Two Towers Preview
Parsley, 12/06/02
A Camp No Friends exclusive
As December approaches, dork and lameoid alike are drooling eagerly all over their preferred form of Mylar sleeves with anticipation for the upcoming Two Towers premiere. The movie, second in the Lord of the Rings series, is expected to draw large crowds since, in the words of one industry observer, “just about everyone who goes will invite his mother along.” All across America, it seems losers just can’t wait to see more of the incongruous wisecracks, gratuitous landscape porn, and barely repressed homoerotic subtext that made the first installment such a success.
The Internet is abuzz with speculation over the contents of the new film: What will the Ents look like? Will Gandalf be back? Will Frodo and Sam finally kiss? Most importantly, what kind of special effects can we look forward to?
WETA, the special effects group working on all three LOTR pictures, developed entirely new effects software called Massive to handle the movies’ immense battle scenes. The program, detailed in a recent Popular Science article, defines thousands of computer generated soldiers, each with their own personalities and strategies, then sets them loose on one another in a battle with a predetermined ending but few set events. The characters make their own decisions, carefully steering around trees and other warriors to reach their objectives and then attacking intelligently (or unintelligently if they’ve been programmed that way). Moviegoers got a taste of Massive in the prologue of the first movie, but Two Towers should give the program a chance to shine.
You don’t have to wait any longer to see this wondrous new technology. Camp No Friends has obtained exclusive stills from The Two Towers showing the extent of Massive’s FX power.
NOTE: The stills, obtained from the filmmakers at great cost, are way too big and not even that high quality, but we had to agree not to alter them in any way. I think their Photoshop might be broken or something. Apologies to our friends on dialup.
Legolas (Orlando Bloom) is surrounded by orcs
The armies of Mordor prepare to attack the Two Towers
I think this is supposed to be Frodo or something
Author’s note: it is easy and fun to make fun of dorks, and pretending Massive is just Warcraft has probably been done to death (at any rate, it was obvious to me the instant I heard about it). But it is hard to overstate how much I am looking forward to this movie and how stupid I get over this stuff. Watching Fellowship of the Ring in the theater, hearing that music come in and the ring appear and the prologue - without a doubt the coolest movie experience of my LIFE, somehow making up for how shitty Episode One was after I spent all day standing in line for it next to some loser dressed up as Darth Maul. Even if the movie was ten minutes long and it was just Gandalf in the hobbit hole putting the ring in the fire and making skeevy faces I would feel like I should apologize for making fun of it. Hence this note. So see you at the movies; I will be the one convincing his friends to drive an hour away so we can see it in the big theater.
That said, I wish they didn’t make the orcs talk. I know they did in the book, but if they cut out Tom Bombadil they could certainly cut out everything any orc and any ringwraith says that isn’t “Blaargh” or “Hsss,” respectively. Please, forces of evil, have a little dignity.