Well, those appendixes are there for those of us who haven’t had enough yet after finishing LOTR… I don’t know that the pun’s intentional, but it is still interesting to think that Elrond and Arwen might have been talking about different things.
I for one would have loved to see the song of Aragorn’s mother written on her tomb in the extended version of FOTR.
I wrote a post sticking up for the Elrond/Arwen sequence, but the hamsters seemed to have liked it so much they feasted on it.
The only real criticism of the movie I’ve seen that I agree with is the fact that Grima was a little too over the top. I think it would have been more interesting to have Gima look like all of the other members of the Rohan court instead of telegraphing the fact that he’s evil by dressing him in black and making him all pale and sniveling. But hey, that’s a minor quibble, really. Taken as a whole the movie gets four stars on the VIBROMETER ™!
cisco - Fill ins for certain questions that you asked:
In the book, Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli meet up with Merry and Pippin at Orthanc: M & P are sharing a pipe on the outer walls (IIRC), loaded with Shire Pipe weed that they found floating in the deluge.
The Oliphants, Southrons, etc are not at Helm’s Deep. Helm’s Deep is exclusively a battle between the Orcs of Saruman and the Rohirim/Ents (+ assorted Fellowship members). Saruman does not have the ties to the eastern cultures and vast assorted evil things (Trolls, etc) that Sauron has - Saruman is just a kid in the playground with a brand new toy (the Uruk-Hai). For reference (I don’t know how it’s treated in the movie) Sam makes mention of wanting to see the fantastical oliphant beasts and is speechless when he actually sees one.
Minas Morgul is not Barad-Dur. Morgul is the tower that overlooks the top of the pass at Cirith Ungol. Barad-dur located in the middle of Mordor, and in the book there is no mentioned action that takes place there, other than Sauron doing his best Visine ad impression.
As far as speculating about RTK - I hope they don’t split the Battle of the Pellenor Fields and Morranon - there’s just such a different character to the two battles. One is fending of the horde, and the climax is the slaying of the Witch-King. Then the armies take the battle to the enemy which turns into a much more dire fight. As I remember, we are left hanging on a cliff with the good armies in two back-to-back circles and a huge press of orcs, trolls, nazgul, battle-smurfs, etc about to crush them as Tolkien cuts back to Frodo and Sam. The “ring toss” naturally occurs just in time to save the folks in front of the gates.
And thank you, minty for the suggestion of using the Arwen/Elrond scene as a bathroom break. I hate, hate, hate the sappy-Hollywood-cookie-cutter-romance BS that they’ve built around those characters. And the insult of Arwen, who remembers Morgoth (IIRC) being treated like a 16 year old would be a bit beyond my tolerance. Perhaps I’ll edit the whole thing out of the DVD when I get it.
[sub] Heh - that would be kinda cool - do some creative editing - put things in the right order - cut the non-canonical crap out - methinks a project for me for 2005[/sub]
Funny how you can check your post 15 times for correct grammar, content, etc. and find no problems. Then ye’ hit the submit button and whango! Nothing /but/ errors.
Another thought:
Taking the subtlety out of Grima’s character is par-for-the-course with Jackson & Co: leave nothing to the imagination. I’d not be surprised if Grima sports a top-hat and long, pointy moustache to twirl deviously. My biggest gripe with FOTR is still the way Jackson cheesed up the “Do Not Tempt Me” scenes with Gandalf and Galadriel. He’s clearly never heard of the literary principles of . . . metaphor is it? That “Her smile was like a sunrise” and “Her smile was a sunrise” are literarily equivalent. You don’t actually have to show sunshine coming out of her mouth in the latter to be true to intent of the author.
And the Men of Dunlend in the book. They’re conveniently left out of the movie, I’d guess so our heroes can conveniently slaughter everything in sight without compunction. It is disturbing that the description of Saruman’s forces attacking is characterized as being genocide against Men, when in the book there were also Men on Saruman’s side.
Nope, the Tower of Cirith Ungol is at the top of the pass. Minas Morgul is the dead city formerly known as Minas Ithil, renamed after it was conquered by the Nazgul. It’s located at the bottom of the pass.
And one last thing: still no Narsil Re-forged. I can only think of one way to get it into Aragorn’s hands now, and that’s to have You-Know-Who break away from her father and hand it to him personally, somewhere on the road to Gondor, in ROTK.
My I didn’t mind the added in fake death really so terribly much, but WHY did it have to be because he fall off a cliff?
it just makes it seem like there is a “falling off a cliff is nonfatal and the person will come back” rule.
