OT: The Two Tower.

[Fyron]

the ents great attack of Isengard (but why did Saruman not defend with magic?)

In the book, he did. A number of ents were burnt to a crisp by fire shooting up from the ground (likely from burning/exploding oil). And besides, he was terrified, and caught off-guard. He never suspected that the ents would attack him.

I really didn't like how Pippin and Merry convinced Fangorn to rally the ents. It greatly detracted from their character (the ents), and made them seem too jaded. The entmoot hastily (for ents) decided to attack Isengard, not leave it be.

Also, I did not like how Theoden was portrayed as a coward (after spell was broken), being unwilling to fight Saruman. He was very willing to in the book.

Oh, and it seemed odd to me that Theoden said "And so it begins" at the beginning of the battle of Helm's Deep. What is he, a Vorlon?

[ December 22, 2002, 06:58: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[klausD]

as for the accuracy of shots, elves are just excellent marksmen with bows Ok this is true, but nobody can hit anybody without seeing him. In this case hits are only pure luck.

And yes longbows have been able to penetrate plate armor. But historically they have to had a optimal entry ankle to achieve this. (similar to a crossbow which have been better at short distances for such a mission) In Austria we have some very interesting special museums called "Zeughaus" (house of things) which shows and describes nearly all medevial weapons which has been used in Europe in those times. I can really recommend this if you ever visit our country.

I really didn't like how Pippin and Merry convinced Fangorn to rally the ents Yes this was a little bit like a speach from the president to raise morale of the soldiers.
Why should a race of thousand year old entities even listen at those tiny little 30 year old hobbits? And why did they think hobbits are orcs? And what was with that gandalf scene when treebeard carried the hobbits to gandalf? Why dont they go with gandalf? The sorcerer met the rest of the fellowship a little bit later and he didnot even mention that he met Pippin and Merry, Hä? Very strange.

All in all the ents have not been portrayed that good. For my taste they have been too fast. Treebeard spoke too much and he comprehended to fast. There should have been a symbolic time delay (2 seconds at least) between a spoken word from the hobbits and an answer of treebeard to portray the different time universe.

Also it was cheesy that treebeard saw the destroyed wood and yelled for help. Then ALL ents came at the SAME time out of the woods in nearly no delay time. (BTW I was very amused by the scene in which an ent extinguished the flaming head with the water of the incoming flood)

Klaus

[Fyron]

klausd, I am inclined to agree with you there.

That ent on fire scene was pretty funny.

[sachmo]

Just saw it, finally. Took my breath away. I am so glad the movie is good, and hopefully doing very well at the box office. If fantasy can make it's mark with the American public, we might see some other quality stories made into movies...Like George Martin, or Robert Jordan, or Eddings. Wouldn't that be something?

[Kamog]

Originally posted by sachmo:
...Like George Martin, or Robert Jordan, or Eddings. Wouldn't that be something?

Yes, David Eddings is my favorite. I have read almost all of his books, and I re-read the Elenium and Tamuli series every year! Terry Brooks is good, too, but I like Eddings' style the best. That WOULD be something!

[Puke]

spoiley below:

i have not seen it yet, but plan to in the next couple of days. some things i hear sort of distress me, so i am going to keep my expectations low, and try to view it as its own movie unrelated to the books.

the hobbits had to beg the trees for help? in the story, the trees were pretty ready to go, they just needed to take some time to talk to each other about it. it probably just took a couple days for treebeard to explain the whole thing to the rest of the ents..

aragorn fell off a cliff? what?

faramir (spelling?) tried to steal the ring? what?

they ended it before breaking sauramans staff, and retrieveing the seeing stone?

they ended it before getting sam and frodo past the spider (and frodo appearing to be dead? that was the fricking cliff hanger!)

a winged nazgul attacked someone? huh?

there was bickering between arawyn (spelling?) and agent smith? eh?

aragorn was tempted by elowyn (spelling?)? the first thing he said to her in the book, was 'sorry, im taken.'

so, it sounds like a lot of sillyness was put in. and it sounds like they ended it VERY early. whats going to be left for the return of the king? are they going to cut out everything after the battle at the gates of morodor? they have to show everyone but Arawyn leaving on the ships.. they have to show sam settling down. they cant cut that stuff out. are they going to leave out aragorn leading the army of the dead?

its going to take at least an hour of the thrid film to catch up to where they should have been at the end of the second film, and that is leaving me with alot of doubts about how the third movie is going to be. especially with what i hear has been butchered in the second movie.

[Fyron]

Yeah... they left out at least half of the events in TTT, and changed the other half.

[jimbob]

Warning: Spoiler spoiler everywhere and not a bit of Think

I'd imagine that a lot of the TTT book was left out because The Return of the King (RoK?) is such a short book - when you remove the appendix that is I'm guessing that they wanted to split the total content of the Last two books evenly to get two movies of 3 hours, instead of TTT being 4.5 hours and RoK being only 1.5 hours long. I'm fairly certain that Shelob will have her day.

As to Frodo's little jaunt to ??? packed under Theodin's arm... I think it would be pretty anticlimatic to have the ringbearer just muck about a swamp for 30-40 minutes. And while the book can convey much more of Gollums' inner workings, to give the viewer a taste for his bitterness at the betrayal by "master" it was probably better to have Gollum tied up and carried about like cord wood for a long time. In the book, it seemed like Gollum was tied up and detained by Theodin and friends for less time than it takes to get through Canadian customs! As much as I loved the book, the sympathetic portrayal of Gollum spoke much more to me in the movie.

As to the arrows fired over the wall - English Longbowmen did not fire at a target per se when firing en mass. Rather they would fire at a likely target location and hope that someone was in that place when the arrow landed. This was necessary because the distances covered were simply to far for the type of accuracy that we can get out of a gun. From the looks of the movie, the orcs were pretty well shoulder to shoulder, so the arrows were IMHO very likely to find a target.

...er, a little edit here. the "not a bit of Think" was a bit of self-mockery. I didn't intend to imply that anyone else had posted any poorly thought out Messages or anything . Yeah, anyways...

Merry Gandalfmas and a happy New Year everyone.

-jimbob

[ December 24, 2002, 02:02: Message edited by: jimbob ]