LOTR: TTT Special Extended Edition [R]

[Mel Brennan]

Well, saw it.

It makes the movie better, but it is still fatally flawed.

Additions include:

(1) The Huorns scene (finally making the ending make sense...as if Gandalf and a couple thousand Rohirrim jumping into the midst of several thousand Uruk-hai ever made sense; indeed, that was disrespectful to even casual viewers, a few of whom I know, who submitted "How does doing that win you this epic battle?" Now, the winning of that battle makes sense...you'll findthat's a theme throughout: Stick to the book, and things make more sense, even to the casual viewer).

(2) Much more on the Ents (making them far more awe-inspiring, but still making them wholly susceptible to that master of intent disguised, Pippin, when he says "No! Go South!" to show them Isengard, making all the difference, as if the Ents were not masters of the Forest and smarter than anything pip might dream up...), this set of scenes was, on the whole, much better...

(3) More on Faramir (inclusive of a whole new scene with Faramir, Denethor, and Boromir, that explains how Boromir was selected to go to the meeting with Elrond...), but the fatal flaw of having Faramir make that choice sabotages who he was, and how he was, how he strove to be, in like mind with Gandalf, and not with his father...these scenes show him to be looking to be in like mind with his father, when the book version of the character makes him, in truth, wiser than his dear ol' dad...this scene still fails in that it seems to be an excuse for Sam's speech on heroism, and I still do not understand what makes Faramir submit "I think we understand each other now, Frodo Baggins." at the point in the movie he does...Sam's speech? Come on...

(4) a small piece making it clear which horse nudges Aragorn out of the post cliff-fall river, upon which he rides to Helm's Deep... ( a whole set of scenes that took time away from scene structure that could have more reflected the book, IMHO...this Warg thing was to give more formulaic sensibilities to Aragorn, putting him in contrived dangerfor no reason at all...I don't feel more for this Aragorn after this event...do you?).

Most illuminating, however, are the parts of the additional features where Boyens, Jackson, and the producers talk about taking TTT from book to screen. They start off with the premise that (paraphrased) "Well, Fellowship intro's the characters, and ROTK has a 'proper ending,' so TTT was always going to be sacrificed in terms of the script."

Wait, what did he say? You read it right...

These folks had little regard for TTT, they actuallytell you (Boyens does) that her and Fran Walsh neglected it, and dealt with the opening and the closing films...

Wow.

In my humble, humble opinion, the driving tension of TTT is the fact that, in the book, noone KNOWS how the "two towers" are communicating, how they are coordinating...

"The Palantir," which is the final chapter of TTT, is one of the early chapters of FOTR, the film...so the entire tension of the narrative for the film was tossed away, for no good reason. I mean, was it important for us to know, at that point, about the Palantir? Or was it just a cool scene, reminiscent of a crystal ball, and thus easily understood by the masses?

This failure of plot construction (remember now, these folks claimed they had a free hand;l they couls have done ANYTHING they wanted, and CHOSE this structure), led to TTT letting down the whole trilogy, IMHO...

They also submit that "every trilogy's middle film" suffers from the same struggles ith making it work that this group had...well:

(1) Trilogies are fairly recent things...I mean, how many trilogies can you name?

(2) the SW trilogy's best film is actually the middle one, so there goes that theory...

In fact, "The Choices of Master Jackson" ought to be the alternative documentary about this film cycle, articulating at each point how Jackson simply, in the end analysis, tried to improve on Tolkien, and at each point, failed to do so...

A new "Last Alliance" of Elves and Men? Puh-leese. For what? How does that possibly serve anything at all...? That's still in this edition in its fullness, unfortunately...

To conclude, the additional scenes make a bad film much better, but they can't fix the fundamental flaws that make a great film opportunity end up a mediocre product.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by Mel Brennan
In my humble, humble opinion
Hm, I'm going to have to call Bullshit! ;)

I agree in general, that the additions improve the movie tremendously, but I disagree that the original was flawed.

