I thought with Madam Corvax's reappearance on the forums, it seems like a good time to resurrect an old thread that was a favourite of mine. However, I think I'll make it more a general purpose
Lord of the Rings thread.
Anyway, the thing is, I recently rewatched this extraordinary trilogy of films and just made a few more observations as to why it deteroriates in the second and the third installments. Yeah, I know. It sounds odd. I say extraordinary on the one hand and say that the trilogy deteriorated on the one hand. I still love the whole trilogy. Each movie is a far cut above average - but the last two had problems.
It occurred to me on this latest viewing that while the first one really transported me into the world of Middle Earth, the subsequent movies largely failed in this. I was conscious for the most part of the fact that I was watching big budget Hollywood films with those two.
In
The Two Towers, for instance, I didn't enjoy the battle of Helms Deep this time at all. It's crass. It's a totally phoney looking battle with Hollywood nonsense gallore. Aragorn takes a ladder and falls down into the Urak-hai below - and rather than being skewered on a whole lot of pikes, he actually turns up back inside the keep moments later. Legolas goes skateboarding on a shield. There's a little side door next to the main door that Aragorn and Gimli use to surprise the Urak-hai outside (a stupid sequence). Why is there a little side door there? What purpose does it serve?
And pikes! Pikes have no effect in these movies. Aragorn charges at a line of pikes without so much as a scratch and his elf buddies too (more on elf buddies shortly). And what I noticed was that when deadly dangers are brushed over constantly, all the tension gets taken out of the movie. The audience goes "Huh. So this is a film where characters can just run into a line of pikes and have them magically part for him. Well, I'll just sit back and pretend I'm watching an old-school swashbuckler." And there's nothing wrong with those types of films - nothing wrong at all. They're good fun. But they don't have tension. And
these movies should have.
This is why the fight at the end of
The Fellowship of the Ring is such a good scene. It doesn't have the scale of the set pieces in the later movies and it doesn't have any innane action sequences... but the danger feels very real and consequently, there's a lot of tension in it.
Another thing that bothered me about these movies is that in the last two, the filmmakers seemed to forget that the hobbits were the main characters and for some silly reason, they decided that Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had equal status. Well, the thing is, I've read the books again (enjoyed them a bit more this time as well) and
the thing is that these three guys are really given no more page time than say Faramir or Eowyn. They are second-tier characters - and making them into main characters resulted in a lot of the movie trilogy's problems. Suddenly, they were having to invent things for these three clowns to do. So we get the pointless warg attack, Aragorn's fake death, a whole lot of boring Arwen/Aragorn scenes, the (shakes head in disbelief) Oliphant scene etc. Although I will say I appreciate the movie making Aragorn a better character. He is a total git in the books...
"Me Strider. Strider talk about himself in the third person. Strider saw you earlier but decided to hide in the bushes and watch you go past. Actually, since you nearly got killed by a barrowight, Strider thinks in hindsight that might not have been the most helpful thing he could have done."
Also, on the subject of reading the books, I found that the first book was mind-numbingly dull and the third book finished about a quarter of the way in before embarking on the longest ending ever committed to paper* - and it was the second book,
The Two Towers, that was the most engrossing and the most exciting.
*The books also had a tendency to leave out numerous key events and have characters refer to them after the fact - really poor narration. You don't know that the fellowship gets ambushed at the end of the first one, for instance. Aragorn goes to the bushes to relieve himself or something then comes back at the start of the second book and finds Boromir dying. "Oh hello, Boromir. Where is everyone?" Ditto for Saruman's betrayal and the Ents' attack on Isengard. Shoddy work by Tolkien there.
What really struck me about
The Two Towers is that it had pace. For a short glorious stretch, Tolkien decided to leave off excessive details and dreary prose and actually let the story gain momentum. Things happen and they happen fast. I love the Rohan section in the book. Gandalf rides to Edoras, finds King Theoden -
"Snap out of it. Helm's Deep is under attack!" -
Theoden goes
"Right. Sorry about that, I don't know what came over me. Anyway, tally-ho!" Then they race to Helm's Deep and get there in time to help Erkenbrand and the Ents save the day. Then it's onto Isengard. Gandalf is saving the Rohirrim so he can get them ready in time to avert disaster at Minas Tirith. There's no mucking around here....
.... which is why it seems very strange that
The Two Towers movie is slowwwww... with lots of moping around.... and time wasting.... and procrastinating. What a waste. Now, I'd be the first one to say that
The Fellowship of the Ring movie improved on the book in basically every way you can imagine, turning drivel into cinematic magic, sludge into an epic masterpiece. However, when it comes to the second and the third parts, I think I have to say I prefer the books - although the jury's still out with me on
Return of the King. I think endings should wait until a book is at least
half finished, at least.
Now, another thing with the movies - Aragorn. This guy is supposed to be a king of men, the one who will reclaim the throne of Gondor but he is so bound to his elvern background in the films. He fights with the elf division in
The Two Towers, he's always talking to Legolas in elvish so other people can't understand (which is actually incredibly rude as well - I hate in particular how Aragorn and Legolas always have their secret conversations and leave out Gimli)... and it really seems as if he believes that hanging around mere mortals is somewhat demeaning for him. Now I don't know about everyone else but that doesn't seem like a good candidate for governing a kingdom of men. Give me Faramir or Eowyn - or take a
drastic change from the books and keep Boromir alive (he's more interesting than Aragorn anyway). No one wants a king who thinks men are beneath him.
I suppose he got this dispicable attitude towards his fellow men from that bigot of a surrogate father, Elrond. Although why
he's so down on men in the movies is also a bit of an issue, since according to the books, he's half-human himself. What a jerk.
Man, I love this thread.
This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 06 February 2010 - 04:39 AM