Finally saw RotK
Jan. 4th, 2004 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Man. I wanted to love this movie, I really did; I wanted to have the huge emotional reaction that so many of my friends have had to it. And I ... didn't. I respect it, I continue to be in awe of what was achieved here technically, there are parts I really enjoyed, I understand (even if I don't always agree with) most of the story choices that were made, I certainly don't feel like Tolkien got trashed.
My chief complaint was the same one I have about a lot of mainstream film: too much screentime given to action/battle scenes, at the expense of dialogue and character stuff. The upside is that nowadays with DVD sets we actually have a chance of getting that stuff back at some point; but there's a larger downside in that I feel like we're almost creating a two-track system of cinema, with the theatre-going hordes getting wham-bang shoot-em-up CGI-laden fare, and the (by my standards) more interesting stuff getting reserved for the subset of viewers willing to cough up the dough for DVDs.
But anyway, by the time I staggered out of the theatre, I felt beaten up and massively headachey, with all the muscles in my back knotted up like rocks from wincing. I'd ended up closing my eyes for chunks of the big battle scenes, because they just seemed like overkill (so to speak). Honestly, I think all the battle stuff would have been far more effective if they'd been shorter and more focused.
Anyway. Stuff that I really dug (in some cases combined with bitching about stuff I wish had been done differently):
--Pippin. Who'd a thunk it, because Pippin was one of my least favorite characters in the books, but Billy Boyd [ed. to fix name] did some fantastic stuff in the role (and, unlike Monaghan, actually got a chance to, although I'm anticipating more Merry scenes in the Extended Edition).
--The Rohirrim. Good god, do they rock. Edoras remains my favorite of all the LotR sets by far, and I love the horses, and I love the Riders' sort of berserker kamikaze lunge into battle. And I love the scene at the encampment, where they're all uneasy and sort of knowing they're going to get pounded, but are just stalwartly going about their preparations, and don't get fazed even when Aragorn & Co. suddenly take off for no apparent sane reason into a godforsaken haunted mountain cave.
--The first shot of Minas Tirith: holy crap. That was stunning. I mean, I still like Edoras the best (*g*), but they did an amazing job of creating that city.
--Faramir's doomed charge. Beautiful and wrenching, intercut as it was with Pippin's song. And melymbrosia (among other comments with which I almost entirely agree) makes the excellent point that the effectivess of that scene was that it didn't show you the fighting--you knew what was going to happen, you didn't need to get beat over the head with it. I will admit that this scene also made me want to whack Faramir one upside the head, because dude, if you need to work out your daddy issues by dying in hopeless battle that's one thing, but you got all those other guys killed with you. And really weakened the defense of the city in so doing. Which was stoopid, and really, the point about Faramir is he's not stupid.
--Actually, upon reflection, the part of the Faramir-charge scene I loved most was the warriors riding out through the streets of Minas Tirith, and the women throwing flowers (funeral flowers, someone pointed out) under the hooves of their horses. Oh, man. They all knew they weren't coming back. It killed me.
--The heads being lobbed over the walls. I'd forgotten that from the books, and oh, ouch ouch ouch.
--The signal-beacon sequence was just beautifully conceived and executed. (Although my Bungee Cords of Disbelief Suspension were sproinging badly here, because really, there's no frickin' way they'd have had sentries permanently encamped right up there on the sharp-edged tippy-tip-top of those very sharp-edged mountains which are clearly inaccessible except by helicopter. But it was beautiful.)
--The way Frodo looked when he claimed the Ring. I'm not in general a big fan of EW in this role (it's a taste thing more than a reasoned critical judgment), but he was just right in that moment. Plus, the creepy Isildur overtones. Very cool.
--OK, this is pure silliness, but I giggled like a nut at Legolas at the coronation, in his bridal gown. Boy, he and Aragorn held that look for quite a long time, didn't they? And even though I have little use for Arwen, that was one toe-curling smooch that Aragorn planted on her.
Scenes from the book that I really wanted to see and didn't get:
1. Wrap-up for Faramir and Eowyn, the whole Houses of Healing bit. Apparently this is going to be in the Extended Edition, but damn, if I was a non-book-reader watching the film, I'd've been going "Huh? So last we saw they were both almost dead, and Faramir was in a suicidal state, and Eowyn was crushed by getting the turn-down from Aragorn, and now they're just fine and giving each other the glad eye, and who the what now??"
