The Two Towers and School
I have many things to say about ‘The Two Towers’. A lot of what I am about to write contains spoilers for ROTK, so if you haven’t read the book I wouldn’t advise you to read this entry, although anything that is not behind an LJ cut is perfectly safe.
Well, my very first reaction to TTT (no wait, it was my second reaction, my first reaction was about a certain ‘she’ who was missing) was, ‘What in the name of God have they done to my poor Faramir, goddamn them?’ I then became very anti- film Faramir the next two times I saw TTT in the cinemas. But something strange has come over me, ever since I brought my very own copy of the movie home- I actually like film Faramir. Because, in all reality, he’s not very different to the Faramir I know and love from the book. It just so happens that certain aspects of his personality have been exaggerated for the screen. The same can be said for many a character:
Sam is made out to be some sort of bumbling idiot in the movie version of FOTR. I mean, let’s face it, he is. He loves Frodo, but he doesn’t appear to have the same intelligence that he has in the book. It’s not until the Special Extended Edition that we see Sam recite poetry, whereas he does this quite a lot (some would say too much, I sit on the fence) in the book.
Pippin is made out to be the foolish one of the Merry ‘n’ Pippin partnership in FOTR. In the book, he’s not quite so idiotic… the whole ‘That counts you out, Pip’ bit in the movie is a tad demeaning to Pippin’s character, but it is all part of the build up to Pippin’s eventual outcome. The same goes for Sam.
Because we’re talking about a movie here, a lot of things that happened in the book have to be left out, or changed. Sam starts off as a simple-minded soul, and then becomes Frodo’s rock, and wiser half. This happens in the book too, obviously, it’s just subtler. PJ had to exaggerate Sam’s simple- mindedness because that’s the only way a movie audience would be able to sit back and say ‘Wow, Sam has truly developed as a character!’ Because there is no narrator in the LOTR films (except for the bit with Galadriel that I always fast- forward), the characters have to take over Tolkien’s job. And by that, I don’t mean the job of narrator, I mean… well, I think it has to be visually narrated, if that makes sense. That’s the point of movies, it’s all in the visual. How boring would it be if Frodo decided to say, ‘Wow Sam, you know, you really have changed so much since we left the Shire. It’s hard to believe that the once simple little Hobbit is now my sensible support, a true hero’? You can’t do that in film, the audience needs to be able to notice a character change without someone pointing it out for them. This can’t be done in a book, unless it is a pathetic excuse for a novel with all dialogue and no narrative. Which isn’t even a book, it’s a script. For this reason, PJ also had to make Pippin appear as the loveable, yet slightly stupid, rogue of the tale in FOTR… but I’ll go into that in more detail later, when I start talking about the Ents.
Christ, where was I? Oh yes, Faramir. Well, film Faramir is quite a devious character, whose only desire is to get the Ring and keep it for himself. Only that’s not true. Faramir is the oppressed younger brother of Boromir, always looked upon as second best by his father, Denethor. Nothing he does is ever good enough for Denethor, the bastard. Suddenly, with Boromir dead, he is left with this huge burden of protecting Gondor from the enemy. I don’t doubt that Denethor has little faith in him, which can’t be all that encouraging. And then, all of a sudden, ‘the Ring of power is within his grasp’. And now, to the line that practically caused me to have a seizure in the middle of the cinema:
‘A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality’. Wow, it took me a long time to get over that one, I can tell ya. Until I realised that I had completely misunderstood not just the line, but the whole character of Faramir (in the film, I hasten to add!). I thought that Faramir’s ‘chance to show his quality’ was some sort of reference to Boromir, i.e., the Ring was slowly taking him over, but now I realise that this is not the case. Faramir doesn’t want to show his quality, or Gondor’s quality, to the world, like what Boromir wanted. He just wants to bring the Ring back to his daddy, saying, ‘Look here, Dad! I managed to get the One Ring! Who’s second best now?’
