October 24, 2002

6:00 AM

Protest Lord Of The Rings "The Two Towers"!!! "We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11." Satire?....please.
posted by Dr_Octavius (42 comments total)

Note that their online petition has been suspended "due to a lack of maintenance by the petition author." Satire gone ignored, hopefully. Scanning the signatures shows that most of the "signatures" were comments to the effect that they were idiots. Petitiononline even bothered to put a note on the page establishing that the name is some 50 years older than 2001.
posted by whatzit at 6:05 AM on October 24, 2002

Well, not exactly a doublepost, but just as silly and pointless.
posted by UnReality at 6:05 AM on October 24, 2002

The 2nd book of "The Lord of the Rings" **IS** called "The Two Towers," and it always has been.

Are they serious?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:05 AM on October 24, 2002

No, Zen, they're just not very funny.
posted by UnReality at 6:05 AM on October 24, 2002

What connection does the name "The Two Towers" have with the World Trade Center and 9/11 anyway?
posted by mischief at 6:18 AM on October 24, 2002

UnReality beat me to it... I was about to ask if anyone thought they already heard this joke six months ago... and it wasn't really that funny then.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:22 AM on October 24, 2002

Just the connection of coincidence, mischief.

Unless they're arguing that Sauron worked at the World Trade Center...
posted by UnReality at 6:25 AM on October 24, 2002

What connection does the name "The Two Towers" have with the World Trade Center and 9/11 anyway?

We are not allowed to ever again build two towers of the same height, heaven forbid they be referred to as twin towers

ever again...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:06 AM on October 24, 2002

Original MeFi post on this from April....
posted by mkelley at 7:23 AM on October 24, 2002

Note that their online petition has been suspended "due to a lack of maintenance by the petition author."

Oh well, if you need a good cause to get behind there is always the petition to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide

We are not allowed to ever again build two towers of the same height

Unfortunately it's already been done.

Anybody interested in starting a petition against Cesar Pelli and the Malaysian government? (And yes, I know they were built prior to 9/11, but it it has the makings of another good meme)
posted by Gif at 7:25 AM on October 24, 2002

This topic was hashed over a few months ago.
posted by gordian knot at 7:29 AM on October 24, 2002

Unfortunately it's already been done.

Gerrrrrrr... They better not call them "the twin towers"!

/sarcasm
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:30 AM on October 24, 2002

This wedsite reminds me of the claim that "Lord of the Rings" was an endorsement of gay sex. Don't people have better things to do with their life?
posted by Bag Man at 7:32 AM on October 24, 2002

Reminds me of when Adequacy emailed the band Anthrax and accused them of choosing their name to capitalize on the anthrax scare.

No one found that very funny either.
posted by ODiV at 7:36 AM on October 24, 2002

the claim that "Lord of the Rings" was an endorsement of gay sex.

No, that's "Lord of the Cockrings."
posted by dnash at 7:41 AM on October 24, 2002

And what about the thousands of orcs who didn't show up to work on Sept 11?

Think about it.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:45 AM on October 24, 2002

gottabefunky: it seems they had an appointment with this guy.
posted by Cyrano at 7:57 AM on October 24, 2002

No, that's "Lord of the Cockrings."

*wiping beverage from monitor*

ah, so that explains all that business about Sauron being "wreathed in flame"...
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:22 AM on October 24, 2002

Has anyone else noticed the resemblance between the movie's Saruman and the real-life Osama?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:34 AM on October 24, 2002

"Lord of the Cockrings."

In fact, Nick Zedd did make that movie, about a guy calle Scroto Baggins. Here are photos.
posted by muckster at 8:52 AM on October 24, 2002

Thank you, muckster, I needed that today. My all time favorite porn spinoff is Forrest Hump though.
posted by greengrl at 9:11 AM on October 24, 2002

Porn spinoffs? The Firm -- no contest.
posted by Accidental Angel at 9:17 AM on October 24, 2002

Naw. Finding Ryan's Privates. That's what it's all about.
posted by ook at 9:24 AM on October 24, 2002

er... Saving... I must've been thinking of the prequel...
posted by ook at 9:27 AM on October 24, 2002

I think this guy IS serious about his petition. It’s just that no one (being a sensible person) is taking him seriously.

His heart may be in the right place, but he is certainly going overboard on this one. It is one thing to decry the commercialization of 9/11/01 events for profits or unethical acts that show disrespect to those who had perished (and who are part of our memories of the tragedy) and another to condemn all or any matter or situation simply because it conjures up 9/11/01.

There is no disagreement that there should be sensitivity in dealing with 9/11/01 events. There should also be no disagreement that every one of us who has gone through an intense emotional experience, shared our tears and deep sorrow on and after 9/11/01 has to move on and begin to put things in perspective.

