I’ve recently realized my workouts go by a lot more quickly if I read. And so I’ve been re-reading The Return of the King on the exercise bike. Thing is, whenever something exciting happens in the story, I can’t help but pedal faster. And last night I was at the very action-packed part of the Siege of Gondor, when all hell breaks loose. Literally. Every paragraph is more exhilarating than the previous one.

Needless to say, I was dead when I got off the bike. What can I say, it’s a rough job, defending the world from evil. I still feel the ache.

“If The Two Towers wins Best Adapted Screenplay, T, I’ll eat your shorts”.

- Me, this morning.

Well, it’s not nominated for it. Yay! It is nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture (yay!), but not Makeup.

More on this topic later.

For the last two nights, I’ve had nightmares bad enough to wake me up. Both involved my hurting someone (or something) physically, both involved Lord of the Rings characters. I’m not sure I really want to know what this means…

After seeing a bear pursuing Frodo and Sam, shooting out lasers out of its eyes, lightspeedchick says, “well, that doesn’t make any sense”.

Pippin replies in a thick Scottish accent, “Hey, it’s Middle Eerrrrth”.

Well, that wasn’t really the scary part.

Excerpt:

LORD ARAGORN: Well, my two trusty companions — Legolas, the Strangely Tall Elf; and Gimli, the Comic Relief Dwarf — in our subplot, we are pursuing Merry and Pippin, who have been captured by Orcs, and now we find ourselves in the Kingdom of Rohan, ruled by King Theoden, whose niece, Eowyn, will become my second love interest once the king is released from the spell cast by his trusted counselor, Grima Wormtongue, who is secretly in league with the evil wizard Saruman!

LEGOLAS: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

LORD ARAGORN: Me either. I’m just reading the script.

GIMLI: Well, I’m really short!

(Laughter)

LORD ARAGORN: But enough explanatory dialogue. It’s time for one of the estimated 17 big sword-clanging battles we have in this movie with hideous computer-generated monsters who always outnumber us by the thousands, although we defeat them every time, because we are courageous heroes!

LEGOLAS: Also, they have the hand-to-hand-combat skills of alfalfa.

MONSTERS: Arrrrrr.

SWORDS: CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

For the rest, visit Dave Barry at the Miami Herald.

This explains a lot.

Dork Tower is, once again, frighteningly accurate.

Devine c’est quoi la traduction (dans le film) de Shadowfax?

GRIPOIL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I think of it, there was only one thing, one character that they changed substantially and I’m nitpicky because he was a character I loved.

I’m sorry but I disagree with people who don’t like changes like Tom Bombadil’s disappearance or (sorry Bill) Arwen’s increased role. What they added concerning Arwen in FOTR was canonical - it was stuff written by Tolkien, just not in LOTR proper, but rather in the appendices and his other writings.

The other changes don’t bother me so much. You just can’t put everything in a movie that is in a book, and I’m willing to accept that. Sometimes you have to tell things out of sequence, even have to combine two characters into one. Though I’m a huge fan of Tolkien, it seems to me that the filmmakers and writers who adapted the book have a lot of reverence for the books, and I don’t feel they were disrespectful. Yes, the changes took me by surprise, but that’s all.

Update: so who else saw it? Wha’dya think?

Update II : Maybe I’m tolerant of changes because I’m still secretly hoping for that Pippin takes a spongebath scene…

I never had a problem with the stuff they omitted in the first movie, and what they added (the Arwen/Aragorn arc) was canonical. That is, it might not have been in the actual novels, but it was in the appendices. It was faithful to what Tolkien wrote. I also fully understand that you can’t tell a story on screen exactly the same way you do in a book. Fine.

I was so prepared to adore The Two Towers. And it truly was an awesome movie. However, I’m not as impressed as I was with the Fellowship, and I certainly am more disgruntled about the liberties they’ve taken with the story this time. Not only are the changes unfaithful to Tolkien, it’s not at all obvious why they had to make them.

I’m giving Peter Jackson the benefit of the doubt until I’ve seen The Return of the King next year. Perhaps some of the perceived wrongs will be righted then.

On the plus side, Gollum is wonderfully done, Rohan and the Helm’s Deep scene are amazing, the Ents rock. In about a week, when more people have seen it, I’ll go into what detractions I didn’t like. But right now I don’t want to give anything away.

… I’m seized with the temptation to see it tonight at midnight! But Bill will skin me alive for not letting her watch me drool tomorrow.