December 25, 2003
Return of the King, finally . . . and with a nasty little twist . . .
Alright, first things first . . . Wait . . . *prioritizes briefly* . . . Important things first. So, there are a lot of us going to the theater for the first showing we can make . . . which happens to be 4:00 *curses at responsibilities and other such crap*, and we decide to arrive at 3:30 to buy tickets. Lord of the Rings has never had a big opening day around here . . . when I went to FotR for the first time, I was at the first showing ever here and there were about 15 people in the theater. There are some friends meeting us there, and a bunch of the orphanage kids, having enjoyed the previous installments with us for the past few years. So we get there about ten minutes later than I wanted to because my parents are sloooooow and there's a pretty decent-sized line, which surprises me. But no big deal, we have plenty time to get to the front of it. I spot our friends near the front of the line, and I settle back to wait until I can buy my ticket. And then suddenly my friends are there beside me, telling me they sold out of tickets two people in front of them. Suck. Gotta wait for the 6:00.
But that didn't matter . . . I've waited a year . . . and an extra week . . . I should have expected to have to wait an extra two hours to get in. We all went back to my house and played games and generally had fun until it was time to go again. We had been told that they would let people into the theater starting at 5:30, so we showed up about then. They weren't letting anybody in, there was a large line formed . . . blah blah blah. Finally, at about 15 till, we discover that this line is to see Brother Bear, and we can go in now. It seems like we're the first allowed in, too. Except that the theater was well over half full already. Grrr . . . Our group of 25+ people couldn't find more than five empty seats in a row, so we splintered in all directions.
There wasn't long to wait. They showed the Troy preview and the Timeline preview (because that still isn't out here). And then the movie started. Yay. Finally. I see "El Seņor de los Anillos" come up, but they always have the titles in Spanish. Then we see the first shots, and I'm liking it, and it's going to be good. The first line of the movie is, "Smeagol!" And there's a lot of that name mixed in the few seconds after. And I notice something odd . . . Deagol is saying "eh-Smeagol!" instead of "Smeagol!"
And I say to myself, I say, "Self . . . D'oh!" Because Spanish speakers are incapable of saying a word that starts with the letter s followed by a consonant without putting an "e" in front of the word. So the only reason for Deagol to be saying "eh-Smeagol!" is if the movie is in Spanish. Of course, this flashes through my mind in a nanosecond and it was confirmed almost immediately. For the next five minutes I think I genuinely regretted being in this country right now for the first time. But then I settled in for the movie.
From one standpoint, it's not a big deal. I've seen movies in Spanish before and later had a hard time remembering whether they were in Spanish or English. I can understand everything they're saying perfectly. The main concern is poor dubbing. I hate dubbed movies because they never sound quite right. And often the voice acting is extremely poor, even painfully so. In this case, the voice acting was tolerable, but it definitely lacked the feeling that I was expecting and hoping for from the original actors. Also, (and I've done this a hundred times myself when translating anything), most things simply will not translate straight over, and a lot of times it comes out sounding completely different and maybe even meaning something different. I could tell the movie was doing this too, and it irritated me. So, basically, I can't submit a review on any of the dialogue in the movie, and precious little of the acting, because by my standards, both sucked when done in Spanish. Spanish can be a very very poetic language, but not when you're trying to listen to another language's poetry in it . . . especially a language as weird as ours.
So, now not only do I not have closure until I see the EE in November, I will have even less closure until I've seen the bloody movie in English!!! I expect this to happen by Sunday, because there are places around here that are showing it English. I am simply disappointed in the extreme that our theater right down the street (literally a five minute walk and about a $1.75 ticket) is not one of them. I'll probably see it two or three times in English, and up to four or five in Spanish before I get back.
Yeah, for convenience sake I am going to see it in Spanish again. Because this movie was a good movie. I mean . . . well, you've all seen it already, curse you, so you know what I mean. A little change of language could not ruin this movie. Not by half.
My minor irritants stemmed mainly from Peter Jackson walking the fine line of sticking to the book and pulling in his own crap just a little too closely. One part was where Sam hesitates just a little bit too long before returning the ring to Frodo. Another was the change to the Shelob sequence that had Frodo escaping the lair, Sam sent away, and Gollum getting the crap beat out of him before the real sequence came several minutes later. He was really pushing it there . . . I know he likes to make the audience think he's going one way, and then go another, but when he is making me think he's really going to screw up the book, that's not cool. Sometimes it's not cool even when I know he isn't. My least favorite part of FotR is where it appears that Sam is going to drown and then doesn't. If Sam actually drowned, that would be the lamest thing ever in movie history, and since he isn't going to it's lame to draw out the shot so far that we think he will. And yeah, Gandalf's flashlight and Sauron's darting eye searchlight were underwhelming on an epic level (but fortunately not overused so I didn't care too much).
All of that notwithstanding, this movie delivered for me. I found myself tearing up at several random moments. There was so much that was right for me that it's impossible to focus on the wrong. The eagles . . . I didn't know whether they were in there because I forgot to ask anyone and literally no one has mentioned them anywhere. So as that part drew near I was wondering . . . they were great. I agree with Randy about Shelob. I'm not even really afraid of spiders, but that part freaked me out. Nor am I bothered overmuch by heights, but the stairs of Cirith Ungol . . . *shiver* They remind me of the last time we were at Tikal and I climbed one of the Mayan temples. The stairs are seriously almost that steep . . . but of course nowhere near that narrow and not slick as snot on a doorknob either. My youngest brother got "stuck" halfway up and wouldn't climb any higher or come back down without help.
Some of the parts that were especially right: Pelennor fields, all of it (especially the initial charge of the Rohirrim and Eowyn's face-off with the Witchking) . . . The second part of Shelob . . . Frodo and Sam climbing Mount Doom . . . the whole winddown (short shrift given to Gondor notwithstanding). There are loads and loads of little things that were perfect as well, but I don't want to get into all of that.
I need to go see it again. But there are more things to do between now and then . . . the other happenings of late will have to wait for another post. I'm starving.