If I’m not wrong, the reason that Spiderman movie had the images of the two towers removed was due to the timing of the release of the movie. It was thought inappropriate to show the two towers as the world was still in mourning.

To put things in perspective (as rightly posted by ZenMasterThis) : The 2nd book of "The Lord of the Rings" **IS** called "The Two Towers," and it always has been.
posted by taratan at 10:02 AM on October 24, 2002

The 2nd book of "The Lord of the Rings" **IS** called "The Two Towers," and it always has been.

Not only that, but -- and to me that's the lynchpin -- there is no connection, implied or explicit, to the World Trade Center. It's just 'two' 'towers.' We're talking about Mordor, not Lower Manhattan. If we were to follow his logic, the words "two" and "tower" would have to be removed from the language.
posted by muckster at 11:01 AM on October 24, 2002

I proposed it on the original petition, and I will propose it again now. I think it should be renamed "LOTR 2: Sauron's Axis of Evil."
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:05 PM on October 24, 2002

Website created with Frontpage = Joke.
Author-intended or no.
posted by Catch at 12:36 PM on October 24, 2002

Website created with Frontpage = Joke.
Author-intended or no.

Why is that? (Honestly - I'm thinking of making my first one soon.)
posted by gottabefunky at 12:50 PM on October 24, 2002

Speaking of LOTR satire....check this out. Satire and a thesarus. Go figure.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:16 PM on October 24, 2002

Careful with the "hate speech" label, OK?

We're getting close to Godwin territory here
posted by matteo at 1:19 PM on October 24, 2002

Ok, I should confess that that little sneer was a bit tongue in cheek.
gottabefunky: Frontpage was/is notorious for creating BAD html... broken tags, non-compliant code, "bloat' in the form of empty/redundant tags .... if you take a peek at the source code of this page, for example, you will see nastiness like whole strings of [/font] [/font] [/font] [/font] [/font].*
I hope I have made up for snarking some.
p.s I hope you have a great time with that first webpage.
*p.p.s yes, I was too lazy to use the proper 'brackets'
posted by Catch at 1:25 PM on October 24, 2002

Catch: It's a good thing you were "too lazy to use the proper 'brackets'"; when people do that, they break the HTML and the rest of the comments are tiny and all scruched up on the left margin. (At least for me; I haven't noticed other people complaining like they used to, so maybe most people don't have this problem.)
posted by languagehat at 1:40 PM on October 24, 2002

From the website:
Do you people seriously think you'll be successful?

We most certainly do. Several of our members were already successful at making 20th Century Fox delay the movie "Phone Booth" due to the Maryland sniper attacks.

So does this guy just look around for things to be offended about?
posted by mckayc at 1:45 PM on October 24, 2002

"The owner of this website considers himself to be a facilitator for the sentiments which have already been expressed by people such as Kevin Klerck who set up the two towers petition on petitiononline.com"

Come on guys, it's Klerck, as in the slashdot troll and page-widener Klerck. See the Slashdot meet-up page. I doubt it's coincidence that they name drop Klerck. If it's not him it's a name-dropping friend/suckup.
posted by holloway at 2:27 PM on October 24, 2002

languagehat: I mean I could use the proper html characters to display them (ampersand decimalwotsit semicolon) on the page. I am just wallowing in sloth today, 1337-wise.
Last derailment, promise.
posted by Catch at 2:53 PM on October 24, 2002

Did someone say Porn Spinoffs?
My all time fave is Poke-a-hot-ass
posted by holycola at 3:23 PM on October 24, 2002

I don't think this will be the only guy to be confused about/upset with the movie's title. My guess is that the studio is worried that the public will get confused, as well. That might be why the movie's trailer starts off with a detailed, complete explanation about which two towers the title refers to.

Remember, this is the same public that thought a title "The Madness of King George III" meant the film was a sequel.
posted by profwhat at 3:36 PM on October 24, 2002

My all time fave is Poke-a-hot-ass
Surely you mean: Poontangcuntass.
(sorry!)
posted by damehex at 3:48 PM on October 24, 2002

Hmmm..

The Loin King?
Jurassic Pork?

and how about the tag line: "in space....no one can hear you cream."
posted by pejamo at 5:23 PM on October 24, 2002

lazaruslong - that was a good link. Much funnier than the current brouhaha.

BTW, is it true that you fucked your own mother?
posted by FeetOfClay at 7:57 PM on October 24, 2002

Unfortunately it's already been done.

Anybody interested in starting a petition against Cesar Pelli and the Malaysian government?

yah i'd be happy to, for calling their towers the tallest in the world. hah! toronto's cn tower is 332 feet taller and has been since 1976.

that 2 towers protest site seems entirely serious, devoid of any satire whatsoever... the faq shows they know that tolkien's novel was named long before "2 towers" might have become assoc. with 9/11.
posted by t r a c y at 12:59 AM on October 25, 2002