The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[Sam Cree]

"For the most part, the audience was one of the quietest I have been in."

Man, I hope that keeps up for a couple days...bet it will, though.

[2Jedismom]

LOL

[2Jedismom]

It was appropriately quiet in our show. No one made a sound for the most part, except to laugh or gasp and several times we all applauded and a couple of times someone would shout "Yeah!"

It was great, because EVERYONE was really in to it and enjoying every minute.

[JenB]

Hi all, on my way between work and The Show. I woke up at six this morning to get ready and all I could think was, "Hmm, Hair and the other Pacific hobbits are just getting out now."

Not looking at the thread, don't want to spoil myself. I'm excited!

[Overtaxed]

It appears that the general non-hobbit population has heard that the LOTR movies are good....way good. Hair, it's a good thing I picked up my ticket on Sunday. When I got to the door of the theater there was a notice that both the 4:30 and 8:00 shows were sold out. Not only did I get there early enough to get a good seat, I was also early enough to get a parking space. :)

Okay.....here's the first impression

I liked The Two Towers a lot better on the first viewing than I did FOTR.....I guess I had a year to get over that change-the-canon-thing. The things I disliked the most:

1. I thought the Galadriel narration was not needed for the most part. It just seemed redundant, telling us what we already knew. The highlight of that speech was that challenge to Elrond.

2. Ditto Sam's "Why We Fight" speech. Don't we know that already if we've gone that far with the films?

3. The time for a bathroom break is the kissy-face dream scene with Arwen and Aragorn.

I think Gollum/Smeagol and Gimli stole the show. Faramir was a bit of a stick although I expect he'll get better. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought that he's been spending too much time hanging around the elves. :)

I thought I'd wait for the TTT discussions to get going before I went into more detail. Oh, and another thing: Now I've enjoyed our discussions and companionship here in the HH but did you people really have to get inside my head this afternoon?! :)

[2Jedismom]

Check back in and check in the chat too...I'm going over there after while. You're gonna love it.

[2Jedismom]

Now I've enjoyed our discussions and companionship here in the HH but did you people really have to get inside my head this afternoon?! :)

What are you talking about???

Hey, did you get some good popcorn?

Did you see above? All the shows in the cinemas near me were sold out!!!

[JenB]

Well, it will be 1 when I get back. I may not check in. But I'll be here tomorrow night. No I won't, I have to go to church to face the session so they'll let us into the church. I'll be here sometime I promise.

[Overtaxed]

Shouldn't you be putting your mold and slime away for the day now?

It was a bad afternoon for the network. I left work at 3:30 and came close to cussing the idiots on the highway who were rubbernecking two cars on the side of the road. For crying out loud! Fortunately, most of the lights were green.

[2Jedismom]

I got behind an old fart on the way to the cinema (before I found out it was sold out) and he must have been going 25 miles an hour in a 50 mph zone. This "Greatest Generation" is gonna drive me crazy.

[HairOfTheDog]

Enjoy the show! Don't get inside OT's head though... She's on to us!

[2Jedismom]

Post the yahoo egroup commercial hair! Or send me the code and I'll do it now and then.

[HairOfTheDog]

And the elves... didn't Legolas get in the best jabs?

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh yeah! - Thanks for nagging me! I forgot after you reminded me earlier! - Check your email tonight if I do though... I won't be around to approve 'em.

[2Jedismom]

You got it, Sis. Have a good time this evening. What time is your show?

[Overtaxed]

Did you get to hear "Gollum's Song"?

They stopped the credits during the intro and never got to the vocals

I'm getting there.....

[HairOfTheDog]

This is a message for all the new and old lurkers to the thread!

Hey everyone! We have created a place
for us to hang out for "casual hobbit hole talk",
called the FR_Hobbit Hole at Yahoo!

It is a private place, for only Tolkien fans from Free Republic. We aren't going anywhere, this is just an additional place we go sometimes. We use the chat room a lot for our idle chit-chat and to share live events like movie chat-views and the Oscars, and there are some cool files there that you can download, like e-versions of all the Tolkien books. If you do not already belong, contact any one of these good folk via freepmail:

2Jedismom
HairOfTheDog
Overtaxed
JenB
Ecurbh
Penny1 (wherever SHE is ;~D)

And we will send you the map of how to get there!

[Wneighbor]

I got the same feeling about the Arwen scenes - maybe we could do will one less. Even though she is one of my favorite characters in the written legend. But, The one with Daddy is the one that I really liked and wouldn't want to delete. And the one at Aragorn's tomb couldn't go because it was really useful in getting that story line across on-screen. But, by the same token, how could we have done without the kissing scene with Aragorn waking to find the horse kiss instead of Arwen? LOL

So, I can't decide what I could leave out. C'est la vie. I couldn't be an editor anyway. The film would definitely have been longer with more time for us to watch in the theater if I'd been editing.

[Wneighbor]

Thank you very much. I am glad to be welcomed by all this noble fellowship.

[Lil'freeper]

Whew, we just got back and I am so torn. I'm positively euphoric from the film but quite irked at the mob of poorly behaved, unattended teenagers who sat behind us . *grumble*mumble*

Anyhoo, what a show! WHAT A SHOW!!! I don't quite know where to start! Smeagol- I adore him. He was exquisite. Faramir...*drool*. Ok, seriously. PJ's screenplay was excellent, for the most part. Faramir's journey of understanding was appropriate for the screen. I do think the Ents would have been better served by not having the "not my problem" attitude, but then that journey of understanding was needed given their short time on the screen.

Helm's Deep took my breath away. I, like other HHers, had an incomplete grasp of the battle and PJ made it real. Hubby approved heartily of the "proper" military tactics. Gandalf's charge left me sobbing I was so caught up in it (good thing the theater was dark).

I loved the glimpse of Osgiliath. Some have said it was an unecessary device but I think it served to illustrate the desperation of Gondor. And the map sequence was excellent- mostly due to the close-ups of that hunky man of Gondor.

I criticized the warg attack when it was released in the 16-minute spoiler clips as "dry" saying it needed music. Well, I loved the music and the sequence was fabulous. And it was tremendous fun to hear the music I've been listening to be set to pictures. Shore needs another Oscar. The violin theme for Rohan swells my heart. Oh I love it!

How amazing was the Black Gate? Oooooh, nasty dark ominous gate- it was perfect. I'm so thrilled with what PJ did with the cloaks- it was better than I had imagined. WTG Galadriel!

Some light critique: What happened to Gollum's fish scene? It would have been so darling! After his capture at the forbidden pool Faramir declares that the price of the fish is death. Gollum, holding a fish, drops it and says "Don't want fish!"

The women and children at Helm's deep did heighten the drama, but would it have been so bad to have them at Dunharrow as per the book? Setting HH banter aside, Gimli was humorous but in a detrimental way. He didn't heighten the esteem of dwarves (their women are mistaken for men?? how sad is that? Gimli can't get the horse to go and ends up under a pile of wargs. Gimli can't see over the wall. Legolas: "Want me to get you a box to stand on?") which is unfortunate. I'm sure there's a way to give Gimli light moments without having him look so inept.

There were some moments with the cgi where Gollum seemed a little out of scale or the Ents seemed a little blue-screen but these are minor quibbles.

Oh what a show! I can't wait to see it again.