Replies

I think the messages rang true, even if the route to get their was different.

I agree, and I think I understand some of the (audience marketing) reasoning behind why he did it. But the fact remains that he took far more creative license in this film than in the first. I have been very forgiving of the license he has taken, it's just that there is more to forgive in TTT than in FOTR. And I hope that trend does not continue into ROTK or he will go too far. The way Tolkien wrote it has to be the ultimate guide and should be strayed from only with great trepidation....

Well, he did say that TTT strayed the most...

But I see only tiny details changed. I think it is just easier to talk about what we don't like than what was right. We take everything that was right for granted.

When I look at the film, I don't quibble with the plot on this one, but the presentation, and then only in a few areas, they just move to the forefront when we don't talk about the good.

I wouldn't have switched it back and forth so often. It felt like someone with an itchy trigger finger was on the remote.

See my quibbles are with the art of the film, not the story. Sam's speech told us much that we already should have known, without making anyone think for themselves. It felt like exposition to hit people over the heads if they were too dumb to figure that part out. OK, maybe they wanted to do that. If some people needed it, then I am glad it was done, but I didn't need it, and felt after the first view that PJ thought we were dumb. Well, some in my audience were.... so OK.

And gollum was too close to us. Again, art rather than function. I would have had him more mysterious, more slinking away, rather than coming right up to me (the audience) and looking me right in the eye. He gave us an intimacy he didn't have with Frodo and Sam.

And yet, after three whining paragraphs, all I can say is, I loved the rest.