Wizards of the Coast Reviews The Two Towers

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(Originally posted by Mollusken)

Wizards of the Coast have posted part one of their review of the second Lord of the Rings movie. In this part, the reviewer goes through director Peter Jackson's departures from the book as well as all the characters in the movie. Here's the part about Faramir:

But if Eomer is reduced to nonentity, then Jackson's Faramir is a disaster. Tolkien's Faramir is that rarest of men, a person who knows instinctively what he should do and does it as far as he can. He knows his country cannot win this war but is determined to make the other side pay for each foot of ground they take; he's essentially an officer defending a doomed position -- a man who will hold out to the last because of the carnage that will follow once he has fallen. Just as Gandalf the White is Saruman as he should have been, Faramir is Boromir as he was meant to be -- it was Faramir, not Boromir, who was meant to become a member of the Fellowship. All this falls by the wayside in Jackson's reading of the character; his Faramir succumbs to temptation at once, proving himself but a poor copy of his more heroic brother. The resulting mess involves rewriting Tolkien's plot to have Sam and Frodo present at the Battle of Osgiliath (the only unimpressive, disjointed battle in the movie so far, represented by a single bombardment), wherein Faramir sets them free just as arbitrarily as he had imprisoned them. To make matters worse, a more forceful actor might have brought some Hamletlike indecision and inner torment to the role, as Sean Bean did with Boromir; instead, the actor playing Faramir turns in a bland performance of a smug and self-satisfied man -- a character who utterly fails to stand out when surrounded by the excellent performances from most of the rest of the cast.

You'll find everything here. Part two will be released next week.