Got to see "Return of the King" on Sunday.  -Been waiting for the past year.  Really enjoyed it.  I felt the three movies did a very good job overall of preserving the content of the book even considering the inevitable editing as well as the "loss of information" that pretty much has to happen when any story is transcribed from one medium to another.
My "gripes" are actually very small, insignificant almost.  I didn't like the way that Smeagle disappeared in to the lava of Mt. Doom.  I saw a lot of red, yellow and orange, but nothing to indicate that the lava was HOT!  Gollum should have burst into flames the moment he contacted the lava.  That would have been MUCH more satisfying.
Also, I felt that the sound track was better in the first two movies.  I was a little bit disappointed with the musical score in "Return of the King".  These are relatively small things, but they were things that bothered me enough to distract me from full enjoyment.

Rule 1: The book is always better.

With that in consideration, I think the movies were as good as could be expected for screen adaptations.  I enjoyed them, but they will not replace the book in my house.

we saw it sunday afternoon. just us and about 4 other people in the theater.

VERY well done. Minus Tirith was stunning.

mike

Liv Tyler is a superfox, but I would have dropped her like a hot potato after the blonde chick singlehandedly killed a nine-foot tall immortal witch-king.

Not that Liv has been coming by the house lately or anything, I'm just saying.

I finally got to see ROTK last evening.  The theater was 3/4 full.  

As Brohawk said, the book is better, but these three movies bring the story of Lord of the Rings to people who would never take the time to read the 1200 page book.

Peter Jackson does wrangle around the story line quite a bit, but it is a fair representation of the book.

The thread that was going on earlier this week about the 'gay' tendencies in the movie were way off.  There was not one hint of it to me.

Hell yah!

Any blonde that can kill immortial spirits and other beings gets my vote. I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers by a long shot.

Took the kids on Sunday morning, and loved it. Yes the books are better but that is expected so no loss there. The length of the movie was good too, as its nice to get your money out of a ticket and 3 1/2 hours of good movie fits that bill. I have waited 20 years to see these movies, and was happy with how they turned out.

I cant think of a movie this year that compares to the ROTK.

on another note, like Harry Potter these movies have encouraged my children to read the series and for that alone I am greatful. Seeing my 10 year old curled up with the book "The Hobit" is a great thing. Hell seeing children read anything these days is a good thing.

CH

Yeah, I agree and with Brohawk, too.
I've been somewhat amused by some of the homophobia I've seen in some of the threads commenting on the movie.  I think the main thing to remember is that Hobbits are not "men".  They are freer in expressing their emotions and less reserved.  The "objectionable" behavior of the Hobbits is not carried over into the scenes between "men".  The "men" behave in a more predictable "macho" way.   Whatever, It didn't detract anything from the story for me.

Was the liv tyler character made up for the movie or was she in the book? I don't recall her being in the book.

The seige and the calvarys (rohan riders) attack were the highlights of the movie...

I am not sure if I am totally off base here, or misremembering the book, but I seem to recall that Aowynn (the blond witchking slayer) showed up as a total surprise at the battle.

The Rohan King is down, the witchking approaches him, a person in full armor and helmet steps in and fights him.  At the end of the fight, the helmet comes off to reveal it is HER.

I think that had much more impact that us knowing she had ridden into battle with them from the start.

Just my .02.  Otherwise a great movie.

Dave

BTW - I loved that song that Pippin sang when the troops rode out in the hopeless attempt to regain the city.  Anyone got the soundtrack yet?

I also thought they have done an excellent job portraying the book as best as possible in a movie. The ROTK was excellent but eveyone around me kept sighing and cussing as they faded away and then came back! I thought it was funny since me and my woman were probably 2 of the 4-5 people in the theater of 50 that read the thing anyway.
I felt like the eagles got screwed. They played a bigger role in the book and I really wish there was more bird of prey attack scenes. Wish they would have made the Hobbit as well, but I guess movies do better in trilogies for the sheeple.

Now if they will only make "Gates of Fire" by Steven Pressfield into a movie...

