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LOTR - The Two Towers


Hope R.
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Crud - I shouldn't have rushed to buy the first DVD! I'm gonna have to get the extended version now... or rent it. I guarantee that after ROTK runs, there'll be a boxed Special Edition set just in time for Christmas 2004!

Hope R. color>size>face>

Life, what is it but a dream? - Lewis Carroll

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Galadriel. Daughter of Finarfin and sister of Finrod Felagund; one of the leaders of the Noldorin rebellion against the Valar; wedded Celeborn of Doriath and with him remained in Middle-earth after the end of the First Age; keeper of Nenya, the Ring of Water, in Lothlorien.

Few excerpts from mentioned book of hubby?s may be of interest to yall:

Galadriel the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes, was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Feanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.

Galadriel spoke: save that we were not driven forth, but came of our own free will, and against that of the Valar. And through great peril and in despite of the Valar for this purpose we came; to take vengeance upon Morgoth, and regain what he stole.

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Hope: Well, check around for a good price on the Green Box set. I got mine for $24.99 at Best Buy on release day, but I have seen it as high as $39. (I've also seen the bookend-version of it for as high as $75. BB had it for around $57, I think. The only diff is that the bookend edition comes with a 5th disc of the National Geographic special. Not really worth the extra $$$, although the bookends are quite nice.)

The Green Box also comes with a free pass to see T2T (again). The commentaries and extras on the two versions (Original and Green Box) are different, so don't just chuck your original DVD yet.

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Just saw The Two Towers. WOW! What an awesome movie. No way did it feel like a 3 hour movie.

Still think we should all have a Samwise Gamgee in our lives. He is the best.

And I agree that fight scene with Gandalf and Balrog was kickbutt. Hubby says in the book Gandalf did not talk about that fight.

The line that Gimli said when he and Aragorn were needing to get to the gate entrance was too fun. And the means of Legolas getting down that flight of stairs was cool. Both were present day tidbits added for fun I guess.

Gollum is great, those eyes were unbelievable, what they can do with computers these days, geezz. And his two personalities was done really well. But one did win out, didn?t it? In the book he leads them to Shelob whereas in the movie it ends with him deciding to do it.

The ents were great and treebeard was adorable, if a talking tree can be adorable. ha ha

Faramir was not tempted in the book like he was in the movie. But guess they felt it needed to be changed, but I think they could have done without portraying him having questions about wanting the power of the ring.

The battle was one that held your attention, I don?t much care for battle scenes but this one was fantastic.

But IMO you could have gone and just watched Aragorn and Legolas walking around for 3 hours and I would have paid the admission. ha ha

Great movie, just great.

icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_wink.gif;)-->

[This message was edited by ChattyKathy on January 04, 2003 at 21:51.]

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Just a quick dissenting impression of the battle scenes: the warg and the orokai (sp?) looked indestructible but they were tossed and killed as if they were made of styrofoam. In the battle, the fierce warg/wolves had every opportunity to go for the Rohan horses' throats and they just stopped and snarled instead, inches from those tasty ersatz horse-burgers.

It would have been more convincing if they were less powerfully built, but still scary. They were an 11 on the ugly meter, weren't they?

Another scene where the bad guys parted like the Red Sea was at Helm's Deep, when Gandalf the White and the Renegade Rohan Calvary charged into the line of spears, and through the line of spears, as if there were no spears at all.

I haven't read the book for ages, but couldn't Gandalf do more with his great staff than bonk the orcs over the head? I expected a little wizardry, not ken-do. Or is it ken-po?

I don't remember why Wormtongue was spared, but the reason Aragorn gave was: "Hasn't enough blood been shed?" How dumb is that? Did their collective wisdom not know he would high-tail it to Saruman to tell him everything he knew, and that Saruman would use that knowledge to try and kill them all? Theoden might have saved a lot of soldiers' lives by killing or at least confining Wormtongue. If that's how the book told it, I still don't get it, but if not, they didn't make a great case for mercy. Show mercy, get slaughtered. Nice. At Helm's Deep, Aragorn tells the elves "Show no mercy for you shall be shown none." Had he learned his lesson? They nearly lost everything and everyone at Helm's Deep on account of Wormtongue, because he revealed its weaknesses to Saruman. Killing him would have saved hundreds or thousands of lives. Strange sense of morality, no?

