Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Wargs of Fandom! - Page 2
© Michael Martinez
As I mentioned to the lady sitting next to me when the film had ended, I think I understand what they are doing with these movies better, now. There is indeed a lot of compression, but there is also a lot of exaggeration. In fact, one of my growing concerns was the performance of John Rhys-Davies in the first movie.
JRD is a fantastic character actor. I love watching him work. But there are some scenes in "The Fellowship of the Ring" (and "The Two Towers") which make me cringe. Why? Because he serves as the comic relief. They almost turn Gimli into a buffoon, and a lot of people have reacted badly toward that (at least in private discussions with me -- I have no idea of what the general audience thinks).
And yet, watching Gimli and Legolas bond in the second movie just a few hours ago, I realized that JRD was probably the only actor whom Peter Jackson could ask to bite the bullet, take the shot, and pull off his performance with credibility. Gimli isn't just comic relief. Rather, he is the counterweight to the extremely tense presentation of certain scenes.
Were it not for Gimli's grumbling running commentary during the highly anticipated Helm's Deep sequence, the audience would have passed out from self-inflicted asphyxiation. They needed reasons to burst out laughing. They needed opportunities to breathe. The site of 10,000 Uruk-hai as they assemble on the battlefield, beat their spears into the ground (in what seemed a subtle homage to the wonderful battle preparation scenes in "Zulu"), is stunning. You could have heard a pin drop in the theater (which would have been quite a feat, considering just how noisy 10,000 Uruk-hai can be).
Except for the dwarf-tossing joke (which leads one to wonder if they are going to beat that horse into China by using it in the third movie), Gimli's lines are very useful. They break up the intense pacing of the action. And the dwarf-tossing joke actually moves the story forward, although it seems to me that they could have achieved their end without it.
One of the curious scenes in the film came when Eomer met Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. All I should say is that the storyline was substantially altered from this point onward. I wondered why, at first, but gradually realized that Eomer had been given a more important role than he plays in the book.
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