I'm Curious...
The Two Towers was on TV here last night. I couldn't help but watch parts of it. The first time I saw this movie was in the theatre, and I loved it, not because I thought it was perfect rendering of the books (which it certainly wasn't) but because it was quite a powerful experience to see how others had visualised at least parts of a story and a
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I've had a similar experience with the LOTR films, btw - was blown away, quite emotionally, by them at the cinema, but now each time I watch them I find myself picking more holes. I've not watched them now for about six months, and I'm hoping that next time I pick them up I'll be less critical. Because they are fantastic cinematic experiences, and in a way we're extremely lucky that it was someone like Jackson who finally got around to making them and not, say, Spielberg.
FWIW, I reread the books immediately after ROTK came out (and then the Silmarillion, and all the History Of... books), and loved them more than ever. But my boyfriend, who hasn't read them (he's read The Hobbit, but that's it) took one look and said he couldn't abide Tolkien's style and was going to stick to the films. I hope he's in a minority, because it would be so sad for fans of the films to be disappointed in the original.
Anyway, I shall stop rambling. Just wanted to say hello!
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Another thing about the films - I think they suffer very much from not being displayed on a large screen, like in the theatre. No matter how good a TV set you've got, it can't make the grand scenery shots justice - and to me, that was the foundation that made Jackson's movies work.
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That makes sense to me. While watching the films at the cinema, I was utterly swept away, and prepared to forgive anything that didn't match my interpretation of the books - Arwen as Glorfindel, for example. Whereas now, Arwen's role in the first film irks me more each time I watch it. Grr...
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But I didn't mind that at all the first time I saw them.
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yes. interesting post-- I find that the comic relief moments bother me the more I watch Jackson's LotR movies. He and Fran and Phillipa Boyens got the deeper moments and the significance of where the plot was going emotionally. However, it's the haha! and ick! moments that Jackson indulged in (the orc's head getting lopped off or the green specter army of the dead) that really rub me the wrong way.
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Yes, you're totally right about the comic relief moments - that grates with me too. Poor Gimli has fared very badly in that, for instance, which annoys me no end.
*friends before rushing off to work*
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