I just wanted to say that was an excellent and interesting post, Punkyova. I had no idea of this personal background.
Do you think that the Protestant/Catholic split, and his mother being rejected & suffering for embracing a new faith, is mirrored in the Elvish/Human split and the loss of immortality themes in Tolkein’s love stories?
I didn’t say she begged to be his wife, just that she begs to follow him. It’s open to interpretation why she does so, if it’s to be with him or to die in battle. Probably both. After all, “all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her,” so going to the Paths of the Dead might seem an attractive alternative. 
Just as an interesting aside considering some of the current discussion…Edith Tolkien has “Luthien” inscribed on her headstone and JRRT has “Beren.”
I saw it yesterday and loved pretty much every minute of it. My only complaint is that I think it could stand to be maybe 30 minutes longer…maybe even a little longer at the very end. There have been some complaints, both in this thread and elsewhere, that the ending was far too long. I completely disagree. I have always looked at this as one movie split into three parts (as many others have, I’m sure). Saying that, Peter Jackson has the task of ending a 10 hour where the audience only sees the final 3h20 at that time. It isn’t easy, and I think the decision to have a full on 20 minute denouement is a good one. If one were to watch the entire movie (all three parts) back to back to back, I imagine it would be a perfect ending. Hell, I thought it was a perfect ending as it is.
I need to see this a few more times, because I spent far too much time thinking, “man this is such a beautiful shot, look at that shot.” I need to sit back, forget about how beautiful the movie is (visually), and pay a little more attention to the plot. I was able to catch the broad strokes but would like it in a little more detail.
I thought the movie was well made and on a basic level gratifying. But I feel alot of the substantial emotional depth of the books were lacking. This is mostly due to the emphasis on battle action rather than the characters.
I really wish we could of seen Sam battle with his conscience on the slopes of Mount Doom with Gollum. In the books he wants to kill him but pities him and lets him go despite his hatred. His mercy allows the ring to be destroyed. The theme of mercy is so fundamental to the rings trilogy, I wish it were emphasized more.
Why did Gandalf have to go WWE on Denethor? Violence is not his way(except as a last resort)…at least in the books
Faramir’s character arc was just dropped entirely! He was saved from the pyre and then we see no else except for a short shot at the end.
Eowyn killed the witch king (Which was sweet) but her emotional desires are never resolved by the movie
No Mouth of Sauron: The mouth is a good device for building up suspense. It worked great in the book as he convinced all the characters that Frodo was captured. Without him the scene felt too rushed in the movie
Sam: I generally enjoy the emphasis they have put on Sam in the movies. Though when he saves Frodo from the orcs in the book, he is much more timid than in the movie. I felt he was a pint sized version of the Hulk. Also no Watchers, no dramatic build up to the rescue of Frodo.
Final battle between Frodo and Gollum: Must everything be exploded to the Nth degree? Not only must we have Frodo fight gollum, not only must they fall off the cliff, but it all has to be filmed in slow motion. My main gripe though is that this scene seems to pander to action fans rather than allowing for the theme of mercy to be developed.
Peter Jackson says he feels the theatrical movies are “better paced” than the ee editions. I think he is fearful that audiences cannot maintain their attention spans without a spectacular battle, visual, or snappy dialogue from Gimli. Would Tolkien approve of Gimli being a comic relief device? These movies feel more like extremely grand popcorn entertainment than an epic myth at times.
There were alot of good points to the movie. More hobbits, and as usual spectacular visuals (one of my favourite parts actually was not a giant battle, or even Shelob, but the lighting of the beacons)
I’m glad they brought back the idea of the hobbits recording the war in their book. I’ve had complaints about the three movies but so far the extended editions have gone a long way to mending these issues. Hopefully the ROTK EE will help as well.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet: didja notice that PJ added to the Tolkien bestiary, with the beasts that are pulling Grond? In the books they’re oliphaunts/mumakil; but PJ made his oliphaunts so big that they’re useless as beasts of burden. So Grond is being pulled by things that look like some pleistocene ancestor of the rhinoceros.
I though they resembled giant armadillos.
not to be confused with the holiday armadillo.
Quick! Hide the Lone Star!
A few neat bits I noticed that haven’t been mentioned:
Loved the orcs chanting “Grond! Grond! Grond!” during the battering ram scene.
I know Samwise inherits Bag End in the book, but the movie ending with the Gamgee family walking into Number 3 Bagshot Row was very neat. There were more of this sort of nod to fans of the books that I noticed, but they’ve slipped my mind now.
Anyways, I was much impressed. Vast improvement over a somewhat disappointing TTT.
look!ninjas, Pippin’s song is from the third chapter of FotR (“Three is Company”)–it’s the last verse of the “walking song” that begins with the lines “Upon the hearth the fire is red”. I think that only a couple of words are changed and a line or two left out. It was one of the highlights of the movie for me.
I saw it twice: the earliest Friday showing with a very small and very quiet audience (everyone seemed to be holding their breath for three and a half hours), and a Saturday packed-house matinee with a much rowdier crowd.
The best parts of the movie for me were the horns of Rohan (“Rohan has come at last”), Theoden’s speech to his men (“Ride to ruin and the world’s ending!”), Eowyn’s face-off with the Witch King, Sam’s fight with Shelob, “I can’t carry it, but I can carry you,” Frodo’s farewell, and “Well, I’m back.”
