What I didn't like about TTT, and a couple of things I did

[Amy Z <lupinesque@yahoo.com>]

(Rachel, sorry.  The obsession continues.  Feel free to skip)

Great post, Abigail!

> The only things LoTR and HP have in 
> common are they that they both feature wizards and can 
> be categorized as fantasy.  

> To have two fantasy movie series come out at the same time 
> simply begs comparisons where none belongs.  

Yep.  I can't completely complain about this (il-)logic, though, 
because it's what got me to read HP.  I was pressing His Dark 
Materials on someone who, after I described it, said, "Have you read 
Harry Potter?"  I repressed an eye roll and said no, grumbling 
silently about the fact that not all British fantasy is the 
same . . . but I accepted the loan of the tapes and the rest is 
history, if The Annals of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder count as 
history.


> it seems that Aragorn's tumble off the cliff was 
> supposed to be part of a longer arc.  Something to do with 
> Theodred's horse, who is driven mad with grief and is released 
> by Aragorn.  It is this horse who rescues Aragorn and carries 
> him to Helm's Deep. 

Ah!  That would have added something interesting, yes.  I thought it 
was really funny--you dream you're being kissed and wake to find it's 
a horse.  I'm not sure the humor was intended.

> The Arwen scenes exist here for the same reason 
> that she's the one who rescues Frodo and brings him to 
> Rivendell instead of that other elf whose name I've forgotten 
> in FoTR.  Because you simply cannot have your romantic hero 
> marrying a girl who is completely absent between her 
> introduction in the first book and her wedding in the third book 
> and has no lines in either one.  

You misunderstand me.  I wasn't complaining about the insertion of 
Arwen--I figured they'd do that and it's okay.  As you say, putting 
in the backstory of her decision is not only okay, it's essential.  
No, the change that bugged me was that Aragorn, riding to Helm's 
Deep, thinks she has decided to go to the Grey Havens.

>(and yes, 
> when I finished reading TTT, I wanted Aragorn to marry Eowyn

Oh yeah.  She's a much more interesting character than Arwen.  But 
then, I like Faramir too, so she'll be very happy.

> 
> The same reasoning holds for Arwen's decision to stay in 
> Middle Earth and reject immortality being made on 
> screen (or not having been made yet, actually.  
> Unfortunately, I forsee an emotional scene with Arwen 
> standing on the boat at the Grey Havens looking wistfully 
> into the East before deciding to Follow Her Heart, but I guess 
> it can't be helped).  This decision is a big deal.  She's 
> giving up immortal life - a woman who has been timeless for 
> millenia.  She's choosing to be parted from everyone she 
> knows and loves.  This is not a decision that you make 
> off-screen, not if you follow the cardinal rule of film-making 
> - show, don't tell.  It can't be an easy choice, it can't be a done 
> deal - it would be meaningless if it were.  And frankly, I think 
> the fact that Aragorn tries to talk her out of staying with him 
> needs to be there too - what sort of man would prefer to 
> see the woman he loves wither and die just so that 
> he won't be parted with her?
> 
> So yes, it's sappy.  There is romance that isn't sappy, but I don't 
> think we should be looking for it in fantasy films.  Certainly 
> we shouldn't expect that romance be taken for granted, which 
Ø	is what Tolkein did.  
Ø	
Ø	
>And anyway, if the Arwen scenes didn't exist, 
> we wouldn't have the gorgeous tableau of a still-young Arwen 
> grieving for Aragorn.  Wasn't it beautiful?  It looked as if it had 
Ø	been plucked out of a medeival tapestry.  

Yes, gorgeous. 

(It also serves to 
> highlight that, at that point, no one, Arwen included, has even 
> considered that Arwen might give up immortality to be with 
> Aragorn, which I suspect will make her choice to do so all the 
Ø	more important in RoTK.)

Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.  I kept waiting for 
Arwen to say, "DUH, Father, I'm not going to mourn forever—I'm going 
to do what human women do and die myself.  Maybe even *before* my 
husband."  (Of course, she could stay immortal instead, and marry 
someone else after Aragorn dies.  Much better option, IMO.)

 

> (although, in my case, 
> I admit I just can't accept Weaving as Elrond.  I keep expecting 
> him to don an earpiece, dodge bullets, and start looking for 
Ø	Morpheus, but that's just my disfunction).   

LOL!  Now, the only thing I'd ever seen him in was The Matrix but I 
loved him as Elrond.  The man must've been born with pointed ears 
because he looked perfect, IMO.


> I was 
> expecting you to offer the opposite complaint - that rather 
> than regaining his (emotional) strengh and riding off to Helm's 
> Deep with no doubts, Theoden spends the entire film on the 
> brink of despair - a despair brought on in no small part by the 
> death of his son (am I the only person who was praying, right 
> after Theoden was revived, that he would somehow *know*?  
> That no one was going to have to tell him that his son had 
> died and he had all but slept through it?  His scene at 
> Theodred's grave was heart-breaking).  Gandalf may have 
> removed Saruman's direct influence, but Theoden isn't fully 
Ø	healed until the end of the movie.  

True, true, and I knew it when I typed "and lo, Theoden is young and 
bold again," but I couldn't resist the rhetorical flourish.  <g>  The 
real issue is not that he is healed entirely (he isn't, either in the 
book or in the movie), but *how* he is healed.  For all my love of 
fantasy, I prefer emotional transformation to magic.  Or magic *as* 
emotional transformation.  This seemed like magic *instead of.* YMMV.

