"The 'what-ifs?' increase exponentially when your heart is walking around outside of your body wearing Buzz Lightyear light up shoes."
- BlestWithSons
Sunday, March 1, 2009
I'm watching The Two Towers extended edition with Blake right now, with the commentary turned on.
It's always fun listening to the commentary, but let me just say that the portions with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkis are absolutely insufferable. There's lots of faux-intelligence, bad interpretations of Tolkien's purposes and themes, whacky discussions of the religious elements of the work, and endless talk of "emotional resonance", "multiple levels of connection", and lots more actory argle-bargle. Ugh.
The commentary of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, on the other hand, is hilariously awesome.
Had to say it. That is all.
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Comments on "A Random Observation on the LOTR DVD Commentary":
2. Bill
- 03/01/2009 8:10 pm CST
I would lump Ian Mckellan in with Elijah Wood and Sean Aston
I would agree, although McKellen's saving grace is that he doesn't comment very much.
One irritating thing about the commentary (and I think this should be irritating regardless of one's politics) - Wood and Astin try to assert that LOTR is an anti-war movie, when one of the main themes in the movie is "there is good in this world, and it's worth fighting for". Astin actually talks about having a lot of trouble with that line.
Tolkien had close personal experience with war. I believe he hated war, and the books are imbued with the theme of loss - even in victory much that is good is lost. But the books (and the movies) never advocate the modern anti-war stance that fighting is never an option.
3. Brandon Milan
- 03/01/2009 8:16 pm CST
yeah, Billy and Dominic are hilarious... they're probably my favorite characters in the movies...
In fact, my biggest gripe about Lost is that Dominic's character only lasted 3 seasons...
4. Bob Sacamento
- 03/01/2009 8:20 pm CST
It doesn't surprise me at all that the cast of LOTR gives horrid commentary, my lack of surprise growing out of the horrid job the whole cast and crew did in making that piece of orc tripe that somehow or another got billed as an adaptation of Tolkien's masterpiece. So there.
(And with that, I give a twist to my ring and disappear.)
5. jen
- 03/02/2009 8:30 am CST
Yeah, I found the commentaries of the second and third films not as enjoyable as the first. I loved the commentary with the 4 hobbits together - when they split it was less fun. Although, Billy and Dominic are awesome. It's the Brit wit.
6. nhe
- 03/02/2009 2:58 pm CST
Bob......one question, if you (with the minority view, which is fine) have disdain for the LOTR films.......how much more wretched must you believe the Chronicles of Narnia films are?.......I mean, if we're on the subject of adaptations of Classic Christian Fiction, the C of Narnia films are far worse, aren't they?
7. Manders
- 03/02/2009 8:33 pm CST
Billy and Dom are my favorites. Always have been. They manage to keep it light and not so faux-serious (although when they are actually serious it's actually great). Besides, Billy's got a voice that just knocks me over (remember that bit in RotK where he's singing in Denethor's Hall?). And I only started watching Lost b/c of Dom, anyway.
8. Shrode
- 03/03/2009 9:00 pm CST
OK, in case I never get around to listening to the commentary, can someone give me some specific examples of Dominic and Billy's awesomeness?
Give me some quotes people. I want to laugh with you.
9. Bill
- 03/03/2009 9:19 pm CST
It has to be experienced. Unfortunately, when watching the DVDs, you have to cut through an AWFUL lot of Elijah/Sean tripe to get to Billy/Dom.
I think the FOTR DVDs have all four hobbits together, which is better. In the others, you can tell they recorded Dom/Billy together, and Sean/Elijah/Andy together, so there's no interaction/buffering of Dom/Billy reducing the ridiculousness of Sean/Elijah.
To get an example of the awesomeness, watch the Grey Havens scene with the commentary on, at the end of ROTK. Dom and Billy are hilarious there.
10. Crossbow
- 03/03/2009 11:54 pm CST
horrid job the whole cast and crew did in making that piece of orc tripe that somehow or another got billed as an adaptation of Tolkien's masterpiece.
Dude - that is unnecessarily harsh. If you don't like it, fine - but thousands of people put their blood, sweat, and tears, as well as almost a decade of their life into those films. Even if you don't like it, at least have the decency to recognize that a massive effort was put into it. If this was some film that had even a hint of laziness or carelessness in it, I would be more understanding of your comments.
I'm no Tolkien guru, but I have read all of his published works a few times (including the Silmarillion), and I am working through all the unpublished stuff that his son is now putting out. I have to say that the films are a fairly excellent adaptation. Not perfect in anyway... but what I see as "flaws" are really just places I would have done it differently. Still well done, just not how I envisioned it.
11. Karl
- 03/05/2009 1:45 pm CST
Yeah, I had the same reaction. Enjoyed watching all the behind the scenes stuff, and also enjoyed a lot of the commentary. But the insufferable pretension and faux-intellectualism of Astin and Wood in particular, and a few others as well, nearly made me gag.
Have you viewed the "easter eggs" hidden at the end of each of the 3 movies? I thought Dom's prank call to Elijah Wood was hilarious.
12. Karl
- 03/05/2009 2:56 pm CST
Have to add though that as much as I enjoyed Boyd and Monaghan's commentary, even they weren't immune from occasional annoying insertion of their own agenda-driven wrong interpretations of what Tolkien was getting at. Their take on Tolkien the tree loving environmentalist, while having some root (heh) in biographical fact, was nevertheless more than a little bit over the top IMO. It's been too long for me to remember the specifics but I recall there were a couple of times where they made comments to that effect that made me roll my eyes.
13. Ken
- 03/08/2009 2:13 pm CDT
I think I've listened to the actors' commentary track just once. They proved themselves to be such worldlings (with the singular exception of John Rhys-Davies, whom I respect tremendously) that I could hardly stomach it. Too sad to bear. But Mr. Boyd and Mr. Monaghan are entertaining.
OTOH, I learned a lot from the director's/writer's track, and some from the producers' track.
14. Karl
- 03/09/2009 2:56 pm CDT
Ken, I agree about John Rhys-Davies' commentary being the best of the bunch. I wish they'd given him more air time. I too found the director's/writer's and producer's tracks very educational, but at times they annoyed me almost as much as some of the actors, with both their (thankfully only occasional) pontificating and with what I believed to be their "missing" of key elements of Tolkien's thought - or if not missing, then dismissing and saying "yeah that's what he thought but we want to do something that'll be better." When it was necessary for filmmaking purposes (taking out Bombadil for instance) I was fine with it. But when it arose from them not resonating with the Christian undertones in JRRT or from other of their postmodern sensibilities jarring against Tolkien's vision (i.e. the change to Faramir's character because we can't have a guy just be a strongly noble guy who would say no to the ring b/c that will rob the ring of its power in the film), it bugged the crap out of me.
All that said, I think they did about as good a job with the films as anyone could have hoped for, much better than I expected even at the best-case scenario and far better than I had feared in the worst case scenario.
Leave a Comment:
I've always thought that I was the only one who had listened to those commentaries. I also thought that much of what was said by the actors is also pretentious and self important but I would lump Ian Mckellan in with Elijah Wood and Sean Aston. Love the movies though.