ARGH! WAITING ONE MORE YEAR! ARGH!

A couple of lines I would have rewritten and a couple of minor changes I would have made. But oh man, was it worth the wait and then some. Not as stunned as I was last year because this time around I knew with confidence that Jackson would deliver. And did he ever.

Second showing for me starts in just under seventeen hours. Time for sleep.

Grrr....*ahem* Never mind me. Just a huge dash of envy going on!

It is released today....Can I go? NO! I am forced to work today.

Mind you, my inner hobbit wants me to play hooky!

Dammit.

Torture, I tell you.

(full story to come)

I was meant to be seeing the first one this morning but STUPID FAT HOBBIT that I am I got there and discovered they were only showing it Monday and Tuesday, and I'd walked for an hour down the edge of the motorway to a mjostly deserted rubbish shopping center for nothing. Then 10 minutes later I realised that was only the Gold Class screenings cos the card was so appallingly laid out, and it was on and I missed it, but then I noticed there were tickets still available for the next Two Towers show, but the ticket machine wanted to charge me £6.50 and the card said £3, all show all times, so I went to the customer service desk cos there was nothing else resembling a box office, and he pointed "over there", and I went "over there" and found nothing, so I went back and realised he was pointing at the snack counter, and I felt very weird asking the guy in the silly hat for tickets, especially as there were no signs or anything. But then I still had to find the auditorium, and the signs said "< 5-8 1-4 >", and I wanted screen 5 which turned out to be on the right AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH, so I went in there and sat down and realised the show was in Screen 3 and I am a STUPID FAT HOBBIT. I've left off lots of other idiocy that happenned today, but that is the stupidest cinema ever, I am the stupidest patron, I think we deserve each other, frankly.

The fearsome EYE OF SAURON:
http://www.ctnow.com/media/photo/2002-09/4499432.jpg

aaargh two hours and THREE minutes!!

(um no Perry jokes please ;))

i am all twitchy like a COKE addict or something!

(Should I run a book on when Katie explodes?)

Graham is on crack.

Given that I'll eagerly read any Superman comic put in front of me, I am not thinking myself all superior and above it all or anything. I will be getting all excited about the Ang Lee Hulk, if the early indications are anything like as good as LotR or CTHD.

I would have a) Taken out all the rubbish dream sequences and maybe, just maybe keep the one were Agent Elrond and Liv argue. b) Remove the moronic enviromental/war affects us all message from the Entmoot. Go back to the orginal, much much more fun. And introduce the other Ent for crissakes.
But Gollum stole the show, take that jar jar! The scene where he is debating with himself was great. And it was nice to see the comic relief didn't get stuck solely on Merry and Pippin. The series of wisecracks from Helm's Deep were perfect.
Great start to the film as well.
But its not as good (or as close to the story) as the first. I can take the omissions and the beefing up certain threads but the more they add from out of the blue the more it takes away from the story.
I luckily avoided getting in the papers but I don't know if I escaped the 11 O'clock news. They had coverage of our lineup party outside and several people I was in line with ended up in the papers.

Im paying now at work for the 12:01 showing last night.

I hear you there. Eeg.

I wish I had wrote this. Haven't seen the movie yet, tho.

hahaha... :) well i was V HAPPY with it, apart from a few things eg. the ELVES turning up at Helm's Deep? Led by HALDIR THE GAY? Faramir being a complete TWUNT and trying to nick the ring (i was really hoping they'd put the line about "i would not pick this thing up if it were lying by the wayside")? and the Entmoot = rub, frankly. AND when they meet Eomer towards the beginning, and he's all like "oh sorry yeah we probably killed your friends. here's a couple of horses though!" and Arwen oh dear oh DEAR. when the horse was nuzzling Aragorn i exploded into giggles because it was OBV that he thought the horse was Arwen in his dream!

b-b-but! gollum! the Dead Marshes (i was TERRIFIED)! frodo turning on Sam (phwoar frodo show us your sting ect)! Gimli being HILARIOUS! Legolas not being utterly rubbish (though surfing down the steps of helm's deep i mean AHEM)! Aragorn being quite heroic! the "not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall" line (i love that line)! and GOLLUM ARGUING WITH HIMSELF it was one of the best scenes EVER!

and Grima wormtongue = he has a black velvet cape - he is a GOTH!!

hahaha! more later! i still want to HUNT SOME ORC!!

I thought the film was great and my few qualms were almost exactly the same as katies above.

I liked the dream sequences - found the Eowyn/Aragorn attraction thing was good - it's in the book after all, just given a bit more attention in the movie. I actually really really liked the Eowyn character and the bit of ice-maiden thing , surrounded by death , stuff. I think it'll lead into the next movie well.

I didn't like Elves at Helm's Deep and Faramir taking the hobbits to osligoth(sp?). I wished the ent thing was more true to book as well - rather than Merry tricking treebeard to go south. Wished that the Ents/ Huorns (where were they?) went down to Helms Deep like they do in the book.

