TLC Forum

(Just wanna say that further discussion of Star Wars should be moved to the Star Wars discussion thread, especially since you're talking about the new film. )

Already did.

So have anyone watched the movie of Black Hawk Down?

Any content I should know about? I am planning on seeing it and I just wanna know what it's like cause I have heard it's really good but IDK for sure.

jesusgirl4ever wrote:Watched the newer Ben-Hur movie. There were some interesting departures from the book. One of them I didn't like, but I knew why they did it (they did it because Morgan Freeman), and the other I actually loved, so that was weird.

I watched the new Ben Hur last night. It was pretty enjoyable. It wasn't perfect, but it stuck to the message. I really liked that they dropped in a couple more Jesus cameos so it wasn't like he came out of nowhere. Even little touches like having people carrying palm branches in the background of one shot to give an idea of the timeline was nice.

Was the thing that you loved the fact that the ending was totally re-written? Because while I thought it was a cop out, I also thought it was touching and made for a way more enjoyable movie.

Is the one that you didn't like the fact that Morgan Freeman was like 6 characters smashed together? Because I too think that maybe they could have cut a little time off of Judah's backstory if it meant that we could have maybe had a couple of characters back and a little more time before the race for it to make sense why this guy who's never raced a chariot before can beat the best of the best.

Yeah, Morgan Freeman was Sheik Ilderim (?), Simonedes, ...the other guy whose name starts with an M that I'm blanking on..., and the centurion guy. I didn't exactly like it, but...

Yes, I loved the new ending. Like you said, very touching.

@Pev: Sorry, haven't seen it. It's on my list of things to watch too.

@Jaygee: Yikes, why'd they mash all those characters into one? The Shiekh and Simonides is a combination that does not compute in my mind, nevermind the centurion.

Simonides was a separate character in the movie, he just wasn't as important, he dies pretty early on instead of reclaiming the Hur household. As far as how they rolled the Sheikh and the centurion into one character...that actually managed to make sense. They took away the personality of the Sheikh and made the personality a lot more like the centurion with a tiny hint of wise man (Who were totally cut out), but gave him the profession of the horse owner. It made sense for the sake of time, but I think that time could have been saved elsewhere and at least had the centurion be a separate character so that Judah could become a "real Roman".

Another thing that added time, but I also think was a nice addition is that Esther is given a much bigger role...however, I don't think that it was quite as big of a deal giving her that big of a role given that Iras was cut.

....Come to think of it cutting Iras was probably how they managed to have that ending given that it meant that (spoiler) Messala's betrayal was a lot less complete and more understandable as something that was the result of a bad decision made in a bad moment...not something that was ongoing. Therefore he wasn't so completely poisoned as a character that his accepting and offering forgiveness made sense.

Very true, Tooky.

Oh. They double-cast Martin Freeman then? That's equally confusing, haha.

No, not really...they just smashed characters into one. And the Simonedes thing meant that he never showed up at the end, just cameoed at the beginning.