10 Reasons why Krull is a better film than Lord of the Rings

Sorry to come over all "io9" but after reading John's sniffy comments about Krull's effects over at SF Signal I felt compelled to respond by pointing out that Krull is, in fact, one of the greatest epic fantasy films ever made, coming as it did out of the same period of low-budget, down and dirty Sword and Sorcery cinema that gave us Hawk the Slayer, Conan the Barbarian and The Beastmaster.

By contrast, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a product of sanitised Hollywood risk management.  Its numerous faults are papered over by the obscene amounts of money Jackson spent on effects and it was unleashed upon a market-place that was if not well disposed to the books then had at least heard of them.

Krull is not based upon any existing IP and it has a tiny effects budget.  In terms of being a praiseworthy piece of film-making it wipes the floor with Jackson's hideous melodrama.

 

 

So, 10 (more or less tongue-in-cheek) reasons why Krull is a better film than Lord of the Rings :

1. Krull does not have any hobbits in it - Hobbits are representative of the English petite bourgeoisie.  In the real world they vote Tory, complain about gypsies and spend their time wearing brass-buttoned blasers and writing angry, ill-informed letters to the Times.
2. Krull has a better bad guy - The Beast is an inhuman cthuloid creature who hops between worlds in his Black Fortress.  Sauron is a flaming vagina who overly invested in bling.
3. Krull has a better good guy - Aragorn is an emokid who lives in the wilderness until he is called upon to topple a legitimate government and serve as a Noriega-style puppet for Elven and Wizard interests in the Gondor area.  I imagine him aged 50 with a paunch and mirrored sunglasses shaking President Reagan's hand before signing the death warrants of Mordor-friendly revolutionaries.  By contrast Prince Colwyn has a beard, wears bollock-crushingly tight trousers, is quite camp and kills people with an awesome spinny thing.
4. Krull has Bernard Bresslaw in it - Bresslaw was a RADA scholar and was spotted by Lawrence Olivier but is best known for appearing in a large number of Carry-on films.  The Lord of the Rings has the chick from the Aerosmith videos.
5. Krull was originally intended to be an official Dungeons and Dragons film - Watching The Lord of the Rings feels like sitting in on someone's interminable D&D Campaign. In fact, you could probably clean out the Temple of Elemental Evil in the time it takes to watch all of the Lord of the Rings films.
6. Krull's plot-hammer is a lot cooler - When Tolkien writes himself into a corner he has an undead army turn up and vanquish the forces of evil.  In the film Jackson has this happen in about thirty seconds begging the question as to why Aragorn or his forefathers did not just call up the army and wipe Mordor off the map without the need for questing and heroic defences of castles.  Krull, by contrast, has a bunch of Clydesdales who run so quickly that their hooves catch fire and they fly.  The first resolves all plot problems with such force as to render all the sacrifice and suffering needless.  The second gets the characters from one spot to another and leaves them to fight the final battle.
7. Krull's noble sacrifice is far more interesting - At the end of the film, Rell the Cyclops must return home in order to die peacefully.  Failure to make his way home ensures that he will die in terrible pain but, after leaving for home, the Cyclops turns around and holds a door open just long enough for his friends to get into the Beast's castle even though he is squashed in the process.  Gandalf falls off a bridge.  Then he comes back.  Thereby completely negating the sacrificial element.  (See also Jean Grey, Aslan and Jesus as examples of fantasy characters who undermine their own sacrifices because the author doesn't have the wontons to bump off their favourite Mary Sue).
8. Krull's giant Spider has a reason for being there - Frodo and Sam are lured to Shelob's lair  as a transparent set up for a set piece for two characters who essentially spend the last couple of films walking.  Krull's giant spider is the sole guard of a prison where a powerful seer was sent for the crime of loving the doubt-ridden Ynyr.  In order to discover the whereabouts of the Black Fortress, Ynyr (now an old man) has to sneak past the giant spider and confront his past and sacrifice his life in order to get the information out.
9. Krull has fresh ideas - While the book of The Lord of The Rings did a fantastic job of innovation and reimagination of old fantasy tropes, the film version is content with depicting overly familiar ideas.  Krull, by contrast, moves beyond Tolkienian tropes and introduces a number of new ideas such as the world-hopping castle, the Cyclops as  an individually doomed people, the Fire Mares and the glaive, a cinematic weapon as iconic as the disc in Tron.
10. Krull's heroes are social outcasts - The political aspects of The Lord of The Rings revolve around Gandalf effectively convincing the great and the good of Middle Earth to do their jobs.  He's kind of a fantasy version of Winston Churchill.  Colwyn's companions are an incompetent wizard, an eerie cyclops and a band of criminals and murderers.  The Lord of the Rings involves people doing their job, Krull involves people sacrificing themselves for an idea and for friendship.

