Some arrogant ass got paid for this Two Towers review?!?

The BBQ Pit
1

Headline at msnbc.com calling it “Epic Kitsch”.

Lessee…(from Cambridge Dictionary of American English)

kitsch, noun
showy art or cheap, decorative objects that are attractive to people who are thought to lack any appreciation of style or beauty

Wow. So, you art-house snot, you’ve not only disdained a hugely successful movie, widely praised for being faithful to its source material, but by describing it as kitsch you have deliberately insulted the tastes of everyone who actually liked the movie(s). Congratulations on taking arrogance to phenomenal new heights.

But let’s go through this whole pile-of-dog-shit review in toto:
Paragraph one: In which our illustrious author bemoans the fact that he’s outside the main stream. Well, ass-breath, considering the contempt in which you blatantly hold the mainstream, your plea for sympathy can be crammed sideways into whichever orifice would hurt most.

Paragraph two: You compare it to the recent Harry Potter movie, a laughably ignorant mistake which you made with the first LOTR movie. What, nobody pointed out that Harry Potter is for CHILDREN? Most adults can handle a movie that is not as “colorful, witty, inventive and humanly enjoyable” because it just might be more, oh what’s the word, DRAMATIC?

Paragraph three:

In this one paragraph you call the film gray, ashen, morbid, leaden, and like stone. Damn, maybe “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” would be more to your liking. Considering, by all accounts, that the BOOK is dark and foreboding (no, I’ve not read it yet), Jackson can’t be forgiven for not cartooning it up?!? FCOL, have you SEEN many trilogies? In MOST stories that happen across three films the middle one is darker, because that’s where the DRAMA really gets going. IIRC, the essence of drama is conflict, and you can’t expect the conflicts to be resolved before the final act, right? Not even Shakespeare did that. (Ironic, considering that you describe the film/series as “meant for people who are scared of Shakespeare”.)

I’m going to leave off parsing individual paragraphs and get to the complaints of yours that seem the most ridiculous and ignorant.
(all of these are quotes from the article)
[ul][li]“Sam calls him Mister Frodo, as if this might make destiny’s child seem more adult and imposing.”[/li][li]"…like the new Potter film, a skinny little creep, all skin and bones and dirty wisp of loincloth. He attaches to Frodo, and either snarls viciously or spouts cute, schizoid gibberish…"[/li][li]"…Helm’s Deep, where hordes of vile scum-balls attack the good guys and women cringe inside (that’s the main female function here)…"[/li][li]…dialogue shakes a few spears (“You are banished forthwith. … “), drools poetry (“like a morning of pale spring, still clinging to winter’s chill”), knocks off Churchillian rhetoric (“The battle for Helm’s Deep is over — the battle for Middle Earth is about to begin!”).[/ul]Near as I can tell, THIS IS ALL TAKEN FROM THE BOOK!!![/li]As for THAT concept, the notion that there is an original work that this film is taken from, consider this, the pièce de résistance of the review:

You’re just assuming this?!? With all your smarmy tossing out of references to Great Works of Capital-A-Art (“The ancestral spirit is Altdorfer’s great painting of 1529, ‘The Battle of Issus.’”…“Imagine Tennyson’s Arthurian saga bloated to a theme park.”) you don’t know that Tolkien can be considered to have single-handedly CREATED the modern fantasy genre?!? How in the world can one person, who’s supposed to be paid for writing reviews of current films, be so ignorant and so arrogant at the same time?

Here’s a thought for you self-annointed arbiters of Films Not Worth Their Celluloid, who denigrate popular movies ultimately just because they are popular: why don’t you pull your head out of your ass and LEARN a little bit about the work you’re reviewing before crapping out another self-aggrandizing treatise?

[sub]Note to Dopers: As I’ve said, I’ve not read the books, nor have I seen The Two Towers yet, so please take care with your spoilers.[/sub]

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All I know is I loved the books, hated the first movie, will see the next two movies because I’m a sucker that way.

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Great rant, Tygr!

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To be fair, lines like “the battle for Helm’s Deep is over, the battle for Middle Earth has just begun” are not from the book, and are badly overacted.

However, to see crap like:

is ridiculous. He manages to admit he’s never read the books, and yet declares the movie to be nothing like them all in the same paragraph!

