LotR2-TTT-Seq08

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Essex

We've been moaning about this for years it seems now. Yes it is very 'Literal' / not subtle - but I haven't really seen a working alternative from anyone yet. It's ok to citicise something, but what would you put in place instead of it?

Agreed. It's easy for me (and others) to know what I don't want. It's just that after all of these years of thinking that Sauron was the the end-all be-all evil guy, he just looks so cheesy in RotK.

It'd be like if the Black Riders wore colored ascots.

[Essex]

I understand this. But maybe PJ was always gonna take a hit for this. How do you show an 'eye' roaming across the landscape looking for his Ring and spying on his enemies as Tolkien talks about.

I remember when I was a young kid and I was standing on the Prom in Satlhill near Galway, Ireland on my hols looking at all the stars in the sky. And I had an epiphany that light wasn't the fastest thing in the world at 186,000 miles per second, but Eyesight was. I made the mistake (and it wasn't cleared up for me for years) that when I was looking light years back in time my eyes were looking OUT at the stars, and reaching them instaneously rather than the years that light would take. Instead it is actually the light from the stars themselves hitting the back of my eye and my brain taking this data and forming an image for me.

So eyesight is not something like a 'searchlight' as people have called PJ's Sauron Eye. But what Tolkien gives us with the Eye of Sauron is almost a description of what I was naively thinking of as a kid. The scene at Parth Galen shows us this best, as Frodo looks out from the seat of seeing as her wears the Ring:

Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.
And suddenly he felt the Eye. There was an eye in the Dark Tower that did not sleep. He knew that it had become aware of his gaze. A fierce eager will was there. It leaped towards him; almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him. Very soon it would nail him down, know just exactly where he was. Amon Lhaw it touched. It glanced upon Tol Brandir he threw himself from the seat, crouching, covering his head with his grey hood.
He heard himself crying out: _Never, never!_Or was it: _Verily I come, I come to you_? He could not tell. Then as a flash from some other point of power there came to his mind another thought: _Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!_
The two powers strove in him. For a moment, perfectly balanced between their piercing points, he writhed, tormented. Suddenly he was aware of himself again. Frodo, neither the Voice nor the Eye: free to choose, and with one remaining instant in which to do so. He took the Ring off his finger. He was kneeling in clear sunlight before the high seat. A black shadow seemed to pass like an arm above him; it missed Amon Hen and groped out west, and faded.Then all the sky was clean and blue and birds sang in every tree.

So what Tolkien is doing here is almost describing the Eye as (to be honest) a searchlight for want of a better word, something that is SCANNING the land loooking for his Ring - how can you show this in the medium of film? I can't think of anything closer to this than a spot light - no matter how cheesy it may look.......

We could perhap have a shot of Sauron sitting on his throne suddenly looking out towards Amon Hen, the camera shooting out from barad dur, following his gaze. (This is how I first saw the scene as I read the book the first time) - But we know that Sauron has no physical form at this time, so if Jackson did something like this, he would be lambasted for not following Tolkien's story correctly.....

He can't win. (again......)

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Essex

So eyesight is not something like a 'searchlight' as people have called PJ's Sauron Eye.

He can't win. (again......)

I'm going to come back to this in RotK, but in brief I hate how the Eye pivots on an axis like a searchlight.

And PJ has already won. His films are successful, he got to remake King Kong, and nothing I say here can take any of that away.

Not that I'll ever let up...

[Essex]

Not that I'll ever let up...

And neither will eye (Sorry, I mean "I")

From Tolkien:

There was an eye in the Dark Tower that did not sleep.... It leaped towards him; almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him.

Sounds like a search light in some respects.........

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

The music which jumps out at you as Gollum speaks "The Black Gate of Mordor!" is incredible. It makes me gasp every time and is one of my favourite scenes. Gollum looks so worried; Frodo looks so lost; Sam looks so aware that this new journey could be a catastrophe. Good acting here, although I don't really like Sam's fall either.

Merry and Pippin annoy me more the more I watch these films. They're two of my favourite characters and they do come across as jokes too often for my liking. Gotta love that greenery, though. Bombadil's lines are very welcome.

They should have just left out the Ent-draught.

[alatar]

A miracle of sorts occured, and I've recovered my paperback copies of TTT and RotK. No idea where FotR is, and someone still has my hardbound, anyway...I now can quote from the books and don't have to rely on my memory (failing) and the audio CDs.

Here's a quote on cloaks:

Originally Posted by J.R.R.T

from The Taming of Smeagol:

'Do you think he can see us?' said Sam.

'I don't know,' said Frodo quietly, 'but I think not. It is hard even for friendly eyes to see these elven-cloaks: I cannot see you in the shadow even at a few paces.'

Point is is that there is no reason for the cloaks to function intermittently; either they hide the wearer all of the time or not. PJ just decided to use them in one instance to create tension and to show a cool effect (the cloak that looks just like a rock). Beyond that, they are ordinary, though well-made, cloaks.

[alatar]

Again, from reading the text, I remembered that the Black Gate was not originally constructed by the Dark Lord, but by the Númenóreans. Not sure why PJ and WETA, who at times followed the Tolkien's descriptions of items did not here. Surely there wasn't an illustration, and the text does give one room to imagine, but I'm still not sure why we have the 'door-like' gate as opposed to the regular gate that opened like a portcullis - that fence-like thing that goes up and down. Was the weight of the gate too much for such construction, as it was to be of iron? Did PJ et al want to keep the battlement looking like one solid wall across the valley so that we could see across the top into Mordor (as opposed to having a tower or towers atop the Gate, breaking up the view)?

If single- or double-door like, like we see in Minas Tirith, then they should open inward (if Sauron switched them) or outward, if the Gondorians built them - easier to shut them up.

Didn't see much from Alan Lee or John Howe that shows that the Gate is exclusively one of their works.