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Rampant and unashamed fangirliness plus purist whinging

So I went out and purchased a copy of the Two Towers Thursday night. I had originally intended to wait and just buy the extended edition when it comes out in November, as who really needs to spend extra money on a movie that they are just going to effectively replace by a longer, cooler version later? However, the promise of a Return of the King preview complete with footage of the charge of the Rohirrim was my undoing. So we went to Wal-Mart and paid our $15 for a full screen version (they were completely out of wide screen, when will people get the hint?). It was too late to try and watch the whole movie before bed so I gleefully sat and watched most of the special features, most notably the special on how they created Gollum (Andy Serkis is completely off his head, and I love him) the preview of the extended edition (Yay, Endraughts! Yay, Hurons!) and the preview of Return of the King (Yay...um...Just yay! Yay, yay, yay!). 

Then I had Green Tea over to watch the movie with me yesterday after work, and we sat down for some good, old fashioned fangirliness. We trash-talked Evil Farimir. We squeed over Legolas. We sulked about Theoden's weird attitude problems. We squeed over Eomer and subjected his hair to criticism (we like it better dark). We made faces and depreciating comments about Wormtongue's personal hygiene. We squeed over Legolas some more. We made fun of the Olympic Torch Runner Orc. We subjected Haldir to much verbal abuse.  We argued over whether any of the Rivendel archers or the Easterling foot soldiers were girls (I am sure I saw at least one female elf in the line-up on the Deeping Wall, and suspect one of the soldiers who almost see Frodo and Sam outside the Black gate was a woman. Green Tea says that all elves look like girls from twenty paces and that the use of eyeliner does not a woman make). We rhapsodized at length about various sound and visual effects that we particularly liked. It was good.

We also had a few moments where we simply laughed at ourselves because this is the first time we've seen the movie since Cassandra Claire ("the original pervy hobbit fancier") made new Secret Diaries for the second movies, and a few of the lines from her very humorous and irreverent spoof stuck in my head and persisted in reciting themselves when we came to the corresponding part of the movie. The ones I really can't get rid of are as follows:

From the Very Secret Diary of King Theoden:

Attacked by Orcs. Aragorn "No Skillz 2 Pay Da Billz" Son of Arathorn fell over cliff, thus avoiding sticking around for battle. So much for Hero King of Men.

From the Very Secret Diary of Aragorn son of Arathorn:

Ran into army of Rohirrim. Asked Eomer if he knew where hobbits were. Got v. cagey answer. Perhaps Eomer still mad about that last bender I went on where I painted rude words in Elvish all over his horse. 

and

Ran into Gandalf. Turns out he did not actually die but instead was forced by Balrog to sell out to laundry detergent company and is now Gandalf the Sparkly White.

and

Have lost favorite sparkly necklace in river. Feeling v. petulant as there is no such thing as bad jewelry. Well, maybe Ring.

I was just reflecting that it's kind of odd how Bored of the Rings offends me deeply, to the point where I can't even read it because it makes me so mad, mostly because it drags a lot of trashy sex and innuendo into the mix. It sinks to a pretty vulgar level for its humor, and that really puts me off. My dislike of Bored may also have something to do with the fact that it is mercilessly spoofing my favorite book of all time. However, Cassie's stuff sends me into paroxysms of laughter. It is perhaps less explicit and vulgar, but it is no less rife with innuendo, though in the Very Secret Diaries the implication is that pretty much everyone is gay as opposed to just hetero and horny. Also, Cassie is almost exclusively spoofing the movies, which I do love, but not as dearly as I love the book. Perhaps that's why I can tolerate her irreverence but not Bored of the Rings.

+++++

Watching the Two Towers again brought back all the things that irritated me about it. I hadn't seen it in a while, and the only thing I could really remember about why I had not liked it nearly as much as Fellowship was that Farimir's character was totally changed and they took all his really good lines from the book and had him say them in such a way and under such circumstances that they sounded completely different and had much more sinister implications.

As it turns out, there were other things that bugged me about the movie, and they still bug me now. So of course, you know that means you are all in for a rant about mostly pointless nit-picks, a majority of which are not even noticeable flaws in the movie, just purist wenching from someone who has read all the Tolkien she can get her hands on over and over until it's burned across her frontal lobes like the Ring inscription itself.