2. The Witch-King coming through the broken walls of Minas Tirith, facing down Gandalf on Shadowfax, breaking Gandalf's staff, and you're just convinced This is it, they are SO dead, and it's a moment of ultimate doom, despair -- and then, then you hear the horns of Rohan blowing wildly in the distance, and all of a sudden you can feel the tide of events swing around. It's a hugely powerful moment (and the Gandalf-not-staff-having would make some sense of why this very powerful wizard doesn't seem to be doing as much of an effectual nature in later scenes).
3. The Mouth of Sauron in the face-down with Aragorn & Co. in front of the Black Gate, showing them the mithral coat -- again, it's an incredibly powerful moment of despair, and I think would give even more emotional weight to Aragorn's "For Frodo!" and that last doomed charge. (Again, I've heard rumors this is going to be in the EE.)
4. The Scouring of the Shire. OK, yeah, I get why they didn't do it, I admit it probably wouldn't really work, cinematically, when you've already had your big emotional climax. But damn, to me that's one of the core parts of the book--that nobody is unaffected by this war, you can't go home again and find it the same. It underscores the theme of the passing of the Third Age; and it really does a lot to begin showing Frodo's apartness not just from normal life in the Shire, but also from the other three hobbits.
Stuff that bugged:
1. There are several places where the writers used different dialogue in places where Tolkien's original language was, to me, particularly memorable or resonant, and it bothered me. For example, the exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-King; man, I so wanted to hear Eowyn saying "Begone foul dwimmerlaik!" and "For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him." Also -- and believe me, I'm not saying this as a Mad Slasher -- Sam talking about Rosie Cotton, at the Cracks of Doom, just felt off to me. I see what they were going for there, and I agree that to have Sam mourning for the life that (he thinks) he's never going to have is moving, but it felt ... well, to me, the stuff in the book, where Sam's talking about how they'll be remembered, with the gaffers and children telling stories about the fire, is far more effective (because you can just feel how he yearns for that warm cozy domestic scene, and sees it as what he'll never have).
2. In line with the above, am I remembering wrong? or did we never actually get Frodo's speech about how sometimes you have to lose everything, give everything up, so that others may keep them? (I may have missed this, because for the whole last hour of the movie I was half-deaf from the goddam Dolby Sounds of Battle blasting away at top volume, but I don't recall hearing it, and--damn. That's a centerpiece of the whole trilogy, right there.)
3. I agree with pandarus that the whole Shelob scene was badly marred by the excision of most of Sam's stuff after finding Frodo's "body." I had a feeling they were trying to set up some cheap suspense--"OMG the orcs have got the ring!"--which seemed dumb, not just because dude, you don't have to have read the books to know the ring gets destroyed eventually, but also because it cost us what I think is one of Sam's best moments--not only his grief, but also his decision that the mission has priority over his desire to stay with Frodo and grieve him, that he's going to carry on. Maybe this scene will return in the EE, though; it certainly felt chopped-up in this version.
4. Denethor ... well, I feel the same way here that I did about Faramir after watching TTT in the theatres, like "People, you just completely trashed a really interesting character!" And I'm hoping that, as with Faramir, the EE covers some missing ground (the Palantir, especially). But even if they do that, Denethor's death scene is wrong, wrong, wrong.
5. I got really, really sick of seeing Sam/Frodo/Gollum getting bashed around on rocks (hit in the head, falling down cliffs, bouncing each other off boulders, etc.) Which is partly a Suspension of Disbelief problem again (I kept thinking, "OK, now here we'd have several broken bones, probably internal injuries, certainly major head trauma...") But even more -- I mean, to me, the real physical toll of the whole journey to Morder is simply the slog slog slog of it, and the hunger and thirst and exhaustion. Which, granted, is less cinematic than a nice spot of hand-to-hand, but still. In my own mind, the very unshowiness of it makes an important counterpoint to all the battle scenes going on elsewhere, and the decision to throw what seemed to me like a whole lot of fight scenes into it bugged me. Dude, we *get* that Gollum and Sam hate each other, they don't have to be smacking each other around all the time.
6. Gollum, in general, got very badly on my nerves, and not entirely in the ways that the filmmakers intended, I think. With the TT DVDs I end up fast-forwarding through all his scenes, and I anticipate doing the same with the RotK ones. Having said which, I'll admit the Smeagol and Deagol scene was very effectively done.
