2002, The Two Towers. Now this one had a special challenge being the middle chapter it had neither a beginning nor an end
It was the middle
And as such it needed to have its own little arcs like
Fellowship its own plot within the greater plot that felt complete yet part of a bigger whole. Did it succeed?
..Mostly?
Bear in mind that this trilogy is still the best studio trilogy we've seen in our lifetimes, and yes, I will fight you on that.
But there is bound to be a weakest chapter, and I think this is it. Yet at the same time, it's
kind of my favorite of the three.
I consider Fellowship to be the most consistent, Return of the King has some of the highest highs
but also some of the lowest lows
So while The Two Towers did some things amazingly right,
There were still some things they couldn't quite figure out how to cram in properly with that three hour runtime looming.
So today we will take a look at The Two Towers
Because you can like a thing while still examining its cultural impact and exploring its flaws. This can be done.
Let me show you
Let us first start with some issues in the adaptation of characters
For a first example let's look at the introduction, if you can call it that, of a bunch of new characters of the Rohirrim
Now in the book the people of Rohan effectively get no introduction
We, the reader, meet them when the characters do
We meet them when Gandalf shows up at Meduseld, and Prince Théodred is already dead, and there's apparently this Wormtongue clown
So in the movie we back it up a bit and give them the slightest of introductions with
dying guy we don't know, and royal vizier who might be just a touch evil
I can't tell it's very subtle, and some guy we don't know gets exiled or something
in the extended cut we get even more of an introduction, like, thirty seconds more
At least then we know who dying guy is
and who Éomer is in relation to the king, and who this lady is, and oh Jesus. God
There are a lot of characters here
And that's the thing when you're trying to adapt a book that has so many characters in it and most of the audience won't have read the book
You don't have a lot of time for each character to get across to the audience: who they are
What their personality is? Why we should care about them?
So most, if not all, of the characters get distilled into a very few key character traits
So you remember the two hobbits that no one can tell apart?
"Merry, it's Frodo Baggins"
- "Hello, Frodo" - "Get off"
the movie plays them up as
Hapless dumbasses who happen to be at the right place at the right time; in the book they know all about Frodo's plan
Hell, Merry even knew about the Ring and in the movie they just tag along because
Why not? And some differentiation between the two is there, Merry is the clever, resourceful one and Pippin the happy dumb one
But in movie language these traits are kind of subtle especially with so much stimulus being thrown at you from other directions
so by the general casual movie-going public the to get conflated anyway. the lowest common denominator or
"the casual movie-going public" ie
most people
So where in the book Pippin is young, impulsive and naive, it translates in the movie to him just being kind of dumb
"What about second breakfast?"
So if Pippin's key trait is that he's kind of dumb
Treebeard's seems to be that he's boring
"Now, don't be hasty, Master Meriadoc" "Hasty?"
I think I might be one of the only people in the world that really loved the hell out of the Ent chapter in the book
and I get the impression the filmmakers weren't too wild about it either
where in the book the two hobbits spend a lot of their time being in awe of Treebeard and
Learning about the Ents, and getting to know their new buddy Quickbeam, who is so hasty he once
interrupted another Ent in the middle of a sentence
snap!
in the movie they spend most of their scenes with Treebeard being bored
And then frustrated that he's not moving fast enough. Hell, by the end of it
They have to trick Treebeard into doing what they want him to
"The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm. It's the last thing he'll expect"
But what's frustrating for the audience avatars in this case the two hobbits is bound to translate into frustration for the audience
So it's not too surprising that audiences weren't crazy about the Ent scenes -- except for the payoff at the end that was pretty awesome
Trees!
Trees! Trees killing things!
You could argue really that it's Pippin, not Frodo, who has the biggest arc of the four hobbits
Hell, the entire Fellowship, really. His journey as a character makes him grow and change the most, where Frodo... well, I mean...
