[Ughósh the Abominable]

I *rented* Two Towers tonight, because I'm not going to *buy* anything until the EE comes out. I did appreciate the EE preview on the TTT extras disc; it looks like the EE is going to mend a lot of the things that marred this movie.<P>However, the EE only adds things; it doesn't take them out of the movie that's already there. It won't remove the silly, soap-opera style Elrond/Arwen scenes; it won't remove Aragorn's rediculous falling episode. It won't remove Theoden's melodramatic senility.<P>There is a difference between drama and melodrama, and that is the same as the difference between good and bad. Drama is good, melodrama is bad. Melodrama just makes people tired and disgusted; the melodrama in the TTT movie is no exception, in my case. The weird "suddenly Aragorn and Arwen broke up" thing is melodramatic. The "Aragorn's dead but now he isn't but now he is but now he isn't" thing is melodramatic. Theoden's "I'm the king, biatch" bit is melodramatic.<P>What it boils down to is this: J.R.R. Tolkien is a far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far better writer than Peter Jackson will ever be, and as such, Prof. Tolkien has given Mr. Jackson the best movie script any director could ever ask for. But Pete, in a mad rush to make the story "his own", has slashed up that script and re-arranged it all around and then added some hot air of his own. The result is not Lord of the Rings, but Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth Playland. It looks like Lord of the Rings; it sounds (vaguely) like Lord of the Rings. But once one gets a good sample of it, one realizes it has an entirely different flavor. Some like it, the same way some people like Green Tea-flavoured Bubble-Tea; others see it for what it is: a perversion of the original, warped to its current shape simply by the pride of the translator, all in the guise of "originality" and "artistic license".<P>Okay, my diatribe is now finished. Return to your normal activities.