well....

[lyssie]

So. Saw Two Towers tonight. Shiny. Pretty. It always rains during battle, apparently.

Not as good as FotR. And Return of the King should hopefully be better.

Had... many nitpicks, sadly. I didn't leave the theatre totally awestruck and unable to talk. FotR left me that way. (I said "Hee. Wow." a lot on the drive home that night.)



I'm gonna get the big one bugging me off fast. Arwen. What the fuck is up with her? The whole point of the Aragorn/Arwen thing is that she GIVES UP HER IMMORTALITY TO STAY WITH HIM. There is no "You'll live long years after his death" shit.

Elrond apparently has been taking lessons from the Mayor of Sunnydale. Both succeeded, too.

So. Arwen has left Middle Earth. Gee. Guess that means Strider can boink the blonde now.

Unless I missed something, that's the gist of it. Which basically means it won't be King Elessar and Queen Arwen. Sad.

(and, to me, that was the one romantic thing Tolkien had gotten right. They pined for each other, they were true, etc... GAH!)

I like Eowyn.

Helm's Deep.

Oh, lordy, who gave Theoden the Stupid Pills? Has he forgotten all about Dunharrow, or is the geography of Middle Earth so vast, no one noticed it was there?

See, the whole point of Helm's Deep was that they were on the run from that big army thing--along with some of Eikenbrand's troops. And there was already a fairly large group at the Deep, too. And, and. Arrr. It just makes no sense to have changed that--unless it was so there could be MORE people being scared and crap.

*mutter*

Helm's Deep itself was VERY well done. The rain was over the top, but I'll live with it.

Faramir. In some ways, I don't mind the changes. In others, it's highly annoying, because there were better ways to spend the time. Osgiliath was pretty, though (and totally screws over the whole fortress thing *snicker* I don't think I'll change those passages in Random Orcs, though).

Honestly, I don't think the movie makes me want to change RO a bit. Unlike FotR, which inspired it, I like what I've written. And don't like the changes made.

Oh! One of the things that was cool was the Haldir bit. *that* made sense. And I'm blanking on whether it's in the book or not.

Hrm. Anyway. I liked it, on the whole. I could wish they hadn't mucked about so much, but... Who's gonna marry Faramir now, if Aragorn gets Eowyn?

Comments

[michaellee.livejournal.com]

Oh, I still have no doubt that in the end Arwen & Aragorn will be paired off at the end, just like in the books. (In fact, I think that's why we got those flash-forward scenes.) I think the whole reason why they did that was so Arwen would actually *be* in this movie -- so they can justify it all.

[dreagoddess.livejournal.com]

As for Arwen, just because we saw her leaving doesn't mean she LEFT. ;) We saw her walking off with the elves on their way to the ship, but I pictured her slipping off as soon as they were out of sight and leaving Elrond to show up in the West and say, "Hey, where's Arwen?" *g*

Arwen

[anastasiab.livejournal.com]

Of course sister's not out of the picture! She'll show up again, have no fear. They wouldn't have spent so much time building up the relationship in FOTR if they were gonna axe her like that- plus, PJ has been very meticulous about keeping the BASIC plot of the movie (Faramir aside), and having Arwen not make the bittersweet choice just eviscerates the movie. We saw her leaving, but not gone. She'll appear

One thing I always wonder, though- Legolas built his ship to sail to the Haven after Aragorn died, and took Gimli with him. Wasn't there room for Arwen on that ship? I know, I know, she made her choice for mortality (and she *was* mortal, though very long lived), but dammit, after my husband had died, I know that I would go to the Havens, myself.

[rexlapinii.livejournal.com]

Arwen did, IIRC, live for some time after Aragorn died; she sort of drifted around Lorien after it was mostly deserted and finally died on Cerin Amroth.

Ditto what Andrea said; and also remember that somewhere we're going to have to get Narsil reforged and into Aragorn's hand, unless they're using it as a symbol of kingship and Elrond brings it instead of the Sceptre of Annuminas to Aragorn's coronation. I really thought we'd see Anduril this movie. Argh. Arwen sneaking out of the procession and lifting the shards might be how they do it, though.

And it looked to me like they conflated Dunharrow and Helm's Deep. Which I found rather irritating, and an iffy tactical move on Theoden's part (Hey! Let's go even closer to the enemy with all our refugees!) but saves an explanation, I suppose. I wonder if the back door out of the Deep that they mentioned ends up being the Paths of the Dead.

Faramir made me sit up and go "huh?" right at first, but Osgiliath was nifty-looking, the winged Nazgul look damned cool, and Faramir did eventually get around to rejecting the Ring's pull like he's supposed to, so I'm not unhappy with the shift. Pity we lost the "Not even if I found it on the highway would I take it" line, though, I always liked that line.

I'm not sure Osgiliath really was ever supposed to be a fortress, per se, except in that it was probably defensible because even without Sauron you've still got the possibility of Corsairs coming up the river. It was the capital city; Minas Anor and Minas Ithil were its guard fortresses.

Probably there's some later fortification dated after the Minas Ithil/Minas Morgul shift, but patently not enough fortification, I should think. :)