[slydog]

ok
i understand ur opinion and i respect it.
but im so stubborn that i have to make u all understand
Arwen still made the perilous journeys through the misty mountains many times and i dont think tolkien had the incident of celebrian keeping arwen from being like her brothers. but i certainly do not believe she was a warrior in any way. I also dont think eowyn or arwen were allegories for the different types of woman. i was merely sayin that her riding through the wilderness to give aragorn anduril is not that audacious or warrior like especially in the film version where she has already ridden against the nazgul.
But seriously what is more out of tolkienicity (character aside)? Arwen delivering anduril or arwen dying because shes just automatically tied to the ring?( Disney would be proud...)
P.S. Viv i did notice that the way i wrote that first line before was kinda snotty...forgive me ?

[Viv]

[slydog]

so...does everyone know where im comin from?
Arwen at Helms Deep... now theres a landmine!!!

[varialectio]

I must admit that I'm torn.



I LOVED the movies when they first came out. I cried shamelessly at the moments where Gandalf 'died' and where Boromir died. When I rented the VHS and watched it again with my parents, I especially enjoyed watching the fine nuances of the acting between Ian Holm and Ian McKellen, or Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee. Those were some of my favorite parts.

And yes, I'll admit that I cried again in the Two Towers when Theoden grieved for his lost son, and when Sam has that little speech at the end of the movie. And I blubbered in ROTK when the lava was about to swallow up Samwise and Frodo, and they were sitting there talking, too weary to move.

BUT... There have definitely been some things in the films which I would change. I am disturbed that the death scenes of Saruman and Grima will only be given 7 minutes to wrap up in the EE; 7 minutes doesn't sound like it will be time for Theoden to make his EXCELLENT 'gibbets and crows' speech to Saruman, which I feel to be one of the highlights in the books. I am worried that with Saruman's and Grima's demises, their more subtle and indeed extremely tragic deaths in the book will be dumbed down for spectacle and gee-whiz special effects...

Case in point... DENETHOR.

This character was one of the most sadly mutilated inviduals in the entire movie Trilogy. It leaves me aghast because especially in the first film, Boromir was portrayed so tenderly and with such life and dimension. It would have been easy for the filmmakers to write off Boromir as the cliche Secret Evil Dude Within The Fellowship, but they didn't. Why, then, did they do so with Faramir and now, most grotesquely, with Denethor?

Denethor's death in the books was tragic and horrific; a man so proud of will, so commited to the vision of doom that Sauron has fed him that he sits and immolates himself on a pyre, unmoving. The Movie, in constrast, has him be knocked off the pyre by Gandalf, then he sees his son and has a weird, Gollum-esque moment of repentance, starts to burn and then implausibly runs off the "Denethor runway" as it has become mockingly known. His death is swallowed up in the pitched battle going on, and never much remarked on after. It has been cheapened by the next barrage of CGI-ed effects that the WETA Digital team can throw at us.

Next case in point: the Mouth of Sauron. Why does the Mouth not have eyes in the movies? It is specifically stated that he does in the books. It is also stated that the way that Aragorn frightens him is by looking in his eyes, and that the Mouth looked the captains of the West up and down and then laughed. What's with this stupid malarkey about 'he sees with his mind'? Why would that be better than the Mouth seeing with the eyeballs that his creator J.J.R. Tolkien stuck in his head? Is it some sort of special infrared vision like the Predator? He looks like a cross between a Cenobite from 'Hellraiser' and Ellen Ripley's 'Aliens'.

IMHO, they did not need to make Faramir into a bully for dramatic effect, they did not need to make him take Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath and nearly have a Nazgul snatch the Ring out from under Frodo's nose. They did not need to cheapen Denethor by making him into a pantomine stock baddie and then give him one of the most ludicruous death scenes in fantasy film history.

And if you think that I'm harsh...

check this out.

PH34R Teh WratH of Teh Purists. Because I have to say that to a certain degree I'm becoming one of them. I'm so disappointed with the final films that at this rate I'm not even going to buy the ROTK EE, and in fact I regret spending the money that I did on the others.

[Yavanie]

Varialectico,

I couldn't agree more about Denethor. I agreed with the choice of actors and they kept some of his lines, I could even live with the dour, brooding, self absored Denethor. But, when he lit the pyre himself and then RAN at least a MILE and plunged off the "runway" with Gandalf having just said "so passses Denethor....", I have to admit it was so ludicrous I was laughing, in the theatre, tears streaming down my face (at least those movie only fans around me thought I was just really moved about the whole scene, and I guess I was - to laughter!). In my house that scene is referred to "Denethor, the flaming marshmallow". For those that don't know, it is popular to toast marshmallows on a stick over and open fire and squish the melty, gooey confection between graham crackers and hershey bars, called a S'More. Anyway, as kids we could eat them until we ran out of chocolate and spent the rest of the evening seeing how long you could hold a marshmallow in the flame until it dripped off or burst into flame and disintegrated into a charred mess, until we ran out of marshmallows. They could have edited out that scene entirely in favor of something more important like Aragorn facing Sauron in the Palantir, or the Sons of Elrond showing up with the rangers, or the hands of the king made known in the houses of healing, I could go on and on and on, but I'll stop now.