JHP, this is funny.
Yes.  Arwen is in the book.  Interestingly, (and this goes to show you just what a GREAT "guy story" LOTR is) the love affair between Aragon and Arwen is delt with in Tolkien's masterpiece of over one thousand pages in EXACTLY, PRECISELY ONE SENTENCE!!

Kick her out of bed?  What for?!  Get that woman turned on and hold on tight.  If you survive you'll be a very satisified man.[:D]  Just remember that her strengths aren't in cooking.  I'm sure she can make up for that in many other enjoyable ways. [;)]

Wonderful movie.  Of course it isn't as good as the book.  For the most part the movies kept the spirit of the books and stayed close enough to the story to be very enjoyable.

BTW...Samwise Gamgee rocks!!!!! and he got Rosie too!  Oh yeah, that Rosie, she's a hobbit-hottie.

But, the appendix at the end of the book deal EXTENSIVELY with the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen, including a lot of dialogue and history.


While I was really excited about the LOTR3, I actually was a LITTLE disappointed, since I thought the story was more disjointed and lacked continuity and transitions seemed abrupt.  Essentially, it needed to be a half hour longer, but I guess they couldn't do that because they pushed the spider sequence from The Two Towers into the Return of the King.

Maybe I'm just overly critical, because I LOVE the extended versions on DVD of the first two movies, and because of the added footage in them, the continuity is much better - so it may be more an issue with me than with the movie.


The cavlary attack of the Rohan on the orcs outside minias tirith was AMAZING, regardless of continuity or anything else.

Actually, Pippin got in the first shot against the witchking, but the "blonde chick" did take out a DRAGON! by herself.

Hah!  

My wife and I were shopping in Toys R Us just before The Fellowship of the Ring was released and saw some LOTR action figures.  Another woman was also looking at them, and I commented that I heard the movie was supposed to be pretty pretty close to the book.

She replied, "Oh? They have books out already?"

All I could manage was, "Uh, yeah."  I then walked away feeling sad for her.

OH MY GOD that's depressing.

If you read or reread the books you will find that Merry actually delt the fatal blow, and Merry is not a man either, he is a hobbit.[;)]


They only thing that left a bad taste in my mouth in general about all three movies. Was the liberal anti-Industrial overtone. While it was true Tolkien loved nature and didn't like distructive greed through industry. I believe his point in the book is the importance of how industry is managed. The Elves, Hobbits,Men, and Dwarves were all very industrious. But what seperated them from the orcs is how they managed and handled it.

Overall, I was captivated by the ROTK and wished they could have made it longer (oh well, there is alway the extended DVD, and I heard they had to cut a lot out).

Edited to add: Lord_Grey_Boots beat me to it, only that it was Merry that rode with Eowyn.

I must have skipped that sentence...because I don't remember her at all...

Thanks for clearing that up.

Too bad we didn't get to see Liv's Elven Thong Underpants - we might have understood why he picked her over the witch king slaying chickie

The attack of the Rohirrim was one of the strong points of the movie for me.  I got chills seeing it.  

Shelob was well done.  Another great part of the movie.  I hate spiders...  [;)]

The way Saruman was dealt with was disappointing.  No dialog for the Palantir...  Merry 'finds' it in the water.  No scourge of the Shire.  No death of Saruman or Grima.

Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate of Mordor was also great.  

Actually, Merry only scored an "assist".  He slipped behind the Witch-King and stabbed him behind the knee.  Eowyn then stabbed him between the eyes with her sword.  Merry's blow (with a magic/enchanted blade) apparently rendered the Witch-King vulnerable to "normal" weapons, but a stab to the knee would hardly be a mortal blow.

Haven't seen the movie yet - it may be different on film than on paper.

"Out of the wreck rose a Black Rider, tall and threatening, towering above her. With a cry of hatred that stung the very ears like venom he let fall his mace. Her shield was shivered in many pieces, and her arm was broken; she stumbled to her knees. He bent over her like a cloud, and his eyes glittered; he raised his mace to kill.
But suddenly he too stumbled foward with a cry of bitter pain, and his stroke went wide, driving into the ground. Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind the mighty knee.
Eowyn! Eowyn! cried Merry. Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she drove her sword between crown and mantle, as great shoulders bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Eowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe. But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world."

