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Saturday, July 16, 2011

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)

5:47 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

The film: It's probably safe to say that THE TWO TOWERS is a much harder book to adapt than its predecessor. Not only does it have to contend with being the middle child of the trilogy and thus lacking a true beginning or end, it's a structural nightmare, focusing on three different groups of characters and told non-linearly. For their adaptation, Peter Jackson and co have made the wise decision to rearrange events into chronological order, but it's with this instalment that some of Jackson's more questionable narrative changes come to the fore and the structure becomes a little too unwieldy for its own good.

First of all, while the film bears the title THE TWO TOWERS, I'd estimate that it only covers around 60% of the book of the same name. A considerable amount of material is held back for the third instalment, on top of the material from Chapter 1 of TTT reappropriated to the end of Jackson's FOTR. The restructuring is a little odd, because it means the film doesn't actually cover anything like as much ground as either the novel or the other two films in the trilogy, despite Jackson and his team inventing a number of what might politely be described as deviations... or, if I'm feeling less generous, distractions. More so than the other two films, this instalment contains considerable amounts of material not originating from Tolkien. Some of these inventions are admittedly good ideas - for instance, despite my initial reservations, I've come round to the idea that the less flattering portrayal of Faramir works well in the grand scheme of things, while by the same token Théoden's despair and refusal to confront Saruman head-on make him a somewhat more complex character than he was in the novel.

Other changes, however, just feel like padding. The warg attack and Aragorn's false death serve no narrative purpose whatsoever beyond giving him an opportunity to catch sight of the army making its way towards Helm's Deep (the point of which I fail to see, given that everyone already knew Saruman was preparing to crush Rohan). The arrival of Haldir and his elves at Helm's Deep is nonsensical, not least because it begs the question of how they could possibly have reached Rohan within hours, when the same journey took Aragorn and company several days... to say nothing of the utterly daft alteration to the Merry/Pippin strand, which sees the Ents refusing to become involved in the war until Pippin conveniently arranges for Treebeard to take them past Isengard and witness the extent of Saruman's destruction of the forest. I'm also less than thrilled with the sheer amount of time devoted to the battle at Helm's Deep. While for some reason I remembered it being longer than it actually is, it still takes up far too much screen time that could have been better served advancing the narrative. In the book, Tolkien devotes all of ten pages to the fighting; in the film, Jackson makes it the focal point of the entire film and, seeming to forget he's telling a multi-stranded epic, for a while settles into action movie mode. To be fair, Ralph Bakshi too devoted far too much time to Helm's Deep... although at least he never had Legolas skateboarding on an upturned shield. Going to be a long time before I forgive you for THAT, Pete. ;)

For all these complaints, though, I do feel the need to commend the casting of the characters appearing for the first time in this film, particularly Bernard Hill as Théoden, Miranda Otto as Éowyn and Brad Dourif as Wormtongue. Otto in particular is a wonderful presence - the real thing in contrast to the rather unconvincing "warrior Arwen" of FOTR - partly thanks to the Éowyn of the book already being something of an unintentional equal rights champion (at least until her wholly unconvincing eleventh-hour "I will be a shieldmaiden no longer" speech) and partly because Otto is, frankly, a much better actress than Liv Tyler. Her finest hour comes in the next film, but already here she's a vastly more interesting screen presence than either Arwen or Cate Blanchett's trippy Galadriel. Karl Urban's Éomer, by contrast, has so little screen time in the films as to effectively become a non-entity. Jackson's decision to combine his role with that of Erkenbrand is, however, a wise one... though once again I feel compelled to point out that he's following in the footsteps of Bakshi, who did precisely the same thing with his version.

