Gandollum
12-23-2003, 08:49 PM
Are Women Just Bored of the 'Rings'?
By CARYN JAMES
Published: December 21, 2003
CLOCKED my first yawn at 50 minutes, lulled by too many pale-blue mountains, computerized tricks and a plot so intricate all I knew for sure was that Gandalf had called for help. And did I care if help arrived? I did not. The final entry in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy reveals once more that what the chick flick is to men, this trilogy is to women — or at least to a large secret society of us for whom the series is no more than a geek-fest, a technologically impressive but soulless endurance contest. That holds even for the newest, least nerdy installment, "The Return of the King" (or as those of us with our priorities straight like to think of it, "The Return of Viggo," our one consolation).
The film arrived in a cloud of media hype that included a full hour on ABC's "Prime Time," Elijah Wood (Frodo) as host on "Saturday Night Live," Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn, the King) on the cover of Vanity Fair and the tiresome, inevitable Oscar buzz. Like the two earlier installments, it also arrived with unmistakable social pressure to gush over its sheer size and spectacle. In a cultural version of political incorrectness, expressing anything less than ecstatic praise seems unenlightened if not downright boorish.
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There's no arguing with the series' commercial success, of course (more than $1.75 billion worldwide, and that's just box-office income, not DVD's). Any movie so popular has to grab an audience across all lines of age and sex. But both demographic and empirical evidence suggests that the trilogy is still primarily a boys' toy. The well-calculated hype and exaggerated praise (the New York Film Critics Circle last week voted "Return" best picture) has obscured what the series really is: an FX extravaganza tailored to an adolescent male's fear of sentiment and love of high-tech wizardry.
This is not a backlash opinion. The male geek factor was present from the first installment, "The Fellowship of the Ring," which New Line Cinema promoted heavily online to reach that audience. Online promotion is still a big part of the marketing strategy, as countless "Rings" Web sites help sustain the true fanatics. The company's own surveys reveal intriguing information. Before "The Fellowship" opened in 2001, New Line polled potential viewers on their awareness of the J. R. R. Tolkien novels on which the films are based. Those most likely to have read the books were "older" (in Hollywood-speak, over 25); 51 percent of them were older men, while only 33 percent were older women. When the first two films opened, exit polls showed women to be less enthusiastic than men; and a more recent survey taken in anticipation of "The Return of the King" said that interest levels "still skew male."
There's no need to be so scientific, though. Take a little poll at your office. I found a male colleague who saw the film and said, "It was great — of course I'm a big geek." There was the female colleague who went because her boyfriend wanted to, and who explained her own interest by saying, "I'm so in love with Viggo"(not her boyfriend's name).
When the media acknowledge the nerd factor, it's only to make nerdiness seem noble. It happened last year when a Salon.com article cleverly titled "Lord of the Geeks" praised Tolkien-inspired computer games. It happened again last week when the British newspaper The Guardian heralded "Return" with an article called "We Are All Nerds Now."
There are precedents for this, notably "Star Wars," the granddaddy of all geek movies. Like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Star Wars" series comes laden with its own mythology and has inspired a rabid (now easily satirized) geek constituency. Beneath a veneer of humanism that allows viewers and critics to think the movies are about Something Big — Good and Evil! Fathers and Sons! — both series are really about special effects. Yesterday's light sabers are today's Mount Doom. They offer an escape into an imagined world of warriors, where emotions are paid lip service but never truly expressed — an approach that is always easy for adolescent boys to embrace.
Who would have thought that Peter Jackson would direct such soulless films? At his best he has mixed fantasy and everyday reality to stunning effect, as in his 1994 movie, "Heavenly Creatures," about two adolescent girls who commit a murder rather than be separated. Throughout their friendship, they create storybook tales that come alive on screen, as their tiny clay figures of knights and princesses take the eerie shapes of green-faced, life-size actors. It is easy to draw a direct line from those girls dancing with their imaginary friends to "The Lord of the Rings." But while Mr. Jackson makes the characters in "Heavenly Creatures" all too human (perhaps because the film is based on a true story), he rarely infuses the "Rings" trilogy with a human feeling.
As a story, "Return" improves on the previous films because it is marginally less impressed with its own FX wizardry; we've seen it all before. Yet true emotions are still hard to find, even though the finale desperately plays out every parting scene imaginable. The characterizations are so haphazard that the most touching figure is not the heroic hobbit Frodo or even Aragorn, technically human but more a fairy-tale king than a man. It is Frodo's sidekick, Sam, who will literally follow Frodo into fire. Sam is played so well by Sean Astin that this affectingly loyal hobbit seems the most human figure on screen.
That's what "Lord of the Rings" is supposed to do — make us see the souls of hobbits, elves and wizards, and care. Instead, it works in the way Jay Leno recently described it. You have to see each film about four times, he said enthusiastically, in case you missed some dragon lurking in the upper right corner of the screen.
The rest of us, those who can hardly tell Sauron from a Klingon or a Jedi, are left with a few humane scenes and the Viggo effect. Out of more than 9 hours (3 hours and 20 minutes for "Return" and 5 hours and 58 minutes for the previous two combined, to be geekily precise), that's not nearly enough.
This has got to be the most dumbest and sickening review ever. Im a guy and even this sickens me. So only guys like this movie and every women on the face of the earth finds it boring, blah. Not only that but she says all male geeks like these films because of fx and battle scenes. What the..., for me the battle scenes are impressive, and the effects are great to look at, but I didnt see the movies for those reasons. I went to see LOTR for the characters, the great emotional moments and the story, thats what make LOTR is so great, the friendships formed and the journey. Is there anyone who agrees with this garbage.
