the road goes ever on and on
Apr. 14th, 2026 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestBeast and I just watched 'Smoke', a series on (I think) Apple TV about an arson investigator and a police detective who have a couple of arsonists to chase.
Taron Egerton is really, really good in it.
*
I happened upon a YouTube post which led me down a convoluted path to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended versions, natch) over the weekend (and yesterday). And there is so much in them that is wonderful. I can't think of a set or a setting that isn't wonderful and somehow exactly right. Most of the cast are so good—though I fear Hugo Weaving doesn't portray a loremaster very convincingly. Probably he isn't trying to portray a loremaster, but I do think he should be, and glowering all the time does not work for me.
And it was a very good interpretation of the book, and in general, I think there were some things that were changed that worked very well. The simplest and probably the easiest decision must have been to ditch Glorfindel and give Arwen his job. An improvement over the original, in that it gave Arwen something to do besides sitting about looking beautiful.
Killing Saruman amid the ruins of Orthanc was also a good decision. It's a pity I will never see Peter Jackson's version of the Scouring of the Shire, but it had to go. Fans of the books will grieve, but non-fans would have been bewildered into sleep, I think. Saruman's death and the simple ending had to go together, and they worked.
And then there were the bad changes, concentrated, I think, in The Two Towers.
The guff about Arwen setting off to leave Middle-Earth, and then changing her mind. She'd already promised Aragorn she was choosing a mortal life. This is just shilly-shallying. (Also, the quite pointless bit about Arwen's life suddenly being tied to the Ring, or the destruction of the Ring, or whatever the hell that was about. Absolutely no need to bring Extra Peril and Higher Stakes into the situation. Would have had more respect for an Arwen who had to be chained up to stop her going to fight by Aragorn's side, if we had to go off-piste.)
Faramir. Oh, Faramir. The sad thing was, they showed the Faramir-Denethor-Boromir relationships so well, and Denethor delivered that line about 'the chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality'. Faramir's disappointment, Boromir's helpless sympathy, Denethor's aaargh!!-ness, all very well done. And they could have kept things exactly as they were in the book from that point onwards! Faramir was not like Boromir, and he knew it and knew who he was and what he believed in, which is canonically why he did not take the hobbits to Minas Tirith. I don't understand why the filmmakers even considered having him choose to do the wrong thing, and then change his mind. Waste of time.
What was all that nonsense with the warg battle? Seriously? It felt like, Oh, we need an action sequence now, is there a monster we haven't used? There is plenty of drama in the story, let them have a few minutes of quiet.
And the Ents. Deciding not to go to war, and then, oh, let's guess, changing their minds. Complete waste of time—I would certainly have preferred a LOUD Entish we-just-decided noise and a march to war. It's good in the books, it's really exciting in the BBC radio version, but here, meh. And Billy Boyd must have dug really deep to bring any conviction to his ridiculous little speech.
And something in the third film—Gollum managing to split up Frodo and Sam, so that Sam actually leaves Frodo... and then, oh, guess what? Yes, changes his mind. After all the guff in the Appendices about the sacred relationship between an officer and his batman (and I'd quite like to get a batman's opinion of that, because it sounds very sus to me), to have Samwise Gamgee stop being loyal to Frodo Baggins, and Frodo stop trusting Sam... what were they thinking?
Taron Egerton is really, really good in it.
*
I happened upon a YouTube post which led me down a convoluted path to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended versions, natch) over the weekend (and yesterday). And there is so much in them that is wonderful. I can't think of a set or a setting that isn't wonderful and somehow exactly right. Most of the cast are so good—though I fear Hugo Weaving doesn't portray a loremaster very convincingly. Probably he isn't trying to portray a loremaster, but I do think he should be, and glowering all the time does not work for me.
And it was a very good interpretation of the book, and in general, I think there were some things that were changed that worked very well. The simplest and probably the easiest decision must have been to ditch Glorfindel and give Arwen his job. An improvement over the original, in that it gave Arwen something to do besides sitting about looking beautiful.
Killing Saruman amid the ruins of Orthanc was also a good decision. It's a pity I will never see Peter Jackson's version of the Scouring of the Shire, but it had to go. Fans of the books will grieve, but non-fans would have been bewildered into sleep, I think. Saruman's death and the simple ending had to go together, and they worked.
And then there were the bad changes, concentrated, I think, in The Two Towers.
The guff about Arwen setting off to leave Middle-Earth, and then changing her mind. She'd already promised Aragorn she was choosing a mortal life. This is just shilly-shallying. (Also, the quite pointless bit about Arwen's life suddenly being tied to the Ring, or the destruction of the Ring, or whatever the hell that was about. Absolutely no need to bring Extra Peril and Higher Stakes into the situation. Would have had more respect for an Arwen who had to be chained up to stop her going to fight by Aragorn's side, if we had to go off-piste.)
Faramir. Oh, Faramir. The sad thing was, they showed the Faramir-Denethor-Boromir relationships so well, and Denethor delivered that line about 'the chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality'. Faramir's disappointment, Boromir's helpless sympathy, Denethor's aaargh!!-ness, all very well done. And they could have kept things exactly as they were in the book from that point onwards! Faramir was not like Boromir, and he knew it and knew who he was and what he believed in, which is canonically why he did not take the hobbits to Minas Tirith. I don't understand why the filmmakers even considered having him choose to do the wrong thing, and then change his mind. Waste of time.
What was all that nonsense with the warg battle? Seriously? It felt like, Oh, we need an action sequence now, is there a monster we haven't used? There is plenty of drama in the story, let them have a few minutes of quiet.
And the Ents. Deciding not to go to war, and then, oh, let's guess, changing their minds. Complete waste of time—I would certainly have preferred a LOUD Entish we-just-decided noise and a march to war. It's good in the books, it's really exciting in the BBC radio version, but here, meh. And Billy Boyd must have dug really deep to bring any conviction to his ridiculous little speech.
And something in the third film—Gollum managing to split up Frodo and Sam, so that Sam actually leaves Frodo... and then, oh, guess what? Yes, changes his mind. After all the guff in the Appendices about the sacred relationship between an officer and his batman (and I'd quite like to get a batman's opinion of that, because it sounds very sus to me), to have Samwise Gamgee stop being loyal to Frodo Baggins, and Frodo stop trusting Sam... what were they thinking?