OBJECTIVE: Watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring once per every week of 2014.
WHEN: October 25, 2014, 8:32am. (Week 44, October 19-25.)
WHERE: In the living room of my apartment in Portland, ME.
FORMAT: Blu-ray on a Vizio 47″ LCD HDTV, time code on.
COMPANY: None.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Blargh.
AN UNEXPECTED EXPERIMENT:
Full disclosure, my plan for today’s viewing was stupidly over-complicated and changed partway through. Originally, I was going to compare Peter Jackson’s film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to another adaptation of the book. (But which one?? Ooh, stay tuned. It’s not Ralph Bakshi’s, I already did that.) I thought it would be interesting to note the time at which certain events occurred in each interpretation and write up a nice article about the importance of pacing when adapting literature. Once I began, however, I realized that the speed of events couldn’t stand alone in determining my satisfaction with the story; each scene would need to be assessed individually for its strengths and weaknesses.
And that’s when I realized: have I ever recorded data on how much I enjoy The Fellowship of the Ring from scene to scene? Indeed, I have not. Screw that other adaptation, this film merits its own study.
“Bill, is this another article with charts and graphs?”
THIS IS PROBABLY HOW ROBOTS WATCH MOVIES:
So, for this viewing, I logged the approximate time code at the beginning of key scenes, and then I gave each portion an individual Entertainment Level on a scale from 0 to 10, 10 being the clock tower finale of Back to the Future, 0 being any scene from Click that isn’t David Hasselhoff boldly delivering the immortal line, “Stacy, did you put shit in my lunch?”
There, saved you 107 minutes.
Here are the scores for each section. Yes, there will be a neat graph at the end! You can scroll if you want to!
00:00:35 – Expository Backstory – Entertainment Level: 4/10
00:07:17 – Frodo and Gandalf Ride in a Cart – Entertainment Level: 4/10
00:11:33 – Bilbo and Gandalf Chat – Entertainment Level: 2/10
00:15:41 – Birthday Party – Entertainment Level: 5/10
00:20:17 – Bilbo and Gandalf Fight and Bilbo Leaves – Entertainment Level: 2/10
00:24:35 – Talking About and Researching the Ring Forever – Entertainment Level: 1/10
00:36:28 – Heading Out on the Quest – Entertainment Level: 2/10
00:38:30 – Old Wizard Fight – Entertainment Level: 4/10
00:43:07 – Corn and the Ringwraiths – Entertainment Level: 4/10
00:49:20 – Bree – Entertainment Level: 5/10 (for Butterbur, the door squish, the ferret, and Viggo)
00:57:10 – Heading Out – Entertainment Level: 3/10
00:58:40 – Saruman Killing Trees – Entertainment Level: 2/10
01:00:18 – Amon Sûl and Poison – Entertainment Level: 4/10
01:04:57 – Tower Gandalf Moth and Army – Entertainment Level: 4/10
01:07:35 – Riding Hard to Rivendell – Entertainment Level: 5/10
01:13:28 – Rivendell in General – Entertainment Level: 2/10
01:35:25 – Fellowshipping Out – Entertainment Level: 6/10
01:38:27 – Caradhras – Entertainment Level: 5/10
01:43:07 – Walls of Moria – Entertainment Level: 3/10
01:54:37 – Drums in the Deep/Cave Troll – Entertainment Level: 3/10
02:01:48 – To the Bridge/Balrog – Entertainment Level: 5/10
02:09:09 – Dead Gandalf Emotion Time (“Fly, You Fools” Onward) – Entertainment Level: 8/10
02:11:27 – The Wood/Lothlorien – Entertainment Level: 2/10
02:32:22 – Saruman’s Army/Leaving Lothlorien/Boromir Ring-Taking – Entertainment Level: 3/10
02:34:58 – End of the Movie Fightin’ – Entertainment Level: 5/10
02:44:24 – Frodo Boat and Sam Almost Drowns – Entertainment Level: 3/10
02:50:42 – End Credits – Entertainment Level: 1/10 (not counting the joy of freedom)
Graphed!
Click to enlarge.
I don’t really know what to say. Yup, that’s how happy I feel for three hours every week. Hmm.
ONE THING THAT WOULD HAVE IMPROVED THE MOVIE:
Some snappier dialogue from the writers of Click.