By CARYN JAMES
Published: December 21, 2003
CLOCKED my first yawn at 50 minutes, lulled by too many pale-blue mountains, computerized tricks and a plot so intricate all I knew for sure was that Gandalf had called for help. And did I care if help arrived? I did not. The final entry in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy reveals once more that what the chick flick is to men, this trilogy is to women — or at least to a large secret society of us for whom the series is no more than a geek-fest, a technologically impressive but soulless endurance contest. That holds even for the newest, least nerdy installment, "The Return of the King" (or as those of us with our priorities straight like to think of it, "The Return of Viggo," our one consolation).
The film arrived in a cloud of media hype that included a full hour on ABC's "Prime Time," Elijah Wood (Frodo) as host on "Saturday Night Live," Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn, the King) on the cover of Vanity Fair and the tiresome, inevitable Oscar buzz. Like the two earlier installments, it also arrived with unmistakable social pressure to gush over its sheer size and spectacle. In a cultural version of political incorrectness, expressing anything less than ecstatic praise seems unenlightened if not downright boorish.
Advertisement
There's no arguing with the series' commercial success, of course (more than $1.75 billion worldwide, and that's just box-office income, not DVD's). Any movie so popular has to grab an audience across all lines of age and sex. But both demographic and empirical evidence suggests that the trilogy is still primarily a boys' toy. The well-calculated hype and exaggerated praise (the New York Film Critics Circle last week voted "Return" best picture) has obscured what the series really is: an FX extravaganza tailored to an adolescent male's fear of sentiment and love of high-tech wizardry.
This is not a backlash opinion. The male geek factor was present from the first installment, "The Fellowship of the Ring," which New Line Cinema promoted heavily online to reach that audience. Online promotion is still a big part of the marketing strategy, as countless "Rings" Web sites help sustain the true fanatics. The company's own surveys reveal intriguing information. Before "The Fellowship" opened in 2001, New Line polled potential viewers on their awareness of the J. R. R. Tolkien novels on which the films are based. Those most likely to have read the books were "older" (in Hollywood-speak, over 25); 51 percent of them were older men, while only 33 percent were older women. When the first two films opened, exit polls showed women to be less enthusiastic than men; and a more recent survey taken in anticipation of "The Return of the King" said that interest levels "still skew male."
There's no need to be so scientific, though. Take a little poll at your office. I found a male colleague who saw the film and said, "It was great — of course I'm a big geek." There was the female colleague who went because her boyfriend wanted to, and who explained her own interest by saying, "I'm so in love with Viggo"(not her boyfriend's name).
When the media acknowledge the nerd factor, it's only to make nerdiness seem noble. It happened last year when a Salon.com article cleverly titled "Lord of the Geeks" praised Tolkien-inspired computer games. It happened again last week when the British newspaper The Guardian heralded "Return" with an article called "We Are All Nerds Now."
There are precedents for this, notably "Star Wars," the granddaddy of all geek movies. Like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Star Wars" series comes laden with its own mythology and has inspired a rabid (now easily satirized) geek constituency. Beneath a veneer of humanism that allows viewers and critics to think the movies are about Something Big — Good and Evil! Fathers and Sons! — both series are really about special effects. Yesterday's light sabers are today's Mount Doom. They offer an escape into an imagined world of warriors, where emotions are paid lip service but never truly expressed — an approach that is always easy for adolescent boys to embrace.
Who would have thought that Peter Jackson would direct such soulless films? At his best he has mixed fantasy and everyday reality to stunning effect, as in his 1994 movie, "Heavenly Creatures," about two adolescent girls who commit a murder rather than be separated. Throughout their friendship, they create storybook tales that come alive on screen, as their tiny clay figures of knights and princesses take the eerie shapes of green-faced, life-size actors. It is easy to draw a direct line from those girls dancing with their imaginary friends to "The Lord of the Rings." But while Mr. Jackson makes the characters in "Heavenly Creatures" all too human (perhaps because the film is based on a true story), he rarely infuses the "Rings" trilogy with a human feeling.
As a story, "Return" improves on the previous films because it is marginally less impressed with its own FX wizardry; we've seen it all before. Yet true emotions are still hard to find, even though the finale desperately plays out every parting scene imaginable. The characterizations are so haphazard that the most touching figure is not the heroic hobbit Frodo or even Aragorn, technically human but more a fairy-tale king than a man. It is Frodo's sidekick, Sam, who will literally follow Frodo into fire. Sam is played so well by Sean Astin that this affectingly loyal hobbit seems the most human figure on screen.
That's what "Lord of the Rings" is supposed to do — make us see the souls of hobbits, elves and wizards, and care. Instead, it works in the way Jay Leno recently described it. You have to see each film about four times, he said enthusiastically, in case you missed some dragon lurking in the upper right corner of the screen.
The rest of us, those who can hardly tell Sauron from a Klingon or a Jedi, are left with a few humane scenes and the Viggo effect. Out of more than 9 hours (3 hours and 20 minutes for "Return" and 5 hours and 58 minutes for the previous two combined, to be geekily precise), that's not nearly enough.
This has got to be the most dumbest and sickening review ever. Im a guy and even this sickens me. So only guys like this movie and every women on the face of the earth finds it boring, blah. Not only that but she says all male geeks like these films because of fx and battle scenes. What the..., for me the battle scenes are impressive, and the effects are great to look at, but I didnt see the movies for those reasons. I went to see LOTR for the characters, the great emotional moments and the story, thats what make LOTR is so great, the friendships formed and the journey. Is there anyone who agrees with this garbage.