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TTT is my least-favorite of the books in LoTR. I don't do well turning huge battle sequences on paper into a coherent vision of what is happening.

How funny! TTT was always my favorite part of LoTR. The suspense, action, cliff hangers, new introductions (Riders of Rohan, Ents, Minas Tirith, the Druadan Forest and its elusive inhabitants), Smeagol's crisis of decision. I've also thought all along it would make the best movie -- because the pacing is more appropriate for a movie.

FotR has a more leisurely, contemplative pace, but the movie (as movies must) bounces from great climactic scene to great climactic scenes at a rapid pace. In TTT the pace is adequate to match the needs of movie-making.

I predict that when all is said and done, we will look back and say that TTT was the best of the movie installments.

I predict that when all is said and done, we will look back and say that TTT was the best of the movie installments.

Maybe we will! I don't know, I like slow pace! And I like TTT, love the Ents, love the three hunters following, and Love the Taming of Smeagol and all of those parts, I just rush through the battle sequences. Maybe because I am a girl, I just don't have as much interest in the process of battle, just the outcome! I don't read the battle scenes and get pictures in my head. Maybe the film will help me with that the next time through!

Wood Versus Astin in Two Towers

Elijah Wood, who stars as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, told SCI FI Wire that Frodo and Sam (Sean Astin) fight each other in a scene for the second film, The Two Towers, that is not in the J.R.R. Tolkien text. "We did the fight scene as part of the re-shoots we did this past summer in New Zealand," Wood said in an interview. "That scene was not in the book."

The actor added, "Literature and film are very different, and for the sake of the film we needed to raise the stakes slightly, just to show that there is a little more going on with Frodo, in terms of the effect the One Ring is having on him. We needed a little more of that and it needed to be clearer, and so that fight was added onto what we'd already shot. We actually filmed much, much more intense moments of the two of us fighting, and they'll be in the extended edition DVD of The Two Towers. But what you get in the theatrical release gives you enough to really see how the Ring is affecting Frodo." The Two Towers opens nationwide on Dec. 18.