Viva Gollum! Viva the Dead Marshes! Viva Grima!! and Theoden!!

Palantir: Grima throws it out of Orthanc at Gandalf, Merry(?) looks in it & sees The Eye of Sauron, Aragorn keeps hold of it as descendant of Numenorian Kings?

cripes new message alert... um he kind of announces his presence to Sauron via the palantir to STRIKE PH34R into his heart, and wrests control of it away from him. its more a psyching-out measure i guess.

I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

Fwoooooooaaaaarodo!

honestly, pay attention Graham ;)

― katie (katie), Thursday, 19 December 2002 15:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Though, if the big nazgul guy sees Frodo w/ the ring in Osgiloth (sp?) does this mess up this whole idea of distracting sauron if he knows who and where the ring are? That additional scene really confused me...

Frodo & Sam at Minas Tirith made little sense either, as was making Faramir a knock off of Boromir - but I guess if they didn't show that then we wouldn't see Minas Tirith at all (no bad thing). ANd it was a pity that with Aragorn off a cliff it was just Gandalf down a hole done again - very deja vu (though great film for lovers of sensual scenes with horses).

A much, much funnier film, Gollum was both very fascinating and amusing, and John Rhys-Davies Gimli gets all the best lines. Very effective switches in pace and tone to move from exciting to reflective. Accents got pretty wobbly in places though. In all less focussed than the first, feels a wee bit like filler, but very enjoyable.

Phwoaaaaaaaaaardo is funny looking.

Also, there is a palantir in Gondor already being used by Denethor, so that'll have to be in there too.

I forsee TT extended DVD including scene w/ Boromir's boat thingy going out to see and his cloven horn washing up on the river bank. Otherwise it's not really explained in the film why Farimir thinks Boromir is dead. It'll start appearing on boards as a 'movie mistake'.

Osgiliath. I actually liked this particular change because I'd actually always wanted to see Osgiliath, which was the most major location throughout the book never directly visited -- it's always just off to the sides, as the frontline for Gondor and Minas Tirith (thus answering Tom's question as to why they're defending it).

The changes in Faramir's character has rankled with a number of folks, but to my mind they match with the needs of the film as Jackson has constructed it. The long scene between Faramir, Sam and Frodo in the book is detailed and very emotional, but at the end of a long film would have been a huge grinddown in terms of pace. Also, Jackson's particular gift with the whole sequence, as Tom noted last year, is that he introduces a sense of immediate, hanging-on-by-fingernails urgency and desperation to everything. This explains both the change in Faramir and in Theoden, actually. When you consider Theoden's anger at Gondor not showing up to assist, that's a notable switch from the book (and makes me wonder how they're going to resolve it in the final film), but what it does do is give a more intense sense of collapse and fragmentation among the Forces o' Good. Similarly Faramir's character here is less immediately 'wise,' perhaps, which was certainly a key distinction betweeen himself and Boromir, but more immediately understandable -- he's fighting desperately against overwhelming odds and a potential weapon comes into his hands. Externalizing his internal dialogue via the Nazgul attack and the effect it has on Frodo in Osgiliath makes more sense cinematically.

As well as making another great 'wasn't in Tolkien but could have/should have' been scene, of which there were many: Frodo about to surrender to the Nazgul on the Osgiliath parapet, Frodo about to kill Sam shortly thereafter, the brutality of the Wargrider attack, the actual physical depiction of Theoden's enslavement and its resolution, a 'real time' depiction of the drowning of Isengard instead of a flashback. So far my favorite added scene from both movies remains Frodo and Aragorn confronting each other on Amon Hen, though.

The Ent situation makes less sense the more I think about it and would be a weak spot -- second time through I was trying to see how Jackson and company constructed it, and it ultimately falls apart, in that Treebeard already hates Orcs, has met Gandalf (who you would think would have an interest in setting Treebeard to rights vis-a-vis Saruman -- he may not do so in their initial encounter in the book, but in the film it's already implied that much more interaction has happened), knows there's a lot of smoke over Isengard but somehow doesn't put two and two together until that little trick of Pippin's. I suppose it *just* works if you have no knowledge of the original story, but even so. Treebeard and the Ents as characters were wonderful, but how they were handled is I think the greatest lost opportunity of the film -- it wouldn't have been any less time or a loss to dramatic pace to show Treebeard already aware and outraged, to have the Entmoot reflect him trying to stir up his colleagues (and if needed then have Merry, say, pour on the rhetoric as he did in the film), and then to have the sweeping march on Isengard, Huorns or no Huorns.

I think Aragorn is trying to speed up the attack w/ the palantir and make Sauron nervous

Yes, that's the plan in the book. As it stands the impact of that scene becomes less necessary in the film because one key point -- Aragorn showing Anduril to Sauron -- couldn't happen unless Anduril finally gets (re)forged and handed over. Gandalf's note at the end of the film -- about how Sauron's response will be quick and powerful -- sets up the idea that things are about to go crazy as well -- I'm guessing the idea of forcing Sauron's hand will turn up mostly with the march on Mordor in the final film, in the sense of directing his attention elsewhere.

