LotR2-TTT-Seq02

[Lathriel]

My brother tirelessly tries to imitate the "Manflesh!" part. It gets kind of annoying but it tells me that my brother is more obsessed with LOTR then he will admit. (Yeah, my conversion was almost succesful!!)

Anyway, I love the scenery in this sequence, especially during the running since you get this flying feeling. (Especially in the theatre which is why they should bring LOTR to Imax )

I think the first sign of Pippin's "growing up" is when he leaves his brooch. It is a clever idea and certainly not something Pippin would have thought of back in FOTR. He is becoming less of a fool although he still has his "stupid moments"

I like that this sequence contrasts the story of Frodo and Sam because the pace is certainly much higher. Which I think is good because otherwise this movie would really drag.

[Essex]

Now we get to the point in the movies were Jackson takes a detour from the order of the text. Tolkien himself stated that if his work WAS dramatasised, then the drama should follow the order of his book, and not chop and change about following the timelines of the characters.

I respectively totally disagree with Tolkien here. Leave Frodo and Sam out of the film for 1.5 hours, then bring them back to cover the other 1.5 hours and finish the movie off? OK, we would have the best Cliffhanger in all of movie history if we followed this to a tee, but that is the ONLY advantage I can see in this way of telling the story.

Anyone care to discuss?

[Lathriel]

I agree with you Essex. If the book was followed it confuse everybody including myself.
It would also seem rather pointless because you sort of wrap up the one story-line with the battle which is a huge climax and then going back to Frodo and sam would create a huge anti-climax. It would make the story seem so deflated.
It works in the books but I could never see it work in a movie.

[alatar]

I too would agree. Though it is easier to have the storylines linear and uninterrupted, in this case there's just no way you could do it like that. The question, then, is how well do you think that Professor Jackson pulled that off, in regards to the storylines and transitions between the same.

As noted, some viewers were looking for a prologue to get them started again in ME, but I'm not really interested in that as much as I see this as one movie. By this sequence we've already seen Gandalf (though he's dead), we've re-established Frodo and Sam (and have added Gollum), have met the Three Hunters and even get to see Pip afflict another member of the FotR (Merry) with some pain.

Not sure what else PJ could be doing.

[Boromir88]

I respectively totally disagree with Tolkien here. Leave Frodo and Sam out of the film for 1.5 hours, then bring them back to cover the other 1.5 hours and finish the movie off? OK, we would have the best Cliffhanger in all of movie history if we followed this to a tee, but that is the ONLY advantage I can see in this way of telling the story.~Essex

I would actually have to agree to, and maybe one of the only things I'm glad PJ changed. I know what you're talking about, I think it's letter 210 where Tolkien is going after Zimmerman, and talks about how it should be as written in the book. I too disagree with Tolkien, I think the linear style he uses of telling both stories works absolutely fine in a book. I've never liked books that constantly jump around go back/forward in time. I like the linear style and telling each story seperately.

With that being said, I don't think such a story telling would work well in movies. I liked the mixing of each story in the movies, and I agree I don't think it would be good to tell Aragorn..etc and then Frodo's journey...theatrically...works fine in the books. I will even go further and say Jackson did an EXCELLENT job of telling all stories at the same time, a very difficult thing to do and Jackson had to deal with telling all 3 stories (Merry and Pippin, Aragorn and Co, Frodo and Sam) and at the same time.

The thing that bothers me most about this scene is the humor of Gimli. I thought FOTR Gimli was rather light-hearted and funny, yet I never lost the sense of what a Dwarf was and what type of people they were. When we get into TTT however and this "wheezing and falling down" Gimli, it is so totally undwarvish you would think Jackson didn't read the books. What's even more annoying about this scene is it creates the wrong impression and I've seen several threads questioning why is Gimli in the Fellowship, he serves no purpose and all he did was slow Aragorn and Legolas down. It's these kinds of changes in Gimli that get me the most annoyed. (I actually think the Dwarf Women scene is quite hilarious...and I will get to it as I catch up on all I've missed) but pretty much the rest of the humor through the rest of the movie (and ROTK) I don't find funny and find it a detriment to the movies.

Other than that I must say another great job, Merry and Pippin with the Orcs were well done. Though Grishnakh seemed to be more driven by eating the two hobbits than getting smart and thinking they had the Ring, you get a good feel of the ruthlessness and cruelty of the Orcs.

[Lathriel]

I think this portrayal of the numerous storylines shows the difference between what a movie can do and what a book can do. I am sure this is something a lot of directors struggle with when making a movie out of a book.
Especially a book like LOTR
I think because PJ mixed the stories it strengthened the movie. For me it had a more psychological affect. Especially during the battle of helm's Deep when it switched to the ents.

[doug*platypus]

Yeah, the three (four counting Gandalf) threads of the adventures of the Fellowship were just begging to be inter-cut one with the other in a film version. In the book, jumping back and forth would be confusing. But in the movie, having one story told before the other would be confusing. We would lose track of exactly when events were taking place. In the book, Tolkien was able to place timelines in, for example when Sam and Frodo are travelling through Mordor and he says "Théoden lay dying on the Pelennor Fields". No such opportunity to do this in a movie. Tolkien was a brilliant author, but he was not a film director. Whatever mistakes Jackson made in his interpretation of the book, he remains a good director with a number of successes under his (these days much looser) belt.

I thought that the Uruks looked magnificent; much better than in FOTR, where they all basically looked like clones, apart from Lurtz.

"I'm wasted on cross country. We Dwarves are natural sprinters!" did elicit a chuckle from me. One of the few times I appreciated the Gimli sideshow, wildly inaccurate though this quote is.