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{To be fair, lines like “the battle for Helm’s Deep is over, the battle for Middle Earth has just begun” are not from the book, and are badly overacted.-MUNCH}

Also to be fair, the book is not a screenplay and the movie must consist of more dialog than what is read in the book. They have to take some liberties.

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Of course, swingchick. But liberties were taken in the “Shadows of the Past” scene in FOTR, and improved on the original. Liberties were taken in the “Treason of Isengard” scenes in FOTR, and were inferior to the original. The same can be said for nearly every scene - the results being either greater than, lesser than or equal to the original.

“Fellowship”, in my opinion, comes out way in the lead in that equation, while TTT breaks about even. The deciding factor? Lines like “the battle for Middle Earth has just begun.” TTT is a better movie in scale and sight, but Fellowship is better in terms of the storytelling. I think it’s completely fair to criticize TTT for weaker dialogue.

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I checked out RottenTomatoes.com earlier to see what the reviews were- 77 “fresh”, 1 “rotten”. From the 1 rotten-

“Why did Bilbo Baggins give The Ring to Frodo knowing the danger it brings?”

Did you watch the first movie?

“Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli fight in the battle of Helm’s Deep alongside Rohan warriors against Saruman’s formidable army of Uruk-hai, Orcs, and Easterlings.” and then she says “Aragorn, believed to be killed in the battle, miraculously returns.”

She gives away a freaking spoiler in the review! Gah!

And at the beginning of the review, there’s this note from RottenTomatoes.com-
“ADVISORY: Victoria Alexander is not an LOTR historian.”

No shit.

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Memo to film critics:

Sometimes, disliking a film means you have descriminating taste.

Sometimes, disliking a film means you’re flat out wrong.

Learn to tell the difference.

Jerk.

9

Well, I guess it is the Pit and all.

But fuck! I live near a dairy . . . I might be able to come up with enough cheese for all that whine.

It’s just a review. That’s all it is. It happens to be a negative review of a movie you like. Boo-hoo. Suck it up.

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but…but…it’s more than just a movie! It’s a “cultural event.”
In fact, some joker called me up at 10:30 last night and berated me for not being in line to see the midnight showing!

And let’s face it. Some people should not be made to review certain movies. For instance, I shouldn’t be allowed to review anything with Adam Sandler…

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This is where I lost you. First off, widely sucessful doesn’t mean ‘good’, and secondly, while I liked the movie, it was so grossly unfaithful to the book that I found myself literally throwing my arms into the air and sighing several times while in the theatre.
I liked this, and I liked the Fellowship, and all signs point to me liking the Return of the King, but this one made me realize what a fucktardilating asscap Peter Jackson is and I most certainly don’t like him anymore.

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I quite like your formatting, and your argument seems to flow nicely from one topic to another. May I point out though that there is an e-mail address attributed to the review in question? I feel the author should get some appropriate “constructive criticism”. :wink:

(And I do feel it’s warranted; most of his complaining revolves around the movie being some sort of epic mythological fight between good & evil when, um, it’s supposed to be!, yeah.)

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Oh, boo-fuckin-hoo. You were awake.

14

Boggle

Not to star a fight or anything, but I was so impressed with the faithfulness to the book that I nearly wet myself. True, there were inconsistencies and even a couple of cheesy bits, but on the whole, Tolkien’s spirit was preserved with remarkable clarity.

It was a movie that was obviously crafted out of love for the source material, even when it wouldn’t be friendly to a casual moviegoer to be that faithful.

I’m sure there were many a person that watched FotR who had no connection with the book that were sitting there fuming, “THREE HOURS?!” Yet, by and large, the Tolkien-heads were sitting there, afraid to go pee lest they miss the elven cloaks, the Seat of Amon Hen, the Argonnath, or any of the hundred other nuggets thrown in there that showed me (YMMV, obviously) that Jackson is in love with the books, and was desperate to make the movie faithful in every way that true Tolkien fans had been dreaming of for years and years.

I’ll never forget a little factoid I read on the LotR website before FotR came out. It said that on the set of the Chamber of Mazarbul, a visitor bent downa and picked up a tiny scrap of paper, far too small to be resolved by the camera, that was covered in Dwarven script. They didn’t have to do it, but they decided that the atmosphere of the scene required that much detail…that much depth, just to get it right.