You could argue that one he gets more and more worn down [and] Sam just gets devoted-er
We'll get to Sam next week
But I would argue that
For a movie that has so many characters and this much stimulus being thrown at you and information that you're expected to remember it
it does get across its intentions
admirably for what it does and [the] time that it has
But not everybody can have an arc
We haven't looked at Gimli yet, so let's look at him "We dwarves are natural splinters"
"Very danger at short distances" In movie one he's more dynamic. He has comic relief moments yes, but he also plots
"[lashes] which I looked them up, I'd say [we] were taking the long way around"
he grieves
And then he seeks revenge
He only has a couple of comic moments
"Nobody touches a dwarf"
People must have really liked that line because in movie two, it's dwarf jokes all around
"breathe"
"Get this adjusted"
"It's a little tight across the chest." He doesn't do much but tag along on the adventure
So he's pretty much relegated to comic relief while Legolas gets to be the cool badass
Legolas got to be the badass in movie one and everybody loved it
And I like the framing of it more in movie one. It was cool because it wasn't so overt
He's just wow this guy is an amazing shot; in movie two, not enough to be an amazing shot
Oh no, we got to do it while shield surfing down some stairs, which is to say nothing about movie three
"33, 34"
bigger-er-er
We didn't need an army
We just needed a couple of these guys. That's not to say really that there was much
They could do with Legolas and Gimli, there just wasn't that much to work with from the book.
Thanks for establishing some tension, Vague-olas. In the book, out of the nine, Legolas is
Probably the least defined. So in Fellowship
He kind of winds up being expository man "Crebain from Dunland"
"He is Aragorn"
"Son of Arathorn"
This is backstory, son of exposition
The only real moment of personality we get from Legolas is in the extended cut where we find out that
He, like Gimli, is a touch on the racist side
surprise
so most of the character arc for these two, like in the book, is about how they learn to be buddies and get along and
Have an epic interracial bromance
I think Orlando Bloom gets a bit of a bad rep. He's not a deplorable actor. He's just kind of, well, surrounded by
Come on
outclassed, you might say
he does have a couple of good acting moments and...
There, right there, that look says, "I am an elf and have never encountered mortality"
"And I don't know how to deal with this", that's a good subtle acting moment
You don't see much emotion from these two in movies two and three, just the development of their friendship
But I like what little we do get movie one "For me, the grief is still too near"
It is there, just not very often. All right, Gimli?
Ho here you fell down
The Two Towers features the two plot threads and there is a cornerstone for both of them, a centerpiece if you will, the first being
probably my least favorite giant chunk of the movies, and the books for that matter, except for Tom Bombadil
And that, of course, is the Battle of Helm's Deep
Not because it's bad, but it just goes on and on, and it starts to feel like padding after a while
Also, what the hell is this? "An alliance once existed between elves and men. We come to honor that allegiance."
So... the second to Last Alliance
Arwen was originally in these scenes -- no, really
So I have to assume that the elves were like, she snuck in with them, and they cut her part
But kept the elves and also this guy goes down
Do you remember this guy's name, casual moviegoer that saw fellowship once or twice a year ago?
Or that he was even in the first movie?
Hey, Guy, with no emotional bond to any of the characters. Did you just show up for the sole purpose of dying a beautifully tragic death?
So I feel like this little chunk was trying to capture a little bit of that magic that was Boromir's death in the first movie
But it works when Boromir dies, because A, it's the end of the movie and B
We just spent hours with him, getting to know him, learning his struggles.
I know who you are, Guy, who was in the first movie and was kind of a dick for like 20 seconds?
But what about Joanna and cletus?
I guess they'll think this is sad because the music tells them it's sad
But, really, for the casual viewer, no one knows who you are
Guy, who is getting tragic death scene. Helm's Deep in the book is really not that long or dramatic
Yes, there are 10,000 orcs that show up to fight
But they're quickly driven back by the awesome might of Helm's Deep and then Gandalf shows up
And they get eaten by the trees -- but the build-up to the battle in the movie goes on and on
And is longer than the battle itself "This isn't a rabble of mindless Orcs"
okay, so you're saying it's hopeless
"They're all going to die" okay, so you're saying it's hopeless
"They say that it is hopeless" Yes. We know it's hopeless
Although if it wasn't for Helm's Deep, we also wouldn't have the best worst shot in all three films
Admittedly it is pretty hard to pick and choose
What will end up in the theatrical cut, bearing in mind that the theatrical cut is the version that most people will ever see
But all of this build-up for Helm's Deep comes at the expense of some really good stuff that you only see in the extended version
like this scene with Boromir and Faramir from the extended cut that sets up Faramir's relationship with his father and the love that the
two brothers have for each other, and the preferential way that Denethor treats Boromir, and how Boromir is not cool with that
"One moment of peace, can't he give us that" And moreover we really need a scene to get to know and that humanizes Faramir
Because he is an asshole
"The ring will go to Gondor"
[Forced Peej Conflict!]