I have already mentioned Farimir a couple of times in this journal, so I am going to leave him well enough alone and say only that from the extended edition preview it appears that they plan to pull something similar to what they did with Galadriel in Fellowship. The theatrical version Galadriel was plain scary and only reflected the perilous, powerful side of the character, while leaving out her joyful, gentle side. I expected as much, someone who's been alive longer than pretty much anything else left standing and who also happens to possess both an insane amount of potential power and quite a complex past is not going to be an easy character to portray on screen. Still when I saw Fellowship in the theaters, I was disappointed that the didn't lighten her up just a little bit. I mean, with all the "In place of a Dark Lord you would have a QUEEEEEN!" stuff she was a little over the top. So when the extended edition proved to contain the scene where she presents the Fellowship with their gifts and the bit with Gimli falling in love with her, I was very glad because that kind of balanced her out. Well, they can't quite do that with Farimir, but it looks as though they are going to try and show, through some flashbacks involving Borimir, what a mean father Denethor is and how awful he always is to Farimir, so that supposedly we will feel sorry for him and forgive him for being eeeeevil. I don't know if this will work quite as well as The Galadriel Fix. Denethor never let Farimir have as many cookies as his big brother and that is his excuse for not being the noble, insightful one in the family like he is supposed to and instead being a slightly less blustering version of his brother and nearly making all the same stupid mistakes. We shall see.

I think my next biggest beef with the Two Towers would be Theoden. My gripes regarding him are twofold. The first is the fact that in the movie, he is more or less being possessed by Saruman and that is why he has become the Cobweb Magnet. I was rather taken aback by this because there is no precedent set in the book for this at all. Most of the things that bother me about the movies are things that took original material from the books and either took it too far in one direction (Galadriel) or left it out completely (Tom Bombadil, the Barrow Wight, and, if the rumors are true, the scouring of the Shire). This was neither. For some reason in this situation, they took the existing problem, i.e. that Grima Wormtongue has sold out to Saruman and is poisoning King Theoden with crooked council and convincing him that he is sick and infirm when he really isn't and just ditched it for something totally different. In the book, Wormtongue exhibits a talent similar to Saruman's in that his voice and words have some inherent power of their own. However, in the movie Wormtongue is only aiding and abetting Saruman who has actually possessed the king and talks through him at one point like something out of the Exorcist, which is silly and weird. 

My other problem with Theoden is that after Gandalf puts him back to rights and exorcises Saruman, Theoden turns out to have some real attitude problems. He is moody and sulky and demonstrates behavior that can only be described as "pissy". He is by turns cocky-and-insufferable and defeatist-and-insufferable. The Theoden of the book is the king of a rather rough-and-ready people who is as kindly and gentlemanly as he is brave and heroic. He would never say dumb things like "Is this all you can conjure, Saruman!" (cocky) or "What can men do against such reckless hate?" (defeatist). He knew that no matter what, a king fights to defend his people, and even if it's a fool's hope you fight anyway because there is no option for giving up. But the movie Theoden does not seem to quite comprehend this. This is very trying for me, as Theoden is one of my favorite characters, and while it probably wouldn't make as good a movie if he had his old demeanor back it would certainly make me feel better. 

Also, speaking of Wormtongue, I was irritated that he got to say so many of other people's lines regarding Eowyn. To wit: "Who knows what she has spoken to the night, when all her life seems to shrink, the walls of her bower closing in, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in" is something that Gandalf says about Eowyn when she is lying unconscious in the Houses of Healing after killing the Witch King. "So cold and so fair, like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter's chill" is, if I am not very much in error, something that Aragorn thinks but does not say while observing Eowyn before he leaves for the Paths of the Dead. Both are lovely, poetic and describe Eowyn perfectly, but are not the sort of thing that Wormtongue would think of to say. It irks me that they let him say them to her, when really both things were said about her where she couldn't hear by very different people.

Back to Theoden again, and more on giving people lines that aren't theirs. Theoden gets all of Eomer's best lines (always excepting the amusing "I would cut of your head, Dwarf, if it stood but a little higher from the ground"). "Let this be the hour we draw swords together" is from somewhere after the Rohirrim have charged the fields of the Pelennor, I think, though I can't recall if it is actually said during the battle that follows or if it is in regards to the last big skirmish at the Black Gate. Anyway, it is Eomer's line, not Theoden's, as is "Now for wrath, now for ruin, and a red nightfall!" Though technically that second one should be the last line of a short poem:

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin, and a red nightfall!