Faramir doesn’t speak of this outright in the book; neither does he demand the Ring from Frodo, yet it is heavily implied that he wants it. He asks Frodo about ‘Isildur’s Bane’ every now and then, and when Frodo answers cagily Faramir retorts by apologising for pushing him into answering. Yet he does continue to ask. This would have taken up a lot of time on screen; therefore it was simply easier to ‘edit’ Faramir, as it were. By that I mean take out Faramir’s subtlety. Yes, this does make him seem a lot harsher and a lot less nice, but I think that PJ had good reason to do this. In the Two Towers Extended DVD there will be a scene involving Boromir and Faramir, and it will show Boromir asking Denethor not to be so hard on Faramir, as he is only trying to please his father. With that scene fitting into the rest of the movie, a whole new side to film Faramir will be revealed, and he will become much easier to understand. Basically, he is the same Faramir that I loved in the book. He’s just a lot more intense. Perhaps if Arwen had been kept as the two- dimensional character that she once was, we would have learned a lot more about Faramir’s character in the movie. Yes, let’s blame Arwen! ;)
Théoden wasn’t one of my favourite characters in the books. He’s still not one of my favourite characters from the films, but I do love him, for one line only, spectacularly delivered by Bernard Hill: ‘The symbelmyne… long has this plant covered the graves of my ancestors. Now it shall cover the grave of my son.’ Beautiful. So… heartfelt. Full of emotion. It makes me cry. Man, will I be a wreck when Théoden dies.
In the book, I don’t begin to pity Wormtongue until ‘The Return of the King’, but in the TT movie I feel sorry for him twice. Firstly, when Éowyn tells him that his ‘words are poison’. Great line, great character (Éowyn, I mean), love her, she rocks, etc… but poor Wormtongue. Because he genuinely does love her. It is evident in his body language after she leaves the room. It’s as though he is saying, ‘Dammit! I said the wrong thing again!’ Now obviously, I don’t want Éowyn to love him back or anything, it’s just that he’s so pathetic… I can’t help but feel sorry for him. The second time I feel sorry for him is when he sheds ‘that tear’; looking down upon the army that is about to destroy his people. Okay, there are theories regarding that tear, some say that it was simply a windy day, and his eyes were streaming. Hmm, doubt that somehow… others say that he is overwhelmed by the size of the army… yes, I agree with that, but I don’t think that that is why he is crying. I reckon his tear is a tear of regret. ‘What have I done?’ That is what that tear says, in my opinion. Man, Wormtongue is such a wonderfully complex character; I’d do a character analysis of him anytime.
I realised something about Pippin this week that I never noticed in the cinema. I never paid much attention to Pippin when he asks Treebeard to take them South instead of North, I just never thought about it… probably I was still thinking about the events of the Helm’s Deep scene before it! It is only in the last few days that I realised that Pippin is a schemer! He sees that Isengard is in ruin, so he asks Treebeard to take them past there, in the hope that Treebeard will see the mauled trees and call the Ents to war! *lol*… you’re all probably like, ‘yeah, duh!’, but I honestly never noticed that before. Which would explain the expression on Pip’s face when Treebeard says, ‘many of these trees were my friends.’ I always thought that it was a funny sort of expression, not exactly grievous… something more. Only now do I see that it was guilt! Wow… and now I refer back to what I was saying about exaggerating a character’s original state in order to make the eventual change obvious. Kind hearted Pippin the joker would never have done something like that! And he was indeed hesitating, he was all up for going home until he realised that there was something he could do, even though it would be hard on his new friend. Fantastic development.
Doesn’t the soundtrack just make the movie? It is so fantastic, so perfect. I love it all… wow. Beautiful. You know the bit where Aragorn rides up to Helm’s Deep? The music there, from ‘Breath of Life’, is gorgeous. The same of course goes for the Last March of the Ent. The music in that scene gets me every time. I downloaded the music from the trailer today; I keep listening to it on loop because it’s beautiful.
Oh, you can call me crazy. Maybe I am. But I could be addicted to much worse a thing than ‘The Lord of the Rings’ now, couldn’t I?
So, tomorrow is the dawn of my penultimate school year. Wahey. At least I’m only in for an hour and a half… I’m going to town then afterwards with the others. Then I’m not back until Friday, when I only have a half-day. Therefore this week definitely qualifies as an easy one. It’s just the thought of putting on my uniform and traipsing into school. Meh.
