Tess nit picks the Two Towers (spoilers abound)

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>alright I just saw it this afternoon and I'm going to first off say that I absolutely loved most of the movie and it didn't really fall short of my expectations. Helms Deep kicked ass, the Ents attacking Isengard was sweet, and Gollum was always comical to look at.

Now for the nit picking...I loved the first movie so much because of how closely it followed the book. Whenever there was a change or an omition from the book you could easily tell why it wasn't there...but this time around I really don't understand some of the changes.

1) Why did the Ents originally say no, they won't help out in the war? I didn't see any benefit to that and in the book they do decide to go to war after their meeting.

2 & 3) Helms Deep: Why were the Elves brought into this? They didn't intervene in the book At All, so have them help in the book? Sure it was a nice emotional part, the Elves giving up their chance to leave MiddleEarth to instead help men. And also the reinforcements-- in the book Helms Deep was saved by the angry trees that hated orcs with a passion. They moved in, swallowed up the army, and departed. I liked the scene with the reinforcements charging in to save them, but it was still quite a change.

4) Faromir: In the book he knew better, showed his valour above his deceased brother and let Frodo go because he knew of what he carried would bring ruin to them all...but instead he dragged them back to Minas Terith and nearly got them killed (although the Nazgul was pretty sweet).

5) Shelob: Wtf is shelob? Gollum talks of her at the very end which means she won't appear till the 3rd movie which is a damned shame cause Shelob's Lair was a big thing in the 2nd book.

Like I said-- nit picking. 1-4 I don't really understand why they changed it at all. Everything else was just awesome though: Gollum vs Smeagol, the Dead Swamp, the liberation of the King of Rohan's mind, all grand.</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>1) They never took the hobbits to Minus Tirith, they took them to Osgiliath

2) The movie didn't end where the book ended. Shelob is definetely in the other one

Wait for the extended version. Remember, a movie over 3 hours doesn't work in the theatres</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>it ended a lot sooner than the book. They also left out everyone remeeting at Isengard but I hope that too is added in the 3rd movie.

And my other nit picks were dealing which things changed, my only omittion complaint was that it ended earlier than the book and it didn't have to if they didn't bother with the whole Elf & Osiliath thing.

Still a terrific movie</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeah, but you really can't turn the book into a movie completely faithfully, the slow pacing of the book would kill the flick. I wanna see how the third one goes. I'm willing to be he leaves out that HUGE denumont in from the book, or just puts a bit of it in</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>They didn't make sense to change-- why did they change Faramir to at first want the ring? That completely changes the character he was in the book; a wise, fair & thoughtful man who was not too quick to act. And the reinforcements at Helm's Deep not being the angry "treeish" ents, that woulda been cooler to see a forest kinda move in and swallow the army up. Not to mention the whole elves thing...

These are just things that I do not understand why they changed. I can forgive cutting it off and saving the end of book 3/4 for the 3rd movie, but some of the other stuff didn't make sense to change</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>It's simple - Jackson thought it would make the movie better. Personally, I don't care if a few things are changed, but I tend not to get anal about book-to-movie conversions.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>I agree with you, the deviations from the first book made sense but in this one they did not.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>

alright I just saw it this afternoon and I'm going to first off say that I absolutely loved most of the movie and it didn't really fall short of my expectations. Helms Deep kicked ass, the Ents attacking Isengard was sweet, and Gollum was always comical to look at.

Yes, the Ents battle kicked ass!

1) Why did the Ents originally say no, they won't help out in the war? I didn't see any benefit to that and in the book they do decide to go to war after their meeting.

I really didn't get that, either. They talked about how it took so long for them to speak in Old Ent, and yet when Treebeard saw the chopped forest, the Ents suddenly gathered, like they didn't need to agree with anything (and just follow Treebeard's lead immediately). It didn't make sense, and now that I know that Jackson fucked that part up, that explains a lot. Things like this lower my faith in Jackson's "translation".

2 & 3) Helms Deep: Why were the Elves brought into this? They didn't intervene in the book At All, so have them help in the book? Sure it was a nice emotional part, the Elves giving up their chance to leave MiddleEarth to instead help men. And also the reinforcements-- in the book Helms Deep was saved by the angry trees that hated orcs with a passion. They moved in, swallowed up the army, and departed. I liked the scene with the reinforcements charging in to save them, but it was still quite a change.

Hmmm...plus the leader of the Lake Elves died, so how are they going to explain that? You said the "angry trees"...are those the Ents? Did they go to Helms Deep, instead of Isengard? Who were these trees?

4) Faromir: In the book he knew better, showed his valour above his deceased brother and let Frodo go because he knew of what he carried would bring ruin to them all...but instead he dragged them back to Minas Terith and nearly got them killed (although the Nazgul was pretty sweet).

Yeah, at that point, it seems like it lacked quality writing. Now, I know why: it wasn't JRRT's word.