Otherwise it's not really explained in the film why Farimir thinks Boromir is dead.

Yeah, I was thinking about that -- also, how *does* Faramir know about the Isengard attack on Helm's Deep?

the scourging of the shire bit isn't going to be in RoTK.

Nope. Jackson has confirmed it is absent.

Hm...more later perhaps.

more on palantir when i get some work done (i just got into work from it 30 mins ago )

Bleeding £10 will be a small price to pay....

.... I really felt it was the first 3 hour film I'd seen which didn't make me shift in my seat and feel bored after about 2 hours.

You don't notice how much time has passed...until you try to stand up. Looking around at the audience (when I went to see the first one), you'd forget this wasn't really meant to be a mass-market film.

Long-haired kid towards the end; Aragorn's sitting out on a terrace and asks him to give over his sword. They have a brief conversation about this and that.

Also, I know that Tolkien publicly denied that The Lord of the Rings was intended to be a parable of anything, but I keep trying to read it (and the films) as a parable for the rise of fascism and subsequently, World War II. (According to this theory, the hobbits represent England and the various other characters/kingdoms stand for the European states.) Has anyone studied Tolkien's works from this perspective?

I actually noticed it was a different editor this time around, in fact two editors. John Gilbert's work on the first film was very grand, so I wonder what the situation was here...

It's a nice-enough guide to the various characters and events in the movie and, until the "Two Towers" DVD comes out, it'll give fans a chance to take a prolonged look at some of the film's images. (Plus, for those who noticed that a key element of the Battle of Helm's Deep is missing from the film, there's a hint that the extended DVD version may include it after all. Hooray!)

Perhaps the ents will show up there after all?!

was no one else irritated by Gimli's "comic relief" role which was all about "ha, ha, dwarves are small" etc

It was almost as bad as Shrek.

The flood scene was a bit simple. A couple of Ents walk into the Isnegard and in no time the whole thing is over. The burning Ent who puts it top in the Isengard flood= great!

http://www.glassgriffin.com/fanart/images/noldor_treebeard.jpg

At the end of the first half I was getting a bit annoyed by the anti-climax cliches, in the cannibal scene (peter jackson speciality?) which was great ("those are a nice pair of legs, he he he!") M and P try to escape but are getting chased by one of the Isengard zombies, just at the moment when they get caught the zombie gets killed. O r the scene where the Dwarf gets attacked and all those killed fall down on him, so he has five or six dead monsters lying on top of him, anti climax on anticlimax.

Legolas skating sequence is his claim for fame, but for the rest he seems to me just a lack-of-character warrior who is fighting along to proove his skills?

http://www.sdbg-handel.dk/aktiv/mdage/ridder.jpg

No the "understanding" of Faramir I did not get either. And why do they let Wormtongue go free? They would know he would go back to Saruman (Christopher Lee acts with his eyebrows! He's fantastic!).

the whole "Fascist/New Order is rising" is bit heavy, but also chiched and is part of every good/evil plot I thnk.

my other gripes with the plot will, as with Fellowship, be entirely dissipated once i have seen the film 3 or 4 more times ;)

(erik i think it is because the Ring is controlling him and it wants to get back to its truuue massster!)

