A Couple Of Towers
Dec. 19th, 2002 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSo I went to see The Two Towers last night.
(note: rant partially composed early this morning. My bile has settled somewhat since then.)
I hated it. Hated it hated it hated it.
Having gotten the initial viewing out of my system I will probably see it again at some point and not hate it nearly so much, since most of my issues with it were about places where it diverged from the (perfectly good) plot of the book, often in stupid ways.
Tom Bombadil and Arwen/Glorfindel aside, the Fellowship movie stuck quite close to the plot of the book. Maybe I just got spoiled by that. Also, The Two Towers was the first Tolkien I ever read, and so I'm emotionally attached to some scenes in a way that just isn't there for the other books.
Anyway. On with the show.
---
I put none of the blame for this movie on the actors. The newcomers -- Grima, Theoden, Eowyn, and Faramir especially -- are all as good as (most of) the previous cast. Peter Jackson's Elrond is, as Emily put it, "a pissy old man," and Hugo Weaving projects this perfectly. Et cetera. Consider all the actors raved about.
Cate Blanchett retains her inability to act her way out of a paper bag. This is something that I simply learned to accept after seeing Fellowship again. I was hoping she wouldn't be in this one, but oh well.
(Those of you who've read the book but not seen the movie are saying "What the heck is Galadriel doing in this movie?" Patience, patience.)
The scenery is gorgeous. The movie opens with the Emyn Muil (well, it really opens with a recap of Gandalf and the Balrog, but whatever), and it's perfect. A maze of broken rock and twisty little passages, all alike. Isengard continues to be very cool. The falls at Henneth Annun (Faramir's hideout) were excellent. Et cetera, et cetera. Remember the first movie? This one's just as pretty. (One would hope so, since Alan Lee and John Howe, probably the two foremost Tolkien illustrators on the planet, are credited as visual designers or some such.)
Even the CGI is, with one notable exception, Not Bad. We get a full shot of the Lidless Eye atop Barad-Dur for the first time, and it's cool. The Ents and the Morannon (and the Oliphaunt) rock my world. When the swarm of Orcs is rushing ant-like at Helm's Deep, you have to take it on faith that they didn't actually have a gazillion Orcs to charge the walls and get shot with arrows and fall off things. It's really too bad that Gollum's first real scene is the fight with Frodo and Sam, because he looked a bit off there. But afterwards he was great. Gollum, gollum.
There's a really horrid catapult shot in Osgiliath that takes out a tower, and it's pretty clear where it switches from "model of tower" to "picture of tower collapsing."
(By now those of you who have read the book are saying "Osgiliath? What on earth are you talking about?" Patience.)
---
I was pretty happy with the movie right up to the point where Gandalf confronts Theoden. Instead of talking some sense into the old fart and throwing Grima out on his ear, Gandalf exorcises the spirit of Saruman from him. (One wonders why, if Saruman could simply possess Theoden, he needed to have Grima there at all.)
Instead of a decently dramatic Casting Out Of Wormtongue, we get flashy special effects. I think that pretty much ruined the movie for me right there.
In fact, that sums up much of my problem with the movie. I can accept-- barely-- Merry and Pippin having to show Treebeard the destruction that Saruman has wrought in order to convince the Ents to march on Isengard. But having Faramir march Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) to the ruins of Osgiliath just so he can get a flashy dramatic example of the corruption of the Ring is overdoing it.
---
Andrew Rilstone, in his review of Fellowship, noted that Gandalf's "Many who life deserve death" speech was one of the more moving moments in the film. He wondered, though, if he was reacting to the speech in the film, or to his memory of the speech in the books. I didn't really see what he was getting at until I heard Eowyn's speech in Meduseld. Here is a woman who we have seen attempting to hold her King together. She tells us that even the women of Rohan know how to wield a sword. But with her next breath she tells us that she fears being trapped in a cage until she grows accustomed to it.
It's a damn good speech. But it's out of place in the movie; no one has even hinted that she might not get to go off to war with the menfolk. Tolkien intelligently placed it after Theoden sends her away to the mountains with the people of Rohan.