Edited to add the next paragraph:
"So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."

Ever read Jaws?

Yeah, the spider scared the bejeezus out of me, that's for sure.  

Those eagles were badass.  

Did anyone else get the impression that Samwise was a bigger hero than Frodo?  All Frodo seemed to do through all the movies is collapse in a faint and fall victim to the power of the ring.  

Samwise gave him the last of his food and water, saw right through to Smeegel's (sp) treachery, followed after Frodo even when he was sent back in shame, fought off the spider, killed the three orcs in the tower where Frodo was held prisoner, then carried Frodo up Mt Doom when he could go no further.  

After all that, Sam only wants to go home and live a peaceful, anonymous life with his bride and children.

I personally think he is the real hero here.

Good point... very important one.  If you read the book, you get that impression even more.  By time I finished reading the book the first time, I decided Sam is the man.

Yep, that's pretty much how it happened in the movie, except they couldn't incorperate the barrow blade because they cut it out of the first movie.

I would say it was much more than an assist. Merry broke the spell that  allowed Eowyn to kill him. Without out that it couldn't have been done. Hey, Eowyn kicks some major butt and finishes the guy off, but Merry's wound was the fatal blow.

I think it's interesting that Merry stabbing the Witch King with the barrow blade, Mirrors Frodo being stabbed by the Witch King at Weathertop. Ultimate payback.

Agreed.  Sam's the man.
I really like the "Zen" qualities of Sam.  Ever humble, he's the "uncarved  block".  His lack of ego gives him great courage, and his humility allows him to see the most clearly of the Hobbits.

Arwen is a character in the books, but VERY peripheral. She is the girl back home for Aragorn.  Talk about a long engagement, they met when he was about 30 I believe, he's 87 at the time of TLOTRs.  He dies at 210 or thereabouts.  Arwen was born near the beginning of the third age and dies in the 121st year of the fourth age, one year after Aragorn dies.

While I would have liked to see more of the stuff they yanked to make room for the expanded Arwen storyline, I think it adds something to the Aragorn character to show him experiencing some emotional conflict over the relationship and what it will cost Arwen  (Arwen must choose between continuing life as an elf or becoming truly mortal.)  This choice is a gift to the half-elven descendants of Elrond's Beren and Luthien, allowing them to choose whether they would be counted among the elves or among mortals.  Elrond chose to be an elf, his brother Elros chose to be a man and founded Numenor, he is thus a distant ancestor of Aragorn who is a direct descendant of the kings of Numenor. Arwen also has the choice (since her father chose elvendom, if he had chosen humanity, well, she woiuld have died a couple thousand years ago a human without the choice.)  Arwen, like Luthien before her (whom Aragorn is singing of in the Fellowship) chooses mortality to be with Aragorn.

Knowing the backstory of all this adds a lot of dimensions and depth.

One of the bigger criticisms of Tolkien is that while he wrote a truly mythic story and built a true cosmology behind it with a vast history, his individual characters are a trifle flat.  They follow the lines of characters in the mythic stories of the past, but don't measure up to the level of internal development expected of modern authors.   Jackson has addressed some of that in the movies, but to do so he was required to explore some of his characters emotional lives a little more closely...mainly Aragorn and Faramir (at least through the Two Towers).  The majority of Aragorn's emotional life is invested in Arwen, thus Jackson needed to make the character of Arwen more real to us.  That required placing her actively in the story.

These are some of the compromises movie directors have to make that authors do not have to deal with since they have virtually unlimited time.

While I am not entirely certain I like all the changes Jackson made, I can deal with them and approve of the general product.

I would definately say that Sam was the Action Hero. Remember Frodo was the Ringbearer, even though it didn't allow him the opportunity to do some of the heroic things that Sam did. The task of bearing the ring to Mount Doom, is probably something few hobbits (no men, elves, wizards, or dwarves) could have done.

