The Lord of the Rings - The two towers reviews

Excellent film better then the first, watch the lemmings run out and then get the DVD, then 6 months later watch the Extended edition appear and then we still run out and get it :'( :D
 
i had completely forgotten about the barrow downs! isnt that where they meet tom bombadil? was that in the first or second book? i read it so long ago that i cant remember much!
 
bantams - I intended doing a 9 hour LOTR session of all 3 after seeing film 1. Can't agree with anyone about Gimli, though. Read it 20+ times & he is not there for comic relief.
 
Spot on, Gimli is a very serious character.....The dynamic between him and Legolas is a set thing. Now it's the little man who falls over and the sex symbol:rolleyes:
 
The little man who can't see over the wall - where is the dignity of Gimli and dwarves in general? And Faramir starts out with a personality transplant, and still doesn't seem entirely trustworthy by the end. I do love the films, but some aspects are disappointing because there's no good reason for them. Still, can't wait for Shelob.
 
Barrow Downs - It's important for something that happens in the third part. They covered themsleves slightly in the special edition by having Galadriel give Merry and Pippin the important items instead...........
 
i would but i dont have time - at the mo im reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. i'm only half way thru book 2 - and there are at least 11 books in the series (each book being over 700pages each). gonna take a bit of time me thinks.
 
Gimli the mighty warrior who slays more orcs than Legolas and waxs lyrical about the beauty of the caves of Helm's Deep - Instead let's have Dwarf tossing gags (oh so hilarious) and stuff Helm's Deep with Elves.....Then despite there history of fighting balrogs have them all slaughtered.
 
Important items from the Barrowdowns - haven't seen the special edition but I heard about Galadriel giving these instead. They've only covered themselves for the benefit of DVD owners, though - apparently it isn't important enough for the rest of us? All the more reason for people to read the book. Perhaps there'll be time after the 3rd film, spankee?
 
i just feel that Peter Jackson hasn't made the films as dark and involving as the book, i was annoyed at the cinema where i saw it that the audience laughed at the character of gollum, because this film should be serious not a comedy.

I feel kind of let down by the production, yes the scenery is amazing, but the intensity is lacking.

For people who have read then book then i think that it is an anti climax, for people who haven't read the book then i think they will find it entertaining.

Peter Jackson is widely regarding as a very accomplished director but i would have prefered David Fincher or even Steven Spielberg.
 
Pretty much agree, but a couple of points - first, one film equals one third of the book and still has to miss things out to cram it into 3 hours. Inevitably more will be lost than just bits of story (eg Barrowdowns). Character development, variations in pace, intensity. To do complete justice to the book we'd need a lot more footage hours than we're ever going to get. Accepting this we can stand back a bit and judge it on other things, like the inaccuracies in characters, what we thought of the Ents etc, & we can also gain an impression of the films as a whole in relation to the book. And this is where I get to my second point - I've read it countless times over 30 years & never believed a halfway decent film could be possible. This is more than just halfway decent. With the first one I was absolutely gobsmacked, I'd been reading about this place all those years, and now it was like someone had taken a film crew there, it was so in tune with the "real thing". That's some achievement. I still hate what's been done to Gimli & Faramir, & can't decide about Gollum and a few other things. But they're outweighed by a lot of other stuff, and I'd rather have these films than none at all.
 
bem is right Spankee - A re-read of LoTRT would be a good thing to do!! In fact it would be more fulfilling than Jordan. The Wheel of Time starts really well but as time goes on you'll find it dragging (IMO - It loses it's way after the fith book)). It's made worse by the gaps between books I had to suffer because he hadn't written them yet, so maybe going straight through won't be so bad.....But....as far as I'm aware he hasn't finished writing it all yet......
 
yeh he hasnt finished writing them yet - he's still got 2 more books to write - so there'll be 13 books in the series :eek:
i found reading LOTR much better and fulfilling than Jordan - i found the first book - The Eye of the World - ok, but it half of it was good action and exciting and the other half was boring. i thought i'd try the next book, and so far it has been quite good - not many boring parts - mostly exciting. i just want to see what happens to all the characters. I imagine that by the 5th book i'll probably have lost interest tho! i dont know where Jordan can go with 13 books - how can a story be that big?

anyway i found that after reading LOTR, i was very disappointed with all the Science Fiction books on sale - none of them seemed anywhere near as good as Tolkien's writing. dont suppose you know of any good books that come anywhere near to as good as the story of LOTR??
i found a writer called Kristen Britain and i thought she was pretty good, but so far she has only written one book :(
 
I speak very highly of the Saga of Exiles by Julian May (Book one is The Many-colored Land)....
Ursula Le Guin is also very good, can't argue with that.
 
A warning about Many Coloured Land - when I first tried it I couldn't get into it because the first few chapters don't seem to have anything to do with each other & I gave up on it. But I went back to it a while later & found I'd stopped reading just before the chapter that brings it all together, & after that I couldn't get enough. So perservere even if you're not sure what's going on, it'll soon be clear & it's well worth it.
 
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