I get that from your purist's viewpoint (and please don't bother with the "But I'm not a purist" disclaimer. If you aren't, then the word has no meaning), Jackson's sins in plot reconstruction, particularly with Faramir, undo the film. But I think you overstate the importance of the change, especially in this new version, in which his character is much more developed. After all, he still does NOT take Boromir or his father's path--Jackson has just given us a more visual portrayal of his pychological struggle. I also suspect he wanted an excuse to get Frodo to Osgiliath for the money shot of him and the ringwraith (studios do demand such things).

I'll have to check out the special features to see just how greatly you've distorted the filmmaker's comments, but I haven't had time yet. Suffice it to say, I'm "doubtful" that they came out and said anything even close to what you claim.

[Mel Brennan]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
I'll have to check out the special features to see just how greatly you've distorted the filmmaker's comments, but I haven't had time yet. Suffice it to say, I'm "doubtful" that they came out and said anything even close to what you claim.

How much would you like to bet?

And I'm NOT a purist; I've met them...that's not me.

Again, I really had no problem with the changes in FOTR...even with Arwen as Glorfindel...none at all...its was crafted MUCH better, even to the point that Boyens submits "You don't KNOW that the group hasn't met Bombadil; its just not included."

That was, IMHHO, craft. That was integrating the studio desire for a lowest-common denominator blockbuster with theright thing to do by Tolkien.

TTT is far from that. TTT is change for change's sake, IMHHHHHO.

I look forward to your analysis of what is said by the producers, director, and writers...if we still disagree, then I'll have to quote them line by line...so that the truth is revealed...

[GringoTex]

There are two reasons to film a book:

1) To use it as a point of departure (Vertigo)
2) The book is lacking and a movie can improve upon it (The Searchers)

Any other motivation is artistically self-defeating.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by GringoTex
There are two reasons to film a book:

1) To use it as a point of departure (Vertigo)
2) The book is lacking and a movie can improve upon it (The Searchers)

Any other motivation is artistically self-defeating.

This sounds cute, but I know you don't believe it for a second.

There is no such thing as "filming a book," so right away, you are talking in absurdity. EVERY film connected to a book in any way, is by definition an example of #1.

Even audio books represent a distortion of the original text, so "recording a book," is also out. The closest you could get with film would be to just fix the camera on an actual copy of a book, while the author reads the thing in the background.

Everything else uses the book as a "departure" to create something new: a film experience.

To quote John Sayles, talking about reading books as background for movie-making: "It's a story bin to be plundered, and depending on who you are or what your agenda is, it's either useful or not. You may read 6 books about the story you're filming. Maybe you find some of what you read useful, and you get rid of the rest: characters, ideas, countries..."

Perhaps the greater fallacy in your claim is that it conflates film and fiction into equal, even congruent, media--a totally bogus claim.

Again, Sayles: "The one thing I feel I can do in movies that I can't do in fiction is--I can do anything in a movie, and it doesn't have to go through your head first. When you're in a movie theater, you experience the film viscerally. it goes straight to your gut."

[GringoTex]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
This sounds cute, but I know you don't believe it for a second.

There is no such thing as "filming a book," so right away, you are talking in absurdity. EVERY film connected to a book in any way, is by definition an example of #1.


I thought it rather obvious that by "filming a book" I meant "adapting a novel to the screen" and that "departure" is measured in degrees. I didn't literally mean that a movie either departs from it's source text or it doesn't.


The closest you could get with film would be to just fix the camera on an actual copy of a book, while the author reads the thing in the background.


I see you abscribe to the sentimental notion that a text is best interpreted by its own author. Actually, the closest one can get to "filming a book" is too print the words of the book on the screen. Which has been done before.


Everything else uses the book as a "departure" to create something new: a film experience.


This doesn't contradict my original position. A filmmaker who doesn't have one of my two stated reasons for ADAPTING A NOVEL TO SCREEN is very likely to create a piss-poor film experience.


To quote John Sayles, talking about reading books as background for movie-making: "It's a story bin to be plundered, and depending on who you are or what your agenda is, it's either useful or not. You may read 6 books about the story you're filming. Maybe you find some of what you read useful, and you get rid of the rest: characters, ideas, countries..."