7. A huge loss to me--and again, don't know how this'll sort out in the EE--is that I never really got in the film what is, to me, an essential core of the story: that the victory is deeply bittersweet because it represents the ending of so many things. I mean, they did some of this; I'm so damn glad they left the Grey Havens in (because man, if they'd ended the film with the coronation, I would've killed people). But I mean -- it's not just that a bunch of elves are going bye-bye, it's not just that Frodo and Gandalf are leaving, it's -- magic is going out of the world, people. The elves are gone now, even if a few of them loiter a little longer, and beyond that--even though we don't see their ending--in the New Age of Men, the dwarves and Ents and the hobbits themselves are also, eventually, gone. What's strange is that they really did a good job of setting the tone for that in the prologue to FotR, but then I didn't feel they brought it back around and closed the circle.
8. Also, and this is really just me, but I thought the Grey Havens were all wrong, visually. I've always pictured this as a flat empty stretch of shoreline, with a huge vista of the grey restless sea, a wide horizon, gulls wheeling overhead, and a small boat waiting. As filmed, it felt really like another interior shot, and an overly ornate one at that. This may seem like a small point, but to me it matters that when you're leaving the Havens you're leaving Middle Earth, and that the visual of Middle Earth here be as simple, as natural, as ordinary as possible.
OK, I'll stop blithering now, but will only add that melymbrosia and
voleuse have performed herculean tasks of collecting RotK comments from all over LJ-land. In particular, I'd commend to your attention
leadensky's comprehensive six-part set of comments that provide all sorts of fascinating and informed commentary on battle tactics, horses, the culture of Rohan, and the like. Really great stuff.
My chief complaint was the same one I have about a lot of mainstream film: too much screentime given to action/battle scenes, at the expense of dialogue and character stuff. The upside is that nowadays with DVD sets we actually have a chance of getting that stuff back at some point; but there's a larger downside in that I feel like we're almost creating a two-track system of cinema, with the theatre-going hordes getting wham-bang shoot-em-up CGI-laden fare, and the (by my standards) more interesting stuff getting reserved for the subset of viewers willing to cough up the dough for DVDs.
But anyway, by the time I staggered out of the theatre, I felt beaten up and massively headachey, with all the muscles in my back knotted up like rocks from wincing. I'd ended up closing my eyes for chunks of the big battle scenes, because they just seemed like overkill (so to speak). Honestly, I think all the battle stuff would have been far more effective if they'd been shorter and more focused.
Anyway. Stuff that I really dug (in some cases combined with bitching about stuff I wish had been done differently):
--Pippin. Who'd a thunk it, because Pippin was one of my least favorite characters in the books, but Billy Boyd [ed. to fix name] did some fantastic stuff in the role (and, unlike Monaghan, actually got a chance to, although I'm anticipating more Merry scenes in the Extended Edition).
--The Rohirrim. Good god, do they rock. Edoras remains my favorite of all the LotR sets by far, and I love the horses, and I love the Riders' sort of berserker kamikaze lunge into battle. And I love the scene at the encampment, where they're all uneasy and sort of knowing they're going to get pounded, but are just stalwartly going about their preparations, and don't get fazed even when Aragorn & Co. suddenly take off for no apparent sane reason into a godforsaken haunted mountain cave.
--The first shot of Minas Tirith: holy crap. That was stunning. I mean, I still like Edoras the best (*g*), but they did an amazing job of creating that city.
--Faramir's doomed charge. Beautiful and wrenching, intercut as it was with Pippin's song. And melymbrosia (among other comments with which I almost entirely agree) makes the excellent point that the effectivess of that scene was that it didn't show you the fighting--you knew what was going to happen, you didn't need to get beat over the head with it. I will admit that this scene also made me want to whack Faramir one upside the head, because dude, if you need to work out your daddy issues by dying in hopeless battle that's one thing, but you got all those other guys killed with you. And really weakened the defense of the city in so doing. Which was stoopid, and really, the point about Faramir is he's not stupid.
--Actually, upon reflection, the part of the Faramir-charge scene I loved most was the warriors riding out through the streets of Minas Tirith, and the women throwing flowers (funeral flowers, someone pointed out) under the hooves of their horses. Oh, man. They all knew they weren't coming back. It killed me.
--The heads being lobbed over the walls. I'd forgotten that from the books, and oh, ouch ouch ouch.
--The signal-beacon sequence was just beautifully conceived and executed. (Although my Bungee Cords of Disbelief Suspension were sproinging badly here, because really, there's no frickin' way they'd have had sentries permanently encamped right up there on the sharp-edged tippy-tip-top of those very sharp-edged mountains which are clearly inaccessible except by helicopter. But it was beautiful.)
