Watched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last night at midnight (thanks to JT for getting tickets AND a very good place in line!). As it's a 3 hour movie, I got home close to 4-ish, then woke up at 9:30 because I had to come in to interview a candidate for a position at work today. Then at our company "holiday luncheon" we had turkey. I am SO gonna fall asleep...
Be warned... the rest of this post presumes that you've either seen Fellowship of the Ring or have read the book... proceed at your own risk!
Some thoughts on the movie (spoilers in invisible type! Drag your mouse over the "blank" lines to magically cause the text to appear... 'course, if you've read the book, the only spoilers are how "cool" things were):
- very grand. Lots of sweeping camera shots of our heroes on horses running across the plains, of Saruman's 10,000 super-orcs striding across valleys like a huge army of ants, all accentuated by a majestic orchestral score.
- I need to re-read the book to see how much the movie deviated.
- seems to be a fair amount more humor than in Fellowship of the Ring. In FOTR, the comedic relief was provided primarily by the hobbits Merry and Pippin, but on the whole the movie was very solemn and grim (not surprising considering the fellowship loses a few members over the course of the movie and then breaks up at the end). In TTT, the bulk of the humor is provided by Gimli the dwarf... mainly because he's not tall, buff and lean like Aragorn and Legolas. Also, the amount of banter between Gimli and Legolas goes up a fair amount, and the progression of their relationship in the books (moving towards being like brothers) sorta comes out through this.
- if you're a fan of Merry, Pippin, Saruman, or Gandalf, they unfortunately don't get a whole lot of screen time or memorable lines.
- new important characters: King Theoden of Rohan, Grima Wormtongue (looks like a band member from KISS), Eomer and Eowyn (nephew and niece of Theoden), Faramir (brother of the deceased Boromir from FOTR), and the 2 cgi characters, Treebeard and Gollum.
- you have to think a bit more in order to keep up with the 3 different plot lines (Frodo/Sam, Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli/Rohan, Merry/Pippin/Treebeard), so on first viewing it might be a bit more difficult to just sit back and enjoy the movie or really be able to examine the acting jobs
- in general, one of the cool parts of the LOTR series so far has been the excellent acting from top to bottom... you can't really pinpoint any thespian who has a poor performance.
- Gollum's schizophrenic personality (the ring-corrupted evil self, and the somewhat nicer "Smeagol" personality) is portrayed in the movie, with appropriate facial and vocal changes. Sometimes it can be the cause of unintentional laughter though, you don't have the same sense of menace as you did with, say, the Green Goblin in Spiderman when Willem Dafoe was talking to himself in the mirror.
- you can see Frodo's deterioration as his soul is corrupted by the presence of the ring, primarily by how at various points in the movie, he takes on the physical and vocal characteristics of Gollum.
- the audience was basically very respectful, not a whole lot of catcalling. People clapped when: 1) Legolas pulled off the nifty move where he grabbed onto the bridle of a running horse and swung himself across the horse's body into an arc, landing on its back, and 2) at the Battle of Helm's Deep when Legolas tosses a spiked shield down a staircase, then jumps on it and "surfs" down the stairs, flinging arrows the whole way down, finally hopping off the shield while it embedded itself in another orc.
- I think I personally preferred the fight scenes in FOTR over TTT (Helm's Deep) because while big huge battle scenes are grand, they can also be an overwhelming blur of images that are hard to individually resolve. At Helm's Deep it was difficult to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, because of fast camera cuts blurring the shots, and armor covering everyone. In FOTR it was easier to be impressed with Aragorn's sword technique and Legolas' arrow-shooting speed.
- combat-wise, I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of portraying medieval combat on horses, and in storming a fortified installation. Particularly in the latter, you could see the combatants using rocks, catapults, creating "shield blankets" against arrows, battering rams, and so on.
- I felt that the whole romance between Aragorn and Arwen felt a bit forced in this movie. Didn't seem to fit.
Cool scenes:
- Gandalf fighting the Balrog while plunging through the air
- Aragorn re-creating Merry and Pippin's escape from the slaughter of the Uruk-Hai company by the Riders of Rohan, simply by following their tracks
- Treebeard's appearance
- Gandalf the White's return
- Gandalf's battle of wills against the Saruman-possessed Theoden
- Frodo struggling to control himself while Faramir contemplates taking the ring from him
- Aragorn putting his armor on before the Battle of Helm's Deep, Rambo-style
- Last March of the Ents
- Gandalf the White riding to the rescue with Eomer and the Riders of Rohan
Be warned... the rest of this post presumes that you've either seen Fellowship of the Ring or have read the book... proceed at your own risk!