I'm not sure what this has to do with my point of adapting novels to the screen.


Perhaps the greater fallacy in your claim is that it conflates film and fiction into equal, even congruent, media--a totally bogus claim.


Actually, it does the opposite. I'm claiming cinema and literature can't even have the same ends- nevermind the means. I haven't read Tolkien's trilogy, but Mel seems to be upset about the parts of the movie that failed where the book succeeded or differentiated from the book. Which makes no sense. What Mel and Peter Jackson loved about "Lord of the Rings" is intrinsically literary. It can't be replicated on film.

Like I said, I haven't read the books, but I bet what I like most about the films can't be found in Tolkien.


Again, Sayles: "The one thing I feel I can do in movies that I can't do in fiction is--I can do anything in a movie, and it doesn't have to go through your head first. When you're in a movie theater, you experience the film viscerally. it goes straight to your gut."

This is why Sayles is such a bad filmmaker. He wants to be Sam Fuller but he doesn't have the talent. There are very few filmmakers good enough to skip the head and go straight to the gut.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by GringoTex
I This doesn't contradict my original position. A filmmaker who doesn't have one of my two stated reasons for ADAPTING A NOVEL TO SCREEN is very likely to create a piss-poor film experience.

This is why Sayles is such a bad filmmaker. He wants to be Sam Fuller but he doesn't have the talent. There are very few filmmakers good enough to skip the head and go straight to the gut.

I misunderstood your first claim, I guess. When you gave the example of "Vertigo," I assumed you thought that this was some type of special category. According to your now more developed explanation, it should have read:

There are two reasons for adapting a novel to film:
1) Novel as a departure (almost every film adaptation ever made)

That's it. There is no "other" or "alternate" reason. Perhaps there are things a director "also" wants to accomplish (improve the story, make a political comment, make tons of cash, screw the lead actress, etc.).

Granted, I think we're agreeing here. And actually, there probably are some crappy directors out there who think they are giving THE true adaptation of a novel to the screen...though I can't imagine there are too many.


As for Sayles, he's such a brilliant director precisely BECAUSE he knows that it's damn easy, too easy, to hit people in the gut, bypassing their heads. For you to proclaim Fuller a master for being able to do what any piss-ant MTV director can do easily seems strange. The spectacle of film itself creates the visceral experience. What Sayles is great at doing, in such films as Limbo, Matewan, and Lone Star, is delaying/avoiding the gut punch, and trying to stick with the head.

[GringoTex]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
According to your now more developed explanation, it should have read:

There are two reasons for adapting a novel to film:
1) Novel as a departure (almost every film adaptation ever made)



But I don't accept this. Today, most film adaptations are not made to depart from a novel. They're made to replicate the novel. A filmmaker or studio's reasoning is: "It was a great book, so it can be a great film." This artistic process is counter-productive. What makes literature great is not going to make cinema great. Have you noticed filmmakers only try to adapt good books nowadays? It used to be they would adapt bad books all the time. Half of Hitchcock's masterpieces were based on crap books. That's because he adapted his movies from an idea of a novel- and didn't care how badly that novel executed the idea. That's what I mean by a departure. Godard took it to an extreme. He would purchase the rights to some American pulp novel that he loved, base the first five or 10 pages of his screenplay on his favorite parts of that novel, and then throw the novel away and make up the rest of the film as they went along.


For you to proclaim Fuller a master for being able to do what any piss-ant MTV director can do easily seems strange.


Horsecrappy- you've never seen a Fuller film in your life.


The spectacle of film itself creates the visceral experience. What Sayles is great at doing, in such films as Limbo, Matewan, and Lone Star, is delaying/avoiding the gut punch, and trying to stick with the head.


Sayles couldn't hit Fat Albert in the gut.