5) Shelob: Wtf is shelob? Gollum talks of her at the very end which means she won't appear till the 3rd movie which is a damned shame cause Shelob's Lair was a big thing in the 2nd book.

I think they spent too much time preparing for the battle to Helm's Deep. They should have focused on other parts in the book, like this.

Like I said-- nit picking. 1-4 I don't really understand why they changed it at all. Everything else was just awesome though: Gollum vs Smeagol, the Dead Swamp, the liberation of the King of Rohan's mind, all grand.

Because it's not a book-to-movie conversion without some asshole FUCKING IT UP! Jesus, can't they just translate every single conversation and action into a part of the movie? It saves time thinking up bullshit to fit in the movie, saves money on movie scripters, and the director would be known as the greatest of all time because he would be the first one to <b><u>HAVE A FUCKING FAITHFUL TRANSLATION!!!</b></u> (Which is quite sad. Somebody should have done that a long time ago...)</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Jackson fucked up then. It didn't make the movie better, because JRRT is a much better writer than Jackson and his crew, and he should have known that. If Jackson wants to make changes to the book, he should have hired JRRT to write the changes.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>For what it's worth, Jackson's admitted that TTT deviates from the books the most of the three.

You'll all get over it, and you'll all go see ROTK anyway, so I don't see what the big deal is.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I haven't seen The Two Towers yet, but I don't need to to comment on this. Books are one medium. Moves are another. The translation from one to the other makes changes to the source material necessary.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>No, it doesn't, especially for a 3-hour movie. Skipping over minor details is one thing. Changing major things in the plot is another.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>The "angry trees" were what Treebeard called the Ents that had become "treeish" because they had sat around too long and gotten lazy. They're like a hybrid now...they lost some of their Entish qualities and became more treeish. They also were dark and angry at many living things because of the obvious fear of axes which Orcs loved to weild and chop down trees with. Treebeard did mention it in the movie-- he said he had to protect them from the trees around that would harm them.

I don't think he "fucked up" the movie, but there were a few parts I didn't really understand his changing. As for Shelob & the reunion at Isengard they will be in the beginning of the 3rd movie; the 3rd book's shorter than the other 2 anyway.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>no-- you don't know what we're talking about; you DO need to see the movie to comment first. Semi-major things were changed, not interpreted differently</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>They only work as much as to get you into the theatre, and that's it. Be faithful to the book, and you'll get a great movie. Why can't directors just believe that? Just look at the examples:

Lynch's Dune - sucks
Sci-Fi's Dune - doesn't suck; faithful to the book
1984 - sucks
Lawnmower Man - sucks
All of Steven King's book-to-movie translations except The Stand - sucks
The Stand - doesn't suck because it was faithful to the book

I was looking forward to this Lord of the Ring series because it would truly be a faithful book-to-movie translation. Unforunately, Peter "such a dedicated fan of the LotR books" Jackson decides to fuck everything up. It would have been a nine-hour epic, whose greatness is beyond measure. Instead, it's merely great. It's not perfect like it should be. If he had followed the storyline to the letter, their wouldn't have been ANY flaws in the storyline. JRRT spend <u>YEARS</u> writing the books, and in writing the books, he made sure there wasn't any plotholes or flaws. Jackson and his crew maybe spend a day making some changes to the story, without going over in detail whether it was flawed.

Look, the greatness of the story is proportional to how much of the book is in the movie. Or to put it in a formula:

Q^B * P = Q^M

Where Q^B = quality of the book, P = percentage of book in the movie, and Q^M = quality of the movie. Therefore, if you have a suckass book, you'll have a suckass movie, but if you have a good book, you have to be faithful to have a good movie.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>well...I'll say that I don't think the changes were THAT bad; I can forgive them</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>It's the principal that matters. I enjoy the movie as much as everybody else, but when there are a few plot holes for a book-to-movie conversion, I know it's a change to the book.</div>

[Stephen]

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>J.R.R. Tolkien can suck my dick. Jackson did Bad Taste and Dead Alive, two movies I'd rather watch twenty times each than reread Lord of the Rings once.</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Tolkien wrote novels, not screenplays.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>...and the award for 0 Credibility on the Shrine goes to--- Stephen!!</div>

[Manshoon]

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>You can't deny it, there's no good way to translate stuff like that to a movie, not unless you're aiming for a musical.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Uh, yeah, right.</div>

[Stephen]

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Why, thank you.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I just saw it, and I enjoyed it. Changes have to be made.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>And I just read what you said. I wouldn't call those "major" changes. They're not small, but a "major" change is, oh, killing off a character when they were meant to stay alive. These aren't the books.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I just got a flash of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail were the knights sing of Camelot.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Quantitative explanation for how "great" a movie is... silly. If you want the books, read them. A "true" conversion from one to the other is never going to happen. Hell, in Shawshank's Redemption - another King story - Red was Irish. But who cares? Morgan Freeman was incredible.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Yup.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>What principal is that?</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't understand, if these are such minor things, why you care that they changed them.</div>