Maybe there is more to it.

[This message was edited by QamiQazi on January 06, 2003 at 13:20.]

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QQ, my thoughts are this. Tolkien is a masterful story teller. And although the movie follows the book, it does so only to a degree, but lacks the story telling. Some of the points you brought up just weren?t addressed.

But for me, it was still a great piece of entertainment and I had forgotten so much of the books history.

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Kathy -

Peter Jackson said the reason they ended the film earlier than the book was because if they did the Shelob scenes in T2T, then Frodo and Sam wouldn't have much to do until the very end of ROTK.

Zix -

The green box came today. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Shoulda gotten the bookends, too! icon_frown.gif:(-->

QQ -

The 2nd time I saw it, I thought the same thing. There were over 10,000 Orcs, and even though the Elves and the Rohanites (?) killed off a lot of them, they still outnumbered the good guys by the time Gandalf and company arrived on the scene. I think the mistake that was made was that the Orc army was made so overwhelmingly large to the viewer's eye, that it made their defeat a bit unbelievable (as if Orcs and Elves are believable to begin with!).

P.S. When Grima asked Saurman how many orcs were in his army, Saurman said "tens of thousands". Later, Aragorn reported to Theoden that the orc army had "ten thousand". To me, it looked like there were about 100,000 computer generated images in the orc army marching scenes!

Hope R. color>size>face>

Life, what is it but a dream? - Lewis Carroll

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This is about book background, not necessarily the movie:

The Simarillion sets up the cosmology of Middle Earth, not just the background and in-fighting of the elves.

It indicates an omnipotent god - Eru Iluvatar: The One, who creates the heavens and the earth.

The One then creates the Ainar, kind of like angels, who he teaches some kind of heavenly music which is basically his word made into reality.

Of these Ainar/angels, he appoints fifteen (I think) as sort of archangels; the Valar. For most of the rest of The Silmarillion Eru/The One is pretty much ignored and the Valar are treated like a pagan pantheon of gods and godesses (Elbereth Gilthoniel, the head godess is mentioned in passing in T2T).

One of the Valar, Melkor, who later is called Morgoth, tries to take over Valar-land. Lots of bad stuff happens.

The non-Valar Ainar are called Maiar. Among the Maiar are the Istari (Wizards, Sauron, and Balrogs.)Sauron is Morgoth's chief deputy, Balrogs are kind of stupid evil Maiar.

Another Maia, Melian, marries the king of the Teleri, Elwe, also called Thingol. Their daughter is Luthien, who marries the Man Beren. They are the great-grandparents of Elrond as well as Elros, the ancestor of Aragorn.

Elves and Men are called "The Children of Iluvatar" and are directly created by him. The Dwarves were formed by one of the Valar, Aule the Smith, but given life by Iluvatar. No mention of the Hobbits' origins is in The Silmarillion.

Orcs originated with Avari Elves (the branch of Elves who refused to journey into the West and for the most part lived in forests) who were kidnapped by Morgoth and twisted and changed. They shared immortality (unless violently killed) with the elves, and reproduced like any other creature.

Oakspear icon_cool.gif

...goin' down to Rosedale, got my rider by my side...and I'm standin' at the crossroads...

[This message was edited by Oakspear on January 13, 2003 at 19:13.]

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Oak, cool background stuff. I also thought about the chain of command in a devil spirit light but was not sure if this thread wanted to go in that direction so held back. Interesting though with Sauron as the head and how the level of intellect deteriorates as it moves down. And the end result of the last book is interesting in this light as well. Not to get into that should no one have read them, and of course have not seen the movie yet. icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

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Oak - Thanks for posting the background material. I have a hard time staying focused while reading the "Silmarillion", but I love listening to the audiotape version.

You wrote, "The One then creates the Ainar, kind of like angels, who he teaches some kind of heavenly music which is basically his word made into reality." That's one of my favorite parts. I think Tolkien did a far better job of handling the problem of theodicy (how can a good God's creation contain evil?) than did TWI with its "idiom of permission", or especially CES with its blind god (they teach that God does not have foreknowledge).

