Thread by @pptsapper

Making the interesting life choice of deciding to watch the Two Towers extended edition

I mean, it's only like, four hours

Have stew, have booze, will see what happens

Declarations of not passing:

French at Verdun, 1916 Gandalf

Things not allowed to pass:

The Germans. A balrog

All we need now is for someone to put a Prussian helmet on the Balrog for this to be complete perfection

Uruk Hai actions on the halt are abysmal

No one pulling security, no checks on sensitive items, no silence

At least one person was doing SLLS, so I guess there's that

Ah, the hobbits are going to Isenagard

Giving rise to this banger

Saruman inciting class warfare smdh

Grima Wormtongue would totally have his own Fox News segment, called "that's a lie! and other shit I make up as I go along in the hopes of finding one woman desperate enough to sleep with me"

The Dead Marshes aka Flanders

I'm not one to always put Tolkien into the limits of his WWI experiences but some of his landscapes definitely are evocative of it

Bogs filled with the dead are a little too on the nose

King of the Ringwraiths was the first how to train your dragon change my mind

Is Gimli just calmly eating an entire plate of cheese as Theoden debates whether or not to go to war?

Now that's the type of energy I want in 2022

Aragorn: calms a wild horse

Eowyn:

Peter Jackson has this annoying way of making Tolkien's characters do the most bizarre things

But it's the worst when he straight up changes an entire character

Like Faramir's

And for that, he has my unending resentment

I carry long literature grudges

That, and making Gimli a comic character. And taking implied scenes from the book and then beating you over the head with them so all subtlety is lost

And this weird, bizarre-ass scene where Aragorn is "dead" but then is kissed by a horse...like, wtf, Pete, ya weirdo

And here the plot takes a left turn and I am gonna need a lot more booze to handle this shit

Oh jfc I never knew it got to be this bad. The extended edition does not in fact add anything, it adds more time for Peter Jackson to make shit up

Now I see why he decides to take it all out on faramir this, with this made up shit about trying to win daddy's affection

This bit where Faramir is like "ring to Gondor" is where I almost walked out of the movie

It's the most fucked up thing to do to such an important character

Faramir is the ALMOST Aragorn. He's the one who is most like him, and but for bloodlines WOULD have been. And he knows it

Which is why Faramir's character of seeing larger than just the world of Gondor is so goddam important. It shows that it's NOT ABOUT BLOOD. It's about those who do what they know is right, even if it goes against their immediate self interest

Utter betrayal by Jackson, here

AND THEODEN DOESN'T TELL GIMLI TO SHUT UP WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE DEFENSES, HE ASKS FOR THE DWARF TO HELP HIM MAKE THE WALLS STRONGER, BECAUSE HE'S A SMART LEADER, NOT AN ARROGANT ASSHOLE LIKE YOU, PETER JACKSON

fuckin hell I forgot how mad these movies made me

It's like every ten minutes someone's character changes and does something not in their character. Or something not even making sense.

Too close for gin, switching to bourbon

Suddenly elves at Helm's Deep

Because why the fuck not, I guess

Throw in some F-35s while your at it. Put an M240B on the walls. Hell, have an ABCT hit the orcs from the flanks

I mean, I guess that's Eomer, really

Orcs going with the tried and true "First Battle of the Marne" tactical approach

Banking that the other side will run out of arrows before they run out of bodies

It's A way

See, this is why you need to establish a base of fire BEFORE you begin your breach. Saruman hasn't figured out SOSRA quite yet

Oh, here comes sapper orc to the BREAAAAACH

See, this is why you need a defense in depth

(As they had at the Hornberg, with three lines, but hey, details aren't important)

Oooh it's treebeard deciding not to go to war, totally normal, totally within his character, totally adds to the whole story

The theme of which I've lost at this point

At this point I'm just watching to see what happens first: Elijah wood blinking or one of the hundreds of horses we've seen finally dropping a deuce, as horses like to do whenever

"faramir sends a mighty gift"

No, asshole, Faramir actually displayed conscience of his own accord, as did Treebeard, not weighed by emotion, which is what Jackson has his characters default to

I think only Eomer and Gandalf make it outta this with characters intact

And Sam, because he just wants to go back to his garden

Which I totally get

Oh, it's over. Well. Good. My liver couldn't take much more of that.

Ok, look. To the people who enjoy the movies, I'm happy for you. Enjoy them! Truly, I don't mean to try to take that away from you. We all can like different stuff, and that's ok.

I grew up reading Tolkien. No, really, I literally learned to read very young because I wanted to read the Hobbit like my sisters were doing and not have it read to me. So, I've got really strongly formed memories and identities in these characters and what they stand for

So that's why I've got a lot of feels when watching these movies. The allure of seeing these places depicted on screen is marvelous. But characters...they're tricky. They're...themselves. Immoveable.

Which is why I can't forgive PJ for what he did to so many vital characters

I forgave PJ for these movies when I saw "They Shall Not Grow Old" but I revoke that forgiveness because good gawd, that was a brutal four hours and I know RotK is gonna be worse, and while TSNGO was cool, it was, uh, well, from a VERY narrow historical aperture, let's just say

Anyways, that was fun. Guess I'll see how many people are angry with me

I leave you with this piece of art: