Just as Jackson did with the battles of the LOTR books. Your making an argument against a position that no one has taken, as far as I can tell.
Hm, well, I guess my question for you would be, “what way did the books handle the battles that was horribly boring?”
You seemed to be saying that focusing on the battle on a grand scale, and eliminating some of the character-centric bits is the boring way in which the books handled the battles, but I could be misreading you.
The argument wasn’t MINE to begin with. I was answering someone who said that the movie battles were bad because they focussed on individual exploits rather than doing as (he said) the books did and glossing over the combat to focus on the larger picture of the armies, like some wargame with miniatures. I was commenting that doing such a thing in a movie would have been boring.
Hm, well, let me rephrase…
I think that there are movies that do focus on the larger picture successfully. An example I can think of off the top of my head is Branaugh’s Henry V. So, my point is that it is not the case that a battle scene is inherently bad because of the fact that it doesn’t focus on specific individuals doing specific things. I suppose you could disagree with that, but it’d be like saying, “any movie with elephants in it is boring.” It’s not the material, but how it’s presented.
All IMHO, of course. 
Well, I think I had an experience unique amongst the Dopers at 10:00 yesterday morning–I saw LOTR in a giant theater, the biggest in the Loews Lincoln Square complex in Manhattan, with a mezzanine and everything, full-sized with surround sound and a giant screen with curtains and all the trappings.
I paid for it the night before with FANFARE, but I might as well have saved my $1.75 service charge because there were about FIFTY PEOPLE in a theater that can hold 2000. So, I had nobody in front of me for two rows, nobody in the row with me, nobody blocking me, no cellphones, only one whiny kid about a quarter of a mile behind me, no interruptions, no chattering, no candy wrappers, plenty of room to stretch out.
But unfortunately, no cheering, no crying, no feedback, no sharing anything with the other audience members. Aside from one laugh at Gimli’s big line and a smattering of applause for about 15 seconds at the end which is all I heard, it was like a private screening that I was seeing in a very plush vacuum.
So how did I like the movie?
I loved it! I was sniffling to myself and smiling a lot and doing all the things you guys did, only much quieter. I was swept up and swept away and liked the battles, the talk between Pippin and Gandalf before they were “going to die”, the Frodo/Sam story, etc.
Nitpicks were: What happened to everybody’s horses in the final battle, when they were surrounded? I guess they let them run away, but I was surprised Shadowfax wasn’t there. He would never bolt. A quick scene of Denethor staring into his palantir with the eye of Sauron staring back at him could have been subbed for one of the grossout eating scenes, because Denny was just an inexplicable wimp in the movie.
Things I missed the most: any mentions of the fates of Legolas and Gimli, the sailing to the West of Sam after his widowing (although in the movie he’d never been a true Ringbearer, I guess), the deaths and honorable burials of Merry and Pippin, a little more of the married lives of Arwen and Aragorn, the mallorn tree growing in Hobbiton, the fact that the Fellowship kept in touch and visited each other frequently after their victory, the romance of Faramir and Eowyn (no, I don’t think their standing near each other at the coronation was enough), the prophecies that supported Aragorn’s kingship, and so on.
But I know a few of these will be on the EE, so I can wait. I loved the movie but will wait a little to see it again, and, contrary to what most people here might think, would like to see it in a MORE crowded theater!
Saw RoTK for the second time yesterday. And I have only the tiniest, teensiest of complaints. At the battle of Helm’s Deep, all the women and children were hiding someplace safe® while the soldiers fought. At Minas Tirith it seems like there were no efforts to get the non-combatants to a safe place. Surely someone must have noticed the hordes of orcs marching towards the city.
There was a quick mention by one of the captains about moving the non-combatants, but it wasn’t dwelt on like the w & c of Helm’s Deep were. Frankly, I don’t know where they could have evacuated them TO–like the Titanic being its own lifeboat, Minas Tirith seems to have been its own shelter, with nobody ever being able to totally overrun it.
I think in the books the non-soldiers fled across the plains before the Orcs came, and it was all soldiers and magickal people facing the Mordorites.