August 19, 2003

Two Towers EE - To Wait Or Not to Wait
Elfowitz

Although Tiniowien and myself could not agree on how old Legolas is, I do agree with her about it being silly for anyone to suggest that if you don't buy both Two Towers releases then you are somehow not a true Tolkien fan. I AM buying both but like Tinowien I wasn't a huge LOTR fan until I saw Two Towers in January. The next day (6th Jan) I ordered the Extended edition of Fellowship and suddenly because of The Two Towers you start getting a lot more out of Fellowship as well. Since then I've read LOTR three times and it has really kept me going as I've spent quite a few weeks in and out of hospital this year. I'm going to buy both this time because first of all - I can't Wait! And Secondly, there were some interesting Special Features and various 'Making of' specials on the original DVD release of FOTR which weren't on the EE release.

A lot has been said about the changes in Two Towers and as I mentioned in my post on this subject on 3rd August, I think Peter Jackson got the balance just about right. If they had filmed Two Towers just as it had been in the book, it could have easily flopped because apart from Helms Deep and Gollum not a lot happened. My biggest complaint is still the changes to Theoden's character but I've got over it. Let's hope there's more Arwen in ROTK.