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LOTR news from The Digital Bits

By the way... we're also checking today on those Lord of the Rings 4-disc specs which we posted a few days ago. The specs came directly from New Line, but now we're hearing from our sources that the isolated score and isolated sound effects tracks have been dropped from the movie discs. We'll post more as soon as we have it.

Translation of TTT article from French edition of Premiere
October 7, 2002
Elbakin.com
Translated by Sadie
See the scans from Elbakin here

After eight weeks of supplementary filming last spring, diverse readjustments, a brief post-September 11th attempt to modify a title perhaps too symbolic, "The Two Towers" is getting ready for a world-wide release on the 18th of December.

Is it a sequel? No, sir, it's a continuation. Faithful to the mind of Tolkien, Jackson chose to pick up where "The Fellowship of the Ring" left off. "So that one day, we can watch the trilogy in its entirety", the director eagerly specifies.

After the dissapearance of Gandalf and the death of Boromir, the compagnons disperse into three groups on Middle-Earth, kept in check by hordes of Orcs and Uruk-hais, frightening cross between Orcs and Elves. Frodo and Sam are on their way to Mordor and Mount Doom, where they count on getting rid of the evil ring. Merry and Pippin, kidnapped by the Orcs, take shelter in a strange forest...searching for them, Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas are going to help King Theoden of Rohan in his struggle against the obscure forces of Saruman and Sauron.

Since December 2000, websites dedicated to the films and books have been circulating all kinds of rumours, even before Peter Jackson finished his first montage this winter. Among the most anticipated events: the titanic battle of Helm's Deep, the return of Gandalf, and two of the most mythic characters, Treebeard, the Ent, and Gollum, the former Hobbit, already introduced in the first film- consumed by the power of the ring.

Review of details...

The loutish and inevitable scenes to introduce the first film will not be seen this time around. Peter Jackson promises, "This time we go right into the action. "The Two Towers" is the one that develops best certain aspects outlined by Tolkien. We adventure, for example, in the meanderings of Gollum's psychology, faced with Frodo and Sam." The comfortable benefits (Sadie's note: can't make much of this word) the first film allowed Peter Jackson the ultimate luxury of sizing his opus to his own mesure, adding, after scenes filmed in May-June of 2002, more than 25 minutes of film. Knowing that this gentleman, under the stroke of inspiration, is capable of laying down a dialogue over the course of breakfast that will be in the can two hours later, anything is possible. Without betraying the confidence of fans, a few minor inacuracies will be in the film, like the participation of Galadriel and Elrond in the battle of Helm's Deep, or the end of Saruman...(Sadie's note:can't make much sense of the rest of the sentence).

What to expect of the new characters
First of all, back in white: Gandalf the Grey, just escaped from the Balrog, let his white hair grow out, and is wiser. This time, he doesn't intend to botch his mission to rid Middle-Earth of the ring. "Vigourous, manicured, relieved of his past, he has become a veritable samorai, a better-trained combattant", according to Sir Ian McKellan.

Now the little news:
Theoden, the king of Rohan (Bernard Hill, the captain of the "Titanic"), bewitched be his councelor Grima, or Wormtounge, in the service of Saroman, is going to find a renewed youth in the battle against the forces of evil. To incarnate the deceitful Wormtounge, Brad Dourif (Billy Bibbit from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") sacrificed his eyebrows, but not his ability to elicit repulsion...

We'll get also a double dose of testosterone with the arrival of lots of men on horses: Eomer, third marshal of the Mark (Karl Urban, from Xena) and the dedicated nephew of Theoden, Faramir, brother of the late Boromir (David Wenham, seen in "Moulin Rouge"). Those who regretted the absence of a feminine touch in the first film should be satisfied: Phillippa Boyens promises a tragic development in the love story of Arwen and Aragorn. Then there's Eowyn (Astralian Miranda Otto, seen in "Apperances"), the strange pale lady of Rohan, niece of Theoden, who will (do something, but I'm not sure what) in a world of brutes.

And at last, Peter Jackson offers in this second film two of the most anticipated characters in the epic: Treebeard and Gollum are the make of the most flattering rumours. Honor to ancestors with the Ent, tree-man who speaks with a millenial wisdom: the venerable flora animatronic 5 meters tall, every bit as well garded in the special effects studios of WETA Digital as the jewels of the crown of England, found his voice in the rocky Welsh intonations of John-Rhys Davies, who we can still see under a kilo of prosthetiques as Gimli the Dwarf.

Special Effects
According to Fran Walsh who supervised the creation of creepy Gollum, the sinister and pathetic creature corrupted by the ring is a revolution in itself. In fact it's the first numeric character entirely generated from the performance of an actor. Models, motion capture, numeric images, and lots of Andy Serkis (seen in "24 Hour Party People" from Michael Winterbottom) who, between a (?) voice and feline movements, brilliantly approached his character like a drug addict. We can also subtly detect his schizophrenia in the flash-backs where he (camps ?) the Hobbit Smeagol before he becomes devoured by his passion for the ring...

WETA, already having received Oscar nods, hasn't been idle, but all that is nothing compared with the battle scenes in "The Two Towers": the siege on Helm's Deep is already considered to be one of the most extraordinary scenes in film history. Boosted by MASSIVE software, let's imagine each of the 10,000 screaming Orcs and Uruk-hais, set loose in a model the size of a rugby field and equiped with battle prowess and movements that befit them... "A stroke of pen and a couple of drops of ink for Tolkien, five years of work for us", commented Richard Taylor, supervisor of WETA... For his part, Peter Jackson filmed the forces allied with Men and Elves faced with the monstrosities of Saroman, at night and in the rain for four months in a quarry near Wellington (New Zealand). (Sadie's note: Don't understand this sentence)

Set Decoration
The director didn't let the decoration department rest: between the abundance of new locations that took shape for the film (the tower of Barad-Dur, the marshes...), he gave special attention to Edoras, capital of Rohan. "Why create on the screen what we can create in real life? Tolkien didn't live in a virtual, numeric world, me either."

After months of helicopter patrols to find it, on an almost desert island in the New Zealand archipelago, the breathtaking view described by Tolkien, the team had to erect from scratch, in four months, a midieval city inspired by Scandinavian civilisations, and then rebuild it two years later for reshoots in Stone Street studios in Wellington. The only technical higher bid: the construction of Minas Tirith during thirty-two weeks. Nothing was left to chance so that "The Two Towers" be finished in delay. And still, this is only the beginning: Peter Jackson declared that this second opus would be better than the first...but not as good as the third.

Hey, nice to see a Dune-fan around. I stopped off at the bookstore on the way home and, uh, read "The Butlerian Jihad". It was pretty good, have you read it yet? Rooting for a Harkonnen took some getting used to, but a lot of it was quite cool, IMO. And of course starting off with a line about call Salus Secundus a verdant gem of a world is a great way to catch my attention.