And it's especially weird that Theoden should give a line from this particular stanza, because this is something that Eomer cries in his grief when Theoden dies at the Battle for the Pelennor Fields. Theoden also recites the best lines out of "Lament for Eorl the Young", but they sound a little half-baked without the rest of the poem and don't really give the same impression. Oh well, so much for the poetry of Rohan.

Speaking of poetry, I finally realized what the little poem is that Gollum recites while Frodo is trying to talk to him about his past: 

Cold be heart and had and bone
and cold be travelers far from home
they do not see what lies ahead
when sun has faded and moon is dead

It's been bugging me for some time. I knew it wasn't something Gollum said in the book, the only rhyming Gollum does is when he recites riddles, and that certainly isn't one of his riddles. It sounded familiar but I just couldn't place it for the longest time. Then I realized that most of the imagery, if not the entire verse, belongs to the Barrow Wight's curse:

Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone:
never more to wake on stony bed
never till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.

There's a second half to the curse, but since it is not germane to my rant, I am leaving it off. Anyway, I found it supremely odd that they should choose to have Gollum recite this, especially since they had to rewrite the middle bit so much in order to make it sound like something appropriate to the situation. Also, they messed with the meter, rearranged words for no reason and gave it to Gollum to say as an idle, slightly disturbing lyric to mutter in lieu of answering a question. And all the time it was really an almost-successful curse to turn the hobbits into undead zombie things very early in the first book. A part of the first book, indeed, which never made it to film. Very very odd. If they just wanted something unpleasant-sounding for Gollum to mumble, they could easily have used almost any of his riddles, which are all rather grim in content and imagery, and have the added virtue of actually belonging to him. 

Back to Rohan now, more specifically to the battle at Helm's Deep. Let's just get the really big thing out of the way, first: Elves? What are elves doing at Helm's Deep? The hell? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for having as much elf as humanly possible in any movie, but why are there elves at flippin Helm's Deep? This would be a classic case of Peter Jackson mucking with the underlying themes for the sake of making a better movie. Yes, having elves fight with the Rohirrim is cooler, and produces a handy plot element that would have taken a lot more explanation otherwise. However. The elves do not fight in the Third Age. They already did all their fighting the first time Sauron's butt got kicked. When the trilogy takes place, they are in their last years, their time in Middle Earth is ending, and they are leaving. The only elf who fights in any of the battles depicted in the entire trilogy is Legolas and that is because he is a part of the Fellowship. What bugs even more is that the archers are apparently from Rivendell, though they are led by Haldir, who is a Lothlorien scout. Now, of all the places where there are still elves, Rivendell strikes me as the least likely to conceal a hidden contingent of archers. It is predominantly a place of reflection and study, whereas Lothlorien obviously has some military (the scouts that arrest the Fellowship on the borders of the wood) and Mirkwood, where Legolas' father is king probably has even more. Of course, I imagine all elves are pretty great shakes with the old bow and arrow, but if (and I say if, because remember this doesn't actually happen in the book at all) there were to be elven archers coming to the rescue of the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep, the place I would expect them to come from would be Mirkwood, or "The Woodland Realm" as it is referred to in the movie. First of all, that is where Legolas comes from, and since we've seen that he is fighting with humans already, it would make a little more sense. Second, they are Sindarin or Grey elves, and so are probably still there. The elves at Rivendell are High elves, and so most of them are probably gone already for the Grey Havens. Third, according to my trusty map of Middle Earth, which is taped to my computer room door, Rivendell is by far the most remote from Helm's Deep in terms of location. Archers from Lothlorien could probably make it in time for the battle if they traveled on the river, or went through Fangorn, and the southern edge of Mirkwood isn't much further away. But Rivendell is waaaay north and across some pretty hefty mountains. Apparently elvish magic extends to teleportation.

Or maybe the archers are supposed to be from Lothlorien (that would explain why Haldir is leading them) and the whole message from Elrond about being proud to fight alongside men once more is just a missive and nothing else. In that case, though, Elrond is kind of slacking. He sends a message, Galadriel sends a troop of archers. The Lady of Light wins by a landslide.

