The End Is (Almost) Nigh (probably)! (poll)

For me it's currently plummeting down through that chasm that all those Kaiju came out of in Del Toro's last movie.

Well, most of it.

Theres always the purist edit for those who wish it (Its still not a great version of TH, but most of it is at least now recognizable as being based on TH and as importantly about a hobbit goingon a journey and seeing what he learned)

I tried to download one of those once Petty, but it was monstrous big for my internet connection.
Mayhaps I'll watch it sometime if I can get to my sister's or something and use her internet.

malickfan wrote:I too have conflicting emotions 'That was a dissapointment' coupled with 'At least it's over now'    joking aside it does feel very odd...I can still remember the first time I watched FOTR 13+ years ago, and it's weird to think the journey is now over all these years later, I've changed, and cinema has changed alot in that time, and I don't think we will see a cinematic franchise or a gamble like LOTR with as much cultural impact for a very long time...

The LOTR trilogy has definitely left a lasting legacy in the world of blockbuster movies. The one-two punch of that and HP (it will never cease to amuse/impress me that the first installments of both series came out only a month apart) were like Star Wars for their time. There are of course plenty of big movie series around today, and maybe the generation currently growing up will feel just as strongly about them as I do about HP and LOTR, but I think that LOTR at least (maybe not HP, at least not for all the films) remains truly exceptional in terms of quality, even without nostalgia. The decision to make LOTR was an atypical risk for any era, and it had so many unique factors at play (many of them thanks to PJ). I do wonder if Game of Thrones, which owes a lot to LOTR, will lead to more epic fantasy movies being made again, but even if it does (which I kinda don't expect; TV is a better for most of the genre and cheaper to boot), it'd still require a hell of a lot of stars aligning to challenge LOTR.

No post credit scene then?

We didn't stick around to see, but I haven't heard anything about post-credits scenes for any of The Hobbit films. And I know there aren't any in LOTR because I've sat through the full fan club credits for each of those films before.

I really should get around to watching the films again soon...

Watching Fellowship again was like falling in love. TTT was comparatively disappointing but I'm still really excited for ROTK. Last time I saw any of them it was still like 18 months before The Hobbit came out. It's nice to be reminded of what made the first trilogy so exciting.

Forumshire will live on for a long time I think, and I'm not convinced in the slightest Warner Bros will leave this a dormant franchise for very long, it may take 5 years or 10 but I'm certain we will see new videogames, or movies with or without Jackson at the helm (and if not, I think Petty will remain significantly narked off with the existing films to give us many more conversations to come...). There's still a substantial amount of unpublished wrting by Tolkien (mostly academic, poetry or the many hundreds of unpublished letters) but whether any of it merits publication is a wholly different matter...

I think it's more likely than not that Warner Bros. will come out with some sort of movie or TV spin-off of the PJ film series in the next 5-10 years. The fact that they're making a trilogy out of Fantastic Beasts (along with their well-documented concern about finding replacement franchises) is good enough reason to think that for me. I think the biggest question is whether PJ will be involved at all. I imagine they'd at least want him to come on as an executive producer, and I think he'd probably say yes to that, but wouldn't expect him to necessarily be much more involved than that. Video games will continue to be made, especially since Shadow of Mordor just became the highest-profile and best-reviewed Middle-earth game since ... maybe ever. On the publishing front though, I'm not expecting much of note. The academic stuff is nice to have out there, but it's irrelevant to 95% of the fandom, to say nothing about the casual Tolkien readers out there. Like, Hammond & Scull's Art of LOTR book just came out, but no one really gives a shit. It's too obscure, even though it's about Middle-earth, which most of the recently-published stuff hasn't been.

As for Forumshire, I agree that we'll keep going for a good long while. It'll be different, but I think our community is strong enough. And we're fortunate to have strong discussion in many non-Tolkien areas too.

Agreed, it's been a long, weird and exciting journey following these films to screen, and despite the failings of the final product I'm not sure I'd change any of the experience if I could...

It's really wild to look back on the whole experience from the finish line. The scrounging for news, the questions of whether the films would ever be made, the casting and director rumors, the elusive "green light", the earliest video diaries and the first trailer ... and that's not even counting the last three years. To go back through the archives and read how people reacted to all that is really wild. And of course to be reminded of how much I've changed in that time is nuts. I was a baby when I started out on here.