I don't really think he's awful. He's a damn fine screenwriter but his grasp usually exceeds his reach.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by GringoTex
But I don't accept this. Today, most film adaptations are not made to depart from a novel. They're made to replicate the novel. A filmmaker or studio's reasoning is: "It was a great book, so it can be a great film." This artistic process is counter-productive. What makes literature great is not going to make cinema great. Have you noticed filmmakers only try to adapt good books nowadays? It used to be they would adapt bad books all the time. Half of Hitchcock's masterpieces were based on crap books.


You combine two groups here that I think tend to have very different reasons for making a given film: producers and filmmakers.

First, I think you overstate the desire for greatness on the part of film financiers. They're looking for safe bets. And I think that's why more "good" books are being adapted: because they're known. Oprah's book club, Shakespeare, Austen...they all have built in markets ready to tap. It's simply a lot easier to get a "Moby Dick' with Patric Stewart financed. On the flip side, there's nothing at all "great" about John Grisham's writing, but his books are instantly optioned, even before the novel's release. Guaranteed markets.

Second, I think you understate the savy of even the lamest directors. Sure, there are cases like Harry Potter where the director is probably given zero wiggle room to "depart" from the novel, but I bet he wanted to. It's also entirely reasonable for a director to want to make a great book into a great film--both are, after all, narrative driven art forms. The key is for the director to realize that the STORY is the key, not the form or the details. This is what, IMO (and you seem to agree) Jackson has gotten right in these films.

Originally posted by GringoTex

Horsecrappy- you've never seen a Fuller film in your life.


Wrong. I've seen The Big Red One. It's irrelevant anyway, unless you're saying he's the ONLY director ever to have this amazing skill. Perhaps we're talking about different things, but I understand Sayles to be talking about the very basic truth that films, by their nature, tend more towards the gut than the brain: The music, the communal environment, the sheer size of the visual spectacle. Even really stupid long distance phone commericals can have you crying before you know what happened. Much easier to accomplish than through words on a page. Fuller's "greatness" better rest on more unique laurels than he "hit people in the gut."

[DoctorJones24]

PS: This discussion might deserve it's own thread on the Books board. Sorry for the hijack, Mel.

[Kryptonite]

So dumb question.

In 2004 (or 2005), they're going to release this epic 9 hour combo box set.

Will the box set be theater version, extended version, or will there be two box sets?

I have the theater version of Fellowship and wondering if I should buy the theater version of Towers. Either way, i'll probably end up buying all three theater versions individually.

I just KNOW that box set will cost an arm, a leg, and half a head.

[GringoTex]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
Fuller's "greatness" better rest on more unique laurels than he "hit people in the gut."

He was the first American director to honestly deal with racism, anti-communist hysteria, the Korean War, and Vietnam (he made a movie about Vietnam in 1957!).

They can be hard to find in video stores, but check out "Steel Helmet," "Pickup on South Street," "Forty Guns" and "Shock Corridor."

[Mr. Bandwagon]

Originally posted by GringoTex
This is why Sayles is such a bad filmmaker.
Lone Star?...Limbo?...Matewan?

Yeah, those movies all sucked. :rolleyes:

[GringoTex]

Originally posted by Mr. Bandwagon
Lone Star?...Limbo?...Matewan?

Yeah, those movies all sucked. :rolleyes:

If you had an idea what mediocre filmmaking can do to a great script, then you'd understand.

[talina_baby]

Is it just me, or did anybody else think Miranda Otto wasn't all that great? Every scene she had, she just made it SO over-the-top dramatic, that it sometimes made me wanna laugh. That new part at the funeral, with that chant thingy, is pretty good. Very sad.

[Mel Brennan]

Originally posted by talina_baby
Is it just me, or did anybody else think Miranda Otto wasn't all that great? Every scene she had, she just made it SO over-the-top dramatic, that it sometimes made me wanna laugh. That new part at the funeral, with that chant thingy, is pretty good. Very sad.

I think she looks Eowyn, and I know that Miranda Otto can act; but whereas she suffers from a horrid plot and gets great direction in "Sex Is a Four Letter Word" (1995), and the same in Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997), maybeits the case here that she's in an environment with a naturally good plot, but a horrible director, who maybe was once okay, but now is, to put it simply, caught up...