The other major new presence is of course Gollum, and I have mixed feelings about him. While the CGI effects used to bring him to life - in conjunction with the motion capture and voice, both provided by Andy Serkis - are unquestionable extremely impressive, I would dispute the claim made by some that he looks truly real. The character design is far enough removed from reality to avoid the "uncanny valley" effect, but I'm always aware that I'm watching visual effects whenever he's on screen, and they have certainly dated in the nine years since the film's release. I'm also not bowled over by Serkis' vocal performance: to me it seems too high-pitched and whiny, in stark contrast to the late Peter Woodthorpe's lower, more menacing rasp in both the Bakshi film and the BBC radio play. It doesn't help that Serkis' Gollum sounds almost identical to Gurgi in Disney's THE BLACK CAULDRON - hardly a flattering comparison.

As far as the differences between the theatrical and extended cuts are concerned, I can take or leave many of the additions, and in some cases feel that they may be overegging the pudding a bit (the inclusion of extra material involving Merry and Pippin redresses their overly brief screen time in the theatrical cut, but it doesn't help that most of their additional scenes involve the Ents, whose lack of haste is captured a little too effectively). Many are good, though, particularly Théodred's funeral, while the flashback showing Boromir in the aftermath of having retaken Osgiliath is worth the price of admission alone. This brief scene explains so much about both Boromir and Faramir's motivation and behaviour that to this day I think Jackson made a big mistake in cutting it from the theatrical version (couldn't he have cut down Helm's Deep a bit instead if running time was an issue). In some way, it also gives justification to the decision to have Faramir drag Frodo and Sam all the way to Osgiliath.

As an adaptation of Tolkien's novel, I find THE TWO TOWERS a bit of a mixed bag. While FOTR was a largely straightforward adaptation, TTT ends up taking more liberties with the source material. On the whole I like the film, but there's a lot wrong with it and, on balance, I feel that it's the weakest of the trilogy. 7/10

Image quality: In contrast to the complex situation regarding the extended BD of FOTR, this review of TTT will be a bit more straightforward. Having already been a 100% digital intermediate title to begin with (barring, oddly enough, the closing credits, which like those of FOTR exhibit gate weave), TTT has not received a completely new master, and as a result looks more or less the same as it has done for the last nine years. BluBrew's comparison shows that there are some slight differences in colour balance between this and the theatrical BD, but they are largely minor (see the shot of Elrond for a rare example of a more pronounced change). There is certainly no green tint to be found here, providing further evidence that FOTR's tint was unintentional.

Where major differences are to be found, they come in the form of the removal of much of the destructive DNR that plagued the theatrical BD. Again, BluBrew's comparison is most illuminating, showing that on the theatrical BD the grain reduction wreaked havoc on hair and skin texture - just look at the close-ups of Gandalf (not an exact frame match, but still sufficient to show the level of difference) and Théoden! This sort of DNR appears to have been standard practice at New Line for their BD releases (see also the likes of PAN'S LABYRINTH, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and, perhaps worst of all, DARK CITY) and the fact that the extended BD shows such an improvement is a cause for celebration. Hopefully, with Warner now handling New Line's BD releases themselves, these follies can be consigned to the past.

That said, before anyone breaks out the champagne, it needs to be stressed that, while much of the DNR is now gone, some is still present, making this the weakest-looking of the three films on BD from a filmic standpoint. Generally speaking, detail is not as impressive as in the other two films, and smearing artefacts crop up on a number of occasions, some more severe than others (this frame of Théoden is a particularly odious example, while this frame shows some pretty severe artefacting on the tree to the right of the frame), but my suspicion is that a grain reduction pass was applied to the entire film. Particularly during wide shots where the pans over New Zealand's impressive landscapes, there is an overall lack of texture, with camera movement resulting in noticeable smearing in quite a few shots. The question that remains, I suppose, is at what stage in the chain this process was applied. It's impossible to say with any certainty, but I suspect the fact that FOTR and ROTK are unaffected points to it having been done at the level of the master itself rather than something that was specifically done for the BD. It is, on the whole, a good presentation, but far from a reference one. Recommended, but with issues.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

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