Foust - Maybe I could've done a better job. My main conceptual problem with the film, aside from aesthetic concerns, is obviously an editing room and film crew one. I don't have expertise in either of those jobs, but I know when something doesn't feel right. It disappoints me when films with enormous funding, audience following, and personal anticipation fall short of making a "clean" movie. It's almost as if there were too many chefs in the kitchen, and some blowhard with a fat wallet had a "few good ideas" -namely: Gimli's behavior, Aragorn's dizzy shot...
Punji Steak- "Power for power's sake" is a modernist cop-out. Of course, we've all been fed that as a motivator for evil, and can understand the want for power in ourselves, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. We want power for ourselves to serve some purpose -be it lust, greed, envy, safety, insanity. What besides insanity(another cop-out) would be Sauron's motivator? Good vs. Evil oppositional thinking leads us nowhere. Rome and Caesar are not portrayed as the faceless Evil that Sauron is in the LOTR. Faceless Evil CANNOT be destroyed, just as faceless Good cannot be. Give them both characters in a story, and then switch it up a bit, and we have a contemporary struggle.
And it seems there are a lot of posters who are gay. That's all. Personally, I'm a Kinsey Three. I could've googled up a search on a JRR Tolkien bio, but I didn't. I still might. I used to think all this violence in fantasy filmmaking was allegorical, but it's really pointless without real sacrifice and real hope. Both of them felt generic in the Helm's Deep battle, making the violence generic, and therefore the struggle generic.
You're not off the point, just expanding on it. The points I raised about women and Good vs Evil are congruent with contemporary culture and the needs of the audience. I might get flack and semantic argumentation for these statements, but I thoroughly believe that we, as a people, ARE EXPECTED and therefore DO know more than all preceding generations. We collect ideas like weaponry and fashion, trump and erode belief structures, and try on manufactured personalities instead of growing into them. That's not just Invisibles talking. We're operating in a very fragile social net where individuals are interchangeable and roles are not. People can be made stronger or be broken with this knowledge. Artists must become responsbile for everything they put into the world. It may seem like a lot to ask, but it's really not. We must become responsible for the messages about differences, about opposites and opposition, about gender politics and gender expectations. How's that for off topic? |