For me, Otto is Eowyn, but the cheese of the contrived, more formulaic love "triangle" ruins her, which is hard to do.

[champmanager]

I don't think I'd ever heard of the actress playing Eowyn, but the whole Rohirim bit was mediocre. I strongly suspect it was a done by a second director. The crowd scenes with the extras were particularly bad, one step above a tv movie of the week, and way, way below the rest of the first two movies. It was the one time I can think of in the first two movies where I got sucked out of the picture and realised I was just sitting in a theatre, watching a flick.

[Metros#1]

I just finished watching the extended edition, and I have not gotten to the extra stuff yet. As a Tolkien fan, I like the added scenes (the more the merrier), and I think for causal viewers, the extended edition provide a little more background and human interest regarding the new characters, like Eowyn and Faramir. I wish there could be a little more background about Ents to show causal viewers that Ents were of a noble and the most ancient race.

However, IMHO, as far as a STANDALONE movie goes, the theatrical edition plus the Boromir/Faramir flashback and the “Sauron fearing you” conversation would be the optimum. Some of the added stuffs are not really all that critical to the whole story; they are more for the fans.

[Mel Brennan]

Originally posted by Metros#1
...However, IMHO, as far as a STANDALONE movie goes, the theatrical edition plus the Boromir/Faramir flashback and the “Sauron fearing you” conversation would be the optimum. Some of the added stuffs are not really all that critical to the whole story; they are more for the fans.

I have to disagree; without the inclusion of the two Huorns scenes (one where Treebeard explains to Merry and Pip, and thus to us, where the trees are going, and the one where the Huorns trap and destroy the Orcs fleeing Hel'm Deep under the onslaught of the newly-arrived Rohirrim under Eomer's command and Gandalf's leadership), the ending of the main battle, as it was in the cinema, is, to put it bluntly, stupid.

Gandalf jumps into a thousand spears with a blinding light, and THAT wins you the battle? After all that build-up, everyone, and not just those who respect the book more than PJ, deserve a more meaningful resolution to the Battle of Helm's Deep than that...

Thanks to PJ moving in the direction of the book, we all get a better conclusion; goes to show that PJs ideas are not better than the book, whoe plot and scenarios and resolutions "marinated" in Tolkien's mind for nearly a lifetime... stick as closely to the book as possible, and we all get a better story...

[Metros#1]

Originally posted by Mel Brennan
I have to disagree; without the inclusion of the two Huorns scenes (one where Treebeard explains to Merry and Pip, and thus to us, where the trees are going, and the one where the Huorns trap and destroy the Orcs fleeing Hel'm Deep under the onslaught of the newly-arrived Rohirrim under Eomer's command and Gandalf's leadership), the ending of the main battle, as it was in the cinema, is, to put it bluntly, stupid.

Gandalf jumps into a thousand spears with a blinding light, and THAT wins you the battle? After all that build-up, everyone, and not just those who respect the book more than PJ, deserve a more meaningful resolution to the Battle of Helm's Deep than that...

Thanks to PJ moving in the direction of the book, we all get a better conclusion; goes to show that PJs ideas are not better than the book, whoe plot and scenarios and resolutions "marinated" in Tolkien's mind for nearly a lifetime... stick as closely to the book as possible, and we all get a better story... While I agree the Huorns scenes completed the battle of Helm’s Deep, but I think you are too harsh on PJ. Just because we didn’t see the final annihilation of Saruman’s army, it does not mean the victory is implausible.

I believe most viewers are willing to file this under “using your own imagination” and enjoy the movie nevertheless. In the theatrical edition, Sam’s speech/voice-over neatly summarized the events in three fronts. In fact, the added scenes in EE after that speech seem a little anticlimactic; they are great as parts of the (eventually) 10-hr long epic but would NOT have worked too well as parts of standalone TTT.

I also agree that PJ’s ideas are not better than the book. However, I think PJ wanted to throw in a battle scene (warg riders) in middle of the 3-hr movie to please causal viewers who may want to see more actions. As a fan of the books, I could totally live without it but I would not fault him too much for doing it.