Back from my second viewing of TTT. Yay.
Upsides: the cinema was almost empty this time, no morons sitting on the left of me whispering (loudly) "who's that? why did that happen? what happened? how can they do that?" like last time.
We got to sit on the row of seats in front of the corridor, so we had even more room to stretch our legs.
I got a poster with Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli on it (to go with the Aragorn poster I got last year). ^^v
Downsides: I was supposed to go see it in English, but when we got to the cinema I found a little sign that said "due to circumstances beyond our control, "Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers" in English will only be shown tomorrow". So I had to settle for seeing it again in Italian. Grrrmble.
One of my brother's friends was also there (with his sister). He squealed, fairly loudly, throughout Helm's Deep. ><
A few thoughts...
On Legolas: damn, he kicked ass. Especially when he jumped on that horse, and when he went down the stairs on that shield at Helm's Deep.
On Faramir: I dunno which I like better, book Faramir or movie Faramir. But movie Faramir, albeit different from book Faramir, was not ill-fitting (even though he made me want to throttle him - but then, so did book Faramir). It was a bit odd seeing his character changed so much from the book, but it fit with the movie, and I honestly can't understand all the whining of "they ruined Faramir!" that I've heard.
On Gollum: best. CG. character. EVER. He seriously did not look CG, and this second time I was actually LOOKING to see if there were any points in which he looked blatantly fake, but nope. His facial expressions were great, and that dialogue with himself steals the "best split personality scene" award that originally went to the Norman Osborne/Goblin scene in Spiderman. I felt genuinely sorry for the poor thing.
On Grima Wormtongue: perfect. Genuinely viscid and fucking scary.
On Eowyn: great. Not the prettiest girl around, and thank fuck because I honestly can't stand "pretty girls" (die, Arwen, die), and she kicks ass.
On Ents: yay. I don't remember how they were described in the books, but I like how they were shown here. I loved seeing the Ent council and each Ent looked different based on which kind of tree they were, and suchlike. Also loved how they walked, how they rooted themselves in the ground when they flooded Isengard, etc.
On Legolas and Gimli: seeing their developing friendship was nice. I LOVED the scene where Eomer threatened Gimli and Legolas immediately defended him. Not to mention their "let's see who kills more orcs" thing at Helm's Deep (pity we didn't get to see how it ended), and their (friendly) teasing just before the battle.
On Gimli: HE WAS NOT COMIC RELIEF, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. QUIT YOUR WHINING, PEOPLE. He's just somebody who's out of his depth, knows it, and chooses to lighten the mood with it. Dwarves are short, stocky, and made for digging and axe-fighting, not for running and horseback riding/fighting.
He falls off his horse? Big deal. How do you know he actually didn't do it on purpose as he says? He strikes me as the sort of character who would do that. He was telling a funny story about dwarven women a few seconds previously, to make Eowyn laugh. How do you know he didn't fall off the horse on purpose, again to make Eowyn laugh? And, even if he didn't fall off on purpose, how do you know he didn't choose to exaggerate it ("It's okay, it's okay, I did it on purpose!") to keep making Eowyn laugh rather than be grumpy and take his fall badly? There's a whole column of people leaving their city, can you blame Gimli for seeing he's out of his depth and capitalizing on it to lighten the mood a bit? As for the second fall (on the battlefield), he's a dwarf, he's not made for horseback fighting.
As for when he's standing on the battlements and he's too short to see over the wall, and Legolas teases him... well, that strikes me as teasing between friends, to lighten the mood before a battle that's looking hopeless. Same with the previous scene with the too-large chainmail.
The dwarf-tossing scene? Well, he couldn't get past that gap on his own, so he asks Aragorn for help. The "don't tell the elf" afterthought, well, there's two of them and they're about to take on a horde of Uruk-hai to protect the gate on their own. Things are looking pretty hopeless, even if they do manage to protect the gate. I saw the comment as Gimli trying to show hope in any situation... "we will survive, so don't tell the elf about this".
I've also heard people whine about the "Legolas! Two already!" "Two? I already killed seventeen" exchange. IT'S IN THE BOOK, PEOPLE. It's not made up, ffs. It's PART OF THE CHARACTER.
Seriously, Gimli kicked ass when it was needed of him, and used his being out of place in a world of men and elves to the advantage of everybody to lighten the mood when he wasn't needed. What's the problem in that?
On little details: this time I managed to catch both cameos, Peter Jackson's and Alan Lee. I also tried to follow a few minor characters during Helm's Deep (such as the boy who rides with his sister to Edoras, and the young man Aragorn talks to just before the battle, his name escapes me at the moment), and I think they both survived the battle. Or at least, I didn't see them die. The young man Aragorn talks to was on the same tower as the old man who shoots the first arrow of the battle (and kills the first Orc), but after a bit I just lost sight of him. Other random little details I noticed... the rats on the sewer/water discharge/whatever at Helm's Deep, Grima Wormtongue's tear, the burning ent extinguishing himself in the flood water.
On moving moments: I cried (again) when Gandalf, Eomer and the Rohirrim arrived to save the day at Helm's Deep. The Smeagol/Gollum scene also got me, as did the scene where Elrond predicts Arwen's eternal widowhood.
More when I'm a bit more coherent, probably.
[EDIT] Oh yeah. Haldir. In FotR he was just this ugly haughty elf, but damn, he kicked ass in TTT. I was sorry to see him die.
[EDIT #2] This happened when I first went to see TTT, but I forgot to mention it then, so I'm mentioning it here. I wandered into the cinema store before the film started (had to get there half an hour before the start to be able to get seats), to see if they had some TTT stuff. They did, and I got a nifty keychain (leather and pewter, with the Hand of Saruman on one side and the horses of Rohan on the other), and while I was waiting in line to pay, I got treated to an amusing display. A whiny brat of a kid saw the One Ring replicas and promptly went to his father and threw a fit: "I WANT IT! I WANT IT! I WANT THE ONE RING!" Disturbingly amusing. XD