Some thoughts on the movie (spoilers in invisible type! Drag your mouse over the "blank" lines to magically cause the text to appear... 'course, if you've read the book, the only spoilers are how "cool" things were):
- very grand. Lots of sweeping camera shots of our heroes on horses running across the plains, of Saruman's 10,000 super-orcs striding across valleys like a huge army of ants, all accentuated by a majestic orchestral score.
- I need to re-read the book to see how much the movie deviated.
- seems to be a fair amount more humor than in Fellowship of the Ring. In FOTR, the comedic relief was provided primarily by the hobbits Merry and Pippin, but on the whole the movie was very solemn and grim (not surprising considering the fellowship loses a few members over the course of the movie and then breaks up at the end). In TTT, the bulk of the humor is provided by Gimli the dwarf... mainly because he's not tall, buff and lean like Aragorn and Legolas. Also, the amount of banter between Gimli and Legolas goes up a fair amount, and the progression of their relationship in the books (moving towards being like brothers) sorta comes out through this.
- if you're a fan of Merry, Pippin, Saruman, or Gandalf, they unfortunately don't get a whole lot of screen time or memorable lines.
- new important characters: King Theoden of Rohan, Grima Wormtongue (looks like a band member from KISS), Eomer and Eowyn (nephew and niece of Theoden), Faramir (brother of the deceased Boromir from FOTR), and the 2 cgi characters, Treebeard and Gollum.
- you have to think a bit more in order to keep up with the 3 different plot lines (Frodo/Sam, Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli/Rohan, Merry/Pippin/Treebeard), so on first viewing it might be a bit more difficult to just sit back and enjoy the movie or really be able to examine the acting jobs
- in general, one of the cool parts of the LOTR series so far has been the excellent acting from top to bottom... you can't really pinpoint any thespian who has a poor performance.
- Gollum's schizophrenic personality (the ring-corrupted evil self, and the somewhat nicer "Smeagol" personality) is portrayed in the movie, with appropriate facial and vocal changes. Sometimes it can be the cause of unintentional laughter though, you don't have the same sense of menace as you did with, say, the Green Goblin in Spiderman when Willem Dafoe was talking to himself in the mirror.
- you can see Frodo's deterioration as his soul is corrupted by the presence of the ring, primarily by how at various points in the movie, he takes on the physical and vocal characteristics of Gollum.
- the audience was basically very respectful, not a whole lot of catcalling. People clapped when: 1) Legolas pulled off the nifty move where he grabbed onto the bridle of a running horse and swung himself across the horse's body into an arc, landing on its back, and 2) at the Battle of Helm's Deep when Legolas tosses a spiked shield down a staircase, then jumps on it and "surfs" down the stairs, flinging arrows the whole way down, finally hopping off the shield while it embedded itself in another orc.
- I think I personally preferred the fight scenes in FOTR over TTT (Helm's Deep) because while big huge battle scenes are grand, they can also be an overwhelming blur of images that are hard to individually resolve. At Helm's Deep it was difficult to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, because of fast camera cuts blurring the shots, and armor covering everyone. In FOTR it was easier to be impressed with Aragorn's sword technique and Legolas' arrow-shooting speed.
- combat-wise, I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of portraying medieval combat on horses, and in storming a fortified installation. Particularly in the latter, you could see the combatants using rocks, catapults, creating "shield blankets" against arrows, battering rams, and so on.
- I felt that the whole romance between Aragorn and Arwen felt a bit forced in this movie. Didn't seem to fit.
Cool scenes:
- Gandalf fighting the Balrog while plunging through the air
- Aragorn re-creating Merry and Pippin's escape from the slaughter of the Uruk-Hai company by the Riders of Rohan, simply by following their tracks
- Treebeard's appearance
- Gandalf the White's return
- Gandalf's battle of wills against the Saruman-possessed Theoden
- Frodo struggling to control himself while Faramir contemplates taking the ring from him
- Aragorn putting his armor on before the Battle of Helm's Deep, Rambo-style
- Last March of the Ents
- Gandalf the White riding to the rescue with Eomer and the Riders of Rohan
posted by Bob at
6:09 PM
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