--The way Frodo looked when he claimed the Ring. I'm not in general a big fan of EW in this role (it's a taste thing more than a reasoned critical judgment), but he was just right in that moment. Plus, the creepy Isildur overtones. Very cool.
--OK, this is pure silliness, but I giggled like a nut at Legolas at the coronation, in his bridal gown. Boy, he and Aragorn held that look for quite a long time, didn't they? And even though I have little use for Arwen, that was one toe-curling smooch that Aragorn planted on her.
Scenes from the book that I really wanted to see and didn't get:
1. Wrap-up for Faramir and Eowyn, the whole Houses of Healing bit. Apparently this is going to be in the Extended Edition, but damn, if I was a non-book-reader watching the film, I'd've been going "Huh? So last we saw they were both almost dead, and Faramir was in a suicidal state, and Eowyn was crushed by getting the turn-down from Aragorn, and now they're just fine and giving each other the glad eye, and who the what now??"
2. The Witch-King coming through the broken walls of Minas Tirith, facing down Gandalf on Shadowfax, breaking Gandalf's staff, and you're just convinced This is it, they are SO dead, and it's a moment of ultimate doom, despair -- and then, then you hear the horns of Rohan blowing wildly in the distance, and all of a sudden you can feel the tide of events swing around. It's a hugely powerful moment (and the Gandalf-not-staff-having would make some sense of why this very powerful wizard doesn't seem to be doing as much of an effectual nature in later scenes).
3. The Mouth of Sauron in the face-down with Aragorn & Co. in front of the Black Gate, showing them the mithral coat -- again, it's an incredibly powerful moment of despair, and I think would give even more emotional weight to Aragorn's "For Frodo!" and that last doomed charge. (Again, I've heard rumors this is going to be in the EE.)
4. The Scouring of the Shire. OK, yeah, I get why they didn't do it, I admit it probably wouldn't really work, cinematically, when you've already had your big emotional climax. But damn, to me that's one of the core parts of the book--that nobody is unaffected by this war, you can't go home again and find it the same. It underscores the theme of the passing of the Third Age; and it really does a lot to begin showing Frodo's apartness not just from normal life in the Shire, but also from the other three hobbits.
Stuff that bugged:
1. There are several places where the writers used different dialogue in places where Tolkien's original language was, to me, particularly memorable or resonant, and it bothered me. For example, the exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-King; man, I so wanted to hear Eowyn saying "Begone foul dwimmerlaik!" and "For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him." Also -- and believe me, I'm not saying this as a Mad Slasher -- Sam talking about Rosie Cotton, at the Cracks of Doom, just felt off to me. I see what they were going for there, and I agree that to have Sam mourning for the life that (he thinks) he's never going to have is moving, but it felt ... well, to me, the stuff in the book, where Sam's talking about how they'll be remembered, with the gaffers and children telling stories about the fire, is far more effective (because you can just feel how he yearns for that warm cozy domestic scene, and sees it as what he'll never have).
2. In line with the above, am I remembering wrong? or did we never actually get Frodo's speech about how sometimes you have to lose everything, give everything up, so that others may keep them? (I may have missed this, because for the whole last hour of the movie I was half-deaf from the goddam Dolby Sounds of Battle blasting away at top volume, but I don't recall hearing it, and--damn. That's a centerpiece of the whole trilogy, right there.)
3. I agree with pandarus that the whole Shelob scene was badly marred by the excision of most of Sam's stuff after finding Frodo's "body." I had a feeling they were trying to set up some cheap suspense--"OMG the orcs have got the ring!"--which seemed dumb, not just because dude, you don't have to have read the books to know the ring gets destroyed eventually, but also because it cost us what I think is one of Sam's best moments--not only his grief, but also his decision that the mission has priority over his desire to stay with Frodo and grieve him, that he's going to carry on. Maybe this scene will return in the EE, though; it certainly felt chopped-up in this version.
4. Denethor ... well, I feel the same way here that I did about Faramir after watching TTT in the theatres, like "People, you just completely trashed a really interesting character!" And I'm hoping that, as with Faramir, the EE covers some missing ground (the Palantir, especially). But even if they do that, Denethor's death scene is wrong, wrong, wrong.
