More belated Lord of the Rings movie nerdery: The extended Two Towers

[mmcirvin]

One of the things I got for Christmas was The Two Towers Extended Edition DVD. I'd been wanting to watch it was samantha2074 for some time, but it's so incredibly long that something else was always more convenient. With her out of town this weekend, I finally broke down and watched it myself. Fortunately I'll be happy to watch it more times. I'd heard it was a marked improvement over the theatrical release, but I hadn't realized how dramatic an improvement.


The elements of the theatrical cut that seemed a bit perfunctorily handled are largely fleshed out here. The Frodo/Sam/Gollum thread is modestly enhanced. There's much more of Merry, Pippin and Treebeard's story, which, contrary to what you might think, actually ends up making the Ents more interesting (even the Entwives are mentioned). We see Treebeard performing his treeherding duties (with some lines apparently filched from Tom Bombadil), and this ultimately connects to a far more satisfying conclusion to Helm's Deep than the theatrical cut had; I distinctly remember thinking that there seemed to be a scene missing there. All the way through, there's much more of the smaller, quieter character moments in between the big action set-pieces. Post-resurrection Gandalf has some interesting extra dialogue. Eowyn's affection for Aragorn is elaborated upon, and the movie version of Faramir becomes much more believable (one of the making-of featurettes spends a lot of time trying to justify the changes to him).

I was most impressed by a short flashback that puts Boromir, Faramir and Denethor on the screen at once, providing clear motivation for the actions of all three and tying together a major plot thread of the entire trilogy in an immensely satisfying manner. I can understand why it was cut, since in the context of Towers itself it might seem extraneous, but it's a great addition.

One small objection I do have is that it almost feels as if some expository material should have been cut from the extended release, since the additions make it unnecessary. Galadriel's strange quasi-prologue at the midpoint probably wasn't necessary even in the theatrical cut, and there are some voiceovers by Gandalf that are now redundant with stuff he already said.

The additions are far more radical than in Fellowship of the Ring, probably because by the time Jackson and associates were doing the final editing, effects, looping and pick-up shots on The Two Towers, they had guessed, from experience with Fellowship, the full potential of an extended DVD release. Indeed, I've heard some speculation that the theatrical cuts of Towers and Return of the King actually suffered from this, since holding back some material from the theatrical cut didn't mean it was completely gone, and in fact made the extended DVD more valuable. There are some elements in the theatrical Return that, in hindsight, actually seem to assume that you've seen the extended Towers.

So now I've got to see the extended Return of the King at my earliest possible convenience. LOTR movie fans felt a little sad at Christmastime that it was all over, but they actually do have something to look forward to.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I was still a little stunned from watching the Battle of Helm's Deep, but I found the added scene of its conclusion particularly, actually jarringly, violent, which is odd because it's hardly explicit. Quite satisfying, though.

I saw TTTX in the theater about a week before ROTK opened, and went to get FOTRX as soon as I could afford it, only to found out that it was impossible to find for a couple of months. I have it now, though. w00t!

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[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The DVD extras are pretty fascinating for a nerdfilm fan, too, though I certainly haven't explored them all. I was particularly interested in the bits in which Philippa Boyens explains the problems of getting a trilogy of coherent screenplays out of Tolkien, something that had probably eluded people before just because it's inherently hard to do.

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[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Though, come to think of it, the old BBC radio series seems to have ardent fans. That's probably a form more easily extracted from this particular story.