Remarkable regard for the source material.

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How regarding of the source material is it to fake Aragorn’s death? Nothing even close to that happened in the book.

How regarding of the source material is it to have elves show up at Helm’s Deep? The Evles didn’t even care for the Rohhirim.

How regarding of the source material was it for Haldir to die? He wasn’t even supposed to be there!

How regarding of the source material was it not only for Frodo and Sam to be taken against their will to Osgiliath, but to hold the ring up to a wraith?!! That was a huge “bad” on Jackson’s part.

How regarding of the source material was it to waste so much time on Arwen (which was done to get couples and girls in the theatre no less)?

This list just goes on and on and on. Don’t take this the wrong way, because I’ve already stated that I loved the movie, but it is in no way, shape or form a “faithful” adaptation.

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Well, to address the OP: There’s a certain kind of movie review that I have always called the “Professional Smartass” review. You probably know the kind of thing I mean–it’s written as though the reviewer, who obviously didn’t like the movie, has decided that since he can’t think of anything good to say about it, he’ll just go ahead and try to be “savagely witty”. Professional Smartass reviews are always negative reviews, because you can’t be “savagely witty” about a movie you like.

This is a classic Professional Smartass review. Bottom line–he didn’t like it.

BFD.

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Dunno. I haven’t seen TTT yet. I was just talking about FotR.

However, it’s all about theme. I was satisfied in the first movie that most of the changes were made with good reason, and were done (mostly) effectively without fundamentally changing the story.

I’ll have to wait and see on TTT.

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Uhhhg, you made me type all that in defense of defense for a movie you haven’t even seen?

Go see the movie and then come back and tell me how faithful it is.

This is a good movie but it’s not The Two Towers, it’s Peter Jackson’s penis.

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Actually, the list doesn’t go “on and on.” Include the battle with the wolf-riders and the Entmoot, you’ve named just about every major inconsistency in the plot.

And you know what? It’s not that bad. How does it detract from the spirit of the book to have these things happen? Tolkein had a good couple hundred pages to write out character development and background. Motivations could be established with a just a couple paragraphs. Jackson didn’t have that liberty; he had to forge motivations for the characters out of the visual material, and in a lot of cases that meant tweaking the storyline.

So what if the elves showed up at Helm’s Deep? It doesn’t change the course of the battle or anything, and it helps to show the elves’ eventual decision to help men fight Sauron. (I may be wrong, but don’t the elves fight in “Return of the King”?)

So what if Aragorn was thought to be dead? It didn’t change the overall story arc, and helped to flesh out the Arwen backstory a bit. It might be argued that the Arwen backstory itself has no place in the book, but face it: they needed to have a bit more of a female presence and they did a pretty good job of weaving that story into the movies almost flawlessly.

So what if Frodo and Sam go to Osgiliath? I admit, that descrepancy kinda pissed me off too, but I got over it. Personally, I think that they used it to bring up a neat comparason between Faramir and Boromir, and their reactions to the ring. In the end, guess what: it didn’t change the storyline.

Think of it this way: if you hadn’t read the books, would you still ome out of these movies with a basic idea of the emotions, feelings and points that Tolkein was trying to get across? Yes? Then what’s the problem? None of the changes detracted from the overall storyline; it’s not like they made Wormtounge into a robotic tap-dancing monkey or something. They all helped to show some insight into the characters’ histories and motivations, and provided layers to characters who were given layers in the books simply through Tolkein’s writing. Jackson had to undergo the task of balancing three stories in one movie, and developing characters all at the same time. And the fact that he did so and managed to stay true to the spirit that Tokein had intended speaks volumes about his ability as a director, IMHO.

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Ok, add those. Now you’ve got 9 admittedly major inconsistencies in the plot. Add Eomer’s exile and you’ve got 10.

I just think that it was possible to be as faithful as to not include ten major plot inconsistencies. Did it ruin the movie? Of course not, and I’ll say it for the third time: I loved this movie. But would the movie have been a thousand times better without them? My opinion is that it would have.

With all the stuff from the book that was left out I can’t help but think that it could’ve been included had Jackson not been trying to cram his own stuff in.