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Lord Of The Rings II


Flexmoney

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Gollum was fantastic CGI and voice acting. Though the schizophrenia was a bit over the top for me. I would have liked to have seen him attempted by an on-camera actor in makeup. Gary Oldman maybe, John Leguizamo.

Legalos has one of those big stick quivers and never runs out of arrows. He's definately shooting Open.

Best line from Gimlee was, "We Dwarves are very dangerous over short distances."

Anybody get a kind of hippy anti-logging vibe from the flick? They made a big thing about the bad guys chopping down trees. Yet the good guys are living in timber houses, burning firewood...

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If you haven't seen it yet...quit reading, 'cause I gonna talk about it some.

Having just read the books a lot of this stuff is still fresh in my head...

In the book, Legalos has spent all of his arrows and has to pick up arrows that have been shot at them.

The tree stuff was a bit different in the book as well...but, I thought it worked in the movie OK.  The movie has some nature over industry stuff (the age of man in middle-earth).

I thought the line by the Lady of Rohan was cool...something like, "...you don't have to live by the sword to die by the sword".

Did they give a final count in the movie on the number of orcs killed in the competition between Gimli and Legalos?

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No I think they'll save the counter for the DVD special edition.

I ascribed Legalos' unlimited arrows to the same thing as unlimited cartridges in movie gunfights; they reload off-screen.

If this one had a theme, it was "We've got to band together to defeat evil," which I guess was from the 1930s mindset and maybe they're trying it out post-2001. It just seems kind of trite. I really liked the struggle over man's weaknesses in Fellowship.

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It's a good bridge between the first and last novels...made a decent movie as well though they could have puffed up the Ent's a bit more.  Thought it was one of the better parts in the book as it provided some focus on Merry and Pippin.

A PO'd Ent is something, though a tossed dwarf has a certain "ring" to it.  hehehe...

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Tolkien was trying to make a statement about man and nature in the books and the movie is just reflecting that.  Remember the environmental carnage done to england in the industrial revolutions and the "murdered nature" of both world wars, especially the first.  Both of which Tolkien witnessed.

I don't think it's neccessarily "anti-logging" but the bad guys represent the idea that man is above nature and need not live in harmony with it.  Industrialism at all costs is another theme.  This is what leads to conflict with the Ents.  Frodo's vision of a future where the hobbits are enslaved and sent to work in polluting factories is only a reflection of the working conditions of english labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  

The balrog is awakened by greedy dwarves who don't know when to quit mining.  Just wander around Arizona and you'll observe that Frodo's vision of  overlogging, overmining, overdevelopment, and overgrazing is very real.

Of course, Gandalf respects nature which is why eagles come to save his butt in both the Fellowship and the Hobbit.   The elves and hobbits are more in tune with the natural world.  Sauron, Saruman, and the Orcs represent the perils of modernity.   Man stands in the balance between both sides.  Which way will he turn is a central theme of the books.   The rising age of man is when middle earth begins to turn from a natural orientation (the elves leaving, the hobbits growing and modernizing) to the modern world.  Hopefully one more balanced than that of Sauron.

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Anybody get a kind of hippy anti-logging vibe from the flick? They made a big thing about the bad guys chopping down trees. Yet the good guys are living in timber houses, burning firewood...


that was part of the book.. treebeard didn't like that sort of thing...

lynn jones

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  • 3 weeks later...

No, I love literature but a degree in it will get you a job at McDonalds. At least a law degree gets me a job.  I did figure it out for myself but I've read the books a couple of times over the past decade.  I think Tolkien's vision was quite impressive.  He literally imagined a whole world with its own history.  The movies aren't perfect but I think they do the books justice.  

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kellyn wrote: No, I love literature but a degree in it will get you a job at McDonalds. At least a law degree gets me a job.

Hey!  I resemble that remark.  I am a sys admin instead of a burger flipper though.    

-ld

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