i. tolk wz sort of still working this stuff out years after the book wz written (the last section of UNFINISHED TALES is all abt them: sadly it reads a bit too like a telephone switchboard manual - eg if the palantirs in amon sul and minas anor are communicating w.one another, the chap online at annuminas will get an engaged signal... in order to get good picture reception, the aerial must be correctly adjusted and positioned etc + the palantir at the grey havens is only to be used to talk to Big Elf Central Overseas.... )
ii. judging by the map consulted by faramir and minions, minas morgul is no longer in the story!! (this = a bit odd, given that the two towers of the title are actualy minas morgul and orthanc, NOT barad dur and orthanc) => anyway this is of consequence bcz sauron had hold of the ithil stone from when minas ithil wz infested w. nazgul and bercame minas morgul: as when anyone used a palantir (ie saruman and denethor, they got tons of mordor-spam and eventually lost perspective, w. saruman becoming sauron's mini-me and denethor becoming world's gloomiest man shouting ALL IS LOST! every other minute): tolk doesn't approve of magical artefacts, they tend to be not worth the price of making them: the palantir are like television, you get to see what's going on in the world but it rots yr brain
iii. why wz wormtongue let go? bcz the rohirrim are all but a nomadic ppl and don't hold w.prisons etc... also the fact that wormtongue doesn't stand up for himself and fight means that they consider him cowardly and umanly and beneath contempt and not worth bothering with: a real man wd go down fighting rather than let himself be imprisoned, so he is of no account — it's interesting actually that both he and saruman are basically major tonguemasters, able to cast deep spells w.their every word, and that the rohirrim, who all talk as if they were top billing in the Volsung Saga, are totally easily taken in by this... tolk never quite works out his attitude to the rohirrim, but basically i think deep down he thinks they are simpletons, yesyes noble and brave and fab horsemen, but really not entirely all there brains-wise
iv. MORGOTH LESS ELESSAR!! The love quadrangle = aragorn, arwen, eowyn, aragorn's horse!! i like the film's idea that elrond's kin are hoofing it (this is sort of kosher, rather than made-up wholecloth — the elves the hobbits first meet are off seawards — but it's implied between the lines in the book, and does need more clearly stating, as does the aragorn-arwen pact, which is only told in the appendix and very allusively and obqliquely in bilbo's earendil poem in rivendell)
v. in the book, the palantir episode is an exposition character and power and understanding and knowledge: the wizards seemingly do battle, but actually it is the actions of the little folk (grima and pippin) which change the balance of power — ie grima throws the palantir and pippin picks it up and looks in it (one of the things which jackson is better at getting across than tolk maybe is that the High and Mighty Elder Races are much more at sea, as regards knowing stuff, than the hobbits and the reader may realise... tolk is actually v.alert to what eg elrond or sauron don't know, and don't realise, but he doesn't always dramatise it particularly (partly this is bcz he never does barad-dur PoV, aware prob that if he did we wd start to like sauron more than aragorn); also tolk's whole secret story is that High and Mighty Elder Races had fucked up big-time and were anyway not all that in the first place

It was almost as bad as Shrek.

doing away with minas morgul does rationalise the geography a bit: at least, i wz always confused abt the GATES OF MORDOR being up at the corner, so that in order to menace gondor, they had to like come out of the side door sort of

one thing i love abt jackson's rendition of the landscape is that it is full of ruins, even when they're nowhere in particular

Gates of Mordor - presumably built before the battle that results in the dead marshes/desolation of wherever it is, i.e. that was the bit they wanted to menace.

(unless they go via nurn and the sea of nurnen — when i wz small, i used to look at the map and wonder why sam and frodo didn't just get into mordor round the back, where there are no mountains at all)

re the one tunnel: i'm just speculating what the extra DVD action will entail, and doesn't eowyn play some part in the paths of the dead stuff?

If they don't include the Palantir how are they going to split up Merry'n'Pippin for them to do their useful things in RotK?

for some reason this amuses me enormously: "no milk today signed saruman the white"

All the trails of the dead stuff will be in the RoTK stuff anyway. The only bits that could be added to the DVD for TT would be more dialogue w/ Ents in fanghorn - Treebeards home for example, and ent-droughts etc. And then the ents coming down to helm's deep. Maybe Frodo and Sam climbing down the wall w/ their special rope before the run into gollum.

The part of the helms deep where the woman and children go deeper in the the caves is all messed up in the movie, (since everyone goes down there) where in the book, the fighters get split in half and later gimli get's reunited w/ legolas and says that legolas must go back w/him into the depths of the caves because they are breathtaking!

AFter a few days I'm not really bothered about some of the changes in the film (faramir, the aragorn cliff fall/wargs, elfs at helms deep) as I've now read some very good justifications and explanations for them! So I'll be glad to see the film again in the next couple weeks. :)

That said if that is true and the Nazgul can't sense the ring at 6 feet away then they are shite.

Since that's a film invention Jackson has to stand by its own internal logic. In Fellowship the Nazgul are seen to specifically react to the Ring when it is worn (Frodo puts it on in Bree, the Nazgul immediately react and head that direction). Two Towers has Frodo succumbing to a greater influence via the Ring as he approaches Mordor, but the Nazgul seem to be more on general patrol than anything else. By the logic of the film, had Frodo put on the ring on the parapet, the Nazgul would not have thought twice, but he didn't and there we are. Makes for a good dramatic moment in the film, does leave the Nazgul seeming a touch rub but there you go.

minas morgul is no longer in the story!!

Nope, it is -- you see the Nazgul riding out of it to hunt for Frodo in Fellowship, and Jackson specifically mentions on the DVD commentary that it is Minas Morgul. It should be in the third film in some way, possibly its absence from Faramir's map was to keep things simpler for the audience (the map has a glancing but for the fanatic glaring error, actually -- Dagorlad is spelled Dagorland!).

basically i think deep down he thinks they are simpletons, yesyes noble and brave and fab horsemen, but really not entirely all there brains-wise

I think this is actually in the book in several points, with general references to their lack of 'book-lore' and not quite being as wise as the Gondor folks (needless to say some of this comment comes from Gondor folks).

tolk's whole secret story is that High and Mighty Elder Races had fucked up big-time and were anyway not all that in the first place

The entire myth cycle can be said to be about the Fall and its consequences, really. Thus one of the greatest lines ever in the book, Galadriel talking about how she and Celeborn have 'fought the long defeat' over centuries.

That really annoyed me the Rohan plural thing.

Must have missed this...

why mention it if yr not going to use it? i tht it might be an eowyn sub-plot, something to do with the PATHS OF THE DEAD, which is a
totally weird little sidetrack

I'm with Tom on this in that it provides a sense of justification that isn't entirely there in the book (alternately, however, the sense in the book both is and isn't as desperate as in the film -- Helm's Deep is being lost in the book but it isn't as completely trashed as in the film, with the Hornburg itself still held to the outer walls even after the explosion opens up the main wall). That said I too immediately thought it might be a transposition of the Paths of the Dead, since Dunharrow has been excluded from the movies (so far).

can i just say again how GREAT were the Dead Marshes??!

Really grand, and indeed all the various set pieces and depictions of geography -- Fangorn, Nan Curunir, Helm's Deep, the Wold, Edoras, Henneth Annun and the moonset over Gondor and the Black Gate -- were all just marvellous. The WETA team is spot on with its work.

Gates of Mordor - presumably built before the battle that results in the dead marshes/desolation of wherever it is, i.e. that was the bit they wanted to menace.

Sorta. The book's explanation is that the two main towers at the Black Gate, Narchost and Carchost, were built by Gondor after Sauron's fall to maintain watch on Mordor, and were then reoccupied and strengthened by Sauron after Gondor was on the wane (this in part explains the subtle similarity I found between those towers and Orthanc, also built by the Dunedain). Similarly Cirith Ungol, as Sam memorably realizes in the book, was built not to keep enemies out but to keep them *in* -- constructed by Gondor to keep watch and then eventually reoccupied and used by Mordor for its own purposes. In the book Cirith Ungol watches over the secret pass via Shelob's lair but there is a main road as well that runs through the mountains between Mordor and Ithilien, and there's how the invading army led by the Nazgul in RoTK can get itself going.

The part of the helms deep where the woman and children go deeper in the the caves is all messed up in the movie, (since everyone goes down there) where in the book, the fighters get split in half and later gimli get's reunited w/ legolas and says that legolas must go back w/him into the depths of the caves because they are breathtaking!

Yeah, that's a bit of a conflation and a half in the film -- but we do get to see Gimli blowing an actual honest to god Helm's horn, sorta (very much not in the book, and I still wonder how Gimli would know about it anyway -- and wouldn't he be rather fighting with everyone else?).

As you can tell, I hate Tolkien and can't bear talking about his work.

Has anyone studied Tolkien's works from this perspective?

It's a popular approach, both in formal criticism and in general discussion, and Jackson like George Lucas obviously knows his Riefenstahl. Tolkien himself noted that if LOTR was to be seen as a direct equivalent of WWII, then all that the 'end' would have been would be one exchange of evils for another and the Hobbits collectively would have been slaughtered. I think Tom Shippey has the better point when he notes that Tolkien was a WWI vet rather than a WWII one, and if anything that makes the plot in LOTR potentially even more of a wish fulfillment, if you like -- instead of an endless grinding down between two sides -- hinted at in the book by Gandalf's line about a choice being to 'endure siege after siege' -- there's a climactic and comparatively swift resolution. The entire basic course of the story from Rivendell to Mt. Doom only covers some three or four months in the book.

I thought Haldir dying was one of the sadder bits (despite him being a bit too camped up), did he die in the book?

Nope -- he doesn't show up at Helm's Deep, as has been noted. However, I don't regard the Elves' appearance as being too surprising, actually -- in RoTK, a company from Rivendell that includes Elrond's sons rides to Rohan a few days after Helm's Deep. Jackson's juggling of things to reflect his own particular take on the story works better than not.

One thing I liked about Haldir's death was how it suggested the resonance of an immortal being suffering something that was never intended -- thus my comment about the Fall above. Death for Men is expected but for Elves is an unsettled horror.

Legolas' sideburns are shockingly absent. This fact, combined with his long hair, makes me suspect that he is actually Ned.

It's a vision. ;-)

Isn't it just the map that comes with the book? Or at least my ancient copy. That is just another reason I need the DVD of this movie as well.

Mark's comments about the key are very funny also, "now kids if there's any problems go and tell Sarumon next door"

The fighting Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas. It's main challenge is to clearly layout the fight so that we can see what's going on, and it does that really well. A great heckle after the conversation in elvish about they're all going to die that Aragorn ends declaring in English that he'll die with them is Hagrid's "I shouldn't have said that, I should not have said that". I liked the comedy from Gimli, but not that it shortened the main black comic bit of the books (the running totals between him and Legolas).

The Ents/Perry/Mippin. The main challenge here was to fail to be shit, and it failed miserably. The ents looked great, and in fact seemed straight out of that Tolkien artists whose Gandalf in the Shire art is the most famous one. No other Ent, the Ents turning up pretty quickly after Treebeard has his primal scream, and the worst bit of Hollywood (Little person makes stirring speech to the big and wise). And what the hell was the minus three seconds of them meeting Gandalf about? Although the scenes around Isengard were great as a realiser of what things the size and consitency of trees can do when they're angry. Peter Jackson = Greatest realiser ever?

And the Sam/Frodo/Gollum/Smeagol trip, which is the gayest film ever, and possibly the best. The main challenge here is to really make us feel the pity for Smeagol, and see how Frodo comes to view him, and it really knocked it out of the park. I don't remember where in the book the change back from Smeagol to Gollum comes, I think I'd thought that there was only ever an fragile balance between them, but to see it happen directly due to Faramir's "We'll decide what's right here after all" attitude is really great. Is this the source of the "You have stumbled into our sanctuary and we're a bunch of dickheads so you must die" plot that furnished Star Trek with so many episodes?

And for two years in a row, too much Liv Tyler. You will be stricken by grief, and hang around the woods like an Enya video. And another failed change for Elrond to say "I hate it here."

It obviously wasn't entirely the fault of anyone involved that right about now entreaties to join us to total war against our enemies on flimsy evidence is not what I want in my entertainment, but it really threw me out of the experience a few times, most notably in the adress to the Entmeet and the "See? Do you see?" bit at Isengard afterwards. Still, if you want socially responsible fantasy at the price of being shit, there's Attack of the Clones for you.

There's a lot in the third movie isn't there? (And this is probably not the time or the place to discuss it, judging by the number of people I know who are reading the books just before/just after the films).

I think my favorite part may have been the Dead Marshes. So creepy and eerie yet also really beautiful.

(I liked this on better than the last. The first part ran a little like a soap opera, but then it all came together at the end like a Seinfeld episode. I was impressed by the Smeigal/Gollum scene where the shot kept crossing the line of shot that the shot is not suppose to cross. It gave the effect of self conversation very effectively.)

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the story with a main theme of struggle between good and bad. Frodo has difficulty deciphering between good and bad, and the reader has trouble too. Peter Jackson makes the good visually look extremely good, and the bad look extremely bad pointing it out perfectly to everyone. I think this is dumbing down the original intended theme immensely.

The changes in Faramir's character has rankled with a number of folks, but to my mind they match with the needs of the film as Jackson has constructed it... he introduces a sense of immediate, hanging-on-by-fingernails urgency and desperation to everything. This explains both the change in Faramir and in Theoden, actually.
Can't agree. The 'men' are easily the most problematic things in this whole adaptation.

Agree with most of the other comments upthread.

Smeagol/Gollum superb: surpassed even my very high expectations.

Anyway --- I'll shut up now. Happy Holidays all!

Merry Xmas everyone!

after the second viewing, the Ents thing is slightly easier to accept. however the Faramir thing isn't really - it's just annoying that Elrond's fantastic line from the first film "MEN ARE WEAK" seems to be being shoved in our faces in a "do you see!>!" kind of way. the whole thing for me about Faramir was that he wasn't a carbon copy of his dead bro. fneh well anyway i am SLAVERING to see what they make of shelob.

and the best line in the film by FAR is surely:

Faramir (to Sam): Are you his bodyguard?
Sam: No! I'm his gardener!

i fecking love it i do!

Yup! Peter himself had two quick cameos...

I think my favorite part may have been the Dead Marshes. So creepy and eerie yet also really beautiful.

Quite so. It captures the sense of location, feeling and mood beautifully, an elegant tribute to the original text.

Joey Tribbiani? *googles* Ah.

Good:

Gollum – bang OTM

Legolas made to look cool as usual, swinging up, around & onto a horse at the beginning of the fight with the Warg Riders, skateboarding down steps at Helms Deep shooting down Uruk-hai all the while.

Winged Nazgul

Gimli humour: *somebody* tosses a dwarf

Battle of The Hornburg (although so much of it passes in a blur)

But this 3 hours seemed so LONG – I started hallucinating: Frodo became a mid-70’s Van Morrison, Arwen (less fantastically) Zoe from Eastenders (it’s a chin thing.) And what was Cerys Matthews doing singing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina over the closing credits??

Some of this was due I guess to the division of the company (& the plot) into 3 strands: some sadly because I think Jackson has lost it a bit. Wtf Aragorn’s cliff dive tied to a Warg? Big Gay Haldir & his posse showing up to aid the Rohirrim? The dumbing down of Faramir to Boromir Jr.? & all that bollocks at Osgiliath with Frodo succumbing to the call of the Nazgul? Sam’s speech encouraging Frodo not to give up didn’t ring true there, perhaps because it was the pure invention of the scriptwriters.

Oh, & my mental Ents weren’t so thin & long-legged, more stocky & substantial. And it was so obvious that Treebeard’s voice was the same as Gimli’s – were they short on the budget??

So far not so impressed, hope Thursday will bring me back on track.

in fact i MAY even be coming round to Ned's Faramir theory/justification. i should go and see it again just to make sure ;)

Anyway, total classic. Battle scenes were ace as was the aforementioned Schmegal vs. Gollum dialogs. I want to go slay some orcs and whatnot.

I have my minor complaints, like ANOTHER character falling from a great height and being presumed dead until his heroic return, but I guess it was a decent in for the elf-stuff flashbacks. Also, the literalization of Theoden's transformation in the movie was okay, and made sense because you know movies do stuff visually (and the actual effect was great). However, I liked how in the book he still seemed really old, so that when he does strap it on and go into battle at the end it really makes an impression and rallies the troops.

That said, I WUVVED it.

1) COCKERNEE ORCS! within the first 5 minutes i was pissing myself at the grotesque buggers "Ah've been living on maggoty bread for freeeee stiinkiiing daaaays!" is the line of the film, almost

2) ENTS - all flaws regarding them as pointed out above are valid but the fact remains they are very probably the most spectacular example yet of CG characterisation...at least in appearance and power. a shame that John Rhys Davies doubled up for both Gimli and Treebeard but OH MY GOD, when Treebeard started talking my bowels almost collapsed - best 'scary' voice in a film since Darth Vader without question - fucking amazing...as was the Ents kicking arse, and yeh the Ent dousing his flames in the water - lots of people in the cinema chuckled at that.

3) GOLLUM - number one really, again, nothing i can say that hasnt been said, and in fact a far greater example than the Ents of CGI CHARACTERISATION - the best example yet in fact - astonishing stuff, esp. the schizo argument..i also laughed at his 'mountain pool, is nice and cool' song and the 'STUPID FAT HOBBIT / cooked vs raw argument with Sam

4) ARAGORN & LEGOLAS - halfway thru the film i started to think i might be gay put it that way (muahaha)

5) the scenery

i want to read the book now but i dont think i have the patience, sob

We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11. Clearly, you cannot deny the fact that this falls under hate speech. We believe that if they will not willingly change the name, the government should step in to stop the movie's production or to force a name change.

Wacky to see Ned talking about T*m Sh*ppey, I was taught by him in JRRT's old office in Leeds. Never found out the pseudonym he uses for his books: any ideas Ned?

i bought the video of FELLOWSHIP for my dad for xmas: a bit nervously, as he has been a devotee of the books for more than 50 years!! Anyway he loved it and cried — and then had nightmares about balrogs!!!

me vs. Jel FITE!!!

i bought the video of FELLOWSHIP for my dad for xmas: a bit nervously, as he has been a devotee of the books for more than 50 years!! Anyway he loved it and cried — and then had nightmares about balrogs!!!

i wuv mark s's dad!

Edward Slimyhands. (Nicole is spot on, of course.)

Miranda Otto really was a good casting choice as Eowyn -- can you imagine who they would have picked if the whole thing was done straight up Hollywood style? Brittany Murphy or the like, yeesh.

am i alone in thinking wtf!! nothing special at all

there was a bit where legolas swings up on his horse in a really tuff ninja way that the film TOTALLY doesn't care about and all the better for it

some of the lack of oomph being noted here is surely to do with overraised expectations from OTHER books/movies re magic spectaculars and superhero powers: the limitations of the powers available to wizards, elves, ringwraiths and whatever sauron is is surely part of the point of the book, which PJ is staying very close to — that "magic" (and also technology) is a trap and a delusion which gives you a big fireworks but not so much effect that it doesn't also take stuff away

eg the nazgul are driven away by aragorn and the hobbits on weathertop with one sword and some flaming brands (in the book they have some more swords from the barrow downs, but not i think in the movie, unless they cheated): they are in tremendous danger but only bcz the ringwraiths can't be killed and are pitiless, not bcz they have tremendous superpowers

the threat in osgiliath is of frodo succumbing to the temptation of wielding the ring, which is when they (and sauron) can see him

one of the points the palantir sub-plot emphasizes in the book is that sauron's attention is often elsewhere: he's not some vast all-knowing dark god, despite being deathless and bodiless, and he makes mistakes

i quite like this general sense of fallibility and fuck-up, that actually people — even gandalf — DON'T know much about what's going on, they're finding it out as things progress; it's a lot less second-guessed than hollywood fantasy plots sometimes are

point taken re characters adrift in proceedings, ur right it is a very hollywood reflex (i prob wouldn't have blinked at it in the book), 20thC nomad monad distrustful of overarching themes child that i am... clever parry. but having THIS IS AN EPIC THESE ARE HEROES THAT'S WHAT IT'S LIKE flashing in lights throughout is still a tough chew

However, I am a fan of that remote control camera on the wire that goes down the hill in the battle at parth galen in tFofR. that was cool.

Heh. In my case, to the point where an article of mine I cowrote is cited -- and I'm mentioned by name -- in one of the manuscript collections Christopher Tolkien edited.

haven't read the book ( i've read the first one awhile ago) is it any good?

