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it's clear that director Peter Jackson has tilted the balance decisively against the hobbits and in favor of the traditional action heroes of the Tolkien trilogy. The star is now clearly Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), and the hobbits spend much of the movie away from the action.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but most of the action in "T3" is with Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and the Rohirrim. The focus of the action is the battle against Sauroman. Frodo and Sam's quest, at this stage of the story, is more subdued, action-wise. In fact, in terms of sheer pages, the Aragorn/Rohan aspect of The Two Towers takes up more space than Frodo and Sam's journey.

From Ebert's comments, I wonder if he has even read the "Lord of the Rings." If he hasn't, he has no right to judge whether Peter Jackson has strayed from Tolkein's intent or not.

Apparantly he didn't read the same LOTR that most of us have read. His review shows a complete lack of understanding of the story line. I've read the series every year since I was 10 years old (I'm 45 now). I think he rented one of the older movies that are now on video tape and wrote his review based on that. There's no way he could have read the books that Tolkien wrote, saw the movies that have recently been made and come to the conclusions that he came to in his review. The job(s) that have been done with this set of Ring movies has been as close to exemplary as you can get given the time constraints a file will place on you.

From Ebert's comments, I wonder if he has even read the "Lord of the Rings." If he hasn't, he has no right to judge whether Peter Jackson has strayed from Tolkein's intent or not.

He hasn't read it. And you make so much sense that if he read what you wrote, I'm sure his head would explode because he wouldn't have room to process the simple, galling truth of it.

Who pays Ebert? There's a better (MUCH better) FReeper review from the Dec. 18, 12:01 AM showing, posted on FR now -- and there have been a lot of other FReeper reviews that reveal a mature depth of understanding, analysis, and insight regarding Tolkien's masterpiece being translated onto the silver screen.