Well, my very first reaction to TTT (no wait, it was my second reaction, my first reaction was about a certain ‘she’ who was missing) was, ‘What in the name of God have they done to my poor Faramir, goddamn them?’ I then became very anti- film Faramir the next two times I saw TTT in the cinemas. But something strange has come over me, ever since I brought my very own copy of the movie home- I actually like film Faramir. Because, in all reality, he’s not very different to the Faramir I know and love from the book. It just so happens that certain aspects of his personality have been exaggerated for the screen. The same can be said for many a character:
Sam is made out to be some sort of bumbling idiot in the movie version of FOTR. I mean, let’s face it, he is. He loves Frodo, but he doesn’t appear to have the same intelligence that he has in the book. It’s not until the Special Extended Edition that we see Sam recite poetry, whereas he does this quite a lot (some would say too much, I sit on the fence) in the book.
Pippin is made out to be the foolish one of the Merry ‘n’ Pippin partnership in FOTR. In the book, he’s not quite so idiotic… the whole ‘That counts you out, Pip’ bit in the movie is a tad demeaning to Pippin’s character, but it is all part of the build up to Pippin’s eventual outcome. The same goes for Sam.
Because we’re talking about a movie here, a lot of things that happened in the book have to be left out, or changed. Sam starts off as a simple-minded soul, and then becomes Frodo’s rock, and wiser half. This happens in the book too, obviously, it’s just subtler. PJ had to exaggerate Sam’s simple- mindedness because that’s the only way a movie audience would be able to sit back and say ‘Wow, Sam has truly developed as a character!’ Because there is no narrator in the LOTR films (except for the bit with Galadriel that I always fast- forward), the characters have to take over Tolkien’s job. And by that, I don’t mean the job of narrator, I mean… well, I think it has to be visually narrated, if that makes sense. That’s the point of movies, it’s all in the visual. How boring would it be if Frodo decided to say, ‘Wow Sam, you know, you really have changed so much since we left the Shire. It’s hard to believe that the once simple little Hobbit is now my sensible support, a true hero’? You can’t do that in film, the audience needs to be able to notice a character change without someone pointing it out for them. This can’t be done in a book, unless it is a pathetic excuse for a novel with all dialogue and no narrative. Which isn’t even a book, it’s a script. For this reason, PJ also had to make Pippin appear as the loveable, yet slightly stupid, rogue of the tale in FOTR… but I’ll go into that in more detail later, when I start talking about the Ents.
Christ, where was I? Oh yes, Faramir. Well, film Faramir is quite a devious character, whose only desire is to get the Ring and keep it for himself. Only that’s not true. Faramir is the oppressed younger brother of Boromir, always looked upon as second best by his father, Denethor. Nothing he does is ever good enough for Denethor, the bastard. Suddenly, with Boromir dead, he is left with this huge burden of protecting Gondor from the enemy. I don’t doubt that Denethor has little faith in him, which can’t be all that encouraging. And then, all of a sudden, ‘the Ring of power is within his grasp’. And now, to the line that practically caused me to have a seizure in the middle of the cinema:
‘A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality’. Wow, it took me a long time to get over that one, I can tell ya. Until I realised that I had completely misunderstood not just the line, but the whole character of Faramir (in the film, I hasten to add!). I thought that Faramir’s ‘chance to show his quality’ was some sort of reference to Boromir, i.e., the Ring was slowly taking him over, but now I realise that this is not the case. Faramir doesn’t want to show his quality, or Gondor’s quality, to the world, like what Boromir wanted. He just wants to bring the Ring back to his daddy, saying, ‘Look here, Dad! I managed to get the One Ring! Who’s second best now?’