And why shouldn't we be able to find truth in Tolkien's fantasy? Look how much of the Bible is *poetry*!

QQ and Hope - The cavalry charge of Gandalf and the Rohirrim (some of Tolkien's languages use the ending "rim" the way we would use "ites", Rohirrim come from Rohan, Haradrim come from Harad, etc.) into the Uruk Hai pike formation seemed a little hokey to me, too, the first time I watched it. Horses are smarter than people in many ways, and will not deliberately run into something they perceive as an obstacle.

This is how I was able to rationalize it after watching it a few more times (I've only seen it 5 times so far. I need to get back into the theater soon:-)

1. The Uruk Hai (Dunlendings, too) had expected Helm's Deep to be a cake-walk, but the defenders put up a better fight than expected. Surprise, surprise, there were some nasty elves there, too. Yikes!

2. The Uruks had fought through the whole rainy night, and just as they thought they were on the point of winning, Theoden, Aragorn, etc. come charging out of the Hornburg down the causeway.

3. As if this wasn't enough, The bad guys receive an unexpected cavalry charge from higher ground on their flank.

4. The rays of the morning sun are shining into their eyes, and even though the Uruks were bred to operate in the daylight (and not turn to stone like trolls), I still like to think this would lower the morale of the Uruks.

5. Gandalf the White, a powerful wizard, is at the head of the charge. Gandalf may or may not have been using some magic to influence the Uruk's morale, but I like to think he was.

So my interpretation is that the pike formation's morale broke, just before the charge hit home. Terror spread from the fleeing first ranks, and morale failure cascaded through Saruman's whole army. Historically speaking, many armies have been defeated due to morale failure cascades.

At any rate, it was a whopping good spectacle! Post on, post on!

Love,

Steve

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A correction to something I said earlier:

In the extended DVD edition, Gandalf does not reveal the origin of Gollum. He DOES say that Gollum used to be called Smeagol, but he reveals nothing substantive about Smeagol.

This is in the scene where they're resting in Moria.

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About the orcs and morale, remember the infighting between the orcs and the Uruk-Hai while Merry and Pippin were being carried off? There were several different bands of orcs, men, and U-H in the army, and when the tide turned, it would not surprise me if they all broke because of that. "Let the slow bastards over there face the Rohirrim, I'm outta here!"

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I know this is about T2T, but there's something

bugging me about both movies, & it's very petty.

Those who read 'the Hobbit' know that Bilbo

Baggins got "Sting", an elven knife, when Gandalf got "Glamdring" (aka "Beater") and the

dwarf Thorin Oakenshield got Orcrist (aka "Biter"). All 3 weapons were magical, and glowed when orcs were present, the brighter the glow, the closer they were.

At the door to Moria in FotR, I pointed out to

someone Gandalf's sword, which he shifts when he sits on the rock to think. A few scenes later, Frodo sees "Sting" glow. I said

"Wait a minute! Why isn't GLAMDRING glowing?"

I don't remember it glowing at the beginning of

T2T either. (One fan in the theater behind me

said, of the beginning, "Glamdring did all the

work!") C'mon, Jackson, would it really have

been too much to ask to make it glow whenever

Sting glowed?

And, yes, a bright light from Gandalf as the

Rohirrim charged at Helm's Deep would have gone

a long way into making the rout more

believeable. icon_smile.gif:)-->

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And another sword question...

Aragorn's sword, Anduril, was made much of in the books. He announced his title and the fact he was the bearer of the sword that had been broken,etc.

All I remember about the sword was the scene in the FOTR when Boramir meets Aragorn for the first time while looking over the pieces of the broken sword, Narsil.

Other than that, I believe that I only heard one other mention of it, when one of the characters said something about legends coming to life...

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I thought Glamdring glowed when G fought the Balrog, but I noticed it didn't glow in the orc fights too.

Plus, in the book, the shards of Narsil were reforged into Anduril at Rivendell, before the Fellowship left! Isn't there a scene in T2T where Elrond mentions Arwen took the shards of Narsil, maybe to Lorien?

I've only seen T2T once so far, so maybe I'm wrong.

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