I always assumed that Gandalf is smart enough not to trust Sauron. Certainly there's something fishy going on. If Sauron had the ring, there would be no sense in bargaining. If he didn't, then Gandalf needed to hold his attention as long as possible to keep his attention off the ringbearer.
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:


But the reason I like this scene in the book is because of Gandalf's surprising response to the offer: that the two hobbits are not worth the price.

>> ^Mikus_Aurelius:

This scene was better in the book.



I do like this scene, mainly because it offers an improvement on the theatrical cut (which cannot be said of the majority of the extended scenes in ROTK, unlike the first two films) in that the Fellowship now believe Frodo to be dead, adding weight to their decision to fight on regardless. So in the films, it works. But like much of what merely "works" in the films (and don't misunderstand, I love these films), it would have been much better if they'd gone with how events played out in the book.

So as I remember it from the book, the Mouth of Sauron is a Númenorean (like Aragorn) and an officer in Sauron's army, not some hideously deformed monster. In fact he tried to bargain with the Fellowship, telling them that although Frodo was still alive, all of his posessions had been turned over to Sauron. He says that in exchange for the safe return of Frodo and Sam, the peoples of Middle-earth would be enslaved rather than destroyed, and would have to pay taxes to Mordor. But the reason I like this scene in the book is because of Gandalf's surprising response to the offer: that the two hobbits are not worth the price.

>> ^Sigh:

look another MMO to fail against WoW!


The sad part is you are 100% correct. Pretty much every MMO since WoW has tried far too hard to dethrone it and wound up fading into obscurity a year later. You have to maintain your own niche of players otherwise you will fail miserably. EVE Online does this right, many others do not.

A key example is Warhammer Online itself. It had a strong first month showing (so much so as all the servers were overloaded and they added more frantically) and looked like it was going to do well. Problem is, once you hit maximum level (40) in that game there was little else to enjoy, and the tier system was lopsided from 31-40. People quickly vacated the game in droves and servers merged, making things even worse with population screwups.

They went from a half dozen or so servers at launch to like 50 when it was doing well, and now its back down to 6. Ouch.
Warhammer closes 43 servers
(The game had barely been out half a year)

This goes for you too, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Just because you have a good license like LOTR does not mean automatic win.

>> ^daxgaz:

also, LOTR passes because several women talked about their impending deaths at helms deep. There were also MANY named women.


That's why it fails, they have to be named + women that are talking to each other. While there's the blonde chick in Rohan, she never directly talks to the elf chick, and neither of them ever talk to the witch.

While there ARE named women of importance, they never talk to each other, so they fail.

This is a silly, silly test.

instead of selectively finding a list of movies that fail, i would like to see a random selection or a specific selection of top movies (top rated, top money makers, AFI top 100, etc..). What's the pass / fail ratio?

if you go looking for guy movies about guys, then you can find them. If i went digging to try and prove movies mainly contained smart, strong women and stupid guys that leach off of them, i could also find a list.

Point is, there are a lot of movies and you can find all kinds of crazy patterns when you have that much data. SO, while it is interesting to note and sexism in Hollywood is a problem, this list really proves nothing.

also, LOTR passes because several women talked about their impending deaths at helms deep. There were also MANY named women.

LotR? Seriously? The books had almost no women in it and were more awesome than the sobbing elvish bullcrap that was introduced in the movies. For the sake of women.

bechdel test = useless

Titanic definately the winner.... BUT

The winner would have been LOTR if the vid used the scene where the eye collapses.

LOTR, fuck yeah!
Prime minister's Questions, fuck yeah!
teatime, fuck yeah!
Silent R, fuck yeah!
Shakespeare, fuck yeah!
Obi-Wan, fuck yeah!

True, sacred the shit outta me back in the day. One of those movies thats just so 80's. Magic and fantasy and the best bad guy on the planet, long before there was Harry Potter and LOTR. And Tom Cruise before he went bat shit crazy! Oh yeah ans Unicorns..... whoot whoot

I've been down after reading an engrossing book like LotR, Harry Potter, or Dune and kind of realizing that our universe is not nearly so interesting. I didn't really have similar feelings after Avatar, though. It just wasn't compelling enough.

So what they are saying is, LOTR would be a lot more realistic if legolas was a football player instead?

Dune was an amazing book. Like LOTR, the story is huge. Lynch got so caught up in the movie, his version ended up something like 4.5 hours. Something that couldn't be marketed. Most of it ended up on the cutting room floor as they hacked it apart to bring it down to a regular movie sized chunk. The result was that anyone who haddn't read the book, had problems following it.

They tried for years to get TV networks to run it but no network would consider it. Finely it was agreed that someone would go back and re-edit a new version of the film for TV. That's the only way they managed to get it on the networks.

Most people don't realize that there are two versions to this film. Both very different from each other. As it ended up, there was enough unused film footage to create a whole different version of the film. Alot of the scenes are the same, but shot from different camera angles.

I've seen both. I have the original VideoTape movie version (It even came with a Dune dictionary so you could follow along with the lingo), but I have never managed to tape the TV edit version to my VCR. (it hasn't been released in any other format - That I've ever seen.)

On that note, years after that. There was a 6-hour mini-series remake of Dune staring William Hurt - I have that on DVD also.

I don't keep track of what's going on in the movies these days, so the vast majority of these are completely new to me.

Shutter Island looks like it could be an interesting story and probably very well acted. It seems it might fall prey to being a predictible rehash of overdone ideas and cheesy "Boo!" cinematography.

I'll keep an eye open for Black Death. Hopefully it's shot more like LoTR and less like 300. Hopefully it can rise above being another medieval action movie riding the coat tails of LoTR.

A Couple of Dicks... yeah, no thanks.

Phillip Morris seems like another brainless comedy. Pass.

I hate Iron Man. The end.

Robin Hood... I'll have to see more. The idea of another remake of this story doesn't thrill me. I'd have been more interested by the original concept, probably.

Predators... Seriously? Didn't we run this far enough into the ground 19 years ago with Predator 2, nevermind the AvP disasters?

Inception... need more info.

Based solely on the cast, The Expendables seems, well, expendable.

Tron Legacy... against my better judgment, I'm looking forward to this. It will almost certainly be fresh and unique even if it's not good.

Hereafter, Mute... need more info.

Paul... Doesn't look like my kinda thing.

@knives. I remember that merge well. Your name?
Mine: Dorander

I've considered Lotr, but I don't think I can split my time up too far.

>> ^gwiz665:
I used to play on Balnazzar-EU, but I quit before this summer. I've restarted with UP in Lightninghoof-US (I had to buy the damn game again!) and it's still fun. After I had a quick foray into Warhammer Online, I see that WoW has begun to take the good things from WAR and implemented them in WoW. With Cataclysm, guilds will begin to level as well, which seems very interesting.


They steal from Lord of the Rings Online a ton too, the guild leveling for instance. Also little things, LotR's had the same exact haircut system WoW now uses about 10 months before WoW implemented it. There's a bunch more.

I played LotR's solid for almost a year, it's surprisingly good if you don't mind a lack of pvp. The crafting system is actually fun, and many of the early level quests have mini-instances that tell tightly scripted events that tie in to the big story arc your character goes through. Very immersive at times.