Faramir doesn’t speak of this outright in the book; neither does he demand the Ring from Frodo, yet it is heavily implied that he wants it. He asks Frodo about ‘Isildur’s Bane’ every now and then, and when Frodo answers cagily Faramir retorts by apologising for pushing him into answering. Yet he does continue to ask. This would have taken up a lot of time on screen; therefore it was simply easier to ‘edit’ Faramir, as it were. By that I mean take out Faramir’s subtlety. Yes, this does make him seem a lot harsher and a lot less nice, but I think that PJ had good reason to do this. In the Two Towers Extended DVD there will be a scene involving Boromir and Faramir, and it will show Boromir asking Denethor not to be so hard on Faramir, as he is only trying to please his father. With that scene fitting into the rest of the movie, a whole new side to film Faramir will be revealed, and he will become much easier to understand. Basically, he is the same Faramir that I loved in the book. He’s just a lot more intense. Perhaps if Arwen had been kept as the two- dimensional character that she once was, we would have learned a lot more about Faramir’s character in the movie. Yes, let’s blame Arwen! ;)
Théoden wasn’t one of my favourite characters in the books. He’s still not one of my favourite characters from the films, but I do love him, for one line only, spectacularly delivered by Bernard Hill: ‘The symbelmyne… long has this plant covered the graves of my ancestors. Now it shall cover the grave of my son.’ Beautiful. So… heartfelt. Full of emotion. It makes me cry. Man, will I be a wreck when Théoden dies.
In the book, I don’t begin to pity Wormtongue until ‘The Return of the King’, but in the TT movie I feel sorry for him twice. Firstly, when Éowyn tells him that his ‘words are poison’. Great line, great character (Éowyn, I mean), love her, she rocks, etc… but poor Wormtongue. Because he genuinely does love her. It is evident in his body language after she leaves the room. It’s as though he is saying, ‘Dammit! I said the wrong thing again!’ Now obviously, I don’t want Éowyn to love him back or anything, it’s just that he’s so pathetic… I can’t help but feel sorry for him. The second time I feel sorry for him is when he sheds ‘that tear’; looking down upon the army that is about to destroy his people. Okay, there are theories regarding that tear, some say that it was simply a windy day, and his eyes were streaming. Hmm, doubt that somehow… others say that he is overwhelmed by the size of the army… yes, I agree with that, but I don’t think that that is why he is crying. I reckon his tear is a tear of regret. ‘What have I done?’ That is what that tear says, in my opinion. Man, Wormtongue is such a wonderfully complex character; I’d do a character analysis of him anytime.
I realised something about Pippin this week that I never noticed in the cinema. I never paid much attention to Pippin when he asks Treebeard to take them South instead of North, I just never thought about it… probably I was still thinking about the events of the Helm’s Deep scene before it! It is only in the last few days that I realised that Pippin is a schemer! He sees that Isengard is in ruin, so he asks Treebeard to take them past there, in the hope that Treebeard will see the mauled trees and call the Ents to war! *lol*… you’re all probably like, ‘yeah, duh!’, but I honestly never noticed that before. Which would explain the expression on Pip’s face when Treebeard says, ‘many of these trees were my friends.’ I always thought that it was a funny sort of expression, not exactly grievous… something more. Only now do I see that it was guilt! Wow… and now I refer back to what I was saying about exaggerating a character’s original state in order to make the eventual change obvious. Kind hearted Pippin the joker would never have done something like that! And he was indeed hesitating, he was all up for going home until he realised that there was something he could do, even though it would be hard on his new friend. Fantastic development.
Doesn’t the soundtrack just make the movie? It is so fantastic, so perfect. I love it all… wow. Beautiful. You know the bit where Aragorn rides up to Helm’s Deep? The music there, from ‘Breath of Life’, is gorgeous. The same of course goes for the Last March of the Ent. The music in that scene gets me every time. I downloaded the music from the trailer today; I keep listening to it on loop because it’s beautiful.
Oh, you can call me crazy. Maybe I am. But I could be addicted to much worse a thing than ‘The Lord of the Rings’ now, couldn’t I?
So, tomorrow is the dawn of my penultimate school year. Wahey. At least I’m only in for an hour and a half… I’m going to town then afterwards with the others. Then I’m not back until Friday, when I only have a half-day. Therefore this week definitely qualifies as an easy one. It’s just the thought of putting on my uniform and traipsing into school. Meh.