Then there is the matter of Haldir, whose only purpose is to show up and get killed in order to have a face that we already knew die so that the movie doesn't resemble a Marvel comic quite so much with none of the main characters ever being in jeopardy. I actually didn't mind Haldir as much in this movie. He was a great deal more elegant and elf-like in this film, and armor suits him much better than does woodland scout gear. Of course, almost anything would be an improvement as he spent most of the previous film looking as though he had just eaten some picked quail's eggs that disagreed with him badly. Elves should not, under any circumstances, look bilious, and that is final.

Still on Helm's Deep (stay with me, here). It's quite a scene in the book, with all those orcs and hillmen filling up the valley, and all the fabulous descriptions of what they looked like from the walls. Spears waving like fields of wheat and so forth. Great stuff. I thought that the battle in the movie was quite cool, though a few things made me grind my teeth. One is that Aragorn uses elvish for nearly all of his commands during the battle, even when he is speaking to the Knights of Rohan, which is silly. These people aren't even fluent in the common tongue, how would they know elvish? Secondly, during the battle, the movie is constantly cutting to all the women and children holed up in the caves behind the keep. I understand that Jackson wanted us to realize what was at stake in the battle and to get a round view of everyone who is affected when there is a war, but the book does not do this, and I don't see why the movie needs to, either. We know the women and children are there. If they weren't, the Rohirrim wouldn't be fighting from behind and on top of a wall. They would never have allowed themselves to be cornered in their last stand keep like that. If it weren't for the women and children, they'd be on horseback, charging into the enemy lines, nothing to lose, singing and making an end "fit for a song". It's because they have something to protect that they even have Helm's Deep in the first place. On the other hand, there was some cool stunt work in that scene, and I got to see those great elven samurai swords at work again, which is always a good thing. And Legolas and Gimli trying to out score each other during the fighting was excellent.

Speaking of Gimli, though, I am getting sick of all the short jokes had at his expense. He is short, he is a dwarf, it has been done to death. Moving on! I mean, I understand that he is kind of the comic relief in the scenes with no hobbits, and that goes for the books as well, but in the books, the comedy comes more from his interaction with Legolas and sometimes with Aragorn, and he maintains his dignity throughout it. In the movie, he is kind of the laughingstock. Arendel made a comment about this when she saw the first film, and at the time I rather disagreed. I didn't think it was that bad in the first film, at least not to the point where it really bugged me. This film, however, takes it too far, and I start to feel sorry for Gimli, who does not deserve such ill treatment.

Otherwise the movie was mostly as I expected and I did still enjoy it very much. If nothing else, if gave me something to complain about, but I did get more than that out of it. There were part I really enjoyed, and overall I still loved it. I'm disappointed it wasn't as good as the first movie, and I hope the last movie is better but I like it fine for all that.

I am certainly looking forward to Return of the King, which looks to be beyond cool. Of course, as usual all my favorite parts in the book will get dumbed down or removed completely, and all of Bill's will become centerpiece moments in the film. This always happens. In Fellowship, I love the chapters between the Shire and Bree, including Tom Bombadil, the Barrow Wight, and a lot of "hobbit talk". I love Lothlorien because of the amazing way it's described and I love Galadriel because, quite simply she is awesome. Bill likes the Watcher in the Water and everything afterwards up to and including the Balrog. So of course, Tom, the Barrow Wight and most of the journey to Bree were removed with surgical precision, Lothlorien was changed from the Golden Wood of the Galadrim elves to the Glowy Blue Home of Visitors from Another Planet, and Galadriel became a rather scary Water Elemental Queen/Elf Witch as opposed to the immensely complex and serene creature that she is in the books. On the other hand the Watcher gets much more screen time than the book gives you, Moria is incredibly rendered as if Tolkien's prose came directly to life, and the Balrog just rocked our socks.

It happened again with the Two Towers. Bill likes the Dead Marshes, and they are much scarier in the movie and have a lot of screen time. Also they have big weird spurts of flame going on which are not at all what is described in the book. The Marshes in the book are full of mists and very grey, full of little misleading will-o-whisp candle flames to confuse travelers. The movie Marshes looked like someplace where you might want to beware of lightening sand and Rodents of Unusual Size. I like Farimir, a lot of Ithilien and Sam's inner dialogues as well as his arguments with Gollum. We have already covered Farimir, and while there is a brief nod to the "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit" argument, it is not as long as it is in the book and not as funny. Of course, Sam's internal dialogues are out completely, because there is no way to do the following on screen:

The early daylight was only just into the shadows under the trees, but he saw his master's face very clearly, and his hands, too, lying at rest on the ground beside him. He was reminded suddenly of Frodo as he had lain, asleep in the house of Elrond after his deadly wound. Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head as if finding words useless, and murmured: "I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shine through somehow. But I love him, whether or no."