Thank you for the correction, yes they are called ents. On my second viewing I can say that my favorite part was when Legolas mounted the horse. He is such a hottie.
The ent said that there was no curse in elvish or entish something when he was looking at Isengard about how the trees were removed. So was entish written down or documented like elvish has been?
It was a much darker film than the first one, and obviously so. I thought the intro to the film was excellent, taking us back to the balrog fight but then following Gandalf down as he fights with the Balrog. Gollum/Smeagol was excellent, you genunily felt for him at some moments, particularly the excellent solilioquy between himself, which was done brilliantly. The section in the dead marshes was brilliant, mainly the bit with the Ringwraith flying overhead which was just as i imangined.
I’m still undecided as to Gimilis comic relief. I think he loses some of his honour which you get from the books, but then he becomes more affectionate because of his humour, and as many people have said his friendship with Legolas is well done.
Aragons fake death was odd, and did led to the not so thrilling Elrond/Arwen scene, but you’ve got to keep an open mind and its serves a good purpose of slowing it down so the faster scenes are even more dramatic. Legolas picking off Warg riders was fantastic, as was his arrow shot through the ladder wire. The Ents were good and although there part was seriously played down they were in it enough to have characters and become less of a novelty and more of a serious character. The destruction of Isengard was epic, the flood was almost exactly as i pictured it, as was the scene with Gollum catching fish, its as if PJ read my mind for that one!
T
he Helms Deep battle was great, soo many good sections from that. Riding out down the slope sending Orcs flying, Gimli and Aragon obliterating the Orcs at the door was great. Gandalfs entry was slighlty overdone, the slope was too step, but it didn’t detract anything from the film.
As for the change of story with Faramir and Gondor i still think it worked. Although it was surprising it certainly kept the action flowing and didn’t harm the storyline. Although someone said that so far we’ve only seen Boromir and Faramir not giving Gondor a good reputation, don’t forget Aragon is the king of Gondor and i dont think he could be doing much more for Gondors PA!
The speed of some sections was immense particularly with the three opening stories leading off from one another.
In RoTK they must have Shealob, Aragon v Sauron in the palantirs(sp?), Gandalf and Saurman, Gandalf and the Witch King at the gates of Gondor, the Pelannor Fields battle and the Grey Havens(some sort of not 100% happy ending, because its both more realistic and true to the books) - the image of Aragon as grey and dead was really shocking and a good reminder of his mortality because no matter how heroic he is, he will still die.
All in all i think it was a quite incredible movie, to capture so much of such an amazing book and add in new bits, and still make them work is just amazing. You’ve got to remember he’s made a movie, which although has criticisms(what doesn’t) has managed to captivate much of the book and appeal to so many people. Credit where credit is due, it is an excellent film, and 2/3 of what should be an epic trilogy.
Sorry for the minor hijack, but after the (Great!) movie, my fiance (who hasn’t read the books) asked me a question that I (who has) couldn’t figure out. So I figured I’d ask it here: Why can’t Arwen “catch the next boat” to Valinor after Aragorn’s death? Why would the elves rather leave her behind to die alone than send a rowboat back for her? I know that Valinor’s all mystical and such, and that you have to sail straight instead of with the curve of the (Middle)Earth, but can’t you come back? Or do they choose not to?
Anyway, on to the movie:
I loved it, although it had some big flaws. The Aragorn rebirth thing was so silly and unnecessary. Up till now, I was OK with almost all the the changes from the book. They all seemed to have a good reason, but this one seemed arbitrary, and took time that could’ve been used to flesh out Merry and Pippin’s story, which was very abbreviated. Or to give Faramir a bit of time. That was the other major beef I had. I didn’t like the changes to Faramir at all. The whole point of his character is that he’s NOT Boromir. Also, as others said, Gimli was too Jarjarized, but it was at least funny, and not painful.
I did love Gollum, and the Ents, and pretty much all of Rohan. Wormtongue was over the top evil, but I did like the exorcism scene. I loved the opening Balrog fight, with the words echoing out of the mountain. And one of my favorite parts was there: the three hunters running non-stop for days in pursuit of the orcs.
The men of dunlend were in the movie, but not at Helm’s Deep. there was a scene early on with Saruman riling them up for the first attack on Rohan. “they have taken your land… etc.” then they attack Rohan. What happened to them after that? I don’t know. pillaging, I guess?
As for how this gibes with the genocide angle, I guess you could say that either he is just using them and will kill them later, or that letting the savages destroy the “civilized” people is good enough for him as far as “destroying the world of men” goes.
Oh, and by the way, I thought the wargs animation was the worst so far in the trilogy. But I can accept it if it was because they were spending so much time on Smeagol and Treebeard.