 
> Also, the 'don't you 
> know your Sam?' exchange and Frodo's Bilbo-like moment of 
Ø	madness were neat.

Totally.  And they do happen in the book---several chapters later, in 
RoTK, but this was a fine place to put it, so long as they leave 
themselves something to build up to.

> 
> As for whether having Faramir decide to take the ring to 
Ø	Gondor cheapens his character.  I'm not certain.  

I don't mean cheapens, exactly.  I just thought it was unnecessary.  
They were trying to get at the key issue, I think—that Faramir sees 
potential for rescuing his beleaguered city--and that's good.  I 
think they could've done it without the side trip to Osgiliath.  I 
mean, it's just not the resort town it used to be, ever since the 
rise of the Dark Lord just down the road.

Me:

> > But this is an Action Movie and Action
> > Movies don't have too much dialogue—the audience might
> > get bored.

Abigail:
 
> Sorry, I just don't think it's fair to make this claim about a 
movie in 
> which, halfway through, the action is suspended so that an elf 
> chick who actually has nothing to do with the plot can recite in 
Ø	Elvish.  

<grin>  Fair enough.  I retract my snarkiness.

 
> it ultimately a movie about hope and perseverence even when 
Ø	there is seemingly no reason for it.  

Sure.  I just hope (and persevere) that it'll be about more than 
that.  It's not a theme that really lights my fire (though I love 
your injection about Denethor, one of my favorite characters—that 
exploration of despair is fantastic, I agree), and the book has so 
much more to it than "never say die."

> maybe I was just so thrilled 
> by the fact that at least one of the Hobbits who isn't Frodo or 
Ø	> Sam had been rescued from Comic Relief hell

They sent Gimli to it in their stead.

Ø	Frankly, I don't see the climax 
> working if the two scenes had been seperated - the attack on 
> Isengard before Helm's Deep or the other way around.  There 
Ø	> comes a point where you're simply banged out.  
Ø	

Yeah, that is a problem.  Maybe as long as they were changing things, 
Treebeard should've dispatched some of the Ents to beat up the orcs 
at Helm's Deep.  Then it would all have held together.  But maybe I 
was the only one who thought it was anticlimactic for the Ents to 
have nothing to do with Helm's Deep.
 

> Someone needs to take the HP movie people 
> and tape them to some chairs and force them to watch those 
> scenes over and over until they understand what a CGI 
Ø	character should be.  


LOL!  Well, Dobby just isn't as complex a character.  I can take some 
cartoonishness with him.

Me:
 
> > it will be interesting to see whether,
> > as in the book, it will be Sam's refusal to see Gollum
> > as redeemable that causes him to send them to Shelob.

Abigail:
 
> Hmm, I always felt that, while Sam certainly wasn't helping Gollum 
> along on his road to recovery, it was Frodo's perceived betrayal of
>  Gollum that truly drove him over the edge - which is pretty much 
Ø	what happened in the film.

Oh, right.  I was thinking of RoTK:  not his first thought of Shelob, 
but the scene where he is being nice to the sleeping Frodo and Sam 
goes ballistic.  We are privy to the fact that Gollum is repenting of 
his plan to get them eaten, but takes it up again with a vengeance 
when Sam calls him a sneak. 

> Considering that I was half-convinced there would be no 
> Ents at all, I was rather pleased by what we got.  I thought 
> their legs didn't look right, though.  In my imagination, Ents 
> are walking trees, and Jackson's Ents looked like that from 
> the 'waist' up, but the illusion was broken by the legs.  I 
Ø	guess I should have expected that , though.

Yeah, that was my problem exactly.  The problem is, the way I picture 
Ents, they don't exactly have legs, so how do I imagine them 
walking?  They'd kind of glide, and that wouldn't work.  It's a 
tricky problem.  They were pretty good.

> All in all, I'm a bit tickled by the people who are only now 
> remembering to be concerned about the liberties Jackson 
> has taken with his source material.  Did you not notice 
> that most of the first quarter of FoTR was just cut out of 
Ø	the movie?  

Notice it?  Heck, I applauded it!  OK, that was just about Tom 
Bombadil and I mostly did it to bug Tabouli.  <g>  But seriously, 
omitting scenes is one thing, adding them is another.  I am much more 
tolerant of the former liberty.



> when 
> it came to TTT, Jackson mustered up the courage to try 
> to offer his own spin on the material (remember, most of 
> the editing of TTT was done after the stunning reaction to 
> FoTR).  He tried to streamline the story in order to 
> highlight what he obviously felt was the most important 
Ø	message in the book.  

> it's important to give him props 
> for courage, as well as to acknowledge that, even if the 
> letter of the book wasn't all that strictly adhered to, its 
Ø	spirit was deeply honored.  

That all depends on what you think the most important message in the 
book is.  When we get to RoTK I'll know whether he offered his own 
spin on it or got it all wrong, both of course according to MHO.  
Others' mileage may vary.

This is reminding me that I meant to post here about something 
someone said about Sauron on the main list a couple of weeks ago.  
I'll see if I can find it.

Amy Z
who sees that Pip has replied and will get to it later.  This is like 
playing tennis against two people at once.  Wheee!