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Eldorion wrote:
I'm not entirely sure he would have been the best fit for Middle-earth, though.  I think a creative mind like his might have run roughshod over the books.  

I turned to a lateral image of the dragon. Smaug’s body, as del Toro had imagined it, was unusually long and thin. The bones of its wings were articulated on the dorsal side, giving the creature a slithery softness across its belly. “It’s a little bit more like a snake,” he said. I thought of his big Russian painting. Del Toro had written that the beast would alight “like a water bird.”

Smaug’s front legs looked disproportionately small, like those of a T. rex. This would allow the dragon to assume a different aspect in closeup: the camera could capture “hand” gestures and facial expressions in one tight frame, avoiding the quivery distractions of wings and tail. (Smaug is a voluble, manipulative dragon; Tolkien describes him as having “an overwhelming personality.”) Smaug’s eyes, del Toro added, were “going to be sculpturally very hidden.” This would create a sense of drama when the thieving Bilbo stirs the beast from slumber.

Del Toro wanted to be creative with the wing placement. “Dragon design can be broken into essentially two species,” he explained at one point. Most had wings attached to the forelimbs. “The only other variation is the anatomically incorrect variation of the six-appendage creature”—four legs, like a horse, with two additional winged arms. “But there’s no large creature on earth that has six appendages!” He had become frustrated while sketching dragons that followed these schemes. The journal had a discarded prototype. “Now, that’s a dragon you’ve seen before,” he said. “I just added these samurai legs. That doesn’t work for me.”

Del Toro’s production design for “The Hobbit” seemed similarly intent on avoiding things that viewers had seen before. Whereas Jackson’s compositions had been framed by the azure New Zealand sky, del Toro planned to employ digital “sky replacement,” for a more “painterly effect.” Sometimes, instead of shooting in an actual forest, he wanted to shoot amid artificial trees that mimicked the “drawings in Tolkien’s book.” In his journal, I spied many creatures with no precedent in Tolkien, such as an armor-plated troll that curls into a ball of metal plates. Del Toro said that it would be boring to make a slavish adaptation.

bungobaggins wrote:https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=235790859956341&set=vb.224540764414684&type=2&theater

Eldorion wrote:I didn't think Pan's Labyrinth was all it was made out to be, but that's not really the film's fault.  More of a problem with an overly evangelistic fanbase.  (Also, I was bracing myself for a hyper-violent film after all the warnings about how "this is NOT a movie for kids" and "the Captain is one of the scariest villains ever".  Not quite, though I do agree it's not for kids.)  I loved Pacific Rim, as I've made clear in several other threads, despite its flaws, which I am sure GDT was fully aware of.  So he's 2/2 in my book.

Eldorion wrote:I didn't think Pan's Labyrinth was all it was made out to be, but that's not really the film's fault.  More of a problem with an overly evangelistic fanbase.  (Also, I was bracing myself for a hyper-violent film after all the warnings about how "this is NOT a movie for kids" and "the Captain is one of the scariest villains ever".  Not quite, though I do agree it's not for kids.)  I loved Pacific Rim, as I've made clear in several other threads, despite its flaws, which I am sure GDT was fully aware of.  So he's 2/2 in my book.

I'm not entirely sure he would have been the best fit for Middle-earth, though.  I think a creative mind like his might have run roughshod over the books.  Not in the way PJ does, where he tells what is superficially the same story but misses the point because he's distracted by shiny toys, but in a more fundamental way where he just ends up telling a story that takes some cues from the book but is really entirely different.  A lot of his design ideas that we heard about (never saw) were reminiscent of the Boorman attempt, though to a lesser degree.

Whether or not that would have been preferable to PJ's version is a matter of personal taste, I suppose.

Forest Shepherd wrote:This phrase "evangelistic fanbase" seems rather oddly used, considering the content of the film and the views of its fanbase. I could see this being used about a Narnia film, for example, but not Pan's Labyrinth.

azriel wrote:Now, Forest, dont get all sweary ? I thought you were talking about Peejers when you wrote "puffed up wanker" ? Then I realised you were'nt..... PJ is just........'A' wanker   (a category all his own)

Eldorion wrote:

Forest Shepherd wrote:This phrase "evangelistic fanbase" seems rather oddly used, considering the content of the film and the views of its fanbase. I could see this being used about a Narnia film, for example, but not Pan's Labyrinth.

I suppose that was a little unclear on my part.  I didn't mean to imply that the fanbase of Pan's Labyrinth tends to be evangelical Christian, but just that many of the most devoted fans of the film that I have met seemed very intent on spreading the "good news" about it and trying to convince others to see it.  And ultimately I felt that the film, while good, did not live up to the inflated expectations I had after hearing so many people call it "(one of) the best fantasy movies ever!"  I felt the same way about The Matrix, actually.