Well. It's Wednesday Morning 2:30 AM (Close to being a Simon & Garfunkle song, but no cigar). I've been up since 6:30 AM Tuesday. I need to be up again in three and a half hours, but I want to get this down, so sleep will have to wait.
Arrived at the theater for Trilogy Tuesday at 9:00 AM. Waited in line until roughly noon, managed pretty good seats for my people, and then sat back and enjoyed the ride...with a couple mini-meals in between. I'm now home and have a lovely collectable film-strip frame to prove I was there. :)
Background, first: I never fully read the LOTR books before the movies. I had tried to read them when I was quite young, got through most of Fellowship, the first half of Two Towers, then skimmed the rest. Going into the first movie two years ago, I had a few very specific memories and several more vague ones. Since then, I've opted to wait before rereading the books until after the related movie, so with regards to ROTK, I'm in no position to judge Peter Jackson's faithfulness to the books. I may have liked some scene that's a complete bastardization of a well-loved character for all I know. :)
Anyway, things that are stuck in my mind right now:
Fellowship: Wow, it's great to see Boromir again. I haven't rewatched FOTR in a long time, and I'd forgotten just how many moments there were where Sean Bean just kicks my ass with how much I adore him. "Gondor has no king. Gondor needs no king." "There is an evil there that does not sleep." "They have a cave troll." I especially love how my understanding of the character was informed by having seen the big Extended TTT Boromir/Faramir/Denethor scene. I heart FOTR muchly...I could probably watch it 100 times in a row and still enjoy most of the scenes, so this film went pretty quickly for me. Before I knew it, we were bidding adieu to Boromir and splitting up the Fellowship all over again. :(
TTT: After a free lunch (followed by a paid-for lunch because the free one was good for about three bites) we settled back in for TTT. I was a bit worried about this one. The first time I watched TTT extended, I fell asleep for a while around the Arwen flashback stuff. Because of that, and because I'd seen it more recently, and because the day was wearing on, I was afraid TTT wouldn't keep my interest. Didn't happen at all. I DID start to feel the length by the time they got to Helm's Deep, but I never felt eager for the end of the movie. (Well, a few times when it occurred to me that when that one was over it would be time for ROTK...but that wasn't TTT's fault. :) ) Despite Peter Jackson's commentary track about pacing differently for theater vs. DVD, I think the extended version worked quite well in the theater.
ROTK: Well...that was emotionally draining. I'll just do a Pluses/Minuses list.
Pluses:
- Frodo & Sam - per my note above about not having done more than skim the books, most of their emotional journey came as a complete surprise. I knew about the basic plot points (Shelob, Gollum, Mt. Doom, the Grey Havens, etc.) but not the ups-and-downs of their relationship between those points. Great stuff and the actors are wonderful, of course. Although I'm not sure there's enough of it in the movie to net Sean Astin an Oscar nom as some have wished.
- Pippin & Gandalf - Going into the movies 2 years ago, there was only one character I remembered clearly - Pippin. So, to make me happy, the series just had to "do" Pippin right. I was pleased with the character in FOTR, lukewarm in TTT (Pip & Merry don't really do much in this one, despite a fair amount of screentime in the extended). ROTK was important in my overall goal of good Pippin stuff, and it succeeded richly. I'm a happy camper.
- Eowyn & Theoden - This relationship pops to mind as the next one that really is well realized. The people I was with spent a lot of time during the TTT viewing making fun of Eowyn's being moony-eyed over Aragorn in every scene. She does a fair bit of that early on here, but Eowyn's story gets much stronger once Aragorn isn't in the picture anymore and her focus shifts to the upcoming battle and Theoden's expectations of her.
- Closing the Circle - I loved that this movie made liberal use of references to the previous films. Really obvious things like small flashbacks to Lothlorien or Boromir's death, to smaller things like Theoden echoing his "I know you" from TTT to Eowyn. I especially liked that there were several shots in the final battle that were visually similar to the prologue of FOTR...a shot of Legolas with his hair blowing like that blond elf some people thought WAS Legolas and Aragorn looking very much like Isildur in a few spots. Especially in the marathon setting, these sorts of tie-backs to past events really completed the sense of closure.
Minuses:
Merry - Way too little screentime! I liked what little we see of his relationship with Eowyn, but I want more in the extended ROTK!
Faramir/Denethor - Felt like they were relying a lot on the relationship as revealed in the big Extended TTT scene to explain the father/son relationship here. Even knowing that stuff, their situation felt quite rushed. When Gandalf tells Faramir that his father will realize how much he loves him before the end, and when Denethor finally does have his eleventh-hour change of heart, I didn't buy any of it because Denethor was such an unrelenting bastard the rest of the time. Again, hoping to see more in the extended release. (Rumors were already circulating during the day that the extended ROTK would have at least an hour of added stuff.)
Aragorn - I was surprised how little active role he played in regaining his own kingship. I adore him. He rocks. But it seemed like Viggo had less useful screen-time here than in TTT.
Pacing - Not a negative exactly, but I'm sure I'll find some pacing issues on later viewings. Any movie with this many threads will always have some periods where you think they haven't gotten back to Plot C yet, or should spend less time on Plot A, etc.
I'll stop there. That's all the bases I wanted to hit. Not particularly well-organized, but oh well. Definitely a day to remember.
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