December 2002

I wrote the following as an email to Chris, in response to an email he wrote to me about the relatively low score I gave Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, in case anyone has a take or wants to answer any of the questions I ask. I fixed some grammatical errors (oops), but otherwise it’s as is.

- - - SPOILERS below - - -

I’ve tried, but I just don’t think I’m going to get into the movies.

I’m not saying that the books are at fault for splitting one story into three parts. Books are different from movies, and movies from books. They each have issues, problems, things that work better, etc. When adapting one to the other, though, some times changes have to be made. So I don’t buy the argument of “that’s how the books are” because we aren’t reading the book.

I think a movie should stand on its own. Even though The Godfather is a trilogy, each film has its own story arc, and I felt satisfied after seeing each of them (well, the first two). Back To The Future ends on “To Be Continued…”, but again, its story stands on its own (but there is a big picture).

When I see a movie, I want something more than a big battle, however good it is. To me, that’s all Pearl Harbor had going for it. But I’m supposed to like this more because its source material is regarded as classic? Fuck that.

Beyond my problem of it being three more hours to get us not much further in the story, here are some specific issues I had:

• I thought Gollum was technically cool, as far as his facial expressions and overall performance goes. But his composition into the live action footage was spotty. Lots of times he looked incredibly real, other times it seemed like they forgot to match his lighting to the live action, which breaks the illusion that he’s real, which makes him less believable, which makes the technical advancements moot because you still know he’s fake.

  And beyond that, I thought he was fucking annoying. I wanted Robin Hood & His Merry Men to shoot him up with arrows.

• I thought the Ents were incredibly boring. Not only that, but while seeing them on screen, the name “Jim Henson” kept creeping through my mind, as I thought the main Ent looked just as good as any of the characters from The Dark Crystal (which isn’t a compliment).

  While the battle at Helm’s Deep was cool, during it, the movie kept cutting back to the Hobbits talking to an incredibly slow tree. So all of the excitement from the battle was quickly screeched to a halt every time they cut back to the Ent walking.

  And when they finally did spring into action, just like Gollum, the Ents’ composition was terrible. Once that dam broke, just about every Ent in every water shot looked like ass.

• That’s a big problem, in general, with the film. Some times the effects are so good you don’t notice them. In other cases it looks as if they ran out of time or money and skipped QA.

• Maybe I just don’t remember it from the first film, but what’s with the multiple languages? So, every one—orcs, hobbits, ents, dwarves, elves, humans—they all speak English? But Aragorn—a human—and Legolas—an elf, right?—also communicate in a different language that requires subtitles. Which, unless I’m remembering wrong, is also used to shout out orders to the fighters at Helm’s Deep.

  What is the other language? Is everyone bilingual?

• Isn’t Saruman supposed to be in these movies? In this one we saw him tour the factory and stand on the balcony, looking like a scared little bitch. Oh, and he was thrown on his ass. Yeah, that’s a great villain. Actually, he assembled a large army. I’ll give him that.

• Oh, but before Saruman is exorcised from the King, how does that “your spells have no effect here” thing work on Gandalf? Before he takes off his cloak, he tries a spell, which doesn’t work, because Gandalf The Grey’s spells don’t work here. So he throws off the cloak and says he’s Gandalf The White, and does the spell again, and it works. So, is it just as simple as proclaiming yourself a new name? If Saruman had said that now Gandalf The White’s spells don’t work, could Gandalf change his name to Gandalf The Green and the spells would work again? Or would he need a matching wardrobe?

• So Aragorn & Co. are looking for Pippin & Merry. They come across the posse on horseback, who say they just came from the camp where the hobbits were, but left nobody alive. Aragorn & Co. are bummed, understandably (but at least they got a couple horsies). So they go to the camp, anyway, and find out that the hobbits weren’t killed after all, which is great. So Aragorn & Co. go into the forest, hot on the hobbits’ trail, where they see that Gandalf isn’t dead, either, which is great.

  So, after these two examples of escaping death (or the appearance of death), why are Legolas and Gimli so quick to assume Aragorn is dead after he falls off the cliff into fucking water?

  And if your answer to that is “I have no idea because that doesn’t happen in the book”, then the argument of it being less than a full story per movie because that’s how the books are is less valid, because the film makers aren’t being absolutely true to the source material, after all.

Obviously I’m not saying you, or anybody else, is at fault for liking the movie. I know Beat Street isn’t great, but I still own a VHS copy of it and will instantly buy it on DVD if it ever comes out. I just think that these movies have their share of problems.

• What’s fascinating is that a Cobra and a Joe can be standing right next to each other, shooting at each other, and miss every single shot, but when a Viper sneaks up on a group of Joes (and, of course, before shooting, announces that you should never turn your back on a Viper, instead of just fucking shooting the Joes and then saying the line), Low-Light is able to drop and, from afar, shoot the Viper’s hand, making him drop his gun.

• The Cobras were always a bit ridiculous in how they put their logos on every piece of equipment or piece of clothing, but I think they went too far in this episode. Scrap-Iron walks in on Cobra Commander, who is programming a group of B.A.T.S. to destroy both Sgt. Slaughter and Serpentor. Scrap-Iron threatens to tell Dr. Mindbender. Acting fast, Cobra Commander reaches into his uniform and pulls out a sack of money. Not just any kind of sack, either: a Cobra-branded sack of money. Of course, I’m just assuming that, because it was a sack, it had money in it. For all I know the sack with the Cobra logo is for storing actual cobras, and maybe they have sacks with dollars signs on them for money.

I missed Rules Of Attraction during its theatrical run. I’m surprised I wanted to see it at all, now that I think about it, considering how much I hated the previous Bret Easton Ellis’ film adaptation, American Psycho. I guess I’ll check out anything that was made on a Mac. Anyway, it’s coming out on DVD soon, and it should be interesting, as one of the commentary tracks will be by the “Chairman Of The Board” himself, Carrot Top. Mr. Avary explains his inspired decision at his site.

Last night I went to sleep wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and underwear. This morning I woke up wearing only the underwear. I have absolutely no idea how the shirt and shorts came off. I didn’t take them off before I went to sleep and I don’t remember waking up during the night to take them off. It’s very strange. I’ll see what happens tonight…

I’ve been working on the Exitwound redesign since May. It took six months because a lot of time was devoted to planning. And after all that time spent, I still managed to fuck up.
      I wanted the site to be more photo-centric, shifting away from the blog format to a scheduled photo (or photo set). I didn’t think I’d need it, but I made sure to build a way for me to post text entries, just in case. I realized, though, that, while possible, the design isn’t suited well for text. And for some reason (maybe that reason) I wanted to start writing more. So Exitwound proper will be photos only (with an occasional text announcement). This site, XXX, will be text (with maybe an occasional photo). Some things on the current Exitwound site will move here (namely The Weekly List).
      Hopefully the two sites won’t be too much of an inconvenience.