im reluctant to watch the movie because of the whole "spider" thing. I hate spiders and they scare me silly. 2 hobbits being chased by a huge man eating spider would be enough to put me out.


  brrrrrrr aye aye aye

So words like "Loyalty", "Brotherhood", and "Comradeship" don't mean anything to you? The book was written roughly 60 years ago, when the word "faggot" meant a pile of firewood, rather than what it means today. The only homoeroticism in LOTR is what YOU put there with YOUR mind. The characters in the movie behave the way the characters in the book were written, and when the book was written their behaviour was NOT a representation of gay behaviour.

If you can't see past that, then it's the contents of your own mind you need to worry about, not the contents of the movie or the book.

[size=5]What's everybody looking at??[/size=5]

[img]http://www.quicktimeflix.net/agd/queen.jpg[/img]

[LOL][LOL][LOL][LOL][LOL]

I just downloaded the Return of the King from suprnova.com. I'll give you a review in three and a half hours after I've watched it. I've heard it's good!

Nope, he's doing King Kong.  God knows why.

I love the book; i don't think Tolkien meant any such thing. What I mean by saying the movie was a garbage version of the book (okay, an overstatement) is that the garbage elements are the movie's fault, not the book.

Many of the movie's characters are not by any means faithful to the book, so it's hardly fair to interpret a critique of the movie as a critique of Tolkien:



Not to mention that Denethor goes from a good man corrupted by the power of Sauron to simply a bloodthirsty madman (his final scene was a hoot - takes my prize for campy overdramatization).

The problem is that whereas the book allows us to make our own interpretations in places, what we see through the movie is Jackson's (and the actors') interpretation. And in it, friendship and male bonding take a modern, metrosexual tone that screams "gay" to my retrosexual mind.

Edited to add: the quote is from a Tolkien Scholar in an NRO article:
[url]http://nationalreview.com/comment/pearce200312170848.asp[/url]

I think the movies were as good as they could be, given the massiveness of the books.

There were some changes the director made for the sake of portraying the story in this medium.  I think if somebody had a test on the LOTR and watched the movies instead of reading it they would shore a 60% at best.

I think a side effect of the "in your face" homosexuality in today's society has been that straight men refrain from expressing their feelings to other men to avoid anyone thinking them queer.  Thus, in such a story (as noted above, written decades ago) when men express cameraderie, when they share fear, or when they express unrestrained joy there is a "That's so gay" backlash.  I haven't pondered this in great depth, but my gut reaction is that we have lost something here.  

Having sat through all three movies (the first two twice with receent rentals to refresh the story), I saw nothing suggesting homosexuality outside of the speculation within this thread.  Perceptions are everything, eh?

Hiya folks,

After seeing the first two movies I wanted to boil PJ alive. Slowly. And dance gleefully on his remains with hobnail boots.

But, I have come to realize it is his and two dimwitted womens version of Tolkiens life work. Not Tolkiens work. It is a cobbled and tinkered soap-opera'd and tattered ghost of a script version of the penultimate fantasy fiction.  They are only vaguely similar stories, with VERY vaguely similar characters.

At that point I enjoyed the movies fully about 65% of the time. I have even purchased them. I have even, well almost, stopped poking pins in my PJ voodoo doll while watching them.

They did a monumental task in bringing the thing to the screen in the first place and have my undying gratitude for doing so. That is why I have seen the movies at the theatre and have purchased the movies for home use.

That said, the worst offenses are, in my opinion:
1. This whole weakness of men bullsh@t theme, how utterly banal and weak.
2. Crucifying the characters for soap opera effect, in other words UTTERLY FAILING TO GIVE MAIN CHARACTERS ANY SENSE OF DIGNITY AND ANCIENTRY, no respect for them at all. Black magic marker and a pair of scissors and you can turn the phone book into the same script.
3. No objects, save the ring, have any worth at all.... not even, mine gott, the shards of have any sort of value... just leave em' to rust in a statures arms out on a balcony.
4. Turning dwarves into comic relief. This is serious literature for those with a serious bent, leave the jar jar humor for Lucas.

I cant go on, the mistakes are legion.

Anyhow, have a nice night all.

Dram(thetolkienfreak)out!

[url]www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/15/1068674429074.html[/url]

I said his company

from the article "Work on The Narnia Chronicles has started at Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop."