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annathepiperToday, partly to celebrate my hard-won day off from work but mostly just on general principle, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird, risu and I went to go ogle a matinee showing of The Two Towers.
Spoiler-free short review: much fighting goodness, much easy-on-the-eyes swoonability on the parts of both Aragorn and Legolas, much heroic and stoic striving in the face of growing temptation on the part of Frodo, a bit more noticeable deviation from trad Tolkien. Didn't quite grip me in the same way that Fellowship did; the first movie actually made me cry in multiple places (and still can pull that off, as I learned while viewing it again tonight), but this one was livelier and actually made me clap my hands and laugh in delight. Right in the middle of a battle scene, even! The bits where the movie deviates from the book may annoy some; me, I didn't find them too much of a problem. Dar, who has not yet read the book, noted nowhere that stood out glaringly as if it did not belong with the rest of the plot, which I take as a sign that they integrated the new stuff more than adequately for the eyes of someone new to the story.
And now, for heavy-duty spoilers. If you haven't read the trilogy and haven't seen the movie yet, do not under any circumstances read past this point!
Okay. As long as we're on the topic of stuff that stood out noticeably to me as different from how things proceed in the story, I'll touch on those first:
What else...
The visual treatment of how Theoden looked while enspelled by Saruman was pretty keen. I liked how the spell just slid away from him without much in the way of pyrotechnics or fanfare, and turned him from a decrepit, ancient-looking wreck of a man into a still stolidly middle-aged but vital king.
Grima Wormtongue looked a little bit too slimily evil for my tastes. It would have been nice to see him be a little bit less, well, obviously evil. And I still, after both reading the book and seeing the movie, have to wonder exactly who thought appointing a guy with a name like Wormtongue into the position of king's counselor was a good idea?! ;)
Ents. Pretty darned cool.
Legolas' Eye Candy Moment #1: doing that wonderful flip up onto his horse.
Watching Eowyn start developing her crush on Aragorn was fun, especially during the scene where Gimli was regaling Eowyn with the popular myth about how there are no dwarf women. Aragorn's little miming of a beard and the mouthing of "It's the beards" was extremely witty; hell, if I were Eowyn, I'd swoon too! ;)
The wargs looked less like wolves than one might have expected. Dar thought of wolverines, in fact, upon seeing them. And come to think of it, I'm fairly sure that entire scene where the warg riders attacked Theoden's company wasn't in the book. But not entirely sure.
I had the battle of Helm's Deep built up pretty heavily for me, courtesy of hearing that MTV had been getting viewer reaction on some show or other of theirs to this film, and on said show one of the guys they'd gotten into view it was an action-movie buff who did not like fantasy flicks in the slightest... and who described the battle scene as the best he'd ever seen.kathryn assured me that it was orders of magnitude better than the battle scene at the beginning of Gladiator -- and I adore the battle scene at the beginning of that movie. So I was majorly looking forward to that part of the flick.
It did not disappoint, though I think I'd have been more heavily blown away if I hadn't had quite that level of buildup (and I suspect that I also had exhaustion and stress from the week I'd been having in general contributing to me not quite managing to enjoy the movie with as many of my braincells as it deserved). BUT, I must stress, I was certainly not disappointed in the slightest.
Two big thumbs up for every scene in the entire battle involving Gimli. Gimli was hysterical, from his frustration at being too short to see over the top of the wall, to his keeping score with Legolas as to how many orcs they'd both killed (which was the part that made me clap with delight; I was extremely pleased that they'd kept that from the book), to his grumpily exhorting Aragorn to hurl him over onto the causeway since he couldn't make the jump. (And for that matter, I loved Aragorn's solemnly vowing "Not a word" as Gimli begged him not to tell the Elf about this incident of dwarf-tossing. ;) )
Legolas Eye Candy Moment #2: riding that shield like a surfboard down the stairs, shooting arrows all the way down.
A brief diversion into commentary on dialogue in Elvish. Liv Tyler struck me more in this movie than she had in the first one as having issues with her Elvish dialogue... though after re-watching Fellowship tonight I hear her having the same issues in that flick, too. Every word she utters in Elvish comes out of her a bit too weighty, too slow, too ponderous. I don't know if this is a factor of her just not being trained enough in the language, a factor of "this is not really a Real language so it feels funny to be trying to speak it", or both. Viggo Mortensen was generally better at his Elvish dialogue, and made it flow more naturally and conversationally... though he too seemed to have issues with it sometimes, like the scenes he had with Arwen. In battle, though, and in conversation with Legolas, he got it up closer to where it started sounding more Right.
