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saw two towers again tonight--good stuff. i got the chills again when the ents attacked isengard and when eomer and gandalf arrived at the battle of helm's deep. i also got a closer look at some things (like the ents) and picked up on more of the subtle things. plus i got to see legolas swing himself upside down onto that horse and then slide down the stairs on a shield while shooting things. yeah buddy.
i was bothered by a few things that i noticed, though. first of all, the frodo/sam/faramir thing got on my nerves, even worse than it did the last time i saw the movie--is it just me, or did they extend that whole sequence a lot longer than it was in the book? i thought they ran into faramir, said hey and chatted, and then were on their way. i don't seem to remember this whole is-faramir-going-to-take-the-ring thing and going-to-osgiliath thing. i really don't think that happened in the book.
and then, there were the time discrepancies. aragorn and legolas and gimli are chasing the uruk hai to save merry and pippin, right, and the sun rises red and legolas says "blood has been shed this night" or some elf shit like that. and they run into the group of rohan men and are informed that the rohan men have killed all the uruk hai and burned the bodies. and the pyre is still smoking, so we can assume that the fight between the rohan guys and the uruk hai took place last night. so aragorn and legolas and gimli follow the hobbits' trail into the woods, and they run into gandalf, who tells them that the hobbits passed that way the day before yesterday. hello? wouldn't they have passed that way last night, like immediately after the battle? i mean, maybe gandalf is confused, he can't remember his own name either, but one would think he'd get that right.
and again. when everybody leaves edoras, aragorn and legolas and gimli go with the people of rohan to helm's deep, and gandalf goes off by himself. gandalf says to aragorn, "watch for me at dawn on the fifth day." but at the end, it seems like the battle of helm's deep went on for one night and gandalf got there in the morning. perhaps gandalf meant "the fifth day from now" instead of "the fifth day of the siege." but i'm fairly certain the battle lasted several days in the book (besides the fact of it probably taking like a week to move all those people).
what i'm thinking is that the script people didn't catch this--that these lines are what gandalf says in the book, and they just didn't get translated into movie-time. but you'd think a line like "watch for me at dawn on the fifth day", which gets repeated in a very big echoey way, would catch their attention. either they messed up with the line, or else we're supposed to assume that several days have in fact passed. although it was night the whole time.
similarly, the ents didn't decide what to do about the war in just one night. it took several days. but i guess even ents have to speed up a bit for a movie.
and one more thing--issues of defense. i mean, i know they have to speed things up for the movies, but wouldn't you think that when the nasty uruk hai are running towards the walls of helm's deep, they'd be shooting off as many arrows as possible? i mean, i've read a lot of fantasy novels, and in this sort of situation, you want to keep the evil demons as far away from your walls as you can for as long as you can. plus, then the next row of demons has to climb over the dead bodies of the first, till there's a convenient wall of bodies keeping them from your walls. but no, in this movie they get off like two volleys of arrows and then the bad guys are throwing up ladders. and speaking of ladders, where's the buckets of boiling oil they're supposed to have on top of the walls to dump down on attackers with ladders?
i know. it's only a movie. it's only a movie. but i still can't wait for the extended edition.
i was bothered by a few things that i noticed, though. first of all, the frodo/sam/faramir thing got on my nerves, even worse than it did the last time i saw the movie--is it just me, or did they extend that whole sequence a lot longer than it was in the book? i thought they ran into faramir, said hey and chatted, and then were on their way. i don't seem to remember this whole is-faramir-going-to-take-the-ring thing and going-to-osgiliath thing. i really don't think that happened in the book.
and then, there were the time discrepancies. aragorn and legolas and gimli are chasing the uruk hai to save merry and pippin, right, and the sun rises red and legolas says "blood has been shed this night" or some elf shit like that. and they run into the group of rohan men and are informed that the rohan men have killed all the uruk hai and burned the bodies. and the pyre is still smoking, so we can assume that the fight between the rohan guys and the uruk hai took place last night. so aragorn and legolas and gimli follow the hobbits' trail into the woods, and they run into gandalf, who tells them that the hobbits passed that way the day before yesterday. hello? wouldn't they have passed that way last night, like immediately after the battle? i mean, maybe gandalf is confused, he can't remember his own name either, but one would think he'd get that right.
and again. when everybody leaves edoras, aragorn and legolas and gimli go with the people of rohan to helm's deep, and gandalf goes off by himself. gandalf says to aragorn, "watch for me at dawn on the fifth day." but at the end, it seems like the battle of helm's deep went on for one night and gandalf got there in the morning. perhaps gandalf meant "the fifth day from now" instead of "the fifth day of the siege." but i'm fairly certain the battle lasted several days in the book (besides the fact of it probably taking like a week to move all those people).
what i'm thinking is that the script people didn't catch this--that these lines are what gandalf says in the book, and they just didn't get translated into movie-time. but you'd think a line like "watch for me at dawn on the fifth day", which gets repeated in a very big echoey way, would catch their attention. either they messed up with the line, or else we're supposed to assume that several days have in fact passed. although it was night the whole time.
similarly, the ents didn't decide what to do about the war in just one night. it took several days. but i guess even ents have to speed up a bit for a movie.
and one more thing--issues of defense. i mean, i know they have to speed things up for the movies, but wouldn't you think that when the nasty uruk hai are running towards the walls of helm's deep, they'd be shooting off as many arrows as possible? i mean, i've read a lot of fantasy novels, and in this sort of situation, you want to keep the evil demons as far away from your walls as you can for as long as you can. plus, then the next row of demons has to climb over the dead bodies of the first, till there's a convenient wall of bodies keeping them from your walls. but no, in this movie they get off like two volleys of arrows and then the bad guys are throwing up ladders. and speaking of ladders, where's the buckets of boiling oil they're supposed to have on top of the walls to dump down on attackers with ladders?
i know. it's only a movie. it's only a movie. but i still can't wait for the extended edition.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-03 12:09 pm (UTC)From:I think gandalf did mean the fifth day from when he made the statement, which makes sense because of the long walk to helm's deep.
Now, I don't remember Aragorn getting separated from everybody and floating down the Lazee River in the book. That annoyed me. Also, the last of the uruk-hai in the helm's deep battle were supposed to go run into a forest and get eaten by the trees or something, which totally didn't happen in the movie. ALSO, since when did elves show up at the battle to help out? I don't remember that at all.
Oh well. We could bitch for days, or we could just forget about it. I'm not gonna worry about it too much. They didn't ask me when they were writing it.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-03 03:16 pm (UTC)From:I mean, eventually, if the book was good enough, they'll make it into a movie. And then I'll go see the movie, but if I read the book first, I'd be all pissed off when the movie people butchered the book to make the movie GOOD.
I didn't read these books, but I saw the movies. And I didn't notice any of these incongruencies that you two speak of. All I know is that Legolas rocks, Aragorn is hot and the dwarf is funny. And that's all that I need to know cuz that's all that Hollywood told me and I trust the people that work in Hollywood way more than I trust even my own family...
Stop reading, people! Leave the reading to Hollywood...Mmm-K?
no subject
Date: 2003-01-03 05:10 pm (UTC)From:anyway, there are some books I've read that I won't even go near the movie. I know they made a movie of Catch-22 back in the day, but I'll probably never see it. The book was too good.
And one of the main problems with making movies out of books is that they'll change things sometimes for no reason. Or just because they felt like it. When the way it was in the book was a much better idea. But I guess that's why we have director's commentary now. So they can explain themselves.