Whoooaaa, hold on a sec there, Sparky

[serai]

.
Here's something interesting.

Deadline issued to produce documents for LOTR trial

The whole thing's proceeding as trials do, but here is the part that caught my eye:


Trust attorneys maintain "The Two Towers" incorporates portions and scenes taken from other Tolkien books. The film company lawyers maintain they need to know how that claim is supported so they can prepare their defense.


Wait...WHAT?? Scenes from other Tolkien books? What scenes from other Tolkien books? Sure, PJ & Co. moved things around and added here and there in order to shape the story to the ends of their film, but...WHAT??

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damn familiar with the legendarium, and I didn't recognize anything from other books in there. In fact, as I understand it, they bent over backwards not to include stuff from any of the other books, since they already knew going in what pricks the Tokien Trust are about this stuff.

Also, I heard just about EVERY DAMN ARGUMENT from the most purist, obsessed fans about every single frame of film in 2T, and this is one criticism I never heard. And if there's a group of people who would definitely know if something had been imported from another book, it's that bunch of sphincterheads.


So, let's hear it. Looking back on The Two Towers, do any of you recognize anything from any other Tolkien book in it? Something that's not from either the main text or the appendices to LOTR?

Comments

[elderberrywine.livejournal.com]

Heh - well, sure it is - from The Return of the King, which technically, the way it was originally published, is another book.

But other than that, they're off their meds.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

They must be. I totally agree with the New Line lawyers - you can't make a claim like that with no evidence. They better have documentation to back that up, 'cause I'm sure the judge will just raise an eyebrow and say, "Got any proof of that?"

At least, I hope so.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

It is indeed. And the things they made up - the Elves at Helm's Deep, Aragorn's falling off the cliff, etc. - don't appear in any way in Tolkien's other books. Hell, that's WHY the purists were so pissed off! If it had been a matter of "we took this from the other book and put it in here because it helps us out", the purists wouldn't have been nearly so up in arms. (As a TORn alumni, you were there and saw all these discussions.)

Personally, I think they're just whoring after more money. But you know, trying to pull one over on the court is really the wrong way to go about it. What, the $150M they're asking for isn't enough, that they have to make shit up to get more?

(I actually hope they press this, and get proven wrong. It'll put the rest of their case in a bad light if they keep pushing it.)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Kinda makes you wonder if the people running the Tolkien Trust have ever actually read all his books, doesn't it?

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

As far as I can recall, all of the non-TTT stuff in TTT was either taken from one of the other parts of the Trilogy/The Appendices or invented from whole cloth. I'm baffled as to what else they think's in there.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Beats me! Like I said to princessofg, I think they've scented blood and just after more money than they're entitled to.

But you know the old story about the dog with the bone. When he looked in the water and saw the other dog with his own bone, he tried to take it away and lost his own meal in the process. This is going to backfire on them, since they can't prove it.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

Actually, thinking about it, one could argue that some of the things that went on in TTT prove quite categorically that the writers had never read any of the other books and were thus incapable of stealing from them!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Hm. That may be your view, but I'm not a PJ hater. I understand very well why they made the changes they made. I might have made different changes, but something definitely had to be done with that part of the story.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

I'm not a PJ hater either but, as you say yourself elsewhere in the thread, things like elves at Helms Deep run completely contrary to what Tolkien has written elsewhere. If I was defending this case I'd certainly consider whether that gave me leeway to use ignorance as an avenue of defence :D

[estelanui.livejournal.com]

"The Two Towers" incorporates portions and scenes taken from other Tolkien books.

I don't know what it means. I remember all TTT scenes were from LOTR books.
But, there is the Elves arriving to Helm's Deep. May this episode be part of one of the HoME books?

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Nope. In fact, that was one of the things that pissed the purists off, since the Elves never took part in any human battles after the Last Alliance. They were busy fighting up north, in Lorien and Rivendell, where the fight was down to them against the orc forces.

As far as I can tell, they're pissing into the wind here. There is no way they can prove this claim, unless they make some vague claim about being influenced in some way by the other books. But that's easily countered by saying that the filmmakers were making up stuff that had to fit into the same world, so it's inevitable that some of it might sound like Tolkien's other writing.

[el-wing.livejournal.com]

Nope, I've never noticed anything from any of his other works, and I've read them all multiple times (and discussed them to the extreme).

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Me too! I've even read those HoME books, that discuss to the tiniest detail everything Tolkien wrote about this story. I can't remember seeing anything about Aragorn going off a cliff, or the Elves showing up at Helm's Deep, or anything else PJ & Co. came up with.

[fantasy-fan.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think of, and this is a real stretch, is Eowyn's dream of the wave overtaking Numenor. That would be Silmarillion, except for the fact that it was stolen from Faramir's comment in ROTK, and therefore shouldn't count against them.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's not from another book at all. It's right there in LOTR; the speech is almost exactly the same as what Faramir said. So they can hardly claim that it comes from another book!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Besides which, isn't that scene in the film of ROTK, and not in 2T at all? (Been a while since I saw the films, so I'm a little hazy on which one it appeared in.)

[fantasy-fan.livejournal.com]

You know, now I'm not sure either. TTT was not my favorite of the three movies, and I haven't watched it in a while. I think I just thought Eowyn in a dress = TTT, but actually it's just before the palantir scene with Pippin, so it might be ROTK after all.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thinking about it, I'm pretty sure it's ROTK. Mostly because I remember the lighting in that scene was utterly ridiculous - supposedly an indoor scene in the middle of the night, and it's lit by what appears to be an enormous skylight! The same thing happened in the Palantir scene. The lighting schemes in LOTR went from very believable, dramatic lighting in FOTR (scenes lit only by firelight, for example) to a world where pretty much EVERYTHING was in way too much light. I don't know what the hell PJ and Lesnie were thinking, but it aggravated me purely from a technical and aesthetic viewpoint.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

OH for crying out loud. :(

[serai1.livejournal.com]

ARGH. *headdesk*