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| Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition by Mischief Maker 12/26/2004, 10:13am PST | ||||
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| Well I've now seen all 3 movies in the full extended edition and I can now say that with one exception, all my complaints with the theatrical versions have been addressed and that in its uncut version this is the best fantasy/sci fi epic movie ever made.
As I said previously in a post lost to the sands of time because the fact that veronica fucked umberto was something none of us were meant to know, the "extended edition" name is a bit of a misnomer because unlike the usual self-indulgent director cuts which are an already complete movie with an extra scene or two added, these are the complete movies. The theatrical versions were savagely cut to shorten run-time, and as a result lots of scenes build up to a moment... then stop, characters make sudden insane decisions out of the blue, and harrowing battle scenes seem short and missing crucial parts from the book. You'd think they'd realize adding an intermission would solve the whole problem and increase their popcorn sales. The Fellowship of the Ring: Lots of good stuff. It starts out with an explanation of what the hell hobbits actually are for the benefit of people who haven't read the books. The battle with the ringwraiths is more harrowing. The part in lothlorien makes sense and doesn't come across as indulgent filler. Boromir manages to come across as a hero whose seduction by the ring is tragic instead of a weasly asshole whose betrayal is inevitable. And the battle scenes! They're longer and gorier! The quiet secret of all these extended editions is that the extra stuf is not just talking. Thankfully, Tom Bombadil is nowhere to be seen. The Two Towers: This one fares the least well of the three in extended edition. While the battles are better and you get some necessary scenes like why faramir almost takes frodo to Gondor and scenes that bring across the little parts of the book like the rivalry between the Uruk-hai and the Mordor Orcs, there are a few scenes that really did deserve to remain on the cutting room floor. Like the scene of Treebeard putting the hobbits to sleep with his poetry, the painful scene showcasing Eowyn's lousy cooking, and a few too many scenes of everyone stopping the action so gandalf or some elves can explain what's going on for the dipshits in the crowd who haven't read the books already. But the good parts are still better and to anyone who says that the couple scenes of gimli comic relief ruin the film, all I can do is slowly shake my head and say, "I don't know where you get your delusions from, lazerbrain! The Return of the King: The best of the three. Holy shit did the theatrical release cut this one savagely. You get the final confrontation with Saruman. You get the part where Gandalf and the Witch King of Angmar face off. You get the scene where Frodo and Sam accidentally get enlisted in Mordor's armies. You get bigger, badder, bloodier battles. You finally get to see tumor orc die. Hell, they even threw in the part with Sauron's ambassador! Must-see. I'm just amazed how good the final product turned out. And the craziness of having all these serious and epic books directed by the dude who made "Bad Taste" and "Dead Alive" paid off. Anywhere there's a chance to show a gnarly death or a gruesome disembowlment, he goes for it, and results in battle scenes that are more harrowing than half the movies that rip off the first half of Saving Private Ryan. I liked most of his departures from the book and think (Gasp!) that he even improved it in places. Whether he killed the "spirit" of tolkien, as some freakazoids busy shitting blood in rage contest, all I can say is that Tolkien was a linguist and most of the twists in the books were matters of semantics (Gandalf's scrutinizing over what "good morning" means, the various word riddles, "I am no man!") so the only thing he himself would have probably been worried about is whether they pronounced his words correctly. The dude that plays Sam deserves an award. As the lower class hobbit-cum-hero of the story he was spot-on. I was really worried sick how, in our current forbidden-cock-lust-paranoia climate, anyone could have done Sam's devotion to Frodo without coming across as an gay, but he pulled it off nicely... ...only to be blindsighted by frodo, aka. the weak link of the films, who comes across as a total queen! What the fuck??? He looks nothing like a hobbit, he acts nothing like a hobbit, and while he has the frightened deer in the headlights look down, he plays his increasing coveteousness (that everyone else in the movie being corrupted by the ring showed just fine) by rolling his eyes back into his head and looking stoned. In one of the extras, I heard Peter Jackson say something of the lines of not wanting a frodo who looks anything like Elija Woods, but he was "so impressed" by Woods' performance that he gave him the part. I suspect the real story is that some studio exec, upon learning that the film's lead, the center face in all the posters, was going to be a fatty, blew a gasket and demanded sexy hobbits. He then, recalling Elija Wodds' skill at blowjobs, placed the little fuck in front of Jackson and said, "work with him!" But even in extended edition, if you haven't read the books, these movies are not for you. It kills me to hear guys say things like, "No one liked the hobbits in the movies!" What you're missing, and what all the many, many ripoffs miss, is the genius of the story. You have all the great heroes and wizards and armies of the day coming to fiht Sauron and they're all fucked. The real heroism comes from these unassuming and insignificant little hobbits who want nothing to do with war using their insignificance as an advantage and sneaking beneath the enemy's attention. Frodo's lack of ambition is the thing that helps him resist the ring for so long. The lowest of the good guys, Sam, the lower class hobbit, is the real hero of the story. And while allowing Gollum to live would have been a recurring idiot plot moment in the hands of a lesser author, this lowest of the low characters was the crucial part in allowing anyone to drop the ring into the cracks of doom. Watching these movies without reading the books is like watching a comedian telling inside jokes. By all means, laugh along with the dick jokes, but don't go telling the rest of the crowd all those other jokes were boring and unfunny and should be cut from the act. I remember asking one girl if she liked Fellowship and she said, "I dunno, it all seemed like such a cliche." That's because, with very few exceptions, THE ENTIRE FANTASY GENRE IS A RIPOFF OF TOLKIEN. From Dragonlance to Final Fantasy to Star Wars. Put down your Terry Brooks, your David Eddings, your Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman, your Robert Jordan, your R. A. Salvatore, and everything else and fucking read the lord of the rings, starting with "The Hobbit." No, with the exception of "the Hobbit," it isn't written in simple easily digestible language for low-attention-span pustule-bursting teenage nerds stopping for mastrubation breaks every 20 minutes. It's a grown-up series of classic literature that's slow to start, but picks up speed faster and faster as it goes on. Unless you're sitting down to the likes of Beowulf or Siegfried's Rhine Journey, chances are you're reading down a watered down LOTR. So before you declare the genre dead after reading a TSR-published "Fantasy -with attitude" book, read the real thing. |
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