Finally saw RotK

[katallison]

Man. I wanted to love this movie, I really did; I wanted to have the huge emotional reaction that so many of my friends have had to it. And I ... didn't. I respect it, I continue to be in awe of what was achieved here technically, there are parts I really enjoyed, I understand (even if I don't always agree with) most of the story choices that were made, I certainly don't feel like Tolkien got trashed.



My chief complaint was the same one I have about a lot of mainstream film: too much screentime given to action/battle scenes, at the expense of dialogue and character stuff. The upside is that nowadays with DVD sets we actually have a chance of getting that stuff back at some point; but there's a larger downside in that I feel like we're almost creating a two-track system of cinema, with the theatre-going hordes getting wham-bang shoot-em-up CGI-laden fare, and the (by my standards) more interesting stuff getting reserved for the subset of viewers willing to cough up the dough for DVDs.

But anyway, by the time I staggered out of the theatre, I felt beaten up and massively headachey, with all the muscles in my back knotted up like rocks from wincing. I'd ended up closing my eyes for chunks of the big battle scenes, because they just seemed like overkill (so to speak). Honestly, I think all the battle stuff would have been far more effective if they'd been shorter and more focused.

Anyway. Stuff that I really dug (in some cases combined with bitching about stuff I wish had been done differently):

--Pippin. Who'd a thunk it, because Pippin was one of my least favorite characters in the books, but Billy Boyd [ed. to fix name] did some fantastic stuff in the role (and, unlike Monaghan, actually got a chance to, although I'm anticipating more Merry scenes in the Extended Edition).

--The Rohirrim. Good god, do they rock. Edoras remains my favorite of all the LotR sets by far, and I love the horses, and I love the Riders' sort of berserker kamikaze lunge into battle. And I love the scene at the encampment, where they're all uneasy and sort of knowing they're going to get pounded, but are just stalwartly going about their preparations, and don't get fazed even when Aragorn & Co. suddenly take off for no apparent sane reason into a godforsaken haunted mountain cave.

--The first shot of Minas Tirith: holy crap. That was stunning. I mean, I still like Edoras the best (*g*), but they did an amazing job of creating that city.

--Faramir's doomed charge. Beautiful and wrenching, intercut as it was with Pippin's song. And melymbrosia (among other comments with which I almost entirely agree) makes the excellent point that the effectivess of that scene was that it didn't show you the fighting--you knew what was going to happen, you didn't need to get beat over the head with it. I will admit that this scene also made me want to whack Faramir one upside the head, because dude, if you need to work out your daddy issues by dying in hopeless battle that's one thing, but you got all those other guys killed with you. And really weakened the defense of the city in so doing. Which was stoopid, and really, the point about Faramir is he's not stupid.

--Actually, upon reflection, the part of the Faramir-charge scene I loved most was the warriors riding out through the streets of Minas Tirith, and the women throwing flowers (funeral flowers, someone pointed out) under the hooves of their horses. Oh, man. They all knew they weren't coming back. It killed me.

--The heads being lobbed over the walls. I'd forgotten that from the books, and oh, ouch ouch ouch.

--The signal-beacon sequence was just beautifully conceived and executed. (Although my Bungee Cords of Disbelief Suspension were sproinging badly here, because really, there's no frickin' way they'd have had sentries permanently encamped right up there on the sharp-edged tippy-tip-top of those very sharp-edged mountains which are clearly inaccessible except by helicopter. But it was beautiful.)

--The way Frodo looked when he claimed the Ring. I'm not in general a big fan of EW in this role (it's a taste thing more than a reasoned critical judgment), but he was just right in that moment. Plus, the creepy Isildur overtones. Very cool.

--OK, this is pure silliness, but I giggled like a nut at Legolas at the coronation, in his bridal gown. Boy, he and Aragorn held that look for quite a long time, didn't they? And even though I have little use for Arwen, that was one toe-curling smooch that Aragorn planted on her.

Scenes from the book that I really wanted to see and didn't get:

1. Wrap-up for Faramir and Eowyn, the whole Houses of Healing bit. Apparently this is going to be in the Extended Edition, but damn, if I was a non-book-reader watching the film, I'd've been going "Huh? So last we saw they were both almost dead, and Faramir was in a suicidal state, and Eowyn was crushed by getting the turn-down from Aragorn, and now they're just fine and giving each other the glad eye, and who the what now??"

2. The Witch-King coming through the broken walls of Minas Tirith, facing down Gandalf on Shadowfax, breaking Gandalf's staff, and you're just convinced This is it, they are SO dead, and it's a moment of ultimate doom, despair -- and then, then you hear the horns of Rohan blowing wildly in the distance, and all of a sudden you can feel the tide of events swing around. It's a hugely powerful moment (and the Gandalf-not-staff-having would make some sense of why this very powerful wizard doesn't seem to be doing as much of an effectual nature in later scenes).

3. The Mouth of Sauron in the face-down with Aragorn & Co. in front of the Black Gate, showing them the mithral coat -- again, it's an incredibly powerful moment of despair, and I think would give even more emotional weight to Aragorn's "For Frodo!" and that last doomed charge. (Again, I've heard rumors this is going to be in the EE.)

