The Two Towers: The Purist Edit

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The Two Towers: The Purist Edit is a fan edit of the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. When the original movie was released in cinemas, a number of die-hard fans of The Lord of the Rings disliked the changes to J. R. R. Tolkien's story, motivating someone to create a "purist edit."

Some of the biggest differences include: there are no Elves at Helm's Deep, Faramir is indisputably a "good guy" again, the Ents don't refuse to help, Arwen doesn't appear to leave Middle-earth, and Gandalf does not exorcise Saruman from Théoden. As a result this version is about 40 minutes shorter. Some of the "purist" fans believe this version to be superior to the original release. The changes are cut out seamlessly and the sound track is carefully re-synchronized, so the only way to notice the changes is to compare the Purist Edit with the original. In some places the Purist Edit completely reverses Peter Jackson's changes and reconstructs the original storyline.

Comparisons have been made between the Purist Edit and Star Wars: The Phantom Edit. While The Phantom Edit has been seen by fans as a way of modifying Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to better reflect the style and themes of the Original Trilogy, The Two Towers: The Purist Edit has appealed primarily to hardcore, die-hard fans who believed the film could have been more true to the saga in its original form.

Film length: 2 hours 15 minutes (theatrical release is 2 hours 59 minutes, the extended edition DVD is 3 hours 42 minutes).

Major changes (out of about 30):

The Ents do not refuse to attack Isengard
Elves do not come to Helm's Deep
Gimli no longer engages in comic relief
Faramir does not decide to send the One Ring to Gondor as a "mighty gift" for his father
Frodo does not attempt to give the Ring to the Nazgûl

An interesting quandary that arises is that the Extended Edition of The Two Towers actually addressed some of these problems while not changing the film's version of the story: specifically, Faramir still wants to take the Ring to his father for a good part of the film, before making up his mind not to, but many expository and flashback scenes are added to the film fleshing out Faramir's character and giving him a far more sympathetic slant than was in the original Theatrical Edition. As the Purist Edit was made in reaction to the Theatrical Edition, before the Extended Edition came out, this leaves matters confused: many Lord of the Rings fans now actually consider the Extended Editions to be the "definitive" version of the film adaptations (indeed the combined theatrical cuts would make 9 hours of film, while the extended cuts back to back would be 11 and a half hours long).

Most of these changes are incorporated into The Lord of the Rings - The Purist Edition, the fan edit of the entire trilogy into an eight hour epic without most of Peter Jackson's changes.