{"id":3315,"date":"2002-12-23T10:50:58","date_gmt":"2002-12-23T15:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3315"},"modified":"2014-06-13T17:18:32","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:18:32","slug":"two_towers_revi-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/12\/23\/two_towers_revi-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Two Towers<\/i> review redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I stand by everything I said in my first review<\/a> of The Two Towers<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n

More particularly (and, with SPOILERS<\/b><\/i>):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. Faboo movie. A must-see. Incredible effects, stirring story, heroic characters, great stuff.<\/p>\n

Yup. Absotively.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if I’m more scared of the purely CG stuff, or of the blending of CG and RL stuff where the seams simply do not show. The battle with the orcs and wargs is a case where it doesn’t even occur to you to question what you’re seeing until long after.<\/p>\n

If the story doesn’t get your juices flowing, you need to check your juice level.<\/p>\n

2. Suffers a bit from being the middle bridge episode. Minimal exposition, lots of action, potential audience confusion. Overall not quite as good as FotR, but we\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdre just talking degress of excellence here.<\/p>\n

Yup. If you haven’t seen the first one, or haven’t read the stories, you will get lost. You’ll enjoy being lost, I think, but you’ll still be lost. We hit the ground running, and never slow down, with only an odd interlude of exposition here and there (Galadriel to Elrond, Frodo reminiscing, and, of course, some keen Wizard-on-Balrog action).<\/p>\n

The action, overall, seems busier than in the first flick. Part of that is the parting of the Fellowship, ending up with three distinct groups of protagonists, plus some bits thrown in from Edoras and Rivendell. The timing and spacing of events is dicy, too, both because of the complexity of the original story, and the changes wrought in it by Jackson.<\/p>\n

3. Peter Jackson\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds taken some liberties with the original story, a bit more than in the first flick. Most of these are good, some are a bit mysterious.<\/p>\n

True. One distinct change, which fit in well but could have easily not been included, was the dispatch of elvish archers to Helm’s Deep. One wonders, though, given the distances and time limits involved, how the hell they got there. My impression was that they were sent by Elrond, since Galadriel kvetches at him about it. On the other hand, it would have been a lot quicker to dispatch them from Lorien. (And if Elrond sent them from Rivendell, how was it Arwen didn’t find out?) Odd.<\/p>\n

The change certainly added to the “We must all hang together or else we shall surely hang separately” theme to the story, and it fleshes out the elvish role in things further, but it was still an odd addition.<\/p>\n

The further expansion of the Aragorn\/Arwen story works well, adding a bit of personality to Our Hero. Throw in a bit of a triangle via Eowyn, and it’s all good.<\/p>\n

Another change is Faramir dragging Frodo and Sam off all the way to Osgiliath. I suppose this was to make the whole situation a bit more threatening, draw some parallels between how Boromir and his brother were, and give us an excuse to see one of the flying Nazgul up close and personal (with the result that we see their scream is not all that potent and their mounts are real wusses). The change here didn’t do that much for me.<\/p>\n

The changes to the Ent storyline were probably fine for the movie. Less magical, but more vivid, if that makes sense. Seeing the Ents tear up Isengard was fun; not having the Huorns there to catch the refugees from the Helm’s Deep battle was a shame, but probably simplified things.<\/p>\n

Aragorn taking a tumble into the river kind of draws us back into the romance thing, but it all feels a bit too clumsy. I think that could have been done without adding further complexity to an already-complex plot, especially since he goes from bedraggled-and-near-dead on his (?) horse to being bold and ready for battle in way too short a time.<\/p>\n

4. The movie is preceded by an overly-long set of commercials and trailers, most of which were so-so at best.<\/p>\n

Agreed. T3 <\/i>looks cheesy.<\/p>\n

5. Gollum is a tour-de-force, and possibly the most interesting character in the film.<\/p>\n

Gollum was incredible, even if there were echos (in voice and occasional demeanor) with Dobbie from Harry Potter <\/i>— I kept expecting to see Gollum start hitting his head on a rock, shouting, “Master Frodo must not go to Mordor! Master Frodo must not go to Mordor!” …<\/p>\n

No, but seriously, aside from some lighting and color tone bits where he didn’t quite blend in alongside the live actors, the rendering of Gollum was faboo, and they did a fine job integrating him in with the action (cavorting down the stream bed, and wrestling with Frodo and Sam in particular). And given that his character goes through the most internal emotional change, and tends to emote outwards, it’s not surprising that he comes across as a bit more vibrant and engaging than, say, ever-loyal Sam, ever-tormented Frodo, or ever-noble Aragorn.<\/p>\n

In a similar CG vein, the shrinking of the hobbit actors continues to work very well, with only an occasional digital glitch (sitting behind the waterfall comes to mind).<\/p>\n

6. When\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds the next one coming out? I can\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt wait!<\/p>\n

Indeed. It will be a sad Christmas 2005 with no LotR <\/i>movie to wait for (2003 will be the last flick, The Return of the King<\/i>, and I’m guessing that for 2004 we’ll have the collected 40 DVD set released in late November).<\/p>\n

Now for some further, random thoughts …<\/p>\n