Lord of the Rings, The: Book III - The Treason of Isengard

Review by mullholland665 — July 15, 2010 @ 6:06 am

Pretty damn good. This is the most radically changed edit in the series so far yet is mostly a success.

Really thoughtful editing with the characters here. Aragorn is stronger and continues to look like he really might be king, we have no Arwin romantic nonsense, and the humor is toned down to a level that’s believable. I loved that the story extended to Saruman’s final big scene, Pippin’s encounter with the Sauron in glass Orb, and then the low key ending with Pippin being whisked away by Gandalf as an early prelude to the battle Minas Tirith.

Only one major problem for me: the Ents marching to war so early in the edit. Reasembling all the Ent and Treebeard scenes in the forest
into once sequence during the early part of this fanedit does work for the most part and is faithful to the book. But the timing of the narrative is then thrown right out of whack by the final shots in this sequence, in which the Ents start marching on Isengard which looks to be only about 10 miles away. Surely this departure of the Ents and the two Hobbits from the forest could have been inserted later in the edit, closer to the time of the Ents actual arrival at Isengard? I know these are book edits, but in my opinion this disconnect in the screenplay is too major a problem to justify.

This gets 8/10 from me. There is much that is worth watching and I’m looking forward to Part 4!

Review by Ripplin — April 21, 2010 @ 8:01 pm

Again, great stuff all around. Felt weird not seeing Frodo at all, but that’s just the way it went. Haha. I’m going to give it 8/10. Looking forward to watching Book IV. Thanks for the fun, Kerr! :)

Review by Matt_Jensen — April 12, 2010 @ 4:20 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by xGrind — February 14, 2010 @ 10:29 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by buddythegoon — February 8, 2010 @ 8:04 am

OK so I didn’t find the changes that “massive” in relation to the first version, however, that does not distract from the awesomeness of this work.

Plot:
Aragorn is a much stronger character, even though he’s now clearly not as badass as Gandalf. Extracting the uncertainty in relation to Liv-Arwen and his strange soap-operatic argument with Legolas prior to the battle makes him more who he is supposed to be.

Theoden is also much stronger. It looks more as if Gandalf has truly renewed Theoden’s spirit, even though the alleviation of Sarumen’s influence does look a little awkward (not docking points for that though).

The battle never needed the elves. It is shorter, possibly significantly shorter, but the book wasn’t really a battle book – only took up a few pages.

Legolas and Gimli get to keep some of their banter without taking over the movie. I believe that the literary Legolas could likely do a lot of the cool things PJ makes him do, but the story really isn’t about Legolas. Kerr leaves Legolas a great archer and fighter, but he never steals the show. Similarly with Gimli, he’s certainly more jovial than other characters, but his humor is not supposed to take over the story. I realize some would argue that it helps to have some humorous quips to please the audience in modern movies, otherwise Michael Bay would still be at MTV, but Kerr expertly trims the most absurd moments and leaves us, again, with a much stronger character.

Quality:
Video – can’t complain

Audio:
Have heard of complaints that audio is not 5.1. I have a 5.1 system, but Kerr’s 2.0 sounds fine, not great, but fine. I’m sure some audiophiles will dock points for it, but I’m too impressed with the work overall – maybe .2 points or something, making it an overall 9.8.