So why is it where it is? Because Theoden doesn't send her away until the middle of the (wholly made-up) fight with the Warg-riders, and there's no time for her to have a Touching Scene with Aragorn there. Chalk one up to the scriptwriters' idiocy.
---
The battle for Helm's Deep, which merited a chapter or two in the book, takes up roughly a third of the film. From this I can only conclude that this is no longer a story about Hobbits, but about Aragorn. (Although one wonders why Liv Tyler's glorified cameo warranted her a higher spot on the credits than Viggo Mortensen.)
I could deal with this if it were a good battle. But it isn't. It's a night battle, so it's a bit confusing. There's an earth-shattering kaboom that feels wholly gratuitous. And at the end Gandalf leads the cavalry over the hilltop to Save The Day, just like he said he would. No dramatic tension. (Also no Huorns kicking Orc butt.)
And then... and then it ends.
---
The book ended with two of the most dramatic cliffhangers in literature: a mad midnight ride to Minas Tirith (although to be fair it's not totally clear what the rush is), and Sam learning that Frodo's not dead after all. The first movie ended with a big dramatic battle, and everyone going their separate ways. There was a lot of tension there: what's going to happen to them all? Where to now?
This one ends with panoramic shots of Helm's Deep and the ruin that is Isengard, and some vaguely threatened malice from Gollum.
This is madness.
One wonders what Peter Jackson will be including from the third book, since the third movie still has to include about a quarter of the second book.
---
But enough of my bitching. It was still a decent movie. It wasn't as good as Fellowship, but it was decent.
See you at the theatre in fifty-two weeks.
---
Other miscellaneous movie notes:
(note: rant partially composed early this morning. My bile has settled somewhat since then.)
I hated it. Hated it hated it hated it.
Having gotten the initial viewing out of my system I will probably see it again at some point and not hate it nearly so much, since most of my issues with it were about places where it diverged from the (perfectly good) plot of the book, often in stupid ways.
Tom Bombadil and Arwen/Glorfindel aside, the Fellowship movie stuck quite close to the plot of the book. Maybe I just got spoiled by that. Also, The Two Towers was the first Tolkien I ever read, and so I'm emotionally attached to some scenes in a way that just isn't there for the other books.
Anyway. On with the show.
---
I put none of the blame for this movie on the actors. The newcomers -- Grima, Theoden, Eowyn, and Faramir especially -- are all as good as (most of) the previous cast. Peter Jackson's Elrond is, as Emily put it, "a pissy old man," and Hugo Weaving projects this perfectly. Et cetera. Consider all the actors raved about.
Cate Blanchett retains her inability to act her way out of a paper bag. This is something that I simply learned to accept after seeing Fellowship again. I was hoping she wouldn't be in this one, but oh well.
(Those of you who've read the book but not seen the movie are saying "What the heck is Galadriel doing in this movie?" Patience, patience.)
The scenery is gorgeous. The movie opens with the Emyn Muil (well, it really opens with a recap of Gandalf and the Balrog, but whatever), and it's perfect. A maze of broken rock and twisty little passages, all alike. Isengard continues to be very cool. The falls at Henneth Annun (Faramir's hideout) were excellent. Et cetera, et cetera. Remember the first movie? This one's just as pretty. (One would hope so, since Alan Lee and John Howe, probably the two foremost Tolkien illustrators on the planet, are credited as visual designers or some such.)
Even the CGI is, with one notable exception, Not Bad. We get a full shot of the Lidless Eye atop Barad-Dur for the first time, and it's cool. The Ents and the Morannon (and the Oliphaunt) rock my world. When the swarm of Orcs is rushing ant-like at Helm's Deep, you have to take it on faith that they didn't actually have a gazillion Orcs to charge the walls and get shot with arrows and fall off things. It's really too bad that Gollum's first real scene is the fight with Frodo and Sam, because he looked a bit off there. But afterwards he was great. Gollum, gollum.
There's a really horrid catapult shot in Osgiliath that takes out a tower, and it's pretty clear where it switches from "model of tower" to "picture of tower collapsing."
