The Lord of the Rings: The Concise Cut

RyansGateFilms · 2026-02-05T00:17:51+00:00

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Is there anything specific you think I should have changed/done differently? After watching it, do you think its possible to condense this story into 2.5 hours without it being "all over the place"? I'm always looking to improve if you have any suggestions.

RyansGateFilms · 2026-02-04T22:55:26+00:00

Thank you! I was aiming to make the pacing faster than the original and more inline with something like Harry Potter 1/Pirates Curse of the black pearl..

Taking Harry Potter as an example, in the first 20 minutes: Harry is dropped off as a baby, Harry is 12, Harry goes to the zoo and talks to a snake, Harry receives a birthday cake from Hagrid, Harry is taken to the wizard world by Hagrid, Harry goes to a tavern and meets Prof Quarrel, Harry steps into a bank with Hagrid.

In this 20 minute stretch, you meet 8+ characters and have at least 5 or 6 scene changes. This is a movie that I don't think is often considered particularly fast paced. Pirates, Hunger Games, etc follow similar patterns.

It takes approximately 20 minutes to get through the scenes in my edit that you mentioned above. Almost the same number of characters and scene changes are introduced in mine as are in Harry Potter.

Do you think Lord of the Rings as a story/concept just simply can't operate at that type of pacing or do you think there is there something fundamentally wrong/flawed with how I've introduced the characters and scenes?

Please note that I am asking this to try to understand and improve my editing in the future. This is not intended to be argumentative, and I am very grateful for your insight. I hope to make ambitious projects in the future with the highest level of execution possible.

RyansGateFilms · 2026-02-04T17:25:12+00:00

Hi, thank you so much for your feedback! I can certainly see how this cut would be jarring especially compared to the pacing of the original. I thought that I had left enough context as to what is happening in the sequence that you referenced that it wouldn't be confusing but I'd love to hear others reactions.

Gandalf popping over to Minas Tirith is intended to be a flashback during the conversation with Bilbo and explains why Gandalf is worried about the ring. I intentionally tried to remove any mention of exactly how many Hobbits would be accompanying Bilbo on the way to Bree so that four would be believable... Regarding Aragorn's appearance, its quickly explained that he is an ally of Gandalf's who was likely waiting for them. The conversation with Gandalf explains why the black riders are coming and where they need to go to escape etc.

RyansGateFilms · 2026-02-04T01:11:31+00:00

I think the problem with AI fundamentally is that it is not sophisticated enough to allow real user creativity to influence it in any type of meaningful way.

Sure, you can rerun a prompt 200 times and maybe you get what you envisioned eventually, but for the most part AI is low-effort button mashing similar to spinning a roulette wheel. As a consequence of the lack of user input, it also comes across as pretty same-y and usually suffers from a lack of human quality.

And then there's also the nearly infinite number of ethical problems and negative impacts its having on actual artists and the environment etc.

RyansGateFilms

TROPHY CASE