But back to the battle. I'm also thinking that Haldir of Lorien showing up with his archers is another diversion from the books; it doesn't feel familiar to me. A very good touch, that, especially when taken against Theoden's bleak "who will come?" response to Aragorn urging him to send out riders in search of aid. But it was still pretty keen to see the armored elves in smoothly disciplined, gracefully warlike ranks there to go head to head with the Uruk-hai.
I dug the shots of the women and children down in the caves as well, lots of tense faces reacting to the thunderous crashes and shouts from high overhead. And lots of anxious mothers reacting to their boys being drafted into battle... though it would have been nice, too, if we'd seen a girl or two taken into battle, if they're going to bother to describe Eowyn as a daughter of kings and a shieldmaiden of Rohan. Don't the Rohirrim have any women fighters? If they've got shieldmaidens, it would have been nice to see them out there, well, shieldmaidening! Though this, I daresay, is more of an issue with the original story than with the movie, that's for sure. Tolkien was never heavy on the idea of equal-opportunity heroics for both genders.
Damn, they grow them oliphaunts HUGE in Middle-Earth, don't they? How the heck did the Southron Men actually manage to tame those monsters?
Last but not least... am I high, or did Shelob not show up until the beginning of Return of the King? The ending did feel different to me, and I was twigging on the absence of Shelob as the reason why. Though leaving off with Gollum plotting to himself about letting "her" take out the hobbits was a more than adequate place to leave off Part 2 in the movie edition of the tale.
This must be viewed again. Probably twice! Mr. Jackson has entertained the hell out of me yet again; with the first movie, he clobbered George Lucas over the head with the "This is how an epic is done" clue, and for this one, he slung one over to Ridley Scott for "THIS is how a battle scene is done" clue mileage. I hope those gents are taking serious notes. And I hope Mr. Jackson's kicking back to take in the pile of money, 'cause I'm going to be slinging some more his way real soon.
solarbird, risu and I went to go ogle a matinee showing of The Two Towers.Spoiler-free short review: much fighting goodness, much easy-on-the-eyes swoonability on the parts of both Aragorn and Legolas, much heroic and stoic striving in the face of growing temptation on the part of Frodo, a bit more noticeable deviation from trad Tolkien. Didn't quite grip me in the same way that Fellowship did; the first movie actually made me cry in multiple places (and still can pull that off, as I learned while viewing it again tonight), but this one was livelier and actually made me clap my hands and laugh in delight. Right in the middle of a battle scene, even! The bits where the movie deviates from the book may annoy some; me, I didn't find them too much of a problem. Dar, who has not yet read the book, noted nowhere that stood out glaringly as if it did not belong with the rest of the plot, which I take as a sign that they integrated the new stuff more than adequately for the eyes of someone new to the story.
And now, for heavy-duty spoilers. If you haven't read the trilogy and haven't seen the movie yet, do not under any circumstances read past this point!
Okay. As long as we're on the topic of stuff that stood out noticeably to me as different from how things proceed in the story, I'll touch on those first:
- The Aragorn/Arwen romance. Every single frame Arwen's on camera in this movie is to the best of my recollection (and it's been about a year since I last went through the book, since I re-read the whole trilogy after the first movie came out) unique to the movie. On the one hand, I think it all held pretty true to the whole spirit of the romance between them; on the other hand, it didn't do too much to make me like Arwen any better than I liked her reading the trilogy. I was really, really, and I mean REALLY hoping that Arwen would in fact be leading the company of elves that showed up at Helm's Deep, to try to maybe show a bit more kick-assedness to go along with the glimmers of kick-assedness that we'd seen in the first movie... but no. And even as I type this, I am acknowledging that that would probably have been too major a deviation from what Tolkien wrote, even though it would have helped me like Arwen a lot better if we'd seen her doing something more than sitting around moping about how she's torn between going off to the Happy Elven Lands in the West and hanging out in Middle-Earth eternally moping after her mortal lover bites the big one.
- The scene where Aragorn is wounded during the fight with the warg-riders and thrown over the cliff is also not in the books... and I kind of liked it. Added a bit more suspense and tension to the sequences leading into the battle, a bit of an excuse to show how Arwen really is the Girl for Aragorn if she's the one he's hallucinating about when he's lying around wounded, and an excuse to demonstrate that Aragorn apparently has the Smartest Horse in the World. Never mind Shadowfax. I was just amused that Aragorn's horse seemed to me to be actively trying to not only wake him up, but also make him get on and ride! Though I could also see this possibly being simply a matter of "hey you! Biped! Where the hell is my hot mash? And why are you lying around instead of brushing my face and taking this saddle off my aching ba--oh, hell, you're going to ride s'more, aren't you? *SIGH* If you insist..."