5. I got really, really sick of seeing Sam/Frodo/Gollum getting bashed around on rocks (hit in the head, falling down cliffs, bouncing each other off boulders, etc.) Which is partly a Suspension of Disbelief problem again (I kept thinking, "OK, now here we'd have several broken bones, probably internal injuries, certainly major head trauma...") But even more -- I mean, to me, the real physical toll of the whole journey to Morder is simply the slog slog slog of it, and the hunger and thirst and exhaustion. Which, granted, is less cinematic than a nice spot of hand-to-hand, but still. In my own mind, the very unshowiness of it makes an important counterpoint to all the battle scenes going on elsewhere, and the decision to throw what seemed to me like a whole lot of fight scenes into it bugged me. Dude, we *get* that Gollum and Sam hate each other, they don't have to be smacking each other around all the time.
6. Gollum, in general, got very badly on my nerves, and not entirely in the ways that the filmmakers intended, I think. With the TT DVDs I end up fast-forwarding through all his scenes, and I anticipate doing the same with the RotK ones. Having said which, I'll admit the Smeagol and Deagol scene was very effectively done.
7. A huge loss to me--and again, don't know how this'll sort out in the EE--is that I never really got in the film what is, to me, an essential core of the story: that the victory is deeply bittersweet because it represents the ending of so many things. I mean, they did some of this; I'm so damn glad they left the Grey Havens in (because man, if they'd ended the film with the coronation, I would've killed people). But I mean -- it's not just that a bunch of elves are going bye-bye, it's not just that Frodo and Gandalf are leaving, it's -- magic is going out of the world, people. The elves are gone now, even if a few of them loiter a little longer, and beyond that--even though we don't see their ending--in the New Age of Men, the dwarves and Ents and the hobbits themselves are also, eventually, gone. What's strange is that they really did a good job of setting the tone for that in the prologue to FotR, but then I didn't feel they brought it back around and closed the circle.
8. Also, and this is really just me, but I thought the Grey Havens were all wrong, visually. I've always pictured this as a flat empty stretch of shoreline, with a huge vista of the grey restless sea, a wide horizon, gulls wheeling overhead, and a small boat waiting. As filmed, it felt really like another interior shot, and an overly ornate one at that. This may seem like a small point, but to me it matters that when you're leaving the Havens you're leaving Middle Earth, and that the visual of Middle Earth here be as simple, as natural, as ordinary as possible.
OK, I'll stop blithering now, but will only add that melymbrosia and
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-04 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 08:26 am (UTC)I found the whole movie utterly gripping. But I too had the big expectation advantage - I've actually tried to make it through the trilogy many times and never actually succeeded, so though I had a vague idea of the story and what would happen, I had no knowledge of the details. As you say, don't know what's missin', don't miss it - and equally, don't know what's wrong, don't care!
It's hard to believe it's over ...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:23 pm (UTC)But again, this is my own personal reaction, and I acknowledge it as such. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 08:47 pm (UTC)I found the movie tremendously sad. I was so aware that, as you said so eloquently, "the victory is deeply bittersweet because it represents the ending of so many things." And not just the things you listed - but also the fellowship (with a small f) itself, the almost unnatural closeness that comes from being thrown together in situations of danger. On the one hand, it's good that it's over, and the dark has been vanquished; on the other, the quest brought them together in a way that can never be replicated, and nothing will ever be the same again. Maybe I'm odd, but I've always found that so wrenching.
Anyway, the movie did leave me strongly with that bittersweet feeling. I see your point, about how those things weren't emphasized - so maybe the fact that I felt that so strongly is attributable less to the content of the movie itself and more to maybe my general familiarity with the stories - and definitely with the genre, since this kind of eucatastrophe/resolution is pretty common in the genre (and it's a genre I tend to love, even if I could never get into these books) and never fails to hit me where it counts.
Finally: didn't say it in my earlier comment, but I enjoyed your review immensely; thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-04 08:31 pm (UTC)Billy Boyd played Pippin. (Sean Bean played Boromir.)
And yup, I adored Faramir's charge to Pippin's song.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 07:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-04 08:37 pm (UTC)Huh. This is the second time I've encountered this comment today, after not (I think) having seen it before, and it still surprises me. I didn't think Faramir had a choice about it -- that is, I got the impression that Denethor was going to order that charge anyway, and Faramir could lead it or refuse and be imprisoned for refusing an order. Or I suppose he could have challenged Denethor for Stewardship of the city, as Denethor was clearly unfit, but there were reasons both personal and political not to do this (and I think it was a mistake to have Gandalf defy Denethor so cavalierly later).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:36 pm (UTC)And yeah, the Gandalf-Denethor stuff was not, I think, well handled, although judging from others' comments it seems to have been a crowd-pleaser. I think the film did such an effective job of building up the hopelessness of Minas Tirith's situation that if they'd added in the Palantir stuff, Denethor would have come off as much less of a raving nutjob, or at least less of an irrational one. Am I remembering correctly that in the book he argues at one point for surrender? It would have been interesting to see that in the film...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-04 09:49 pm (UTC)I think, sometimes, that the cutting is too fast, but then I remember that this is what you perceive when you actually are on the field, too, and I wonder if the cinematic speed is some sort of effect in and of itself.
