January 18, 2003

Peter Jackson = Ed Wood
Cris

I was watching the special edition TFotR on the night of the 17th just before going to check out TTT with some friends of mine. Now, perhaps it was the altered state of mind that I was in due to my trip to farmer Maggot's but I noticed a 2 things I hadn't noticed before. One is a minor thing, when Frodo is being swept off to Rivendel by Arwin there is a shot of Frodo's face covered in green stuff (I guess its vomit), but when they are at the river (can't remember the name), just after The Nine are swept away, he is all clean. I guess Liv Tyler didn't want to kiss a messy Frodo. The real funny blunder, that had my friends and I rolling on the floor was one of the scenes added in Moria. Shortly after they enter the mines there is a shot of the Fellowship walking along an edge. Gandalf is leading with his glowing staff and you see him kicking the electrical cord powering his staff out of the way. It is just hilarious. I can't believe they left that in, but took out the glint from the car in the background in the scene with Frodo and Sam in front of the scarecrow!
If I may, I would like to move onto a different topic. Am I the only person (along with 3 of my friends) that wasn't happy with TTT? I went into it accepting (and agreeing with) many of the changes that PJ made to TFotR and realized that the same would be true of TTT. However, I can not agree with so many of the things that PJ did to the movie. I can't believe I am not hearing any uproar from the fans. Here is a quick list of things that I thought made for a horrible adaptation and had no redeaming value with respect to producing a better movie.
1. Gimli, why didn't they just put him in a court jester outfit, I mean PJ even stole some material from PeeWee's Big Adventure!
2. Aragorn "dying", hasn't that thing been done to death?
3. Dreaming of Arwin kissing you only to find out a horse is, can anyone say The Mask?
3. Theoden, what was up with that transformation, and didn't anyone notice it happening in the first place?!
4. Ents deciding not to go to war, only to have Treebeard change his mind because of Pipin. Then all of a sudden there were a hundred ents right there at the edge of the forest ready to go. I so wanted to see the marching of the ents!
5. Ent battle, it was good, but could have been so much better. I wanted to see the 100 years it takes a tree tear a rock apart take place in a few secons, all we got was boulder tossing.
6. Wasn’t there enough action at Helm's Deep and Isengard, why the extra warg battle, sure it looked cool but other than allowing for the cheese of point 2 all it did was lessen the amount of time dedicated to character development.
7. Not enough with respect to the growing friendship between Legolas and Gimli.
8. Faramir, why is he such a prick? And why does he let Frodo go all of a sudden. Sam's cheesy soliloquy wasn't that stirring. Surely no one could come away thinking that not only is Faramir a great captain of men on the battle field, but also wise and reminiscent of Gandalf, as Sam thought.
9. What was the point of going to Osgiliath? They didn't put any effort into the supposed battle that was going on there and made it seem like Osgiliath wasn't already abandoned for a few hundred years. Although it looked like a great abandoned city from Gondor's past, I doubt that came across to most people. I would have rather seen more of a battle between Faramir's troops and the Southrons.
10. More holywood cheese thrown in with respect to PJ making it look like Arwen is taking off. Why couldn't PJ have Elrond tell Aragorn that unless he became king he coulnd have his daughter? That's what happened in the book and would have been great for character development and helped motivate PJ's reluctant king take up the crown.
11. They left out 5 chapters or so! What the..., just to have 45 minutes of Helm's Deep (which did look awesome) and extra battles that never happened! So now it will have to be crammed into TRotK, and I think that will only hurt the 3rd movie.
That's the major stuff I guess. I you guys think I am wrong, please let me know.
Later
Cris