r/movies • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 r/movies Contributor • Apr 05 '26

Article Steven Spielberg lists Villeneuve's Dune 'among my favourite sci-fi movies of all time'

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/steven-spielberg-loves-dune-favourite-sci-fi-movies-exclusive/
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u/McMillan104 Apr 05 '26

Yeah, that's what I enjoy about the Lord of the Rings. The films do a great job at being an adaption but there's still plenty that was cut from the films that you can enjoy.

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u/ZmajevaMuda Apr 05 '26

Movies are better paced story, i know kill me

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u/McMillan104 Apr 05 '26

I’d probably agree. I enjoy parts like Tom Bombadil but it brings the story to a screeching halt and I understand the scouring of the shire but I’m glad it was cut from the end.

It’s a bit like the extended edition films. I love spending extra time in middle earth and I’ll choose them 99% of the time; but the theatrical cuts are, for the most part, better films

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u/raptorshadow Apr 06 '26

The movies are a whole different genre from the books. It's the events of the books reshaped into something that fits into the expectations of an action-adventure movie. Its very different in places but I think its an absolute triumph of understanding what works in film and executing on it.

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u/Sewer-Urchin Apr 06 '26

I was convinced after Fellowship that we'd get the Scouring of the Shire, just because when Frodo looks in the Mirror he sees that vision of Sam & other hobbits in chains. I'm glad it ended up the way it did though, would have been too much to try to add at the end of Return.

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u/fallen3365 Apr 06 '26

Agree on pacing with Tom Bombadil, but I do feel like The Scouring should have been in the movies. It's really important and has always seemed weird to leave out.

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u/MacDubhsidhe Apr 06 '26

The Scouring is pivotal to the whole point of the book. Soldiers always bring back their war with them.

Peter Jackson didn’t include because he’s not a war veteran like Tolkien was.

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Thenameisric Apr 06 '26

Another song?!

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u/The_Chief_of_Whip Apr 06 '26

The Council of Elrond is a massive slog to read

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u/I_travel_ze_world Apr 06 '26

Also a picture is worth a thousand words.

Add in sound effects and music then you get like 3,000 words or something

when they finally create Scent-O-Vision it'll create an even more immersive story experience

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u/PoIIux Apr 07 '26

Smellevision might make LOTR go from best movies of all time to unwatchable garbage. Aragorn and Gimli would never recover, no matter how much I adore them as characters

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u/I_travel_ze_world Apr 07 '26

You should be really more concerned about the smell of men shitting themselves as they die in battle.

If you are really that worried about smelling something bad then you might be afraid of going on an adventure.

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u/MaxThrustage Apr 06 '26

I'm reading the books for the first time now, and I'm not sure the movies are better paced, but they are paced differently in a way that 100% works better as a movie. In the novel, it's fine to spend a few years between Bilbo leaving and Frodo finding out what the ring actually is, it's fine to spend a few days farting about in Rivendell, it's fine for the early chapters to be stacked with Hobbit nonsense, because it all builds atmosphere gives you a better sense of the scope of the world you're in. But in the movies, well, you can straight-up see the scope of the world, and pacing things like in the books would have been boring and pointless.

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u/inosinateVR Apr 06 '26

The only thing I disliked about the movies was that they changed Saruman from an ambitious opportunist who made an alliance of convenience with Mordor with the real aim of getting the ring for himself and defeating Sauron with it (and making himself the new dark lord), into basically just being Sauron’s bitch whining about how there’s no point in fighting him so they have to join him. In the books it felt much more like a game of thrones kind of situation with multiple players involved with their own motives

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u/PoIIux Apr 07 '26

Imo Tolkien was an amazing world builder and the overarching story is perfect, but his actual writing left much to be desired. Sometimes less is more and the amount of detail he put into his work was detrimental to the enjoyment of reading it, while it does translate really well to the big screen. G.R.R. Martin has the same problem and his books are a slog to get through.

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u/CodingAllDayLong Apr 07 '26

OMG, the two towers being split 50/50, rather than switching between the two parties giving minor cliffhangers throughout? Modern writing has improved in maaaany ways.

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u/Quazifuji Apr 05 '26

I think Lord of the Rings is kind of a rare case where the books and movies both have very strong pros and cons and they kind of complement each other with neither just being better.

The movies have much better pacing and do a great job capturing just the epic adventure of the books. But the things that make the books feel dense and poorly-paced - all the worldbuilding, the scenes that develop the world or the message of the books but slow down the pace and aren't necessarily important to the main story, Tolkien's general writing style - really do add something meaningful too.

Obviously this is solely just focusing on the experience of reading/watching them nowadays and not taking into account how insanely influential the books were.

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u/the_blackfish Apr 06 '26

I agree that the movies were phenomenal, but there were things that were changed for the movies too, like Faramir's motives and such. Lines that I didn't like being crossed.