[LOR] Motion Picture Trilogy Exhibition at Houston Museum of Natural Science

Already been to it in Houston. It's not worth the price of admission.

 

i heard it's $17.50 and $14.50 with a student ID. i'm prob gonna go this w/e.

 

The Star Wars one ruled.

 

Why not and how much?

 

How long is it in Houston for?

 

It was pretty interesting, my sister and I had student discounts. I mean, the one thing that sucked was that all the video monitors that you could go up to and pick videos to watch from all seem to be the same stuff from the DVDs, so it was kind of pointless. It's cool to see the actual costumes and props. There was the head of Treebeard from the 14 foot animtronic one they made so that they could actually put the actors in it's hands and then a maquette of treebeard next to it. There was the miniature of Sauramon's tower, the actual one used in filming. There was a maquette of Sauron's tower that was built as a preproduction idea of what they wanted, but it was so good they ended up using it for some long shots. They had lots of weapons and props that never even seem to appear on screen, but give you an idea of how much detail went into everything. I'm talking about like small knives and tools and eating utensils that characters would have but never were used in any scene.

One thing that was a bit of a let down was that they obviously had the body double costumes of Frodo and Gimli. I know Elijah is a small dude, but not that tiny. So instead of the Sting that Elijah and Sean Astin used, it was the one the little people who were their doubles used. In way it's cool because you see how big these things are supposed to be though.

The WETA guys even made some full size models specifically for the exhibit. There's a full sized Lurtz with the costume from the the movie and a full sized, but only upper torso of a Cave Troll busting through a wall with a cave Orc model crawling down a wall next to him. There was also a human sized maquette of a Cave Troll with genetelia, which I thought was unnecessary.

There's a suit you can put on, I didn't do this but I only saw a kid doing it and thought maybe it was kids only. Anyways, it looks like a Lego Man medievil or Knights or whatever costume, but it has these tracking balls in it that are used for motion capture. You stand in a green room and there are monitors where they put up CGI soldiers and you can control their movement. They apply different skins so you can see a foot soldier, a pikesman, an archer, etc.

There was also a section where you can experience modern day forced perspective. This is a camera trick where somebody close to the camera has small props to look big and somebody further away has big props to look small. Here they had a hobbit bench cut in half. One half was small, one really big. A person sat on one piece, the other person on the other piece and then both shots are put together so it looks like one bench but one person is huge, the other small. For 10 bucks, you can keep the picture.

 

This movie did not have a big enough impact on my life to warrant me going to an exhibit of props... for $17 no less.

Star Wars on the otherhand was worth it. That movie was an integral part of my childhood.

I will pass on the LOTR exhibit but would pay again to see Star Wars.

 

I believe the exhibit is here until 8/28.

 

Ah, me and the wife would have gone to see it last weekend if we would have known.

We probably won't be back in town until the Roxs season start, oh well

 

I'm so going to this! I love LOTR!

Thanks for the heads up man! I'm headed there tomorow.

 

For those of you cheap-azoids:
PDF-itized Coupons for buy one get one free discount from METRO for EXBHIBIT room, Planetarium, IMAX, or a "RIDE RIDE" to the museum (includes map.)
RE-UP if you download.