(By now those of you who have read the book are saying "Osgiliath? What on earth are you talking about?" Patience.)
---
I was pretty happy with the movie right up to the point where Gandalf confronts Theoden. Instead of talking some sense into the old fart and throwing Grima out on his ear, Gandalf exorcises the spirit of Saruman from him. (One wonders why, if Saruman could simply possess Theoden, he needed to have Grima there at all.)
Instead of a decently dramatic Casting Out Of Wormtongue, we get flashy special effects. I think that pretty much ruined the movie for me right there.
In fact, that sums up much of my problem with the movie. I can accept-- barely-- Merry and Pippin having to show Treebeard the destruction that Saruman has wrought in order to convince the Ents to march on Isengard. But having Faramir march Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) to the ruins of Osgiliath just so he can get a flashy dramatic example of the corruption of the Ring is overdoing it.
---
Andrew Rilstone, in his review of Fellowship, noted that Gandalf's "Many who life deserve death" speech was one of the more moving moments in the film. He wondered, though, if he was reacting to the speech in the film, or to his memory of the speech in the books. I didn't really see what he was getting at until I heard Eowyn's speech in Meduseld. Here is a woman who we have seen attempting to hold her King together. She tells us that even the women of Rohan know how to wield a sword. But with her next breath she tells us that she fears being trapped in a cage until she grows accustomed to it.
It's a damn good speech. But it's out of place in the movie; no one has even hinted that she might not get to go off to war with the menfolk. Tolkien intelligently placed it after Theoden sends her away to the mountains with the people of Rohan.
So why is it where it is? Because Theoden doesn't send her away until the middle of the (wholly made-up) fight with the Warg-riders, and there's no time for her to have a Touching Scene with Aragorn there. Chalk one up to the scriptwriters' idiocy.
---
The battle for Helm's Deep, which merited a chapter or two in the book, takes up roughly a third of the film. From this I can only conclude that this is no longer a story about Hobbits, but about Aragorn. (Although one wonders why Liv Tyler's glorified cameo warranted her a higher spot on the credits than Viggo Mortensen.)
I could deal with this if it were a good battle. But it isn't. It's a night battle, so it's a bit confusing. There's an earth-shattering kaboom that feels wholly gratuitous. And at the end Gandalf leads the cavalry over the hilltop to Save The Day, just like he said he would. No dramatic tension. (Also no Huorns kicking Orc butt.)
And then... and then it ends.
---
The book ended with two of the most dramatic cliffhangers in literature: a mad midnight ride to Minas Tirith (although to be fair it's not totally clear what the rush is), and Sam learning that Frodo's not dead after all. The first movie ended with a big dramatic battle, and everyone going their separate ways. There was a lot of tension there: what's going to happen to them all? Where to now?
This one ends with panoramic shots of Helm's Deep and the ruin that is Isengard, and some vaguely threatened malice from Gollum.
This is madness.
One wonders what Peter Jackson will be including from the third book, since the third movie still has to include about a quarter of the second book.
---
But enough of my bitching. It was still a decent movie. It wasn't as good as Fellowship, but it was decent.
See you at the theatre in fifty-two weeks.
---
Other miscellaneous movie notes:
- The trailer for Bad Boys 2 used Smartbomb for part of its music.
- Eomer is clearly part elf, as he has blond hair and black mustache/beard.
- Gimli should never have been reduced to comic relief.
- Wargs are R.O.U.S.es.
- I got about two-thirds of the way through the movie before hearing Lucifer's voice come out of Aragorn's mouth.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-19 09:31 pm (UTC)think you'd appreciate it, in light of your review...
(personally, i enjoyed it. but then, i hadn't quite finished the second book, and haven't read the third... will before the next movie comes out tho)
no subject
Date: 2002-12-20 09:06 am (UTC)That was great.
Like I said, I'll probably appreciate the movie more the next time I see it. I'm mostly just miffed that some of the cooler scenes were pushed back to the third movie to make room for a big honkin' battle, and I disagree with Jackson's treatment of Faramir and Theoden. But it was cool. (Just not as cool as _Fellowship_.)