Procrastination is so EASY these days…

Boy, sure have been a lot of Geeky Fanboy posts lately… must be the season.
Sat down and watched the middle two hours of the SE edition of Fellowship last night.
– The stuff they add in the birthday party is great.
– I need to watch the fight with the cave troll about fifty times.
– Get to see Arwen’s purple dress from the Very Secret Diaries. Laughed and laughed.
– Sam kicks ass.
– I like the long version of entering Lothlorien better.
– Celeborn is a big fucking waste of space. It’s not the movie maker’s fault: he just is.
– Sam kicks ass.
Jackie and I have both seen it about five times now so unless something new was on we’d (occassionally) chat about this or that, since she’s reading the books for the first time. In explaining about how such-and-such scene from the books was changed or altered or tweaked, combining two or three lesser characters into one or whatever, I’ve realized that I agree with every single alteration the crew of this amazing film have made. Tom Bombadil doesn’t need to be there, ditto Glorfindel. In book form, sure: it lends the weight of time to the thing, the sense of history and things that are (within their realms of influence) more powerful than even the Big Bads of the world, but it doesn’t necessarily help the actual story.
So, no mourning for me.
Except I would really have like to have seen the Barrow-wights, but that would have meant including Tom Bombadil to rescue them, so I understand that they had to go.
I absolutely loved seeing all the stuff that they filmed and got to add back in. Great, great stuff.
Best new scene: Frodo ‘leading’ the party out of Rivendell.
Only thing in the new bits that looked like it really shouldn’t have been there: One of the urak-hai falls down before Legolas actually shoots him, I think. Need to watch that scene about fifty more times too.

2 Replies to “Procrastination is so EASY these days…”

  1. My favorite “added” scene was the extended Gifts of Galadriel. though they didn’t have the bit about the gift of the tree seed to sam. Probably it will be a secret flashback scene in LoTR:RotK.
    And yes…I can’t help but laugh now every time I see Arwen’s Purple dress. I have cross-movie visions of “So Mr. Anderson…How do you like my purple dress you pervy elf fancier”. It just can’t be helped.

  2. Well, haven’t cracked open the DVD … yet. Hey, just managed to get Firefly from Friday watched last night. And something about late night writing projects getting in the way, too.
    But I’m more and more anxious to watch it soon.
    I agree with your comments about all the “book” stuff that got tweaked or cut for the movie. Bombadil, Old Man Willow, and, yeah, the Barrow Wight are all cool characters, but eminently snippable.
    Now, I seem to recall some dialog from the book when they pass by the big statues along the Anduin about this being the northernmost bounderies (historically) of Gondor. Would have been nice to explicate that a little, along with the Seat of Seeing. But those are nits.

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