[Manshoon]

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>And I loved the Lawnmower Man movie. I just wish the sequel hadn't sucked so much ass. I did read the short story, and I don't think a literal movie translation would've been that great (what exactly can you do with 20 pages worth of story?). Besides, the VR slant was just cool as hell at the time.</div>

[Manshoon]

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>And I loved the Lawnmower Man movie. I just wish the sequel hadn't sucked so much ass (hint to Hollywood: if you can't get the cast from the original movie back then don't fucking bother making the thing). I did read the short story, and I don't think a literal movie translation would've been that great (what exactly can you do with 20 pages worth of story?). Besides, the VR slant was just cool as hell at the time.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The anal fanboy principle.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Helm's Deep really ended like this... once they got penned up in the keep they did in fact ride out on their horses and fight their way down to what the book called the dike while someone blew on the horn, not Gimli. Once they got there it says they looked out and for some unexplained reason found a forest where once a vale stood (or something like that). They describe that they saw the remaining orc army cowering both from the sound of the huge ass horn and from the trees. The king and Aragorn and the rest of them then saw Gandalf from the east swoop down with with a guy named Erkenbrand from Westwood and a thousand men on foot. So the book didnt have King Theodens nephew save the day, some neighboring country did. I think the King's nephew was with the King for most of the fight in the book.

The forest that was suddenly there was not the ents, its a different forest altogether since Helm's Deep and Isengard arent really that close on a map. I think Treebeard's forest was called Fanghorn, and they did seige Orthanc like that in the book with the flood and all, was very cool to see.

On a side note, i dont like how Gandalf is portrayed now. In the first book he seemed human, now he seems godlike. Shorter beard, shorter hair, new fangled clothes and staff... he couldnt even remember his own name for gods sake. If i remember correctly i dont think he actually dies and resurrects in the book, he just lived the fight with the Balrog after he won.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>I agree with shoon on those two movies, plus i kinda liked IT.</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Not to mention he died quite a long time ago :-)</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Of course, that's part of the "necessary" stuff Kupek was talking about. Different medium leads to different pacing. If you translate the book to a movie with completely accuracy, EVERYONE would sleep, including you</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Forrest Gump: Book blows ass, movie is great; Shawshank: great, great film; Starship Troopers: nothing like the book, but rules. Different medium of delivery requires different writing techniques, period</div>

[EsquE]

<div style='font: 14pt Calligrapher; text-align: left; '>1. Add more drama in the limited media of film

2 & 3. See # 1

4. See # 1 (hmmm, a pattern develops)

5. Throwing another major character into an already cluttered film would be overkill.

...I've never read the book (I will read it after I see all three films), so maybe that's why these changes seem obvious to me. I enjoyed the movie but not as much as the first. It was pretty plain to me that this one was a bridge between the first and third, with the majority of it involving the positioning of characters for the final film.

...Jackson is trying to do something unprecedented here, and is doing an incredible job of it. His love of the work of Tolkien is apparent in every goddam frame. Everyone knew things would be omitted. And if you know about film, the reasons why are quite apparent. Without those changes the end of the movie wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic as it was and it probably wouldn't have reached the necessary climax to not only give people something of an ending but also carry interest through another year. You don't want to sit through a 3 hour movie and not have most of the minor threads concluded before you walk out.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>SS Troopers didn't have powersuits. Nuff said.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>What about Hannibal?</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>I thought it turned out OK. As did a lot of Grisham and Crichton novels.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>And that explains the whole Gandalf thing, which puzzled me. See, everything that I thought was wrong with the movie happened to be something that was changed from the book.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>NONE of those changes "HAD" to be made!! None of them make sense and I can see no reason why they couldn't have kept to the book's version</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>He doesn't quite remember his name in the book either, and he was brought back.

And Gandalf IS the closest thing to a diety you can say Middle Earth has. His purpose is to save the people of middle earth from evil; once that is accomplished he is no longer needed and leaves (I forget how this happens exactly).

He is not human</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>you're all freakin generalizing!! None of the changes I noted would have made the movie dull or less entertaining</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>It didn't make the movie more entertaining or easier to understand and it didn't bridge a part they had to omit. The changes didn't need to be made unlike the changes in the first movie which were understandable.

It just annoys me those changes were made, but I still love the movie</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>You don't know the reasons for making the changes. Peter Jackson & Co. make movies; they're professionals at it. They made the changes because, for some reason, they thought that would work better in a movie. I see no problem with that. He didn't make these changes just to make them.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>So? Why must a movie based on a book be as accurate as possible to be good?</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>No, in fact, it was taken from just being another sci-fi movie to a far deeper film with the changes made. It was excellent, far better than you initially think it is</div>