[Phantom Lord]

[tomakaze]

Thanks!

[www.corvettewave.com]

I was one of the few souls that did not like the first installment of LOTR. However, because of family pressure I have tickets to see #2 this afternoon.
I think JRR spent a little to much time in the local opium parlor. Just seeing the technology used in creating the film is a real treat though...

[SamAdams76]

Thanks for the review. I had not realized that the movie is out already. Regarding the "spoiler" alert, I fail to see how a movie based on a book that most people in the Western world have read at least once can be "spoiled." I mean, most people are already familiar with the plot.

I am hoping to get the first LOTR movie on DVD this Christmas. If not, I'll go out and buy it and then see "TWO TOWERS."

[snopercod]

Great review. You're a good writer. Thanks.

[AppyPappy]

ping

[American72]

Thank you so much for this wonderful review. I cannot wait to see this film. I am leaving work at 1:00 today so I can go see it. Am I bad or what? I, too, have been anticipating this movie for an entire year. I read the books this year (out loud to my son) and thoroughly enjoyed them. Needless to say, we have been unable to find another set of books that remotely compares to LOTR. We may have to read it again!

[Dialup Llama]

Wormtongue looks like a prototypical politician who claims to be doing good but is really loyal to the dark lord and out for himself. How many US generals, lawyers, congressmen etc... have accepted Saudi payments and in exchange have made our country more vulnerable to attack. When I see Wormtongue I think immediately of Daschel or any number of the figures paraded on the evening news.

The good king Theoden could not see Wormtongue's true agenda. As in real life many today also cannot see the true agenda and harm that the left intends. As in Venezuela, some people may rise up only when the orcs are at the gates at which point one wonders will the defenses hold?

The scene were Saurumon and Wormtongue are in teh tower in front of the massed orc army. Those guys look like Hitler and Goebbbels at the Rally at Nuremberg. That surely was the model for that scene.

[Andiceman]

Regarding your comments on the thousands of orcs, I thought you might find this story over at Wired.Com interesting: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56778,00.html

Here's the text:

Digital Actors in Rings Can Think

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- In a sparse, sunlit loft, programmer Stephen Regelous quietly works alone every day to the hum of his laptop. But what he's really doing is leading the masses.

Regelous created Massive, the special-effects program behind the colossal battles in The Lord of the Ringsfilm trilogy. Using Massive, the Oscar-winning Weta Digital team pulled off anticipated scenes for the latest installment, The Two Towers-- such as the battle at Helm's Deep -- by digitally generating smart crowds to supplement the live action.

The computer-generated characters, called agents, have minds of their own.

"Every agent has its own choices and a complete brain," Regelous said. "The most important thing about making realistic crowds is making realistic individuals."

To bring J.R.R. Tolkien's books to life, gathering 70,000 or so tall, broad-shouldered extras, dressing them in elaborate armor and choreographing them slaughtering each other was out of the question. And that was just one scene from the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring.

So in 1996, director Peter Jackson asked Regelous, who had worked on Jackson's film The Frighteners,to come up with a program that could handle the task.

In Massive, agents' brains -- which look like intricate flow charts -- define how they see and hear, how fast they run and how slowly they die. For the films, stunt actors' movements were recorded in the studio to enable the agents to wield weapons realistically, duck to avoid a sword, charge an enemy and fall off tower walls flailing.

Like real people, agents' body types, clothing and the weather influence their capabilities. Agents aren't robots, though. Each makes subtle responses to its surroundings with fuzzy logic rather than yes-no, on-off decisions. And every agent has thousands of brain nodes, such as their combat node, which has rules for their level of aggression.

When an animator places agents into a simulation, they're released to do what they will. It's not crowd control but anarchy. That's because each agent makes decisions from its point of view. Still, when properly genetically engineered, the right character will always win the fight.

"It's possible to rig fights, but it hasn't been done," Regelous said. "In the first test fight we had 1,000 silver guys and 1,000 golden guys. We set off the simulation, and in the distance you could see several guys running for the hills."

For inspiration, Regelous didn't watch war movies as you might expect. Instead he experimented with artificial intelligence by growing digital plants, and studied how people avoided each other on crowded streets.

Massive is not just for making war. It was also used to generate doubles of the film's stars and to create flocks of birds.

"I wanted to take the processes of nature and apply them to generate computer imagery," Regelous said.

As a result, when the dark wizard Saruman leads his Uruk-hai warriors to Helm's Deep to crush the human alliance in The Two Towers,the army isn't made up of the same character copied and pasted 50,000 times, marching symmetrically like a chain of paper dolls.

"Every soldier is drawing from their own repertoire of military moves and determining how they will fight the fight," explained Richard Taylor, director of Weta Workshop, on New Line Cinema's site. "Some of the scenes that we'll see in Helm's Deep will defy belief."

