Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Reaction

Love the boys all saying " I wonder if men and elves could have kids? We havent seen any half elven kids"  RIGHT as the whole screen holds on Elrond HALF ELVEN's face "  😆

Treebeard is, in fact, voiced by Gimli. John Rhys-Davies. He also played Sallah, Indy's Egyptian sidekick in the Indiana Jones movies (Raiders and Crusade).

I would love to recommend The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were friends and influenced each others' stories. In fact, The Lord of the Rings was created because of a bet between the two authors. Not to mention, the four houses in Harry Potter are based on the main characters in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are so many connections between the popular books and movie series.

THAT scene at 2:24:28 lives rent free in my head, I loved Boom shutting everyone up for that part XD

You guys really should react to Narnia for awesome war scenes

Not a fun fact but a suggestion, after all the films watch the Making Of from the DVDs!

There were so many scenes from the extended edition that I think add so much and its so sad to not see them 

FUN FACT! The majority of the Rohirrim extras are just women because they put out a call for people who owned their own horses and could ride and there were just sooooo many women in New Zealand with horses who showed up, so that's a bunch of women with fake beards riding with Eomer.

- While not shown in the movies (unless I'm forgetting something from the extended cut), when Gandalf first goes to Saruman in Fellowship, there's a part where Saruman calls himself 'of Many Colors', rather than Saruman the White, a sign of his corrupted ego. He basically abandoned his title and position.

- Tolkien was not a fan of industrialization, which comes out pretty damn strong in this movie. I feel like the Ents taking Isengard and freeing the river to flood the place was fairly cathartic for him to write. 

- Sadly missing from the theatrical cut is the fate of the Uruk-hai who flee the battle. Fangorn Forest has shown up over the night behind them (the mention of trees moving earlier), and they die real fast when they go in. One of my favorite stories about Tolkien is that, when he was a kid, he was really disappointed when he first saw Macbeth, as he thought the prophecy of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane meant the forest was actually going to move. So in *his* books the forest does move, and there are some really, really angry trees.

- In the last two novels, each book is split into two parts, the first following Aragorn and friends all the way through Helm's Deep, then the second flipping back to Frodo and Sam for the rest. It's not a format that would ever work in a movie, but it means the reader doesn't know what's happening to Frodo and Sam until they've finished the first half of each book. Tolkien takes particularly evil advantage of this in a few spots.

- Viggo Mortensen loved the horse he rode in this movie so much he actually bought it. Then he bought one of the trainers the horse she wanted because she couldn't afford it.

-  Gollum was groundbreaking in this movie, either the first or one of the first very successful CGI portrayals of a serious character. Andy Serkis really fucked up his throat doing the voice, and battered himself pretty hard throwing himself all over those rocks. If you've seen Avengers 2 or Black Panther, he plays Klaue. He's a ton of other CGI characters, including Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot movies, and Snoke in the Star Wars sequels. 

- Aragorn continues to wear Boromir's gauntlets as part of his armor in this movie. In the scene showing his funeral, he is still wearing them.

- One of the extended edition scenes involves a glimpse at Boromir and Faramir's relationship, and gives a lot of context to the 'a chance for Faramir to show his quality' line.

- Two changes fans got really angry about in this movie were elves at Helm's Deep and Faramir being tempted by the ring. I think the reasoning for both is solid, particularly Faramir. In the book, once he finds out what's going on, he says he wouldn't pick the ring up if it was lying on the side of the road, and immediately lets Frodo, Sam, and Gollum go. A cool moment for the character, but it also severely undermines the movie trying to emphasize that literally everyone is vulnerable to it.

- Whiterun in Skyrim is really, really, *really* obviously fashioned after Edoras from this movie, right down to having a horse on their banners. 

- In the novel, Aragorn is the one to recite the Horse and the Rider poem, at a much earlier point in the story. 

-  Wormtongue's speech to Eowyn is taken from something Aragorn says about her in the novels, fittingly proceeded by:  "Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Theoden's ears?"

- Tolkien fought in World War 1 and lost nearly all of his friends in the fighting. This comes out really strongly in certain parts of the books, but particularly during the scene where Sam and Frodo witness the ambush against the Haradrim. It's one of my favorite passages from these books:

"It was Sam's view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart or what lies or threats had led him on the long March from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."

Useful information: Most humans in Middle Earth live as long as they do IRL. Hobbits live a bit longer, usually reaching 100 years old. Numenoreans, like Aragorn, are basically the GigaChads of humanity, and live for 300-500 years, along with being taller, stronger, smarter, etc. Dwarves live for about 250 years, but some could get as old as 340. Also they never go bald. Elves are immortal, or at least never grow old. Orcs only live for 20-30 years.

The colors of the wizards seem to be a sort of ranking system to establish a pecking order. The five wizards, know as the Istari, were sent to middle-earth. Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown, and two unnamed blue wizards. Saruman was supposed to be their leader, Gandalf a sort of second in command with a greater purpose never known by himself until his Jesus-like resurrection, Radagast preferred the company of the animals of the wood (you may one day meet him) and is thought to be less powerful to Gandalf, and the two nameless Blue Wizards are almost a complete mystery. The only thing that can be said for sure of them is that they traveled to the east on a quest that is never revealed in Tolkien's writings, nor do they appear in any of the major stories. 

This world is so fascinating to learn about, Tolkien was and is truly in a class all his own. 

Please, watch Game of Thrones. From my experience it is the closest fantasy world that can be compared to Tolkien's, and to be fair, the nudity in the show can generally be cut out of youtube releases, do to the lack of relevance to the over all story.