That's probably one of my all-time favorite moments in my all-time favorite book. The thing about The Lord of the Rings is that it is full of things like that that you just can't get out in any way that will make sense on screen. So you cut them and you make the monsters scarier and the fights longer to make up for it. And that's movies, and I understand that, but it doesn't keep me from missing it anyway.

This process is doomed to be repeated in Return of the King. Bill will get a huge, scary spider, lots of screen time for the Witch King of Angmar, and much climactic vanquishing of evil with many stunts. I will get no scouring of the Shire, most of the re-gathering and happiness in Ithilien after Good Has Triumphed will likely be removed, and even if I am treated to a wall-top kiss between Eowyn and Farimir (I'm not holding my breath) it will be incomplete because the most romantic thing about that moment is Tolkien's description of how their long hair, black and gold, streams out and mingles on the wind behind them while they kiss, and movie Farimir's hair is short and blondish-brown, not long and black. Bah humbug.

Of course there were parts of the movie that I just loved. The charge of Gandalf and Eomer's company coming to Helm's Deep with the sun rising behind them was spectacular, with sun beams streaming down into the valley and Gandalf burning white at the forefront of the charge. So very cool. And of course the bit at the very end where the hobbits are talking about whether or not their story will every make it into songs or tales just gives me the warm fuzzies. "Frodo wouldn't have gotten far without Sam". Aww! Sniff! It's on a par with the little scene between the two of them on the River Anduin when Frodo is leaving the Fellowship and there's that whole "Don't you leave him, Samwise Gamgee" thing. Just melts me even though both scenes are rather changed from the original events in the book. And then of course there was Legolas with his hair and his excellent knives and his one-handed mounting stunt. So it was far from a total loss.

+++++

Me: You know, Gimli really shouldn't get that line where he says that the sun is rising and everyone kind of stops to check it out.

Green Tea: I know that's kind of not him, huh?

Me: Yeah, I mean of all the people there, the dwarf would be the last person to notice something like the sun coming up. Legolas or Aragorn should get that line.

Green Tea: Legolas. 'Cause he has all those other lines about stuff like that. "This forest is old," "A red sun rises," and all that, I mean he's kind of the guy for that.

Me: Exactly, observations regarding natural phenomena are the domain of the one elf present, not the dwarf.

Green Tea: Right. Plus, this means he is on screen for a few more seconds, which is a few more second in which I get to gaze in awe at how hot he is.

Me: That is another point worth considering.

Green Tea: You've gotta love a guy who can braid his hair in more ways than you can.

Me: Speaking of hair, Aragorn needs a shower.

Green Tea: The "rugged grease-ball" look just isn't doing it for you any more?

Me: Well, he's kind of due for a shampoo. I mean in the first movie he got all nice and clean at Rivendell, so he was good for a while, but he doesn't wash his hair at all in this movie. I hope he takes care of that before the end of the next film.

Green Tea: Well, he really hasn't had time in this movie with all the running the fighting and the falling in the river. Hey, he fell in the river! That's kind of washing, right? He's covered.

Me: Doesn't count. He's still all damp and lank. He is beginning to rival a certain Potions Master for Most Disturbing Lack of Hair Care.

Green Tea: He'll wash his hair before he becomes king, I'm sure.

+++++

So now I have the urge to go and read the books again. It's probably been almost a year since I read the second two books to my family, and longer than that since I've read all three from beginning to end. The movie reminded me off all the incredible prose that Tolkien used to describe the scenes I was watching on screen, and I got to hankering for the Barrow Wight after I figured out the mystery of Gollum's little poem, so I might just start reading them and see if I can't get through the whole trilogy again.

+++++

Apologies for never updating. I am taking Fiction Fundamentals this semester and it is on Tuesday's, so I only have Thursdays to write, and I'm never really awake anymore, so it's been tough. I will try to stay with it here, even if my updates might not be terribly regular.

Also, apologies to those who either haven't seen the Two Towers, or don't care nearly enough to remember all this stuff I'm complaining about. I had to get it out of my system.