no limit to the number of characters I can use, because this promises to be the longest post ever on the BC site! However, I'll try to be as brief as I can.
1. I think you're absolutely right about Galadriel. I have a lot of respect for Cate Blanchett, and she did a good job with the role, but in my opinion she doesn't possess the magnetism that made the character so memorable in the books. I can't imagine Gimli falling so completely and hopelessly in love with her - and as a result coming out with the finest dialogue Tolkien ever wrote. "Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy."
2. Watch the movies. The extended versions. Together they'll take something in the region of 12 hours from your life, but believe me you won't be complaining that you'll never get them back again.
First of all, the acting is wonderful. There are so many stunning performances it's impossible to list them all. Sir Ian McKellen played Gandalf to absolute perfection. Ian Holm brought life to a Bilbo Baggins I'd always had difficulty picturing. Miranda Otto as Eowyn was spellbinding. Viggo Mortensen, David Wenham, Sean Bean, Andy Serkis and many others made similar weighty contributions. Pride of place, as far as I'm concerned, must go to Bernard Hill for his portrayal of Theoden - his speech at the beginning of the battle of the Pelennor Fields lends the scene a near Shakespearean quality.
Then there are the special effects. Everyone has their own mental image of what Middle Earth looks like. I'd say the backdrops came to within 80 or 90 per cent of my expectations, and I am very demanding in this respect. Isengard, Khazad Dum, Rohan, Minas Tirith and Mordor they get completely right. The Shire, Rivendell, Lorien and Fangorn were always going to be a bit more problematical, but on the whole they're fairly convincing. The action sequences, with a couple of minor exceptions, are breathtaking. Some of the CGI work is inspired.
But I'm recommending these movies most of all because they add an extra dimension to the world Tolkien envisaged. There are so many reminders that this is a post-apocalypse society, still struggling after 3000 years to recover from a devastating series of wars that depopulated an entire continent, of which the one that saw Isildur take the ring from Sauron was only the last.
You'll have your gripes, of course. There's no Old Forest or Bombadil, they take massive liberties with the time-scale at the beginning of the story, and Saruman gets his come-uppance well before he has a chance to be scoured from the Shire. There are also a couple of scenes that weren't in the books, and come across as completely unnecessary.
The sheer number of really special moments makes up for this. From Merry and Pippin setting off Gandalf's fireworks without his permission, then being made to do the washing up as a punishment, to the final scenes at the Grey Havens, which are as moving as anything I've watched on a cinema screen, they never seem to stop coming.
One thing I'll stake my life on, you'll have no complaints about the actress who plays Rosie Cotton. That smile could ignite a polar ice-cap.
Thanks to anyone who had the patience to get this far. One more thing: if Melanie E is reading, THIS is rambling.
http://youtu.be/0cgK8tflQs8
I agree with TtL, with a reservation...
Galadriel is the morning and Arwen the evening: So a difference in the type of beauty. But Galadriel is a ring bearer and as such she started as a very powerful being and over the millennia of wearing and wielding the ring became more powerful still. Cate wouldn't have been my choice either, but she showed the power aspect really well.
I have to admit that LOTR is my favorite story due to Tolkien's soaring use of the English language. I have owned, and still own, the books, The BBC version on cassette, the NPR version on cassette, the full length performance on audio disk, The Extended Version on DVD and recently purchased the extended Blu-Ray version. Told you I like it!
My issue with the Films was that two more were needed. The Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, "Oldest and Fatherless" and the battle of the Barrow Downs would be one: The Scouring of the Shire the other... I agree with your other reservations and would add a complaint that Merry and Pippin were played as one dimensional comic relief characters when in the books they were quite heroic.
Ole
We are each exactly as God made us. God does not make mistakes!
Gender rights are the new civil rights!
I saw the movies
I read the books long before the movies were even thought of and when the movies came out, I reread the to books before seeing the movies. As in the books, I was far to caught up in Frodo's story to be too concerned about the actors portraying the characters. I rate the movie as excellent in maintaining the story line of book.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
And of course...
...Howard Shore's fantastic score!
Love, Andrea Lena
And Another Thing...
I believe Frodo could and should have been female. Last time I read the books I imagined 'him' as 'her' and it worked. After all, Frodo's a completely sexless character.