gygax! corners Ned on his Two Towers Exp. Edition thoughts

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Ned,

It's come to this... it's now or never:

What are your thoughts on the director's cut of The Two Towers?

I was suprised at how much was added back in esp. wrt: Faromir/Gondor, the telling flashback of Boromir/Faromir which allows for much more sympathy towards Boromir, and many other things I don't quite remember right now but I want to sit down and watch it all again (with the closed captions to decipher the Treebeard lines that I couldn't remember from the text).

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I already posted this on the Two Towers thread you revived! I like it! Etc.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

i just bought it for my dad at xmas!!

thus DILEMMA: do i watch to "see that the tape is OK and stuff", or shd he get it still sealed and present-shipshape?

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

i mean i think it's FUNNY when i get a book for xmas and it has a lollipop-bookmark stuck to like page 176

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

It shows it was well loved.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 November 2003 21:54 (twenty-two years ago)

haha, too funny.

* Though I still think that the Ents come off as almost willfully ignorant on certain things and that they could have written the movie to have Treebeard be more immediately understanding, they do set it up so that Saruman's decision to start hacking into Fangorn happened almost right there and then in second-movie-timeframe terms, and thus making it more an honest surprise.

Yes, I think Treebeard seems even more stubborn and hindering in the film.

* The seemingly complete rewrite of Faramir's character from the book is much more conditional now -- the Faramir/Denethor/Boromir plays out the tensions described but not directly encountered in the book within that family and his initial actions are less surprising/less of a switch than before.

Yes... although I should probably read the book again. Like: Does Faromir warn Gollum of Shebol in the book? I thought that was kinda a little too much foreshadowing in the film.

and Old Man Willow sorta shows up indirectly!

????????????????????????????????

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Does Faromir warn Gollum of Shebol in the book?

Shelob. The scene as filmed is physically harsher than in the book (the Gondor forces never assault or abuse Gollum in the text), but when he hears about the path that Gollum is leading them on, he does warn Frodo using I think a good patch of the dialogue that ended up on screen. As for Old Man Willow, I'm referring to the tree in Fangorn that entraps Merry and Pippin in the extended Ent-draught sequence.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, okay for some reason I first thought that was an allusion barrow wight but then remembered that a similar episode happened in the 2Twrs!

Yes, like I said I need to read the books again (wrt: sp errata)

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, the tree trapping thing is in Fellowship only, it just got translated to Fangorn here, along with a bit of the dialogue. It was a nice little transposition actually!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:40 (twenty-two years ago)

she-lob is easy to remember: it means "female spider" IN ENGLISH!

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:43 (twenty-two years ago)

cf: pouncing pony, &c. &c. &c.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 20 November 2003 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I tried the commentary on for size last night... Pete and Fran and Phillipa.

SPOILER: Fran shot a Smeagol as riverfolk (??? isn't that what type of being he was) scene with his cousin where he steals the ring. They thought about inserting it into the TTEE but it will be instead in the theatrical release of ROTK.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

EGGSES!!

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah -- not really much of a spoiler, though, they've been talking about that since last year.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

where do they do this talking?

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

This was in various interviews with Jackson and Serkis and et al.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

oh.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

there is lots of spare talking at the bit where the helicopter is outside moria

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

haha!

how does gollum traverse the chasm at kazam-dum?

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:38 (twenty-two years ago)

he gets ahead of them when they are stuck in the room w.the tatty book

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I am having DVD player techinal difficulties. I can't seem to get the audio commentary to play. I get the little names of the people who should be talking, but no audio except for the normal movie audio. I have tried using all the 'sound' settings! My FoTR DVD works fine though. I am pathetic.

― marianna, Friday, 21 November 2003 16:42 (twenty-two years ago)

actually i always used to wonder how the bridge at khazad dûm got there in the first place: it's "a single unbroken span hewn from the living rock" = there's this great bottomless (and sideless?) fault or fissure with one blob of "living rock" *already* spanning it, which they just carved down nicely!!??

(competent geologists to thread)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

They are Children of Aule and they know what they are doing. Don't interfere!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:48 (twenty-two years ago)

presumably the misty mountains are an upthrust zone caused by collision of continental tectonic plates anyway (or the destruction of thangorodrim = same diff)

(hmm except aren't there volcanos?) (i don't think tolkien thought this through) (admittedly wegener wz still considered an unscientific crank until the mid-60s)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Karen Wynn Fonstad did her best to explain the geography in The Atlas of Middle Earth and had good fun doing so. Gundabad is arguably a volcano, and she does try and explain Moria I seem to recall.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 November 2003 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't read any of this thread although I've just bought it because I am waiting to watch it on Sunday OW MY EYES!

― Sarah (starry), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Poor Sarah eyes! :-(

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i recently entertained a friend of mine's cousin from birmingham and he mentioned that tolkien based the lay out of Middle Earth on a particular region of birmingham, the hills/mountains, "towers" and such...

perhaps moria is really a convenience store?

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

"Birmingham" != "convenience"

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:24 (twenty-two years ago)

middle earth = midlands?

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet it's easier to get a bus through Middle Earth.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:28 (twenty-two years ago)

numenor = B&Q in nuneaton

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 21 November 2003 17:55 (twenty-two years ago)

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