The moral of this story is that Big Budgets and Zeitgeist-dominating torrents of hype do not necessarily make for a great film.  As we saw in my alternative Hugos list, sometimes the films that slip in and out of cinemas are more worthy of your attention.  While a lot of these reasons are facetious, I would honestly rewatch Krull in a heartbeat whereas I can think of nothing worse than spending 12 hours sitting through the interminable melodrama of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.

Comments

[Jeff]

You've sold me! When do we get our big budget, 10 hour Krull remake extravaganza?

One point though: the LOTR books established fantasy tropes by borrowing liberally from European (Nordic, Germanic, etc) folklore.

Snark on!

[Heather]

Awesome post! Rell is the man, Mr. McCalmont, but so are you!

I also think the low budget F/X make for some pretty atmospheric sets. Love that swamp scene. I can't help it--I totally bought it.

[Jonathan M]

Hey Jeff :-)

Agreed on the borrowed nature of Tolkien's tropes but I think it would be somewhat unfair to downplay Tolkien's role in transforming them from source material to tropes. It would be a bit like suggesting that Greg Egan's work is derivative because a lot of his ideas are taken from science journals.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Heather :-)

Hurrah! We'll make Krull climb that Amazon best-seller chart one copy at a time. You're also bang on about the swamp scene. Particularly the bit with the changeling. Very creepy, very atmospheric.

I sometimes think that my hostility to much epic fantasy comes from the failure of most books to live up to those kick-arse 80s sword and sorcery films.

[Heather]

>kick-arse 80s sword and sorcery films

There was even something about the film stock that I still like. They just have their own "look".

[Mbuckingham]

What On Earth are you on about? I feel your argument to be completely opinionated. Krull has some really colourful characters, but Lord of the Rings give a more emotional touch to it's characters.

You made some nice points for Krull, it's a great film, but I don't agree with anything you said against Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings will remain one of the best fantasies ever!

But I do certainly recommend Krull too, it's a quaint little film!

[Jonathan M]

Lord of the Rings is hideously sentimental (particularly the film). Sentimentality is not the same thing as genuine emotional depth.

[Haz]

When I started reading this I was wondering what you were on about, but about halfway through I remembered. I saw this when I was a child, I think it was the channel Five crappy saturday afternoon movie (called that because most of them were effing dire).

I can't remember all of it, but I do remember the cyclops dying and being genuinely upset, and I also remember the giant spider and the vaguely romantic bit in the middle of that web.

I should watch it again, it'll be fun.

Also the undead army in the Lord of the Rings don't half look like the undead army in Asterix and the Twelve Tasks, and the bit with them arriving at Gondor was so cheesy I actually thought 'it's only a model'.

The fairly old ones do seem to be better than the new ones based on the really old ones in a different medium, but not necessarily better than the new ones based on the incredibly old ones from before media was invented. Yeah...

I think I better quite while I'm ahead...

[Jonathan M]

Hi Haz :-)

Kudos on the "it's only a model" gag. I'm totally stealing it!