4. The Scouring of the Shire. OK, yeah, I get why they didn't do it, I admit it probably wouldn't really work, cinematically, when you've already had your big emotional climax. But damn, to me that's one of the core parts of the book--that nobody is unaffected by this war, you can't go home again and find it the same. It underscores the theme of the passing of the Third Age; and it really does a lot to begin showing Frodo's apartness not just from normal life in the Shire, but also from the other three hobbits.

Stuff that bugged:

1. There are several places where the writers used different dialogue in places where Tolkien's original language was, to me, particularly memorable or resonant, and it bothered me. For example, the exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-King; man, I so wanted to hear Eowyn saying "Begone foul dwimmerlaik!" and "For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him." Also -- and believe me, I'm not saying this as a Mad Slasher -- Sam talking about Rosie Cotton, at the Cracks of Doom, just felt off to me. I see what they were going for there, and I agree that to have Sam mourning for the life that (he thinks) he's never going to have is moving, but it felt ... well, to me, the stuff in the book, where Sam's talking about how they'll be remembered, with the gaffers and children telling stories about the fire, is far more effective (because you can just feel how he yearns for that warm cozy domestic scene, and sees it as what he'll never have).

2. In line with the above, am I remembering wrong? or did we never actually get Frodo's speech about how sometimes you have to lose everything, give everything up, so that others may keep them? (I may have missed this, because for the whole last hour of the movie I was half-deaf from the goddam Dolby Sounds of Battle blasting away at top volume, but I don't recall hearing it, and--damn. That's a centerpiece of the whole trilogy, right there.)

3. I agree with pandarus that the whole Shelob scene was badly marred by the excision of most of Sam's stuff after finding Frodo's "body." I had a feeling they were trying to set up some cheap suspense--"OMG the orcs have got the ring!"--which seemed dumb, not just because dude, you don't have to have read the books to know the ring gets destroyed eventually, but also because it cost us what I think is one of Sam's best moments--not only his grief, but also his decision that the mission has priority over his desire to stay with Frodo and grieve him, that he's going to carry on. Maybe this scene will return in the EE, though; it certainly felt chopped-up in this version.

4. Denethor ... well, I feel the same way here that I did about Faramir after watching TTT in the theatres, like "People, you just completely trashed a really interesting character!" And I'm hoping that, as with Faramir, the EE covers some missing ground (the Palantir, especially). But even if they do that, Denethor's death scene is wrong, wrong, wrong.

5. I got really, really sick of seeing Sam/Frodo/Gollum getting bashed around on rocks (hit in the head, falling down cliffs, bouncing each other off boulders, etc.) Which is partly a Suspension of Disbelief problem again (I kept thinking, "OK, now here we'd have several broken bones, probably internal injuries, certainly major head trauma...") But even more -- I mean, to me, the real physical toll of the whole journey to Morder is simply the slog slog slog of it, and the hunger and thirst and exhaustion. Which, granted, is less cinematic than a nice spot of hand-to-hand, but still. In my own mind, the very unshowiness of it makes an important counterpoint to all the battle scenes going on elsewhere, and the decision to throw what seemed to me like a whole lot of fight scenes into it bugged me. Dude, we *get* that Gollum and Sam hate each other, they don't have to be smacking each other around all the time.

6. Gollum, in general, got very badly on my nerves, and not entirely in the ways that the filmmakers intended, I think. With the TT DVDs I end up fast-forwarding through all his scenes, and I anticipate doing the same with the RotK ones. Having said which, I'll admit the Smeagol and Deagol scene was very effectively done.

7. A huge loss to me--and again, don't know how this'll sort out in the EE--is that I never really got in the film what is, to me, an essential core of the story: that the victory is deeply bittersweet because it represents the ending of so many things. I mean, they did some of this; I'm so damn glad they left the Grey Havens in (because man, if they'd ended the film with the coronation, I would've killed people). But I mean -- it's not just that a bunch of elves are going bye-bye, it's not just that Frodo and Gandalf are leaving, it's -- magic is going out of the world, people. The elves are gone now, even if a few of them loiter a little longer, and beyond that--even though we don't see their ending--in the New Age of Men, the dwarves and Ents and the hobbits themselves are also, eventually, gone. What's strange is that they really did a good job of setting the tone for that in the prologue to FotR, but then I didn't feel they brought it back around and closed the circle.

8. Also, and this is really just me, but I thought the Grey Havens were all wrong, visually. I've always pictured this as a flat empty stretch of shoreline, with a huge vista of the grey restless sea, a wide horizon, gulls wheeling overhead, and a small boat waiting. As filmed, it felt really like another interior shot, and an overly ornate one at that. This may seem like a small point, but to me it matters that when you're leaving the Havens you're leaving Middle Earth, and that the visual of Middle Earth here be as simple, as natural, as ordinary as possible.

OK, I'll stop blithering now, but will only add that melymbrosia and voleuse have performed herculean tasks of collecting RotK comments from all over LJ-land. In particular, I'd commend to your attention leadensky's comprehensive six-part set of comments that provide all sorts of fascinating and informed commentary on battle tactics, horses, the culture of Rohan, and the like. Really great stuff.