For me, the theme of LotR has always been that all things end, and they usually have a battle at the end (But I'm an apocryphal person), and so for me, it was the battle that was the important thing, the essential thing, as man fought to either keep it's place or lose it altogether to darkness. That the elves left the land was just the end of the last age, and I didn't find it sad at all.
I have so many more things to say, but I always manage to convince myself that someone else will say them, and most of the time they do. Oh well. My review was mostly tongue-in-cheek, because I just can't fish out things that I need to talk about.
BTW, the Scouring, I was so pissed about it's absence I whined in the theatre.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:45 pm (UTC)I found your comment about being on the losing end in re-enactments fascinating, because I think one thing I found pretty much unbearable about the battle scenes was -- it was too easy for me to feel my way into them, they really got in amongst me, and (as I said above) I ended up having to just pull myself back, emotionally.
And re: the ending of things -- I think what moves me most is the sense that no matter *how* things turned out in the final battles, something was going to be lost, that there's loss even in victory. But I agree with you that the battle always has to be a key part of it, that it's essential to fight on anyway.
And now I really want you to write me a HL story where Methos and Duncan are walking home after watching the movies, and Duncan's all into critiquing the battle strategy ("You don't send cavalry charging into an entrenched infantry battalion, that's *stupid*!) and talking about the swordplay and armaments, and also about how Eowyn is damn hot, and Methos is making sly insinuations about the sexay-ness of tall dark scruffy guys with long swords, and blah blah. Heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 05:21 pm (UTC)I think I reviewed it earlier in December in LJ....on the 19th? I think it was the first night of hanukkah. And lately I reviewed the whole trilogy in a survey provided by
I get you on the loss aspect. I think though, that it's so natural that things be lost when the is a new beginning (probably stemming from a fruit of knowledge=loss of innocence story I have heard repeatedly since childhood), that I take the loss for granted and minimize it. Such is my hardass emotional self.
The following link is a pic of me getting bashed with my own shield. Alas, it is one of the only pics of me in the middle of battle, and much to my chagrin, the one that everyone remembers. Yes, I am being shield bashed by a Roman. I don't know why we have a Roman unit in Middle Earth, but they throw good parties, and the Roman in the picture, Grrundy, played Gandalf at the battle of the Hornberg this year, making him Grrundalf.
http://amandr.brokensymmetry.net/graphics/amandr.jpg
Gah. THAT was a scary moment. I was on the field for...ten seconds, and I died in the charge. Stupid Roman tactics...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 12:40 am (UTC)Seriously, we had the exact same reactions across the board, and you hit every point I would have made if I'd been motivated enough to write a review. And godforsaken haunted mountain cave, hee.
.m
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 02:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:51 pm (UTC)::nodding:: Yup, that, exactly. And now (you having brought up Cirdan) I find myself wondering about Elven cookery. Because god knows they don't subsist on lembas all the time. What would they eat, by choice?
And I can deal with Faramir doing what he did, because times different/whole damn world different/etc. He's not a twentieth-century guy, and all that.
Plus, from all the comments I've seen re: the battle scenes, you're not the weirdo, I am. *g* I can deal with that, I guess.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 12:03 pm (UTC)But if it's the end of magic, what of the dwarves? They're still there; they weren't all killed in Moria. Another unanswered question.
I would've liked more to be done with the White Tree-- show a small leaf budding when Aragorn is crowned, perhaps.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 04:58 pm (UTC)Re: the White Tree, I have to look for this next time I'm watching the film, but someone posted somewhere that during the coronation scene you actually get a glimpse of it, in full leaf, restored. (I must confess I was too busy thinking, "Damn, that Aragorn guy cleans up nice." *g*)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 06:23 pm (UTC)Next time I'll have to look for the tree.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-07 03:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-05 09:20 pm (UTC)And I think we get Gandalf vs Witch King in the Extended Remix, 'cause it's in the trailer. As is Eomer grieving, which is the part that I really really wanted.
er. and um, Legolas and Gimli were adorable. *embarrassed foot shuffling* Hi :)