General Discussion - The Two Towers

Author

The Two Towers

ANDRONDA

2002-12-30, 10:21 am

I thought it was a much better movie than the first one. It deviated from the book substantially in a few areas and that was a bit frustrating for me having read the books back in my teen years and again recently. But, despite that fact, it was a really fine movie. It is all they promise it to be.

My big beef is with the character Faromir and the story line surrounding the Men of Gondor. In the books he is presented as a much more noble character and he DOES NOT try to take the ring as he does in the film. After hearing the compete story, he releases Frodo, Sam and Gollum to complete the quest. This was the biggest deviation from the book and do not understand the film-writers purpose for that. I am not certain why in the film he suddenly has a change of heart and becomes a good-guy. The appearance of the Nazgul apparently scares him straight or something. It did not make much sense to me.

The write-in story about Aragorn and Arwen (played by Liv Tyler), also not in the books to the same degree, is livable and actually makes the story MORE compelling. They also add a few action scenes not in the book, such as a mini-battle with the “Wolves of Isengard” resulting in Aragorn having to take a short detour off a cliff and the battle of the Ents is shown in detail where as in the books it is retold after the fact with much less detail. The added material did not really hurt the film much and probably helped to make the characters even more heroic when you see them come out of their trials.

There was also much added dialog designed mostly to bring the casual viewer up to speed on Middle-Earth as well as provide for some comic relief in places most notably from Gimli the Dwarf and from Gollum/Samwise. I do not feel that this took away from the story. I do wonder if the story is difficult to follow for those who have not read the books.

I thought that they hit the character Gollum better than anyone could have expected and the character Grima Wormtongue was absolutely perfect. They could not have done better on those two. Grima was sort of this really nastier version of Ozzy and Gollum was much more realistic than the depictions in the circa 1977 animated for TV version. In that animated version he was a reptilian creature but in the film he was more of a distorted halfling: like almost a really warped and decrepit Hobbit. He was presented in such a way that you wanted to kill him but at the same time felt pity for him. I believe that it was Tolkien’s goal for the character.

All in all it was a very exciting film and I cannot wait to see it again. I await the final film with much anticipation.

mindmesh

2002-12-30, 10:44 am

I liked the film a lot. And having not read the books I don't find it hard to follow at all. I'm sure there is somethings that I'm missing but I can follow it no problem.

PS. Just bought the book : The Hobbit for my wife. I'll read it when I retire from all these Tech books I have to read.

studymode

2002-12-30, 11:02 am

it's too bad it deviates from the book, but oh well. i thought the lord of the rings was quite good, overall, and it's much better than anything that's come before to portray these books. the graphx are awesome. i think tolkien would have been glad to know that so much effort was made to make things as correct as possible, considering the moving-going american public wanting pure action. i haven't seen the two towers yet but i don't think i'll be let-down. i have yet to hear of a movie reflecting a book properly. it never happens. you just have to take it by itself, as a movie, as entertainment.

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