[mark c]

"It's only a model" is from Monty Python and Holy Grail

you neglected to mention that Krull also stars Mark sodding Fowler off eastenders, whereas as Beast master has cute super-ferrets! Go go super-ferrets!

[Nick]

"I once punched a bloke out once for saying Hawk the Slayer was rubbish."

"Good for you."

"Yeah, thanks... But that's not the point, Tim. The point is I was defending the fantasy genre with terminal intensity, when what I should have said was 'Dad, you're right - but let's give Krull a try, and we'll discuss it later'."

[Jonathan M]

I'm terrified by the thought you might have quoted that from memory. Worthy reference though.

[Serdar]

... I love you.

[Just a guy]

One you forgot to add. It had Liam Neason as one of the thugs.

[Don]

Lord of the Rings tried to tell a huge story in the span of about 10 hours. They really should have sectioned it off into 6 movies and focused more on character development (like Star Wars).

Krull had a great storyline, but the movie was unbearably cheezy. If they remade Krull today, I bet it would be number one hit at the box office.

[No Idea What You're Talking About]

Until I stumbled here, I'd never heard of Krull. Your review convinced me to check it out, but I'm a long way from convinced of its superiority.
It's uncharitable to judge the films as recycling "Tolkienian tropes." All modern fantasy is touched by Tolkien's rewritten myths, they're sterotypes because they're been copied. Jackson's films can't be blamed for that.

[rocker1446]

I think we must all remember that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis based their writings upon Christian archetypes. Gandalf and Aslan represent Jesus Christ. Try reading the bible, focusing on Christ and His sacrifice. If you don't think it a sacrifice, please let me know what is. You speak of that which you know nothing.

[Yechie]

you are really board man. if this is what you have to do in life.

[Elvis]

LOTR is nothing but 10 hours of walking.

Nuff said.

[rune basher]

I think we must all remember that Tolkien and the gospel writers based their writings upon pagan archetypes. Gandalf and Jesus represent Osiris. Try reading some pagan myths, focusing on Osiris, Odin, Cu Cullain, etc. and their sacrifices. If you don't think them sacrifices, please let me know what are. You speak of that of which you know nothing.

[anon]

There's so many things wrong with this. You need to do more research and maybe read a book or two before you go off on some random criticism tangent. It sounds like you're comparing story lines more than you are comparing the movies themselves. Granted I feel Krull is a better movie than lotr movie trilogy, but comparing Krull to the lotr storyline is not fair. You're complaining about things like hobbit lore, bad guys, ect ect, all storyline, and the giant spider DOES have a reason for being there, if you had read the books you would have known this. To be honest, and I think we all know this deep down, Krull would not have existed if it weren't for Tokien's lotr books that he wrote well before Krull was even thought up. He is pretty much the father of fantasy. They both have great story lines, but you should be focusing on the movies themselves and not the story Tolkien created in the past. I for one do not agree with how his books were portrayed in the movies at all and do agree that krull was a better movie, but I couldn't even finish reading this crap. Its just... crap!

[Jonathan M]

I don't consider something as a sacrifice if that which is given up is immediately given back. That's not a sacrifice, that's lending.

[rocker1446]

The term sacrifice is not well understood. To sacrifice is to make something sacred....notice to root. Anytime we serve someone, we make a sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice be time, money, sweat, blood or any number of other things. Sacrifice doesn't mean to suffer, though suffering may be involved. When someone helps a little old lady with her groceries, he or she is making a sacrifice. They make sacred that time used to help the little old lady. Does it mean that they are loosing something? Yes, a little time. But they gain a whole lot more than they 'give up.' This is the nature of sacrifice. Gandalf, Aslan and many others have made various degrees of sacrifice. By the way, to make something sacred is to devote that thing to some higher purpose or being.

[unbound]

lmao - at the very least, please post what you are drinking when you write an insanely positive review about a highly derivative, poorly scripted fantasy flick. Point a non-fantasy geek at this film, and they'll never forgive you.