Also, I suppose this is simply a sign of how much of a Russell Crowe fanatic I am, but during every frame where Aragorn was riding wounded back to Helm's Deep and swaying in the saddle, all I could think of was Maximus riding for Spain and the prayers about guarding his family with a ready sword. ;) - Faramir. My memory's a little fuzzy on the sequences at the tail end of the scenes with Faramir, but I'm pretty darned sure that the parts in... the city under attack by the Nazgul, the city whose name I currently cannot remember and am too lazy to go upstairs and look up... are not in the book. Certainly Frodo never goes eye to eye with the Ringwraith that I can recall. And I'm not remembering Faramir having that bout with temptation to take the Ring.
- Not a word was spoken by Treebeard about the Entwives and the Ents being all angsty about having lost them, but then again, I can totally understand that being left out of the movie. Wouldn't have added a thing, really. Though I'm fairly sure I remember the bits about the Ent-draughts which later cause Merry and Pippin's noticeably increased height being in the second book. I'd have liked to see that at least passingly mentioned.
- Gollum/Smeagol seems to have a much more conflicted connection to Frodo in the movie than he does in the book! I don't ever recollect him actively trying to shuck off his darker impulses in the story; I remember a lot of him being actively sneakily malicious, and a lot of him seeming to cravenly go along with Frodo and Sam ordering him around just because it'll keep him nearer to the Ring. But in the movie, Gollum seems to sometimes actually genuinely care about Frodo and even has the bit where his better side tries to take full command and banish his darker one. And, in the movie, he seems actively MPD rather than sometimes putting on an act of obedience. I kind of like this touch, since it plays into the whole theme of Gollum being a pitiable creature, and Bilbo's and Frodo's pity of him and failure to slay him ultimately helping lead to the triumph of Sweetness, Light, and Nasty Golden Trinkets Being Tossed Into the Fires of Mount Doom.
What else...
The visual treatment of how Theoden looked while enspelled by Saruman was pretty keen. I liked how the spell just slid away from him without much in the way of pyrotechnics or fanfare, and turned him from a decrepit, ancient-looking wreck of a man into a still stolidly middle-aged but vital king.
Grima Wormtongue looked a little bit too slimily evil for my tastes. It would have been nice to see him be a little bit less, well, obviously evil. And I still, after both reading the book and seeing the movie, have to wonder exactly who thought appointing a guy with a name like Wormtongue into the position of king's counselor was a good idea?! ;)
Ents. Pretty darned cool.
Legolas' Eye Candy Moment #1: doing that wonderful flip up onto his horse.
Watching Eowyn start developing her crush on Aragorn was fun, especially during the scene where Gimli was regaling Eowyn with the popular myth about how there are no dwarf women. Aragorn's little miming of a beard and the mouthing of "It's the beards" was extremely witty; hell, if I were Eowyn, I'd swoon too! ;)
The wargs looked less like wolves than one might have expected. Dar thought of wolverines, in fact, upon seeing them. And come to think of it, I'm fairly sure that entire scene where the warg riders attacked Theoden's company wasn't in the book. But not entirely sure.
I had the battle of Helm's Deep built up pretty heavily for me, courtesy of hearing that MTV had been getting viewer reaction on some show or other of theirs to this film, and on said show one of the guys they'd gotten into view it was an action-movie buff who did not like fantasy flicks in the slightest... and who described the battle scene as the best he'd ever seen.
kathryn assured me that it was orders of magnitude better than the battle scene at the beginning of Gladiator -- and I adore the battle scene at the beginning of that movie. So I was majorly looking forward to that part of the flick.It did not disappoint, though I think I'd have been more heavily blown away if I hadn't had quite that level of buildup (and I suspect that I also had exhaustion and stress from the week I'd been having in general contributing to me not quite managing to enjoy the movie with as many of my braincells as it deserved). BUT, I must stress, I was certainly not disappointed in the slightest.
Two big thumbs up for every scene in the entire battle involving Gimli. Gimli was hysterical, from his frustration at being too short to see over the top of the wall, to his keeping score with Legolas as to how many orcs they'd both killed (which was the part that made me clap with delight; I was extremely pleased that they'd kept that from the book), to his grumpily exhorting Aragorn to hurl him over onto the causeway since he couldn't make the jump. (And for that matter, I loved Aragorn's solemnly vowing "Not a word" as Gimli begged him not to tell the Elf about this incident of dwarf-tossing. ;) )
Legolas Eye Candy Moment #2: riding that shield like a surfboard down the stairs, shooting arrows all the way down.
