Wow, what a lot of traffic in my thread. You guys make me blush with all that “secret crush” stuff...
But Civilian made some very good points. I am just going to reply to shortly to some of them now, because I still have my next batch of reasons to post.
Ents. I did not say Ents are unnecessary. Yes, they are vital to the story, in fact I was a little disappointed that in the theatrical version in was not Hurons who crushed the orcs. You cannot do without Ents. I just said that I was disappointed with the execution of the theme. The voiceover by John Rhys-Davies was booooring, and I did not like the look of Ents, too much like bad book illustration. And the dialogue and plot! Treebeard says that Merry and Pippin are “little orcs”. Now, how dumb is that? M&P, a pair of really nice-looking blokes cannot be taken as orcs. Next, T. says, that he will take them to the White Wizard, and he’ll know whether they are orcs or not, and it is implied, that they met this WW guy. And then Ents go on the Moot, and during the first day they established that M&P ARE NOT orcs. Gee! Aren’t they brainy! Tolkien described them as “slow”, but as opposite to “hasty” not “mentally slow”.
Bitching Theoden. I admit I cannot understand your comment on that. Why do we need Theoden established as a villain?
Women and Children. I agree with you about women and children in keeps. I just found it curious, that they needed such a long way to get there. Don’t you think they were vulnerable as hell going like that? And they did get attacked. And it just struck me that in both cases they departed from the books. Tolkien has women in children hidden in the mountains, away from the fighting. Should the keep fall, they can seek refuge somewhere else, just flee. I do not find it that implausible. And in siege techniques, were it was possible they tried to not to have too many people inside, in case the siege was prolonged and they run out of food.
And please, remind me, where Tolkien described a siege of Osgiliath? I was going to devote a point to that, because according to my knowledge Osgiliath was very much absent from the books, it was just a reference to a place. I will wait with my point then, maybe I am mistaken there.
Eovyn sparring with Aragorn. Honestly, JYAMG you didn’t like it? I am surprised. It is soooo COOOL
. Anyway, you are right, Eowyn is naive and inexperienced to talk like that. Well, she does do some stupid things later on, like disobeying her uncle and going to war. Of course, she can be reasonable and say “ well, Aragorn is not the last guy in the world and I am pretty sure to get someone sooner or later, no need to risk my young life. I will just sit here and see what happens.” Quite reasonable, isn’t it? But she would not be Eowyn any more. The dialogue is not the first rate, again. They took this dialogue out of the books (mixing register again, but never mind) to show that she is desperate to get out of her cage at all cost, to show to the world that she is “a shield-maiden, not a dry-nurse”. And to show some good sparring. I like it.
And, wow, JYAMG, doesn’t it show that you are a teacher
. I am doing my second degree in English right now, and there are some teachers in my class... Spanking, indeed. Quite a topic during the breaks between the lectures
Final comment. You see, I decided to join this forum, because I haven’t seen too many people telling other people to f%^&* themselves. Please, let’s keep up the high standards and please do not descend to the level of some other internet discussions...
Anyway, here are more reasons for you to dissect...
23. A Curious Propensity of Various Members of the Cast to Fall off Great Heights
Did anyone, even for a split second, believe that Aragorn was going to die after the fight with the Wargs? Especially, when we all knew, even those that had not read the books, that he was the heir to the throne of Gondor, and the next film is called The Return of the King? What sort of suspense is that? For the sake of the fall itself? The writers seem to love it. We have Gandalf, then Sam falling down the hill, then Aragorn, and in ROTK we have even more swan-dives (Denethor, Gollum). I half expected somebody would jump down the cliff over the Rohirrim’s camp in ROTK.
24. Arwen Disguised as a Horse (very cleverly at that!)
The horse Brego was perhaps the greatest mystery of the Theatrical Version to me. Where the heck did this horse come from? As it was followed by a shot of Arwen kissing Aragorn and hissing something about the Grace of Valar (whatever that is), I assumed that this horse was sent by Arwen especially with the purpose of finding Aragorn and getting him out of this plight. Well, in the books she did send him a horse, albeit of a different name (Roheryn, as I recall), but I accepted the change of the name and for a while I was happy with that. Of course, the explanation was included in the EE, and as it happened I couldn’t have been more mistaken about it. Why the director included this horse, not providing the explanation of its presence in the first place? To puzzle poor people in the streets like me? Or because they did not bother coming up with a good plot without holes the size of Mount Doom?
25. Arwen Continued.
You could almost feel how desperate the writers were to introduce some more Liv Tyler to TTT after they scrapped the idea of her travelling to Helm’s Deep. I quite understand them – if you hire a beautiful, accomplished and famous actress like Liv Tyler, you want to use her. The whole story does not work, alas. One minute she swears eternal love to Aragorn, the next minute her father talks her into leaving. And she actually leaves! What a suspense for all those who read a book! What dramatic tension! I knew immediately that some deux ex machina solution would be used to turn her back. No plausible explanation could have been possibly devised.
26. Showing the Ending in the Middle of the film
I can’t really understand why we get to see Arwen’s fate in a quite moving and beautiful scene of Aragorn’s death right in the middle of the film. Wouldn’t that be a better ending of the whole trilogy rather than the overwhelming felicity prevailing in the ending of the third part? Compare the ending in the books – not quite so self-complacent as in the film. After Sauron is defeated and the king established, there is still blood to be spilt and plights to be suffered. Since we did not get Scouring of the Shire, I think it would be more in the spirit of Tolkien to show that you DO have to pay the price for everything and things are never what they used to be.
27. Superfluous Voiceover
The voiceover by Cate Blanchett in the middle of TTT was unnecessary. Hey, we knew that Frodo suffers, we knew that Elrond sent the Fellowship of the Ring and did not deigned to go with them, we knew that war is starting. Galadriel did not really have anything important to communicate to the audience. It was done because it worked in the first part. And to whom is she talking, anyway? Elrond? Does it mean that they communicate? How? Oops, I forgot – magic again.
If it was really necessary to include Cate Blanchett (so as not to waste her presence on the set), would it not be more logical to show that it was Galadriel who found Gandalf after his fall, robed him, gave him the new staff and gave him the necessary information about what happened to the fellowship?
28. An Unforgivable Omission (IMHO).
There is a line in the books that is really funny. When the Gondorian soldiers find Sam and Frodo in Inthilien, one of them says, that these two cannot be Elves, because Elves are “wondrous fair to look upon”. Sam retorts “Meaning we’re not, I take you”. Now, this is really funny, one of the few funny jokes in the books. How come that they did not include this line? Instead Faramir asks if Sam is Fordo’s “bodyguard”. I am sure “a bodyguard” is a term that Gondorian ancient aristocracy uses quite a lot.
29. Faramir
Faramir is my favourite character from the books. I was curious to see how the writers handled him. They did what they could to make his brother more amiable than in the books. So, before seeing the film I re-read the part of TTT where Faramir talks about Boromir and I noticed that it couldn’t be left as it is – what Faramir does in the book is plain slamming of his brother in front of total strangers. He says “I can well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein), might desire such a thing [Isildur’s Bane] and be allured by it.” Well, it is not exactly a praise, is it? Given that Boromir was really a nice guy in FOTR, Faramir would not say anything like that, I expected the character to be different in the end. But I did not expect the hatchet-job that was done to him. Faramir wanting the ring for himself? Again, EE gives us a little insight into his motives, true. But still it did not work, and I hated it. Gone was the noble prince, and we get a petty jealous younger brother instead.
more to follow...
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Sorry, something strange happened to my post. A bit in the front went missing The whole content, up to the reasons, is to look like that (I was not able to edit it...) Sorry :