TTTII

[prog]

Saw Two Towers with a couple of Arcusiods last night, spur of the moment. A 10:15 show versus a midnight one, and I found that I enjoyed the movie much more this time. My not being so sleepy probably helped a great deal.

Things I liked better, compared to last week's show:

• I was able to follow the sequence of events at Helm's Deep this time. (My memories from my first viewing amounted to (as Jim said): Uh, blurry. Loud? Something to do with arrows.)


• I originally had the impression that everything Gimli said or did was for comic relief. Actually, he was good and in-character for most of the film, though Jackson did indeed lean a little hard on him for the yuks. I wouldn't complain so much were you to snip out that business with the mail shirt.


• The actor portraying Faramir seems to have one eye located significantly higher on his face than the other, an unusual personal feature one doesn't see very often, and I sheepishly admit that I found this distracting on my first viewing. This time I was able to watch Faramir without staring at his eyes the whole time. (I tried looking for the clinical term for that condition, but knew not the words. "misaligned eyes" brings up lots of information about crossed eyes, and "faramir eyes" brings up lots of Faramir/Éomer slash.)


• Gollum! So many subtleties in his animation. How wonderful.

Things I liked not so better:

• It's not clear what changes Faramir's mind about the ring. I hope it wasn't just Sam's sappy speech. Maybe he saw Frodo flipping out and nearly killing his pal, which, if he had any doubt about the ring's value, might have shown him the truth, but there's no evidence that he witnessed any of that. That is too bad.


• It's also not clear why the Nazgûl just flew off after Sam knocked Frodo out of its way. The only possible explanation I can conjure is that it didn't know that Frodo held the ring, and thought he was just some dope standing on the wall -- had Frodo slipped the ring on (as he was about to), then he would have been lost. But, in Fellowship, the Nazgûl repeatedly pursue and attack the non-ring-wearing Frodo, so one imagines that they actually do have a good idea who he is, and thus had no reason not to snatch him up right there, in which case Sam lying on top of him wouldn't have provided much protection. Bleah. I dunno.
  
  It seems that, in retrospect, I must join in the Bombadillans in not liking the Osgillath scene very much -- not for its mere existence, but because it has strange and possibly dumb things in it. Hmm.

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with Michelle on this one, which is to say, these scenes will all make much more sense when we get the movie instead of the abridged movie (also known as "when we get the extended version instead of the movie"). They did have the feeling of "something is missing here."

[jadelennox]

The hobbit says that she was reading that Peter Jackson has said that Return of the King will be "as long as it needs to be", quite possibly more than 3.5 hours. So that might help, too.

Nazgul

[cnoocy]

When we've been discussing the Nazgûl running away, we've noticed that we see this particular behavior a lot: at the mushroom patch, in the marsh, and in Osgillath. The nazgûl seem to feel physical pain or something when Sam prevents Frodo from putting the ring on. I think this is due to:
Sam's steadfast heart, or
Ringwraiths having issues with denial, or
The ring itself responding to the assertion of power over it.