Narnia Fans Reviews: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

There can be no excuse for what Andrew Adamson did to-- not "did with," "did TO"--the Prince Caspian movie. The canonical Caspian was a BOY, who could and did regard King Peter as a role model; Adamson's version was an age-peer AND RIVAL to Peter. Peter was made to look silly for identifying himself as the king he was, and the true Caspian's virtuous humility was diminished.

It's bad enough to see admirable male protagonists being gratuitously scorned BY FEMALES, as when Indiana Jones was put down by Phoebe Waller- Bridge's character, when the deceased T'Challa was replaced by a woman despite Chadwick Bozeman's known wish to have his character still be alive, or when "The Acolyte" sneered at everybody male. We've come to expect this. But King Peter was double-teamed: he was made to look inferior to females AND to other males.

If those making the reboot have the integrity NOT to slime Peter Pevensie, I will applaud them heartily for going against the trendy tide.

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P.S.: Aldis Hodge would have been an excellent choice to step in as Black Panther.
 
CF, wrong movie. ;-) If forgiveness is necessary, it is for splitting The Hobbit into three films to fit the "it's a franchise" mold of its era. Honestly, if Little Red Riding Hood had been filmed at that time, they would have had "Hood: The Journey to Grandma" followed two years later with "Hood: Lupine Larceny" and finally "Hood: The Search for Grandma".
 
Copperfox said:
There can be no excuse for what Andrew Adamson did to-- not "did with," "did TO"--the Prince Caspian movie. The canonical Caspian was a BOY, who could and did regard King Peter as a role model; Adamson's version was an age-peer AND RIVAL to Peter. Peter was made to look silly for identifying himself as the king he was, and the true Caspian's virtuous humility was diminished.

It's bad enough to see admirable male protagonists being gratuitously scorned BY FEMALES, as when Indiana Jones was put down by Phoebe Waller- Bridge's character, when the deceased T'Challa was replaced by a woman despite Chadwick Bozeman's known wish to have his character still be alive, or when "The Acolyte" sneered at everybody male. We've come to expect this. But King Peter was double-teamed: he was made to look inferior to females AND to other males.

If those making the reboot have the integrity NOT to slime Peter Pevensie, I will applaud them heartily for going against the trendy tide.

=================

P.S.: Aldis Hodge would have been an excellent choice to step in as Black Panther.
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As @EveningStar said, this is about The Lord of the Rings, not Prince Caspian. Nor is it about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (which was excellent, to me). I am not sure what's different between when Phoebe Walter-Bridge's character puts down Indy, and when Marian does the same in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's common in the Indiana Jones films.

Chadwick Bozeman didn't own the Black Panther character... but if his wish had been for his character to still be alive, his wish was granted. The character of "Black Panther" still exists. And in the comics, Storm from the X-Men has been Black Panther, too. It is a mythic character, not a priest standing In Persona Christi.

EveningStar said:
CF, wrong movie. ;-) If forgiveness is necessary, it is for splitting The Hobbit into three films to fit the "it's a franchise" mold of its era. Honestly, if Little Red Riding Hood had been filmed at that time, they would have had "Hood: The Journey to Grandma" followed two years later with "Hood: Lupine Larceny" and finally "Hood: The Search for Grandma".
Click to expand...
lol... Wait'll I get to my reviews of the Hobbit films... spoiler for that: while I do agree that it should not have been split into 3 films, and even 2 films would have been a stretch, but honestly, I thought that would have been better than three... my reviews are going to look at each film probably individually, but as it's a retrospective review, it is going to look at the whole as if there is only one Hobbit movie, and each film makes up an act of the film. Because we don't have to wait a year between each.. and, in fact, when I first saw the Battle of the Five Armies, it was at the end of a marathon in the theater, where we got to see all three of them back-to-back-to-back. And that colored my entire experiece of The Hobbit as an adaptation. It made the films land more like a solid whole.

Compared to when I first saw the BBC's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on PBS in the 80s, that was split into multiple parts, shown over multiple nights. I would consider this to be similar to that.

But I also really enjoyed seeing the things that were happening concurrently in the book, that we knew were happening because of The Lord of the Rings fleshing out a lot of that. And having the voice of Trufflehunter, Ken Stott, as Balin was just awesome. I remember hearing his voice in Prince Caspian and wishing he had played a larger role. It was such a unique and powerful voice.
 
Marian in the first Jones movie had cause to put Indy down, because he had genuinely offended her. But the Waller-Bridge behavior in "Dial of Destiny" was there ONLY for the sake of girl power girl power girl power. As for the female Black Panther, even girl power should not have enabled her to shrug off being impaled clean through.

I do agree with you about "Hobbit" being stretched out too long. I had no problem with Radagast being allowed to do more. And I liked Bard being assisted by his son. My serious grievances are as follows:

--- It was wrong to make Thorin a punching bag. Source material gives us no cause to agree that he JUST BARELY managed to kill the elder goblin-chief by luck. Someone downplaying my complaint told me, "Thorin was fighting fiercely." I retorted, "Anyone who is LOSING BADLY may still be fighting fiercely; Thorin should have been shown as tougher than the movie permitted him to be." At his first fight with the dead goblin-chief's son, he got his clock cleaned again, and needed help to survive. In the trilogy's finale, Thorin was the underdog AGAIN, managing only a mutual-death draw.

--- It was equally wrong to make Beorn a werebeast LACKING CONTROL. Another intentional defiance of authorial intent. The real Beorn had complete self-mastery at all times, regardless of which form he was in. Then, as if there hadn't been enough revisionism already, Beorn was BARELY IN the Battle of Five Armies at all. If you blinked, you missed his arrival. They could easily have had him tackle one of those tunneling monsters which resembled sandworms in "Dune;" another TEN SECONDS of this would have sufficed to establish him being in the action. But no, Jackson chose to complete the gratuitous minimizing of a great character.
 
For Indiana Jones, I don't believe Phoebe was there for only "girl power." I think she was there as a counterbalance to Indy. All of the Indy films also had a supporting actress. And you don't want to just repeat the same tropes with each female character every time. And yeah, Marian had cause (which was problematic if you think about it too much, so don't dive into their ages too deeply).

I don't recall the female Black Panther being impaled, but I only had it on in the background. Either way, that sounds like a story-point that they wrote for her, and if it was something the character could not survive, then they wouldn't have had it happen.

The Hobbit was stretched out too long... but I loved it.

Thorin had to be a bit of a punching bag at times. He's not Helm Hammerhand. He's not Superman. It's good to show that a character can be beaten, because it adds tension to the scene that would not be there if he were flawlessly winning every fight. Thorin was fighting fiercely, I do agree, but he can't be shown to be TOO tough. Have you watched the Extended Editions of the Hobbit films? I don't recall if Thorin gets more fighting scenes in Battle of the Five Armies EE, as it's a much bloodier version, and I tend to stick to theatrical for that one, because of the blood. But Thorin had to be on the brink of death from his last fight, so he could not be He-Man-level Rambo with a sword.

Beorn's lack of control while transformed into the beast was another tension-building storytelling beat that you kind of need to do with a film. I do think they could have have done something a bit different by having Beorn then start laughing after he has essentially scared all the dwarves, while still in bear mode. I think there were additional scenes with Beorn, but here's footage that didn't get finalized for the movie:

 
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