I liked the Smeagol and Deagol backstory intro. Was Gollum telling the story to Frodo (and Sam)? That wasn’t made clear to me.
The lighting of the beacons was unexpected and very beautiful. So was Gandalf’s description of death as the “far green country under a swift sunrise,” though I know that’s really Frodo’s view of Valinor. (I think the bits of dialogue that are directly lifted from Tolkien’s wording have always been very well chosen, across all the three films.)
I’m still not quite sure whether I liked the cliff-hanging Frodo at Mount Doom. The last struggle with Gollum was fine, and I don’t even mind having Frodo go over too, but the way the camera moves over the edge to reveal that (well, of course) he’s hanging on by his fingertips was kind of cheesy. However, Sean Astin’s delivery of “Don’t you let go!” was just perfect, so that redeems it.
The only bit I really disliked was Denethor in flames running off the cliff. It should have been a horrific scene, but it turned out ridiculous when combined with Gandalf’s somber “Thus passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion.”
Some things from the books I really wanted to see (and hope that one or two make it into the extended edition):
[ul]
[li]Sam taking the ring from Frodo (or a least a longer scene with Sam leaving “dead” Frodo behind. “Don’t go where I can’t follow” was heartrending, but the moment ended so quickly for me. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have time!). This is my favorite chapter of the books, so naturally I would say this, but I’d love to see Sam conquering his despair and gathering the will to go on even though he thinks Frodo is dead. We know he must have done so, but I want to see it![/li][li]Aragorn healing Merry and Eowyn.[/li][li]Frodo calling Sam a thief when Sam gives back the ring in the tower.[/li][li]The Mouth of Sauron.[/li][li]Sam showing mercy to Smeagol at Mount Doom.[/li][/ul]
I loved it, although, as has been noted, Denethor’s death was a bit Monty Python.
I like long movies as much as anyone and consider myself a reasonably sophisticated student of cinema, so I’m not a short-attention-span rube, and I absolutely agree with him. I like my EE versions of the first two movies for having some cool stuff, but the theatrical releases WERE better paced, especially Fellowship, which bogs down a few times with the added scenes. More information is not necessarily better.
Pupshaw, you beat me to the song ID. I knew I recognized the words when I saw the movie, but the song went by quickly enough that I couldn’t nail the reference down. I bought the soundtrack tonight partly to research the reference.
I’m one of those who’s not 100% happy with the movies, but I read something the other day that makes it better for me. Someone said we should think of it as another storyteller reciting something like Homer’s Odyssey. Each storyteller may emphasize things in different ways.
I teared up at two points. The first was the loving sweeping tracking shots of Gondor during Gandalf’s gallop up to the top; just something about the whole scene got to me–likely that it was the first piece of truly ambitious and impressive architecture that wasn’t, you know, evil. And that I knew the beating it was going to take very soon.
The second was the whole charge of the Rohirrim. Holy good goddamn, that was nice. I especially liked the way morale waxed and waned back and forth between the orcs and the riders–and that when the cavalry crashed into the enemy, it was much more clear thist ime that those pikes were not set, that they were in fact in the midst of breaking from total morale collapse.
The multiple fake-out endings amused me; I pictured Jackson pondering how to simultaneously mess with both book-fanboys and those who hadn’t read the books at all.
Saw it for the second time tonight. Love it!
I agree that Denethor’s death could have been handled better.
A nitpick I have is with Shelob. I think Shelob looks awesome–very realistic and creepy and her fight with Sam had me on the edge of my seat. But spiders don’t have stingers, do they? They envenomate by biting with their fangs. Yet Shelob hits Frodo with a stinger on her abdomen and she tries to get Sam with it, too. It looks a lot like a wasp or bee stinger, but I don’t think any spiders have such a thing, do they?
Ah! Thanks for helping me locate that one. I couldn’t find it on my own, and was beginning to think I was suffering from false recognition.
Tangent - Well, Shelob isn’t really a spider per se. See, she’s one of the spawn of Ungoliant, who lurks in the darkness at the deeps of the earth, and… um… She’s a big scary monster who just sort of looks like a spider. Anyway, it’s in the book that way.
What was?
Sorry for the disconnect there, Rilchiam – I was tired enough I didn’t notice the thread had moved on half a page beyond what I was responding to, which was someone complaining about Sam’s line, “I can’t carry it, but I can carry you.” That’s what I get for reading without sufficient caffeine.
I’m really holding out hope that the whole sequence in the orc tower atop Cirith Ungol will be expanded in the EE. There’s so much wonderful material there that contributes directly to both plot and characterization, PJ would have been crazy not to at least have it in the can somewhere, even if he trimmed it for the theatrical release.
Mama Tiger, I too feel pretty sure that there will be something added for Cirith Ungol in the EE.
Archergal and look!ninjas, when I first heard (I think in the commentary on the FotR EE) that Billy Boyd was going to sing a song for Denethor, I was rereading the books and happened to think that that exact verse would make an appropriate song for Pippin. I was absolutely amazed to hear it, almost exactly as I had imagined it. Quite a thrill.