Putting it mildly, yes. But it's a different beast from the film -- a lot more deliberate and slowly paced.

very incomplete list of artists deliberately invoked: john martin, gustav dore, david, albrechsburger [sp?], poussin ("blind orion" in the ents section), arthur rackham, bosch, hell breughel, several of the earlier American Sublime school (whose names all come in threes)...

And, how do I learn to stop worrying and like hobbits?

gollum = bam bam

This is the most brilliant thing I've read in ages. :-) Yay Di!

I don't think Marc ever looked so bad, even in the 75 nadir.

dr vick had a theory about his eyes being too light to be fanciable, but i think it's just bcz he's the epitome of mimpy

(actually i do see why eowyn lusts after him but you just KNOW she wd always have rub taste in men)

It's all about the hobbits - although I would love to make a decent DARK ELF and no not an ORC or Galadriels stupid DARK QUEEN speech, beautiful and terrible as the night, computer generated breastplate and strange whited out hair!!

ALL SHALL LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIR!

Well frankly...

Aragorn TOTALLY SLEAZES on Eowyn.

"you handle your blade well.... care to take a feel of my 'blade'?"

"aragorn it is so soft"

"haha feel the pork sword girl"

SLEAZY BASTARD.

It's the girly hair, I'm telling you. Oh, and the fearsome ninja powers.

WANT!

it is kind of half-hidden behind other cavalry business, so look out for it if you missed it

That's impossible to miss, Mark! You should have heard the crowd at the midnight showing when that happened. (And it is brilliant -- VERY wise move of them to not show that in the trailers and to potentially scare everyone with the shield surf scene instead.)

Mine too Ned! They both have a sort of untouchably pretty aura about them.

Never thought of it that way, but you're onto something. Did have the poster from the first album on the wall. Ah, eight years old and to be listening to that and Sesame Street Fever nonstop...

here's a good way to piss ppl off: when eomer says "we slew everyone" to A, L and G, says "oops" in a loud voice

Ok fair enough I dunno ANY of the Elvish tongues for 'cucumber'.

Haha I bet Neds mum wants to learn about Elvish tongues hur hur hur

SORRY NED!!!!

http://homepage.mac.com/evanbaumgardner/iMovieTheater6.html

aragorn son of arathorn gives them swords upstairs at the inn of the pouncing pony.

it will be RED HOT.

You know, Gygax, I could have you killed.

from a friend's email today:
I went to visit a friend at Network Appliance, and they are supplying Peter Jackson with over 250 Terabytes of storage for the new movie. Apparently there are something like 20,000,000 non-human "actors" in the movie.

And based on the preview Marianna called it. :-) And the Huorns are going to turn up and the descent on the rope scene at the start of the Sam/Frodo/Gollum sequence and the Entdraughts and...

(I just find it very irritating to have to switch discs, and I know that a lot of early DVDs were double-sided because of sloppy coding.)

? Not following you here. You mean only two feature length commentaries instead of four?

But all four commentaries are good in their own ways (and the director/script one is the only spot throughout where Fran Walsh directly participates; she consciously avoided participating in the documentaries because she's generally a more private person, I gather).

The director/script one is the only other one I've heard in full -- the others, I've put on to listen to while I was cooking, something I can't do in this apartment since the kitchen is not similarly close to the living room.

How true! Sad gal that I was, I hadn't listened to most of the commentaries until this past weekend. In spots, it was more fun to listen to the commentary (as I'd seen the movie already, natch). It's rare that you hear every actor in a cast actually say that they loved doing a project. Where else would you find out that Christopher Lee smashed his hand before filming?

Not even that, early 20s.

I dunno, I liked that (and he wasn't saying 'cool' all the time or anything)! If anything he was talking about sheer enthusiam for the joys of cinema as a watcher and I think it came across really well. He might not have been Pauline Kael or the like, but are we expecting that of such commentaries?

"orlando bloom, he might look good on the poster, he doesn't have many lines does he?"

Elijah Wood has often noted that he was never able to finish LOTR itself, so personally I don't think that's much of an issue. But if you must play the card, Bloom *does* say on the commentary that he had read it at least once.

* Though I still think that the Ents come off as almost willfully ignorant on certain things and that they could have written the movie to have Treebeard be more immediately understanding, they do set it up so that Saruman's decision to start hacking into Fangorn happened almost right there and then in second-movie-timeframe terms, and thus making it more an honest surprise.

* The seemingly complete rewrite of Faramir's character from the book is much more conditional now -- the Faramir/Denethor/Boromir plays out the tensions described but not directly encountered in the book within that family and his initial actions are less surprising/less of a switch than before.

A lot of the additional scenes came straight from the book or used a lot of the direct dialogue, v. nice -- and Old Man Willow sorta shows up indirectly!

Liv Tyler elf lady doesn't really have to worry about being alone. old Legolas will still be around won't he? I can't remember if he left or not?

It's been twenty years! Remember when!

Well, those of us on the podcast did...

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/45