ROTK and other matters, spoilers are cut, diced, and boiled for your pleasure

[deralte]

So drove up to cedarlibrarian's last night where we and her husband watched Two Towers before the movie. The following conversation ensued:

deralte: If Aragorn isn't interested in Eowyn, why does he keep flirting with her?
cedar: Because he's a manwhore.
*L*
Cue muttering about manwhores for the rest of the night *eg*
Theatre was very crowded and even had some people dressed up. Crowd was very... er, rowdy. Our film stopped twenty minutes before the ending which led to death threats and curses being flung at the management, and would shortly have progressed to a full blown riot had they not restarted the film in the right place. Still it did ruin the mood a bit so it was nice to be compensated at the end with free passes.

It was an improvement over the second, but still not as good as the first. Whatever quibbles I have with the movie, I must say PJ must be doing something right because the audience was cheering left and right for the last two thirds of the movie. Every 'cool' character got his moment, though the only ones I really felt like cheering along with were Sam's triumph over Shelob and Eowyn's slaying of the witch king. Was too busy giggling over the writhing eye when the ring was destroyed to be cheering. The same goes for Legolas' now customary, 'I will do something so cool, it's elvish' scene.

Things I loved and liked:
Faramir's interaction with his father. For all the fact that neither of them are really the character's they are in the books, the conversation was strait out of the books and was lovely and deep. Ah, dysfunctionalness...
Everyone's acting. Lovely all around, especially with sam and frodo even if my eyes did start to glaze over at points when they kept going on about the shire (certainly not PJ's fault, the books are much worse in detail...).
The whole scene in Mount Doom. Lovely, and the look on Gollum's face as he fell...
Sam's fight with Shelob.
The surprising amount of singing in the movie. Way to go to PJ for having the confidence to leave that in.
The Rider's of Rohan's charge.
Merry and Pippin charging after Aragorn near the end before anyone else.
Pippin's and Gandalf's interaction.
Less Legolas.
Gimli's cool lines.
Sam getting up the courage to talk to Rosie.
The end.

Things I didn't like:
Denthor's portrayal as mad, a glutton, and an idiot. He is supposed to be mad by the end, but not in the beginning and the lack of the palantir... cheapens his character. I was wincing horribly when Gandalf delievered that 'smack down' The jumping off the tower in flames was over the top as well.
Random Arwen is dying due to ring now thing. Very weird, odd, and not actually needed.

Wondering:
Why we had to watch such a long scene of the beacons being lit. It was cool to watch but I couldn't help but look for the message in the corner saying 'paid for by the new zealand tourist industry'. Have to agree with Fyre here and say that Aragorn runs like a girl on seeing the beacons and had me giggling madly.

Random Observations:
Becoming powerful in Middle Earth obviously automatically entitles you to a spot light, hence how Gandalf carries one around all the time and Sauron does his best impersonation of a lifehouse:)

Flaming eyeball's dying are quite funny. So was Pippin with the palantir.

Minas Tirith didn't look the way I pictured it. It seemed too, small I suppose. That's just me though.

Edit: idlerat wrote a lovely, long response to my entry which I thought I'd link to, here.

And now I must go see it a few more times to see if my opinion changes.

Comments

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Ah, fresh meat.

Our film stopped twenty minutes before the ending

How annoying!

...

er, I started writing so much in response to your points I have to make another post. Scuse me! In the meantime, see my last.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I still see Denethor being driven mad by despair as pretty potent, thouhg I missed the palantir...and I don't think he'd become an idiot so much as thoroughly focused on negativity. Which is idiotic, but also pretty much what happens to him in the books.

Arwen dying due to ring very annoying, bah humbug.

*loved, loved, loved Pippin singing, but is pissed as hell about the lack of Faramir/Eowyn, which had better be on the DVD or else will throw raging hissyfit*

[mark356.livejournal.com]

Agreed with you on the lighthouses. I thought I wouldn't like the singing, but I loved it, and am glad for the little bit of it. I also thought that it wasn't as good as the first.

Now, I'm going to ask you this because it's been really annoying me, and I know that you'll be able to give an intelligent answer, even though you did not mention it: what can you tell me about the Witch King with morningstar/Eowyn with sword fight? I understand that we already knew about the Witch King's morningstar, and Eowyn and Merry killing the Witch King was downright fabulous, but there is something so wrong about someone with a morningstar fighting someone with a sword; they're not the same kind of weapon!

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Mmm, actually the morning star was designed for fighting against someone with armour on, who was most likely carrying a sword or spear. The idea is to use the morning star to dent or smash the person's armour, while using the chain of the star to wrap around the person's sword/spear and either pull it out of their hands or incapacitate them. Eowyn got my seal of approval when she picked up that shield to defend herself since that was the only way she could block the star, short of dodging it each time. I agree that it isn't the type of fight I'd willingly *chose* to be in since the person with the morningstar has the advantage (providing they know how to use it... those things are as dangerous as numchucks for coming back at their weilders... but we'll assume the witch king was knowledgeable). You can't exactly choose who you're going to be running into on a battlefield and what weapon they'll be using of course (I was more surprised the witch king was using a morningstar at all, but then I remembered that it's a good weapon from horseback since it has a long reach and I assume that applies to riding on flying lizard thingies (cannot remember name...)).

Fights with different weapons happen all the time. We don't do them *to* often in my own classes (though I can remember an awful lot of moves that start with me barehanded and my oponnent with a knife...) but I do recall fighting someone with a knife while I had, well the weapon looked like a type of grappling hook on a chain with a round ring at the other end. The whole purpose was to use the ring and chain to incapacitate the other person (usually by tying htem up/choking them) then using the hook at your leisure to rip into them. It certainly wasn't a fair fight, but i