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An essay on the hobbit
An essay on the hobbit
An essay on the hobbit
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Film theorist Kristin Thompson decided to explore her love for Tolkien’s work and her passion for film by writing “The Frodo Experience” Thompson explains her claim in the introduction. (Rings) “can fairly claim to be one of the most historically significant films ever made.” She wrote the book, to trace its influences in filmmaking, marketing, and merchandising; as well as its impact on the New Zealand film industry that existed before the trilogy came there. Bottom line; Thompson did a good job at explaining why the film held such historical significance. She talks in depth about the costumes, props and different technology designed specifically for this film. The Rings changed how movies were made.
During the introduction; Thompson sets up a base to the books franchising and marketing techniques. Thompson creates this book to explain the explicit process of the franchise. Although positioned as a work of film history, Thompson quickly pointed out that the film versions of Tolkien's books already build upon a franchise.
She then compares The Rings to other franchises such as Star Wars, Batman and Superman. Additionally, Thompson notes that although Star Wars can be seen as a franchise, Walt Disney had maintained control over merchandising for many years prior. Franchises make for much more effective branding than studios, stars or directors, which are not nearly as important. The first thing that that attracts audiences are familiar characters, stories and formulas.
The first chapter: Prudent Aggression, Thompson explains the different path’s The Rings takes to gain its success. She explains how New Line eventually rolled the dice with an unknown director who agreed to make three films. Then there were the sales of the rig...
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...95-96), and generally provided visual clutter (all of the 48,000 objects used in the film were handmade by artisans from appropriate raw materials) to create a sense of historical depth underlying the films (96). Additionally, the filmmakers lured a larger target audience by creating a popular genre film with conventions from action films (martial arts, horror, swashbuckler, war films, and even Westerns) that provided mass-market appeal (57-59). Innovations in computer graphics developed for the LOTR films were helpful in creating creatures, monsters, and crowds that were believable because they followed "real-world principles of anatomy and physics" (90).
Works Cited
Gooch, John, and Dorothy Seyler. Argument. 2nd ed. Mcgraw-Hill, 2012.
Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo franchise: The Lord of the rings and modern Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California P, 2007.
Learning Module Seven - “Human Action” Myth in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Frodo Franchise is an academic book written by the film scholar Kristin Thompson about the Lord of the Rings (shortened to Rings) films. Early on, Thompson states that she wrote this book for three reasons. The first reason was her love for Tolkien’s work. The second reason was because the Rings had one of the most historically significant impacts on modern day movies. The third reason was because Thompson went to New Zealand while the film was in production. This resulted in Thompson being in the best position to write a book on how the films were made (Thompson 7-12). In her book, Thompson goes into great detail to explain to readers why the Rings trilogy is so historically significant. After reading the first couple of chapters of the book, Thompson convinced me that her claim was correct. I agree with Thompson when she states that “like a great rock falling into a lake, the ripples that is caused spread far, and they will continue to do so for years to come (Thompson 2)
Heroes are present in many of the films produced today and these heroes generally follow both Campbell’s “Hero’s journey” and “Heroic Archetypes”. Some of Campbell’s tenets for a hero are that he must be called to a quest, he will face trials and tribulations, face temptation, complete a task, and eventually return home. The hero must also fit an archetype and its quest, fear, dragon, task, and virtue. Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is in fact one of the aforementioned heroes. Bilbo Baggins has always wanted an adventure and one day he is called on a quest to win back the Dwarfish kingdom of Erebor from the dragon, Smaug. Bilbo had not realized at the time of his departure that he was a hero and at first he even refused to go on the quest. Bilbo fits many of the tenets of the departure, initiation, and return of Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” along with one of his archetypes. Joseph Campbell defines a hero as “someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself” and this is what Bilbo Baggins has done by accepting his quest to aid the Dwarves on their journey to the Lonely Mountain.
Tolkien, J. R. R., and Douglas A. Anderson. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
Rings' would be a nice idea for a report. It is interesting to see the
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien, is the first book in the fantasy-based trilogy of the Lord of the Rings. The book begins with Bilbo Baggins celebrating his one hundred and eleventh birthday. After his party, he then decides to leave everything behind and join a Fellowship, which has a task of destroying the ruling ring, which will give supreme power to whoever has possession of it.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again. New York: Ballantine, 1982. Print
Print. The. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. First Ballantine Books Ed.
Tolkien, J.R.R. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954. Print.
Frodo’s adventure is not one of originality. It follows a cookie-cutter character through its journey to save that which is dear to him. In the case of Frodo he must protect the shire from devastation, and potentially all of Middle-Earth, by throwing the ring back into the fires of Mordor. This quest takes Frodo through a series of plot elements that famous Greek heroes have followed, his mission to rid Middle-Earth of ominous forces.
Everyone except Frodo and Sam arrives at the kingdom of Gondor, and though the people of Gondor are amazed and frightened at first by the huge army of walking trees that accompany them, everyone smiles and accepts them when Gandalf and Aragorn reveal themselves. The brothers Denethor and Boromir, however, see that Aragorn brings knowledge from the North which will give their kingship over to Faramir, the true King, and so they secretly conspire against him. And so later on, when the forces of Mordor arrive to attack Gondor, they successfully plot to have Aragorn positioned so he must face the Witch-King in single combat. The battle is too much for Aragorn, and just as he is about to die he is saved by Eowyn, a woman of Rohan who loves him, and Merry, who slays the Witch-king in single combat by using ancient hobbit-magic and so reveals himself to be the lost Thain of the Shire. Even as the forces of Mordor retreat, they are swept into the Sea by great ships brought by Faramir, the true Prince of Dol Amroth, from the hidden city of Osgiliath further up the Great River.
Today, movies use CGI to create special effects to replace thousands of extras, stunt people, and puppet like characters, as witnessed in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The evolution of special effects and Computer Generated Imagery technologies has taken the film industry to a whole new level. Computer Generated Imagery began with awkward and dull effects in the early 1980’s. The 1982 film “Tron” was a desperate attempt from Disney to jump on the CGI bandwagon and start a revolution in film making technologies (imdb.com). Although this film showed an attempt at something that had never been done before in the history of cinematics, it was weird and confusing.
Murray, Roxane Farrell. "The Lord of the Rings as Myth." Unpublished thesis. The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 1974.
First of all, the The Lord of the Rings-trilogy contains the beautiful and is original, not for the present day, but for its literary standards of its time, when epic fantasy was not nearly as frequently written as in this day. Avid readers of fantasy claim the book to be unoriginal, since it follows the structure of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth or the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a predetermined structure, based on the typical epic fantasy adventure. It typically consists of a cycle of twelve stages, depending on which variant is used, (Campbell 391) and each story contains at least some the same standard archetypical characters. Examples of these are the hero, like Frodo, the magician, like Gandalf, and the trickster, a humorous sidekick like Sam. This trilogy concerns the journey of these heroes, as they se...
This critique is about the film “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies”. It is a heavy designed film that definitely had a long research and design process. There is more than one designer in each area of the following; scenery, costume, lighting and sound. Instead of talking about each designer’s accomplishment in the film. I will be talking only about their work. There were so many participants in the creating of the film it would be hard to reference each design element to an artist. The following are the mentioned artist, The Art Directors Simon Bright and Andy Mclaren, Set decoration by Myktya Brazhnyk, Simon Bright, and Ra Vincent, Costume design by Bob Buck, Ann Maskrey, and Richard Taylor, Music by Howard Shore, and many more creators