I think it's less about heros and more about friendship. Neither one could have done it alone, and they both had a major part to play, and each were meant (according to Gandalf) to play their specific part.

I could go on..... I love the story [:)]

Edited to add: Excellent post icemanat95!

I've heard that the Confrontation was kept for the extended DVD version.  Now to wait the 11 months until it gets released (sigh).

Tolkien was opposed to industrialization and technology, but it came from a conservative impulse rather than a liberal one. He was so conservative he was still carrying a grudge about the Norman invasion in 1066.

ok not to bust any bubbles...do you all think that 30 min or so could have been cut?

I don't think we needed to see every single beacon get lit...I got the idea after 3 - there was a large distance between the locations.
--------------------------
spoiler below
The charge on the river town by the men that got cut down by arrows - is it me or would you have considered an alternate attack? how about moving or changing direction? I like a good charge and understand the shortest distance between two points is a straight line...but those tactics sucked elf buttrack

The trolls and the seige machines and castle defense systems rocked...literally!


How did the main ugly-ass orc get it? I might have been trying to keep from peeing my pants and missed it.

Yeah, after a while of lighting signal fires I was thinkg, "It will take them a month to cover that distance!"

I understand what you are say and agree with you, but I don't see how he could be opposed to it per se(subconsiously?) when he portrays the good guys as being very technologically advanced (IE mining mithril and the things they did with it, it only turned bad when they got too GREEDY). They just handle there technology in the right way. The bad guys burn, break, rape and plunder in the name of industry.

JHP, Good point. I thought the burning towers were pretty cool, but I think I would have liked to see maybe something that was cut instead of 5 extra towers lighting up [:D].

They didn't show the Ugly Orc get it. I think it must of been cut, because it sure seemed like they were building up to it and it just never happened.

As opposed to the cute ones?  That just struck me as a tad redundant. [;)]

This thread is another reason why ARFCOM is so addictive.  I can't hear discussions like this with most of my coworkers & associates.

I'm willing to call it a tie.  Otherwise we'll expose ourselves as irredeemable Tolkien nerds, and on this forum, that could be...unpleasant.  [beer]  Interesting comparison of Weathertop vs. Pelennor - I hadn't seen that before.

Have a laugh.
http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/tolkien.fellowship.shtml
http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/tolkien.twotowers.shtml
http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/tolkien.returnking.shtml

[LOL][ROFL2]

You guys are killing me.

Okay, Okay, The ORC that-kind-of-looked-like-the-elephantman. Is that a better description.[:)]


trachnload, Okay, but I was just about to quote that passage in the appendaces where..............[run chubby fingers through greasy black hair and remove tape-repaired glass, right right I get your point [:D]]


But remember AR-15s etc are the weapons of the 4th age of middle earth. [:P]

That flail/mace looked like it was the size of a mini-cooper....thing was bad ass

Wasn't he run down in the Rohirren(sp?) charge?
I could be mistaken though...

Did anyone else think that the pink faced orc commander looked like Sloth from the Goonies?  I wanted to yell "HEY YOU GUYYYYYYS!" when he came on screen.

From what I've heard (all rumor so far) they did not even film the Scouring of the Shire, since it would seem a downer / anticlimactic at the end of the movie.

Sam was the hero of the book.  He was dedicated, loyal and unnerving in his quest to do the right thing by Mr. Frodo and the Ring.  He was "The Man".  Frodo would have failed on his quest without Sam.  However, keep in mind also that he would have failed without everyone else in The Fellowship.

Great book, great movie, great story.  I feel sorry for those that have not read the books or looked to criticize the movie instead of just sitting back and enjoying one hell of an experience.  

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a LOTR nerd about a month ago... I asked if Middle Earth was retarded because they went for over two thousand years with out any battlefield technological advances (comparing the battle in the prologue of Fellowship to the pitched battles in later movies)... I thought that they should have been fighting at at least a present day tech level (did they have a black death or dark age to slow them down?) Whatever maybe I've just been playing WAY too much Empire Earth.