Not Fade Away: Peter Jackson's The Two Towers, extended

 Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortenson, Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellan. Dir. Peter Jackson, New Line, 2002

7 lbs of movies - 2-pound edition

Talking to a friend tonight, I mentioned that, while the three boxed extended editions of the LoTR fims are really sweet, kind of must-haves for a movie collector, I burned out on them and on Tolkien, in general, the last few years, and so planned to not watch them in the immediate future.

"Or," she said, "you could choose to consider them films you're done with. They were special, and that time is gone, and they're good memories you never have to try recreating. It's ok to move on from movies you love."

I think that's right, and the LoTR movies might fit in that slot. I loved them. I watched them until I saw all Jackson's story alterations as understandable for commercial reasons but basically unforgivable. I watched it more. Until I hated it, apart from giving it props for its vision and influence.

Still, if I'm going to say farewell, I might as well watch at least one movie and make sure. Oddly, my favorite of the three has always been Two Towers, which goes most wildly off-book. Any LoTR fan knows it's literally impossible for elven troops to fight at Helm's Deep. The only place in Middle Earth with that size force, Rivendell, is surrounded.

Jackson just says, "Screw it, fans wanna see men and elves fight on the same side, so it's gonna happen," and it works.

Watching movies just about everyday for five years has changed my view of movies differing from the source material. It's inevitable and it's necessary. A film based on a book has to still tell its own story, rather than the story of the book. Too-faithful adaptations render movies well-intended and utterly inert. Perhaps that will make a difference to me this time.

First off, though these are the dvds, not bluray, the film looks fucking amazing on a big TV. Whatever issues I have with Jackson, there's no faulting his visual achievement. The cgi, groundbreaking at the time, is now 20 years old. To these eyes, it's still perfect. Outside the cg, Jackson's sense of scale and scope and his visualization of Middle Earth continue impressing me.

Ok, I AM writing this as I watch. That could argue against the movie, but understand I literally know every line of dialogue in all three movies. I pay attention to films like this and Episode 4 differently than something I've seen a few times. Whenever I go back to it for a few minutes, I'm buyin' it.

My biggest issue with Two Towers and Return of the King is the same issue I have on re-reads of the book. Tolkien wrote each section as a dual narrative. One, Aragorn fulfilling prophecy and uniting Middle Earth to fight Sauron, moves and grooves, has gnarly battles and wizard-stuff and Ents and soldiers of Gondor. It's good. The other narrative is exactly the same thing each time. "We're walking to Mordor. We're walking and it's miserable and we're walking and it's miserable and oh, here's Gollum so now we'ee walking to Mordor with Gollum, and we're walking and we're walking and jesus, Elijah Wood's performance is oddly rrminiscent of Natalie Portman's in the Star Wars Prequels and..."

As I said, I fault Tolkien for that, not Jackson, but it strikes me an extended edition of either film will inevitably include even more of its problematic content, so again, is this any still for me?

So Gandalf just dispossessed Theoden King of Saruman and buried his son and I have to say I'm not seein' a movie I need to retire for all time. In fact, so far, as a Tolkien fan and a fan of well-made movies, Two Towers is the real deal on both counts. I agree with my friend's basic conceit, of retiring cherished movies. It doesn't appear Lord of the Rings has yet earned a place on my list.

That said, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

I find myself trying to draw parallels between LoTR and Star Wars, the two fandoms where my viewing of the movies numbers in the thousands. To the extent they exist, they crop up in the screenplay and its performance. Like Lucas, Peter Jackson's not a great dialogue/drama guy. The characters in both series tend to be expository declaimers of varying skill- and charisma-level. Neither director understands that character banter is always more interesting, often more informative. As such, their obsession with the visual tends to deafen them to extraordinarily poor line readings of extraordinarily poor dialogue. Jackson doesn't suffer it to the degree Lucas does in the Prequels, but many of Wood's and Astin's lines had the same stiffness and artificiality as Natalie Portman and Hayden Christianson's exchanges. Wood was on track to be a fine dramatic actor. He did some work in that vein after LoTR, but nothing has really stuck. Like Mark Hamill & Star Wars, LoTR does appear to have changed the trajectory of his career.

These movies made Orlando Bloom a star. Until his sucky acting unmade him. It's interesting watching his performance now and remembering his popularity always owed to his looks and skaterboy charm, not his interpretation of the elfling prince, remembering because it is almost as thin as many SW performances. Legolas works as a character - he's fearless and a badass - but Bloom's a weak spot.

That pretty well does it for the LoTR -SW parallels. Though I've grown into a passionate fan of the Prequels, LoTR makes the better first impression and avoids most of their mistakes. Seeing it 1001 times doesn't pile up new evidence to the contrary.

I'm wary of extended editions that are not specifically the director's cut. I got a box of the first four Alien movies not long ago. Each disc included an extended edition, and in all cases the directors refer to the original film as the director's cut, the other version just what the studio requested.

In all cases, the additional footage adds nothing but time to perfectly-paced pictures. Jackson also considered the theatrical cuts his definitive versions, so these two-disc, 4-hour versions could be just bloat, turning great movies into almost-great. I'm not having that problem. Jackson oversaw the extended versions, and only did commentaries for them, and they largely restore the non-expository, character-enriching dialogue and situations, making Two Towers a much fuller, more satisfying film, for me.

The LoTR movies need not eye Florida retirement property just yet. I'm still a fan. A big thankyou to my friend. These are cherished and treasured additions to my collection.