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The Two Towers
Jun. 22nd, 2011 07:31 amLast night was the second of the three NEW! EXPANDED! RE-CUT! BIG-SCREEN! Lord of the Rings movies. Seeing them a week apart on the screen at the theatre seems to me actually the best way to absord this masterpiece. Viewed at home, each one is usually cut up by daily chores and duties. Trying to see them all back to back is more than the human mind can take. The Two Towers - in this rendering - was three hours and forty five minutes long.
In any case, I'm convinced that this "new" version actually does have some scenes that were not in the first extended version. For example: Eomer finding Theodred's barely living body on the battlefield and taking him home to Meduseld. Eowyn and her women singing a lament at Theodred's funeral. Aragorn and Gandalf looking off over the plains of Rohan after leaving Fangorn and having a conversation that includes Aragorn telling him that Sam is with Frodo on the way to Mordor. I think there's more time spent with the hobbits and Treebeard. I know that the movement of Fangorn to surround Helm's Deep was cut from the original version, and put back in the extended version, but I think there is even more now in this "re-mastered blue-ray" version. Has anyone else seen this new "cut"? Can you comment on new material?
And speaking of "cut", I also think there are some things that were in one of the older versions that are no longer "in". I'm thinking specifically of when Sam has a bit of soliloquy at the Falls of Rauros and decides not to go running about the woods yelling "Frodo! Frodo!" and instead thinks his way through to going back to the boats. I was looking for that scene in this version, and it wasn't there.
Has, perhaps, some other Tolkien fan, with more time or more film technology than I possess, done a scene by scene analysis of the various versions? It's the kind of thing that I would kind of expect to find somewhere on the web, but have not (as yet).
Back the summer before the first movie came out, The Mythopoeic Society had one of the assistant directors who worked under Peter Jackson as a guest at their annual Mythcon (this one in Berkeley if I remember aright). She said that when all filming was done, and all the material assembled in order, that there were more than 13 hours of actual, final, storyline. Even the extended version is less than 12 hours. So I've always believed that there is more material out there that, someday, is going to be released in an ultimately final version. I do understand that the purpose of the re-releases is to make us buy new copies and spend more money. And yes, likely I'm willing to do that at some point.
The real question I keep asking myself is why is all of this important to me? And the answer seems to be that the Lord of the Rings is THE story of my life and my generation. I first read it when I was 13 (before the Ballantine editions came out), and have read it over and over, decade after decade. I've memorized the poems and the songs. I know who Frodo's parents were and how they were related to Bilbo. I know that Galadriel is Elrond's mother-in-law and Arwen's grandmother. I know some of these people better than my own family.
The Bakshi filming was a disappointment that bordered on heresy. The Jackson films (while occasionally just plain "wrong") have enough of the story and the language and the characters to satisfyingly fulfill a desire to SEE the story that has been growing inside of me since high school - and that's a LONG time, folks. I only wish that Jackson could have gotten over his mad desire to film everything in the dark of night. There's more sunshine in Lord of the Rings than he lets us know.
In any case, I'm convinced that this "new" version actually does have some scenes that were not in the first extended version. For example: Eomer finding Theodred's barely living body on the battlefield and taking him home to Meduseld. Eowyn and her women singing a lament at Theodred's funeral. Aragorn and Gandalf looking off over the plains of Rohan after leaving Fangorn and having a conversation that includes Aragorn telling him that Sam is with Frodo on the way to Mordor. I think there's more time spent with the hobbits and Treebeard. I know that the movement of Fangorn to surround Helm's Deep was cut from the original version, and put back in the extended version, but I think there is even more now in this "re-mastered blue-ray" version. Has anyone else seen this new "cut"? Can you comment on new material?
And speaking of "cut", I also think there are some things that were in one of the older versions that are no longer "in". I'm thinking specifically of when Sam has a bit of soliloquy at the Falls of Rauros and decides not to go running about the woods yelling "Frodo! Frodo!" and instead thinks his way through to going back to the boats. I was looking for that scene in this version, and it wasn't there.
Has, perhaps, some other Tolkien fan, with more time or more film technology than I possess, done a scene by scene analysis of the various versions? It's the kind of thing that I would kind of expect to find somewhere on the web, but have not (as yet).
Back the summer before the first movie came out, The Mythopoeic Society had one of the assistant directors who worked under Peter Jackson as a guest at their annual Mythcon (this one in Berkeley if I remember aright). She said that when all filming was done, and all the material assembled in order, that there were more than 13 hours of actual, final, storyline. Even the extended version is less than 12 hours. So I've always believed that there is more material out there that, someday, is going to be released in an ultimately final version. I do understand that the purpose of the re-releases is to make us buy new copies and spend more money. And yes, likely I'm willing to do that at some point.
The real question I keep asking myself is why is all of this important to me? And the answer seems to be that the Lord of the Rings is THE story of my life and my generation. I first read it when I was 13 (before the Ballantine editions came out), and have read it over and over, decade after decade. I've memorized the poems and the songs. I know who Frodo's parents were and how they were related to Bilbo. I know that Galadriel is Elrond's mother-in-law and Arwen's grandmother. I know some of these people better than my own family.
The Bakshi filming was a disappointment that bordered on heresy. The Jackson films (while occasionally just plain "wrong") have enough of the story and the language and the characters to satisfyingly fulfill a desire to SEE the story that has been growing inside of me since high school - and that's a LONG time, folks. I only wish that Jackson could have gotten over his mad desire to film everything in the dark of night. There's more sunshine in Lord of the Rings than he lets us know.