In the book Faramir is a pretty nice guy
maybe a little too nice because not a whole lot happens after he captures Frodo and Sam
As soon as he finds out Frodo has the ring he pretty much immediately decides that he doesn't want to touch it
He's just that nice. He's not a dick to the hobbits and
Doesn't drag their asses to Osgiliath for yet another battle, and then as if to compensate for the good scene
they added in the extended version, they also added this:
Oh, you're not looking at the cruelty you ordered your men to inflict? That must mean you have a sensitive soul!
Yes, I understand in order for it to be a movie
It needs more conflict
but in this case it comes at the expense of the likeability of a character that the audience needs to sympathize with
to be fair at least he does eventually revert to his book character by Movie 3
By spending most of it unconscious
But I said that there were two set pieces in this movie the first being the big battle scene the other one being
"So bright, so beautiful, our precious"
I did not just squeak
Gollum is the best character in all three books, period.
Yes, I may be a touch partial, had an odd collection of Gollum posters back in college, Nella loved it, really
Might have stood in line all night wants to meet Andy Serkis, got a picture and everything! He smelled nice
What?
How easy would it have been to screw this up?
We've seen Gollum done a couple times before in other adaptations, and if you're being charitable you might say
At least he works within the tone of those...
films?
But Gollum is out there, man, a hair in either direction, and we'd have another Jar Jar Binks on our hands
[Gollum talking]
He's like, Gandalf's dialogue
In the wrong hands, this could have gone terribly
In the decision to make him totally CGI, to integrate him the way they did, he was a really huge gamble
They changed quite a bit from the book, scenes wise, added a bunch
But it really distills the tragedy of the character for a new audience the schizophrenia thing is played up a lot "Master's my friend"
"You don't have any friends" And this scene right here turns on a dime several times the audience is laughing and then they go to
Sympathizing with him and then they cheer for him. This scene uses its time very effectively
Also, this
Assholes. but while we're talking about Lord of the Rings and its influence, I would be remiss to
neglect its main
peer
the very first Harry Potter movie came out about a month before Lord of the Rings and
Probably influenced the success of Fellowship very greatly
It really is kind of a coincidence that the two projects
Coincided the way that they did, that the viewing public was interested in high fantasy epics in a way that they never were before
Harry Potter may not have been directly responsible for the success of Lord of the Rings
But it certainly didn't hurt. Harry Potter is fantasy, but modern fantasy, therefore more accessible
It's also based on a book series that
Everyone was reading at the time and therefore was bound to be a huge success even with Hollywood's brightest
Hack making a mediocre movie like Sorcerer's Stone ended up being. So in wading an appetite for high fantasy, the Harry Potter books and movies
Certainly didn't hurt Fellowship's grosses
Especially considering that Fellowship wasn't aiming at the exact same demographic, the Lord of the Rings movies were for an older audience
most of the, well, we won't call them knockoffs, but
Projects that were *influenced* by the success of Lord of the Rings were clearly trying to suckle that demographic teat from both franchises
the Chronicles of Narnia
Stardust, the Spiderwick Chronicles, the Golden Compass
Especially, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. You look at Narnia, especially which was trying so hard
To be the next Lord of the Rings. It was based off a book by one of Tolkien's
Contemporaries and everybody already knew it, it got epic other worlds and fauns
They wanted so bad for it to be Lord of the Rings they really tried a little
Incredibly way too hard
Don't dun da da da Da dun-- is this epic enough for you, fantasy wars and shit? Yeah?
Things can get a little awkward when you try to movie epic-fy a short little children's book into something it's not.
[mm]. Also those movies weren't very good
But these are the more obvious influences and the resurgence of high fantasy as a viable moneymaker. There are other perhaps
less-obvious influences, but we'll get into those next week. For now,
Hmm... I feel like I'm forgetting something...
Oh, right