Regelous plans to sell Massive for $40,000 per single floating license. Even if he doesn't win over the market, some say he's made great advances. Seth Lippman, a 3-D sequence lead for the first two Ringsfilms, said Massive surpasses techniques used for other Oscar-winning films he's worked on.

"In What Dreams May Come,the crowd characters were like 2-D billboards in space -- filler. They couldn't become main parts of the action," Lippman said. "The illusion created by using the 2-D billboards would be exposed when employing the radical 3-D moves Peter Jackson is famous for. With the Massive approach, he could fly cameras right through the middle of the battle."

For his part, Regelous is satisfied that Massive's agents are covert enough to win over fans of the classic trilogy.

"I can't tell what's Massive and what's not anymore."

[egarvue]

Here's my review of The Two Towers, caught a midnight showing. Could you ping the Ring Ping list for me?

[butter pecan fan]

Hell of a review!

[Slip18]

Thanks for the review!

Who's been playing with your keywords?

[neutrino]

Thank you for a great review!

[beachn4fun]

Oh man, am I jealous! I have been waiting for a year to see the next installment. It has been driving me crazy just seeing the trailers. And, now I have to wait until Friday. I just watched Fellowship again to get myself refreshed for Two Towers. I have never read the trilogy, but only read the FOTR to see how much different it was than the movie. I must say I enjoyed the movie much more. I won't read any of the other books until after I see the movie.

Thanks for the good review.

[winodog]

I have read the books three times. The last time was fall of 2001 before the movie came out.
Now I want to read all three books again and see the first movie right before I go see the second one.
This isnt normal behavior. I hope i am not the only one that is this nutty.

[Alkhin]

The storyline of Merry, Pippin and the Ents suffer the most compression, disappointing, but totally and understandably necessary

Ain't that the truth!

Not yet ready to say this movie was the most brilliant ever. I still have a few little problems with the first film. But by no means am I a purist. I thought most of the changes were perfectly within reason. MOST.

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

Saw the midnight screening myself, and certainly suffering for it now, hehe. Overall, my favorite is still FOTR, specifically, the Extended Version. That movie has the feel of an epic adventure down pat, and I feel that is somewhat lost in the Two Towers. However, the technical scope of this film is quite brilliant, the two technically riskiest pieces, Gollum and the Ents attack on Isenguard, were top notch.

I believe this film will also get the Oscar nominations en masse but probably still won't win Best Picture or Director against stiffer competition from Gangs of New York and such, but it will still get its share.

The highlight of the film for me was seeing the Ents rip Isenguard a new @sshole and the first part of the battle of Helm's Deep. The Black Gate of Mordor was also very impressive. Things I didn't like so much, well, the ending of the battle of Helm's Deep, it would've been nice to actually see it instead of being told by Gandalf that it was over. The escape of Wormtongue from Hedderas, also, too corny and not believable.

OTOH, the Two Towers answers a question posed by my personal viewing of FOTR, namely, whereiseverybodyitis. As much as I love FOTR, it bothered me that throughout that that film I was wondering where everybody was. Outside of the Shire and Bree, Middle Earth looked pretty unpopulated, specifically of Humans and Dwarves. Even the two Elvish locations in that film, there weren't that many Elves on screen to give the feel that these were some heavy population centers. Anyway, that point was answered in the Two Towers, we actually see what's going on in the human world and why we didn't see much of them in the previous film, they're simply outmatched and on the run.

I'll definitely need a 2nd and 3rd viewing to take it all in, to get my final judgement. FOTR is still my favorite.

PS - bonus points for who can tell me where the hell the Dwarves are? I haven't read the books, but in FOTR Gimli and his cohorts came from somewhere, yet he was totally unaware that his cousin and the whole host of Dwarvendom in Moria was wiped out. Seemed unlikely to me.

[DoctorMichael]

Thanks!

[Senator Pardek]

What about Shelob?!?!

[Mudboy Slim]

"...the film reminds you that the battle against evil is also a battle against temptation and despair. Good will triumph, but only if those fighting for it keep fighting no matter the odds, even if it is certain death. We are shown how the frightened men and boys stand and fight and die at Helm's Deep to protect the women and children; we are shown the frightened faces of the women and children as they know the cost their husbands, sons and brothers are paying. Time and again, the evil ring tempts Frodo toward despair, only to have him pull back from the brink. Even stalwart Legolas almost gives in to despair. Yet courage, valor, and sacrifice (as embodied in the characters of Aragorn and Sam) defeat temptation and despair. Even though the cost is great, the battle against evil can be won. It is this aspect of the film that most affected me, and sets the film apart as truly epic classic."

Excellent amateur review, my FRiend...looks like I'm gonna haveta wait 'til this weekend to check it out!!

FReegards...MUD