The Two Towers

With The Two Towers Peter Jackson has shown, once again, that he is
the right person to recreate Tolkien books on the big screen. The
film isn’t perfect, far from it, it even has some flaws that I
really can’t understand:

What I don’t condone is Peter Jackson taking perfectly
good plot lines and characters and, as far as I can see, making
them worse on purpose. Faramir, the noble and kind brother of
Boromir, has been turned into a carbon copy of his brother just to
delay the coming of Shelob, when the Frodo/Sam sequence could just
as easily have ended with Faramir pointing them in the right
direction to Cirith Ungol and sending them on their way. Gimli and
Gollum were transformed from a grim and doughty warrior and a
tortured soul, respectively, into comic relief that the movie
wouldn’t need if Tolkien’s comedic lines were kept intact. Eomer
was banished from Rohan just so it could be he, rather than
Erkenbrand and the Huorns, who shows up and saves the day, which
makes the situation less confusing for non-book readers but is
sheer horror for Tolkien purists. If I wanted to keep on listing
specific changes I could go on all day, but suffice it to say that
Peter Jackson seems to have forgotten that this is not his story to
tell. The phrase “based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien” should be
preceded by the word “loosely” or vaguely”. Hopefully Return of the
King will put the storyline back on track. href="http://www.movie-source.com/l/lordoftherings2.shtml">[link].

There are some modifications that I can understand like removing
Tom Bombadil to cut on the film length. What I don’t understand are
the changes that completely change the spirit of the story and
don’t add anything to the film.

From .

Besides the flaws in the story here are the goods and the bads of
the film:

  • Gollum is simply the best CGI character I ever saw and almost
    all of his scenes are breathtaking.
  • Why in the hell did Peter Jackson had to put Legolas skating on
    Helm’s Deep.
  • I wanted to see Shelob :-( Guess I’ll have to wait another
    year.
  • Some scenes are just as I imagined them, namely the Dead
    Marshes and Faramir’s Hideout.
  • Even the Ents are well done thought I didn’t imagine them with
    legs.
  • When filming a story that is hard to fit into 3 hours why add
    some unexisting romance into it.
  • Lot’s of more stuff that I just don’t remember right now.

Bottomline: The film isn’t perfect but i can’t remember anyone else
capable of doing it so well as Peter Jackson. If you are a Tolkien
fan then you probably already saw it, if you are not then don’t
miss it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 22nd, 2002 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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