Thanks for your point of view. It's challenging.
I did not know what that music was. Thanks for telling me.
No prob.
It sounds like a great idea, but the unaccompanied choir doesn't meld at all with the orchestral score of the film.
Very jarring. Pulled me right out.
I believe you, but perhaps it's either a matter of taste or habitude; the original score is filled to the brim with choirs (see Nazgul theme for example).
The slow motion is also uncharacteristic.
Eh, I can't agree about that - it is a recurring Jackson device. The overlong Frodo agonizing slow-motion shot after he gets "impaled" by the troll-spear definetely comes to mind. It was also used numerous times at Helm's Deep - when Legolas pulls out his knives, the death of Haldir, the final winning charge by Gandalf and the Rohirrim - the latter being a DIRECT parallel to what muka is doing.
I understand that the effects are incomplete, but I can't ignore what's going on in the background.
Muka asked for feedback on whether this works or not. I think it doesn't work.
I have shown it to my friends and some family and opinions are pretty split - some liked it, some didn't. I think opinions would shift if the sequence was in the movie rather than a short clip. Furthermore, I would just like to reiterate that your feedback is totally warranted - I'm only taking a contrary position because either I disagree on a couple of points or I'm trying to develop new ideas for muka.
It's not bad by itself. It doesn't work because in many ways it doesn't match the rest of the movie.
The available movie footage doesn't include key material to represent what happened in the book.
- No indication that the Rohirrim can't win the gate. No, there is a shot where you see the Rohirrim having clearly overrun the northern flank but still being far away from the gate. Enough visual information there to be consistent with Tolkien's description without spelling it out.
- No fighting rage from Eomer when he sees Eowyn. This can be easily rectified by displacing the shot where Eomer sees his "dead" sister to happen during the battle and then using shots of Eomer's battle fury (think the shot where he grabs a spear from somebody else) and you got it.
- No enemy reinforcements arrive. Not very important in the grand scheme of things, but you can still use the shots of the orcs crossing the Anduin with make-shift bridges to depict this.
- No wind change is depicted, no Arwen's banner. That's why I suggested that the banner that unfurls during the Boromir-Faramir dream sequence be used. It would be perfect.
- No Dunedain army. No Dunedain army :/.
The movie format requires major streamlining, and the omission of most of these details of the battle is OK. But the major annoyance for all of us is that the Dunedain are absent, and the army of the dead show up instead. Even this would be forgivable streamlining by the movie makers, if the dead army wasn't portrayed like green scrubbing bubbles, and another battle ending miracle that can only be used once. It's like something out of an RPG.
But the solution to eliminating the dead army cannot be to show the three hunters win the battle by themselves instead. It makes zero sense.
Right.
The solution has to be made within the context of the movie story.
I agree with your line of thought.
Here's what I see in the movie: Both sides have sustained heavy losses. Eowyn kills the Witch King.
We see the enemy being routed in the background! Killing the Witch King = Victory.
Except we lose very significant things from Tolkien's description. The bulk of Pelennor's Field happens AFTER the death of the Witch-King rather than before. Tolkien explicitly explains that, despite the tremendous setback of the loss of Sauron's captain, Gothmog, Lietenant of Minas Morgul, was still in command. You don't get the necessary Eucatastrophe that is a FUNDAMENTAL element of Tolkien's writings - how out of the darkest hour comes unexpected victory - and that is only possible by showing certain victory with the approach of the black ships.
All that is left is to clean up. There appears to be plenty of good guys left to do the job. (Evidenced later by the size of the army that Gondor sends to the Black Gate.) But Aragorn has to rejoin the story here.
I though about it some more and realized that in the movie, the whole point of Aragorn's side quest was to fetch an army.
If he shows up without an army, it is a HUGE problem
.
Actually, in the "movie-verse", at least half of the motivation are Gandalf's warning of the "Corsair ships" and Elrond's of the "a black fleet". However, I do agree that the lack of an army is quite an issue. This is rectified in two ways: either you add shots of people running around aboard a ship from some other movie (viable, but ill-advised) OR make the overthrowing of the Corsair a strategic and necessary decision that becomes the motivation for Aragorn's trip. This is why muka changed it to having the corsair ships on the Palantir. The whole point of his edit was to show that Aragorn went to the Paths of the Dead to take out the Corsair ships because nobody knew otherwise that they were coming. I think it can work out narratively just fine with the way it's been set up.
I re-cut this a few different ways, and the way that works best for me is:
The witch king is killed. In the background, the enemy is being routed.
Theoden dies. Things are getting quiet on this part of the field.
We see that there are still some enemies left on the docks and the Corsairs are arriving.
Aragorn & Co. jump out and the dead army is behind them as they advance.
We do not see them walk on water or fight at all.
Cut to Gandalf smashing down the door of the tombs.
Denethor says that the battle is won. (And he doesn't even know that Aragorn & Co. showed up.)
After the pyre, we go back to the field and see that Denethor was right, the battle is over.
Aragorn releases the dead. Then he turns to see Gandalf and Pippin arrive on the field.
In this way the dead army shows up to help as promised.
The dead army is implied to have helped finish the battle, and that's enough.
Except it's still a horrible deus ex machina...