A brief diversion into commentary on dialogue in Elvish. Liv Tyler struck me more in this movie than she had in the first one as having issues with her Elvish dialogue... though after re-watching Fellowship tonight I hear her having the same issues in that flick, too. Every word she utters in Elvish comes out of her a bit too weighty, too slow, too ponderous. I don't know if this is a factor of her just not being trained enough in the language, a factor of "this is not really a Real language so it feels funny to be trying to speak it", or both. Viggo Mortensen was generally better at his Elvish dialogue, and made it flow more naturally and conversationally... though he too seemed to have issues with it sometimes, like the scenes he had with Arwen. In battle, though, and in conversation with Legolas, he got it up closer to where it started sounding more Right.
But back to the battle. I'm also thinking that Haldir of Lorien showing up with his archers is another diversion from the books; it doesn't feel familiar to me. A very good touch, that, especially when taken against Theoden's bleak "who will come?" response to Aragorn urging him to send out riders in search of aid. But it was still pretty keen to see the armored elves in smoothly disciplined, gracefully warlike ranks there to go head to head with the Uruk-hai.
I dug the shots of the women and children down in the caves as well, lots of tense faces reacting to the thunderous crashes and shouts from high overhead. And lots of anxious mothers reacting to their boys being drafted into battle... though it would have been nice, too, if we'd seen a girl or two taken into battle, if they're going to bother to describe Eowyn as a daughter of kings and a shieldmaiden of Rohan. Don't the Rohirrim have any women fighters? If they've got shieldmaidens, it would have been nice to see them out there, well, shieldmaidening! Though this, I daresay, is more of an issue with the original story than with the movie, that's for sure. Tolkien was never heavy on the idea of equal-opportunity heroics for both genders.
Damn, they grow them oliphaunts HUGE in Middle-Earth, don't they? How the heck did the Southron Men actually manage to tame those monsters?
Last but not least... am I high, or did Shelob not show up until the beginning of Return of the King? The ending did feel different to me, and I was twigging on the absence of Shelob as the reason why. Though leaving off with Gollum plotting to himself about letting "her" take out the hobbits was a more than adequate place to leave off Part 2 in the movie edition of the tale.
This must be viewed again. Probably twice! Mr. Jackson has entertained the hell out of me yet again; with the first movie, he clobbered George Lucas over the head with the "This is how an epic is done" clue, and for this one, he slung one over to Ridley Scott for "THIS is how a battle scene is done" clue mileage. I hope those gents are taking serious notes. And I hope Mr. Jackson's kicking back to take in the pile of money, 'cause I'm going to be slinging some more his way real soon.
Re: various comments on your comments
Date: 2002-12-24 09:07 pm (UTC)(Of course, nobody would get the Elrond/Elros history strictly in the context of what's presented to the viewers in the movies, so well hey.)
Others have identified Osgiliath to me, but thanks. :) I'm having a debate with a friend of mine as to whether that sequence generally works; me, I think it does kind of work in the movie despite being Not Tolkien, though I have some issues with Faramir's general performance. He didn't come off quite as neat as I'd hoped, though I did still come away with "he's the smarter, wiser brother", which is still the overall reaction I have to him in the books, so there ya go.
I didn't remember the Huorns so I didn't really miss them much. It'll be interesting to see whether their being left out is covered in the supplementary material for the inevitable Extended Version Two Towers DVD. :)
I don't dislike Arwen's performance of her Elvish lines, per se. It's just that every so often she doesn't quite really 'flow' for me for some reason. I'm not sure why.
And heh. For what it's worth, you're not coming across to me as whinily nitpicking, and I even read your commentary over on your journal, too. ;) Between you and my other friend, I'm convinced that in spots Two Towers is a bit weaker than Fellowship in terms of upholding its general Tolkienness, but my personal jury is still mulling over which is the generally better movie. Clearly more viewings are in order to help me decide!
Re: various comments on your comments
Date: 2003-01-06 06:50 pm (UTC)The first was "okay" but didn't leave me 1) wanting to watch it again 2) wanting to re-read the LoTR books. (I read them once but found them deadly dull, though I finished. NOW... I am anxious to try reading again.)
Of course Eowyn may have a part in this. That white dress she was wearing? I've decided to look into if I can do something like that for a wedding dress...
Also the fact that one of my co-watchers leaned over and said Aragorn also means "hope" and everytime someone said hope afterward I saw how that comment also applied to Aragorn and it opened up layers to me.
Re: various comments on your comments
Date: 2003-01-12 11:05 pm (UTC)On the other hand, Eowyn is pretty nifty. :) And yes, her dress was pretty wonderful!
I don't remember Aragorn's name meaning "hope" but well hey, I can see it; he is very much the hope of the race of Men, in the whole setup. I'll have to go look his name up in the reference material I've got.