"War of the Rohirrim - what do you think?" Topic

The new animated LOTR movie

YouTube link

It's a bit of a strange film – a lot of it feels like a rehash of your favourite scenes from the LOTR film trilogy….and it is finally revealed that the Giant Eagles are basically running Middle Earth

6/10 on a good day.

It's a cartoon.

I don't mind animation, but I can't stand anime style. This one is low on my watch list.

It's a cartoon.

Were you in the observer corps…?

I am with enfant perdus, especially for the Tolkienverse.

Once I saw it was animation I decided not to bother with it.

Live action would have been better. I wouldn't argue with that. I was going to say that no-one wants an animated Tolkien, but I did quite like the Bakshi LOTR – just a shame they didn't get to do part 2

I thought it was ok. I was pleased that it was animated since it lies out of Tolkien's work, therefore less apt to rub me the wrong way (like the Amazon series). In any event, it was better than The Hobbit. Unequivocally better.

It was very, very meh. Helm Hammerhand is a secondary character in his own story. There are also some weird cuts between scenes. 4/10

I'm really not a fan of animé style, especially the stock "jump, scream, be suspended in slow mo in mid-air while various rays, starburts and sharp jagged edge lines appear around the character to indicate that they are fighting even though otherwise the figure is entirely motionless."
I also dislike the inevitably jerky, jumpy motion of animé in general. (Go study classic Disney and Warner Brothers animation— see the fluidity of action? See the smooth transitions? Learn how to do that, dammit! That's the whole point of animation— to create smooth, believable motion out of a series of non-moving drawings.

And after reading some of the comments here and elsewhere, I'm thinking this is gonna be a pass for me.

@ Parzival:
I haven't studied either method, but from what little I understand, the anime style was developed to keep costs down. The 'stop in mid air for a flashy slo-mo' is just a few frames that can be drug out for a few seconds instead of multiple frames actually showing the motion. Far fewer man-hours that way.

@Stryderg
I've heard that, too. And if it's true, I think, "you get what you pay for."

I note that American animation from the same period remains more fluid and less "choppy," and that's even stuff made for TV. The early seasons of Batman: The Animated Series pull it off well (the later seasons obviously tried to go cheaper, and the art suffered).

I don't like anime.

Its been ruining cons for years.

That cos play thing is another gripe.

They used to have costume competitions. Now they do cosplay competitions.

I wear costumes. I do not dress up in cosplay.

Cosplay is wearing costumes.

Wearing costumes does not have to be cosplay.

I wish organisers would take note.

"Get a grip John…"

Remember that Disney used a lot of traced film footage.

This was obviously only to save time.

Also Xerox.

I'm sure plenty of other tricks too.

Some examples from elsewhere:

LOTR, same falling tree flipped over.

LOTR costumes standing in for pile of dead urukhi.

Star Wars weight lifting sand person was looped.

Of course cgi is the biggest offender with copy paste, orcs, gunguns, dinosaurs, so on.

Rings of power crowd copy paste horror.

Tos movie-tng secondary bridge reuse.

Starship troopers in Firefly.

Oh, yes, silent running ships in BSG.

JP Elle jumping the same tree trunk again.