I think the fake Aragorn death was included in order to highlight the romantic triangle thing. In other words, it gave Eowyn an excuse to get all moony when he miraculously returned. Of all the changes Jackson has made to the story, this is the one I question most; I can certainly see the dramatic necessity of it, but I think there are a number of ways it could have been done better.
The most significant issue I want to raise about the film is its function as the middle of a trilogy. A lot of the things we’re nitpicking about it – the change to Faramir being perhaps the best example – may require the context of the third film to fully understand. The middle of a trilogy, by its very nature, has no beginning, and no end. We enter running, and we leave hanging. Dramatically, and narratively, The Two Towers functions as a bridge between, well, two towers.
Although I can complain about how certain aspects of the film work or don’t work, I’m going to reserve final judgment until the release of the final chapter. That will answer a lot of questions about how the changes are intended to work over the arc of the whole story.
No curse in elvish, or entish, or the tongues of men…
Don’t have the Appendix with me, but IIRC Tolkien didn’t take entish to the same detail that he took elvish (Sindarin and Quenya). But Treebeard speaks a great deal of it in the book, so you get a feel for it: buarum = orc; Laurelindorinan = Lothlorien. It’s a long, slow, language that takes a long time to say anything.
(I always felt that when Treebeard talks about language, and the relationship between words and the things they describe…it’s really Tolkien talking about his real job as a philologist.)
Being halfelven, she’s allowed to choose to be mortal and share in the doom of Men. Like Beren and Luthien, in the Silmarillion. Or Elrond, and his brother, Elros- Elros being Aragorn’s umpity-grandfather, long dead.
Elrond’s little snits about Men get tedious when you consider his paternal grandfather was human (Tuor), as well as his maternal great-grandfather (Beren). I wish Jackson hadn’t put those into the movie.
OK, but why isn’t she allowed to have her cake and eat it too? Can’t she stay just a little longer (what’s 100 years among elves?) and then leave? She doesn’t want the doom of men, she just wants Aragorn. Or is it all a euphemistic way of saying that she commits suicide because she can’t bear to live without him?
Luthien was half-elven too? I thought she was fully elf. (disclaimer: I did make it through the Silmarillion, but barely.)
So where did all these half-elfs come from in the first place if elf-human mating is so taboo?
Hmm… I knew Aragorn had elvish blood and that Elrond was halfelven, but I didn’t know they were related. So Aragorn is Arwen’s umptieth cousin umpty-1 times removed? eww…that’s royalty for you. 
Arwen mentions making “the choice of Luthien” - this leads me to believe that she was either hoping to go to where Men end up or willed herself to die, trusting judgement would be made to let her follow Aragorn. Elves only Love once in their life and Aragorn was her Love. So, when he died, she joined him dying, though I don’t know if she went to Mandos’s hall or where Men go.
Luthien, being a half Maiar and Elf cross, got special dispensation from on high due to her actions and heroism against Morgoth. She was let go to where Beren went…to where men go.
It’s not taboo, it’s just that it never ends happily. It may be something to do with Immortals loving Mortals. One of them is going to leave the other behind. Not exactly a pleasant circumstance.
Not as close as some.
Whoops! Thanks for the correction - yes, that makes more sense. Either way, Minas Morgul is not Barad-Dur.
Haha! Me too, except I was thinking “Isn’t that Billy Bibbit, from Cuckoo’s Nest?”
Nuh-nuh-nuh-NO! Guh-guh-gan-duh-dalf can’t come in huh-huh-here with that stuh-stuh-staff!
Hey Squeegee,
Just one matter I have to strongly disagree with here. Keeping the the Grey Havens is vital in my ‘dream’ of the RotK movie. I’ve managed to get ‘OK’ with losing the scouring of the shire but I think the emotional ‘wallop’ the movie will/would get from Frodo not being able to endure the pain of what has passed is a must keep.
I really really REALLY hate the idea of any stupid ‘happy ending’. I want the audience to be impressed and inspired (and sad even) and walk out thinking about the consequences of power and the individual’s dealing with choice in the face of evil.
I couldn’t bear the idea of a ‘Happy Ending’ Lord of the Rings…that would be a crime.
I think that if they play up that Frodo will never return to the Shire he loves, that he has to leave from Gondor and never return to the land he was fighting for, and Sam DOES return to the Shire at the very end with SOME sort of variation on “Well, I’m back,” and hinted at expectation that he too was ringbeaer and may one day come back, then they can pull it off winningly. That’s what I’m hoping for anyway. There IS real pathos to capture there, that echos the pathos of the book, without the scouring.