FILMIC ISSUES WITH "THE TWO TOWERS" MOVIE
as considered by a war-film, adventure-film, costume-drama junkie
Promises Kept
Not the good ones, I'm afraid. (Major spoilers for ROTK-M)
Dromonds. Not Junks.
How small details, messed up, can have much broader significance. (Spoilers for ROTK-M)
The Downfallen
A storyboard sequence, doodled up and digitized, showing
how a certain major missing SEQUENCE from ROTKM could have been handled without
too much difficulty as far as getting in things like the desperate
state of intelligent defenders, the massiveness of an Atlantean fortified city, the idea
that the Witch-King of Angmar should inspire the same sort of dread that an
undead Macbeth who's also the real Vlad Dracul, working for the Devil as
field commander, with access to >unlimited troops to use for ballista-fodder and materiel
support, would inspire - and also, along the way, the Houses of Healing, Noble!Denethor,
and a siege-engine that an ancient conquerer wouldn't have been ashamed of.
Missing Scenes
from ROTK-M; sketched up in a couple hours for the heck
of it, with no real attempts at accuracy, just impressions for how they could be blocked.
(There's also a major continuity error in the second, due to framing the storyboard
from artists' POV first, which would have to be corrected in filming/production;
I'll leave it to Age of Sail enthusiasts to catch it.)
"What news from the North, Riders of Rohan?"
Freehand storyboard sketch: If I were doing this for real, I'd use reference photos and do an elevation plan to block
everything out, get the foreshortening/perspective accurate to the map, etc; (frex
I don't know if from where the trails crossed, you could see the Gap as I've drawn
it, or more or less of it or the Forest.) But this gives a feel for how I'd shoot/frame/costume
the scene.
Enjoy Your Nice Oatmeal, Kids, And Stop Whining
"Just accept it for what it is" — I do, and here's the
scorecard. Doesn't include plotholes — I do have other things to do, after all —
and doesn't include "Movie
Mistakes" style nitpicks, which don't usually register with me:
just the big obvious stuff like characterization and visuals.
"Helm's Deep"
Another rough take of a scene, done straight from the
book, roughed out as a telescript. Even with minimal cuts and very long
directorial descriptions, it's shorter than the corresponding sequence from the
movie transcript... and there's nothing to make military history buffs tear
their hair, either.
Irrelevant and Anticlimactic?
The "Scouring" Considered, for Readers and Others
Broken Promises
The (many) disappointments of TTT-M, examined briefly
(sort of). Footnote and sarcasm warnings.
The Battle That Ate The Film
Helm's Deep vs all other aspects of the plot in TTT-M,
with some hard numbers (and graphs.)
Forgery
The stupidity of the re-forging of Anduril scene from
the ROTK trailer. (What makes it worse is that they got the mechanics of
forging blades right earlier, in Isengard, which scene is used
as the backdrop for the menu lead-in on the Theatrical Edition DVD. Apparently
they forgot in the past year...)
An Alternative Outline
Not a full script, just a quick breakdown of how the
scenes in a 3-hour film version of TTT could go - and still be faithful to the
books. After all, if the makers of El Cid could fit in an impressive battle,
a tournament, another battle, and a war/siege/sortie into three hours - and also
fit in two romances, several court intrigues, treason and redemption and character
development - surely something of the kind could have been managed
with the adaptation of this epic story. Here's a rough sketch of how it might happen.
No Rohan in New Zealand?
It's now being said by many posters (coming I believe
straight from the EE DVD propaganda) that the scenes from 'The Riders of Rohan"
were moved to a piece of volcanic terrain more resembling Iceland than
the rolling hills and wetlands of East Emnet in the book, because there
are no plains in NZ for them to film on. Well, there may not be much that's
flattish as compared to the highlands and mountains - but a quick google will find
plenty of images of terrain that looks suspiciously like the "green sea" of the fine
horse country of the Mark. For anyone else who winced every time horses were shown
running through those awful tufa slopes - here are links to a few examples.
"The King of the Golden Hall"
A rough take, with as-yet minimal cuts, on how this sequence
could have been scripted otherwise. More trimming is required; yet even
as it stands, read and paced out, it only takes twice the length of the same
sequence in TTT-M, some of which minutes could be removed from uncanon Osgiliath,
and others from uncanon Rivendell, and still more from the Helm's Deep
sequence - that one chapter doesn't really need to take up 1/4 of all the
movie screentime, does it? (Surely something could be left for the EE-DVD,
right, for the fanboys who just want to see hack-em-up action and don't care about coherent
plots or characterization....)
A Canon Scene of Low Comedy for TTT
Exactly what it says.
—Still think TTT-the- Movie is better than Lawrence of Arabia, El Cid, The Longest Day, The Bridge At Remagen, Grand Illusion, The Great Escape, Aleksandr Nevsky and The Seven Samurai put together, or that Peter Jackson is a superior director to David Lean, Michael Korda, Jean Renoir, Terrence Malick, and Akira Kurosawa on their best days? Tell me why, then, if you want, with specific examples, but don't waste my time asserting that LOTR and LOTR-M can't be compared 'cause they're different media — or I'll regale you with the specifics of at least three different film versions of Jane Eyre and which ones failed and how, when all were "accurate" adaptations, and sundry other movie treatments that were in some ways superior to the books they were based on until you'll wish you never heard the word "adaptation"...
