Recently we borrowed the complete LOTR DVD collection, the extended version with all the extras, from Benjamin and Amanda. I had seen Fellowship five times, Towers thrice, and Return once, which pretty much sums up my respective opinion of the deteriorating quality of the films, and had only seen the theatre cuts of them all. Michael had seen each one only once, also only the theatre cut. So we settled in for a long and enjoyable Fellowship spree last weekend.
Fellowship, it must be noted, is by far the best of the three and is a really good movie in its own right, being extremely well made as well as pretty faithful to the story overall. The extended version was even better than the original (unlike the new and updated Star Wars trilogy, re-released in 1997), and the only drawback to watching it was the mild distraction of constantly saying, 'That's new - that wasn't in the original, was it? No, wait, maybe it was...well, it was definitely in the book.' VERY well done and quite worth watching. The extras, of which there were hours and hours, were fascinating, and I am amazed by how much attention was given to every last little detail. No wonder the movie turned out so well - it simply reeks of quality. No cheap shots and shortcuts here. Or, as Aragorn himself would have said, 'My cuts, short or long, don't go wrong.'
Fast forward one weekend. So last night we watched Towers, which I didn't remember nearly as much of. In its defense, the extended version is much better than the original. And that's about all I can say for it. It is still much worse a movie than Fellowship, still diverges annoyingly from the plot, still casts Faramir as weak and Treebeard as unhelpful and Aragorn as having broken up with Arwen and being actually interested in Eowyn, and still has all the lame moments such as the horse-kissing scene, the indecent orc shot, and Gandalf's 'Hi-yo Silver!' moment at the end. Still, much of the stuff they cut out of the original version did clarify a lot of the plot and should have been left (even if it did make the movie exceed four hours), especially all the Merry and Pippin stuff, which was truly delightful. We have yet to watch any of the extras on this one, and I must say I want to see what the director has to say for himself, going off and making changes pell-mell to the story after spending so much time in the extras of Fellowship casting himself as this devoted Tolkien fan who holds the stories in such reverence and all that.
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3 comments:
Having seen the Harry Potter movies, which are completely, slavishly, entirely indecently faithful to the books, I have to agree with the principle of changing a book to put in onscreen. The HP movies are stiff and claustrophobic; the LOTR movies have freedom and imagination, while remaining true to essence the story.
Then again, don't get me started on the Greer Garson version of Pride & Prejudice, although you probably could argue the same thing about that book-into-movie. I guess part of it depends on how attached you are to the actual story. :)
-- SJ
Can't wait for Narnia, December 9!
Of course I don't object to the occasional invocation of poetic license, with one character saying another's lines here or there or skipping over delightful but non-essential bits of plot for a freer flow. That sort of thing is necessary now and then to make the transition between two such vastly different forms of media smooth and credible. What I object to is the wholesale slaughtering of characters, leaving entire personalities warped beyond recognition, and twisting the story around to serve some devious end. Leaving out Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest is an effective and fairly painless way of getting Frodo and the Ring closer to Mordor in the interests of brevity; having Faramir drag Frodo and Co. all the way to Osgiliath so they can have an unscripted run-in with the Black Rider, or drafting thirty elves into service on the walls of Helm's Deep, or sending Arwen riding off to the Grey Havens halfway through the second movie while Elrond and Galadriel so obviously still linger, are not.
And yes, Narnia looks very, very good!
Personally, I thought the first was the most depressing, in fact I walked out of the room before the last half-hour. The second was somewhat better, a glimmer of hope. The last, now that was the best. All's well that end's well.
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