Subject:
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Re: LoTR: The Two "Towels"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Fri, 10 Jan 2003 23:33:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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789 times
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In lugnet.castle, Dave Schuler writes:
> In lugnet.castle, Aaron Dalan writes:
> > > In lugnet.castle, Nathan Todd writes:
> > > Somebody had to reply...granted it didn't have to me but...
> >
> > > Don't mess with a good thing. A classic work such as LOTR does not
> > > need extra confrontation between the characters (Legolas and Aragon),
> > > villians (almost Fairamir), people falling off cliffs ?!?!?!, etc. etc.
> > >
> > > End of rant and God Bless,
> > >
> > > Nathan
> >
> > The juvenile exchanges between Aragorn and Legolas were bad enough, but as
> > the movie progressed, I started to get downright p/o'd. Faramir "captures"
> > Frodo and starts bringing him back towards Minas Tirith? Treebeard is a
> > halfwit who has to be TRICKED by Pippen into fighting Isengard? Frodo and
> > Sam stumbling towards the black gate, but hiding under a jacket in a sand
> > pit to avoid detection? An army of Elves at Helm's deep? WHY??? It
> > wouldn't have taken any longer to stick closer to Tolkien's story. In fact
> > they added quite of horrible dialogue and took the story in totally
> > illogical directions. Very, very disappointing.
>
> Well, that's one negative vote against millions of positive. Not to say
> that you're wrong, but let's remember that the film is an adaptation, and
> Almighty Tolkien penned more than his fair share of terrible dialogue, and
> he was frankly far to verbose in his handling of character development, and
> he suffers from the same penchant for goofy names that seems to afflict
> George Lucas.
My son loved it and it got him to read "The Hobbit", so it can't be all bad!
Lucas wins the goofy-names contest hands down. Tolkien, on the other hand,
wins the tedious and confusing names contest: Melkor, also known as Morgoth,
and named "The Black Enemy" by the obnoxious effete people of
Little-Dropping-on-the-Turf, but really known by his faithful Maiarian
Companion, Sauron (also known as Annatar, Lord of Gifts, the Necromancer,
The Other Black Enemy...oops, sorry), as Mister Whiney-Pants, except on
alternate overliths, when he was known as...
The Two Towers was the weakest of the three books, in any case. The hobbits
are off-stage too often and when they are missing, Tolkien lapses into his
ancient-myth-style rather than his friendly-talking-to-the-reader style with
lots of "Lo!"'s and pompous pontifications (No one shall touch my sword,
Anduril, also known as Narsil, for it blessed of Elendil, also known
as...oops, sorry, there I go again). Sometimes I want to cut in the scene
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and just shout, "Get on with it!"
> Yes, I love Tolkien's writing, but I don't revere his vision as paramount.
> For instance, Jackson's simultaneous portrayal of the three plotlines plays
> much more effectively than Tolkien's sequential telling.
I found the opposite. Jackson had a terrible time intercutting the stories,
in part because he moved Helm's Deep from the middle of the book to the end
of the movie and ended up dragging it out over half the movie to accomplish
that. I agree that he needed to weave the stories together rather than tell
them one at a time, but I don't think he did a good job of it. Further, he
made it worse than it needed to be by splitting the Fellowship even further
with a completely unnecessary plot variation. Cut out the whole invented
warg/Aragorn-on-his-own sequence and he would have had a better movie.
> You're certainly entitled to be disappointed, but if you demand that the
> director adhere religiously to the original, flaws and all, then you're
> always going to be disappointed.
I was not dissappointed with the first movie because the changes Jackson
made usually made sense, or at least they did if I approached it from the
Joe Average viewpoint and not the I Know the Story Backwards and Forwards
standpoint. Some I understood, such as a sequence that is Tolkien but does
not appear in the actual story (the Appendix tale of Arwen and Aragorn) or
the simplification of the Orc factions that fought over Merry and Pippen,
but Jackson simply was not as deft in changing the story to make it more
comprehensible as he was in the first film.
That being said, I still enjoyed the movie for what it was. Gollum was
actually quite good, the battle of Helm's Deep was truly spectacular,
Jackson is able to truly find the vistas of Middle-earth in New Zealand, and
one feels the weight of the Ring bearing down on Frodo.
But let me re-edit the movie and I could make it better. :-)
-->Bruce<--
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LoTR: The Two "Towels"
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| (...) Well, that's one negative vote against millions of positive. Not to say that you're wrong, but let's remember that the film is an adaptation, and Almighty Tolkien penned more than his fair share of terrible dialogue, and he was frankly far to (...) (22 years ago, 10-Jan-03, to lugnet.castle)
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