Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Precious Edition, The:

[MCP]

In terms of visual editing and natural presentation The Precious Edition text is perfectly annotated and matches the font of The Two Towers up above it to perfection though I did notice a black bar appear during one of Saruman’s earlier scenes and from 1:11:03 to 1:11:07 there was a black bar growing on the lefthand side of the screen otherwise visual editing between the natural and rearranged flow of the overarching narrative was seamless though in terms of natural audio editing and presentation. I noticed that in some of Gollum’s earlier scenes his voice seems to be playing in the ear of the opposite direction that he’s in for instance in one instance it’s in the right ear when he’s on the left side of the screen and during Frodo and Sam’s conversation at the river Smeagol’s noises seem to be coming from the left ear even though the camera panned rightwards when it first showed him, two other instances of questionable audio choices which I know are apart of the original source but perhaps could be resolved are the volume spiking when Faramir’s group attacks and an abrupt audio cut at 1:43:55. I know that on the Extended Edition DVD the abrupt audio cut is a result of ending one disc and starting the next one so that seems to have carried over to the Extended Edition Blurey though returning to the subject of Faramir the reduction of his questionable adaptational personality change helps to make both FILM-A-MEIR and the subplot that surrounds him much more bearable and efficient in terms of pacing and character likability and similarly the majority of the Ent Subplot improves character likability and pacing when it comes to Treebeard though I do think these two scenes involving him could have been removed ‘’We have only just finished saying good morning’’ along with ‘’We have just agreed that you are not Orcs’’ As for other scenes I think could have been removed they would mainly be the little things such as Gimli’s burp, the bowman’s accidental fire, the Wilhelm Scream during the Battle of Helm’s Deep and this line of dialogue from Gandalf ‘’Theodan has a strong will but I fear for him’’ Always sounded a bit odd to me since Theodan succumbed to Saruman’s spell and needed help from Gandalf to become free of said spell otherwise the only major scene I think could have been cut is the one of Legolas pessimism towards the people of Rohan’s likelihood of survival. Otherwise this edit is a huge improvement and a nice balance between the theatrical and extended cuts of Peter Jackson’s adaption of The Two Towers.

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