At the Movies!

[Arjahn]

Rewatched the Lord of the Rings trilogy since I've only seen parts of Fellowship, watched Two Towers about 15 times since it was the only DVD I had for the DVD player when my family drove across the country about ten years ago, and I've seen Return of the King once or twice.

Fellowship doesn't have much action at all, the entire movie is basically one giant chase scene. There's Weathertop and the final skirmish with the Uruk-Hai, but aside from that it's really held back. It's a bunch of character development and world building with some really tense escape scenes. I mean, I've seen the sequels, I know Frodo isn't going to die, but hot damn when they're running for the ferry at night is it nerve wracking.

ALSO, Merry and Pippin cause like 95% of the problems in Fellowship. It's nice to see them do stuff in the following films, but hot damn are they massive fuck ups in the first go around.

Then we get to Two Towers which is pretty much like watching a really good D&D game while a low key one plays out in the background. I don't love the Frodo Posse as much in TT, it sort of lulls when they're with the Gondor militia, but it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination and I really like the Smeagol character development. Feels kinda crummy at the end when Gollum gets pissy again, feels like Frodo could've just said "Hey they were gonna kill you if I didn't squeal, really sorry it won't happen again." I mean it's perfectly in crazy-character for Gollum not to accept and to get plotty, but it's kinda weird that Frodo never even really tried.

Then we get to Return of the King and it's a non stop thrill ride. I love this movie sooo much, think it's better than Towers but not quite as good as Fellowship. It's really apples and oranges though between the two, hard to judge. Some of the battles drag-on a bit, same with a few of the Aaragorn scenes, but god the Frodo crew is fantastic, the siege of Minas Tirith is really well done, and I'm a sucker for Denathor. Tiny nitpick is when Gandalf yells "Get the women and children out of here!" after the Orcs breached the gate. The fuck, is there somewhere they could've gone? Why would they not go there sooner?


So to sum it all up, good movies are good.

Tune in next week when I give you the scoop on this hidden gem called Star Wars.