And what were they doing while he was reciting the poem? Were they preparing him for war? It was almost like a ritual! It was very very cool!
Agreed. It had a highly cool half-tribal, half-medieval flavor to it.
Which makes sense. What Tolkien was shooting for with the Rohirrim was the feel of the early, recently-converted to Christianity Anglo-Saxons.
I don't think it comes up much in TTT, but it will be interesting to see how PJ manages to handle the anti-PC nature of the battles in ROTK. All of the Men on Sauron's side are described as at least swarthy, and lots of them are black. Meanwhile, all the good guys are white, and lots of them are blonde.
Ought to give the PC fanatics heart failure if PJ plays it straight.
This is the only factor that I think could cause LOTR to miss out on the 2004 Best Picture and Best Director awards.