I'd never thought about Gondor in the movies this way before, but it does really ring true.
/fistbump
The Shire and Rohan are both predominantly well-lit and the music is cheerful and/or uplifting. Rohan is slightly overcast, but there is still plenty of light. Gondor is almost entirely drearily-lit, overcast, and the music is mournful/sonorous.
Yuppp. It's got this desaturated melancholy/pity (when not outright contempt, as with Denethor) to everything. It seems meant to be rather disappointing with glimpses of former glory, where Tolkien's version is more ... whoa, look at this impressive thing! and that one! and it used to be far greater, practically another Númenor!
I know you know this, but Pippin's experience of Gondor in the book is so charming, too—he quickly attaches to this place and its people, he names his son for Faramir, he travels there to die and be buried there. I think if we saw Gondor more as the characters do, and most of all as Pippin does, it would be easier to care as they do.
Gondor is that multiplied by a factor, and all that extends to the costuming.
Oh, yeah. I once saw a comparison of the richness of Théoden's clothes vs Denethor's costuming and it's really glaring—all the more given the RL inspirations for Gondor's culture and aesthetic! And definite agreement on Ithilien in particular, too.
I wonder why PJ didn't spend time developing Gondor as much, *especially* since it's the final film in the trilogy and where everyone ends up together again.
That's the thing I wonder about, too! Like, sure, not everyone is a Gondor stan, but it's one of the main locations of the final film and much of the story builds up to going there and saving it, so it really should be built up rather than the clear unfavorite of the production. Gondor haunts Tolkien's text long before the characters get there, preserving it is a major motivation for numerous characters, and like you say, it's where they all reunite, so building up that stature with care and detail would actually have benefited the films and esp ROTK quite a lot IMO.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2023-03-04 02:38 pm (UTC)/fistbump
The Shire and Rohan are both predominantly well-lit and the music is cheerful and/or uplifting. Rohan is slightly overcast, but there is still plenty of light. Gondor is almost entirely drearily-lit, overcast, and the music is mournful/sonorous.
Yuppp. It's got this desaturated melancholy/pity (when not outright contempt, as with Denethor) to everything. It seems meant to be rather disappointing with glimpses of former glory, where Tolkien's version is more ... whoa, look at this impressive thing! and that one! and it used to be far greater, practically another Númenor!
I know you know this, but Pippin's experience of Gondor in the book is so charming, too—he quickly attaches to this place and its people, he names his son for Faramir, he travels there to die and be buried there. I think if we saw Gondor more as the characters do, and most of all as Pippin does, it would be easier to care as they do.
Gondor is that multiplied by a factor, and all that extends to the costuming.
Oh, yeah. I once saw a comparison of the richness of Théoden's clothes vs Denethor's costuming and it's really glaring—all the more given the RL inspirations for Gondor's culture and aesthetic! And definite agreement on Ithilien in particular, too.
I wonder why PJ didn't spend time developing Gondor as much, *especially* since it's the final film in the trilogy and where everyone ends up together again.
That's the thing I wonder about, too! Like, sure, not everyone is a Gondor stan, but it's one of the main locations of the final film and much of the story builds up to going there and saving it, so it really should be built up rather than the clear unfavorite of the production. Gondor haunts Tolkien's text long before the characters get there, preserving it is a major motivation for numerous characters, and like you say, it's where they all reunite, so building up that stature with care and detail would actually have benefited the films and esp ROTK quite a lot IMO.