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Okay, I've seen it twice now....
I think it actually would be a better movie-going experience if you had *not* read the books going in. I think Jackson did a great job of maintaining suspense -- at no point did the outcome seem inevitable.
I have decided that Legolas is some sort of litmus test: either you find him sexy and elvishly alluring, or incredibly annoying. I fall into the latter camp. Which is interesting, because a year ago I would have gone the other way.
I wish Gimli had had more screen time -- John Rhys-Davies is a good actor. (And if anyone caught the picture of the Fellowship crew in the year-end Entertainment Weekly, he was the only one not pictured, being replaced in the photo by Liv Tyler -- which is so unfair, as he had pretty much the same screen time as Orlando Bloom. Speaking of that EW picture, most of the cast looks better in the movie than they do in real life -- except for Dominic Monahan (Merry), who looks really hot with short hair and a beard, and Orlando Bloom, who actually is much more attractive with curly brown hair.)
I was highly put out that they left out the fight over the Shire. Given what was shown in Galadriel's mirror to Sam in FotR, I was sure they would include it. My sister, on the other hand, was upset that they left out the meeting of Faramir and Eowyn (she has an Eowyn fetish) in the Houses of Healing.
Gandlaf's moving speech to Pippin about what happens after we die is consistent with the entire mythos of Middle Earth as developed by Tolkien (which was heavily influenced by his Roman Catholicism), but I cannot remember it actually being in the LotR books (it sounds more like something from The Silmarillion).
IMHO, the best acting job for a non-Fellowship role was Bernard Hill as Theoden. (I also really like David Wenham's job as Faramir, but that might be because he is so nice to look at. Yum.) I thought John Noble's Denethor was a little over the top.
I liked the fact that, unlike in the book, Merry knew from the get-go that Eowyn was helping him to battle, not mistaking her for some young soldier only to find out her identity on the battlefield. I think it makes more sense.
Billing for movies continues to mystify me: Cate Blanchett gets pretty high billing for this, even though she has five minutes total screen time, tops.
I liked the "Arwen's dying" minor subplot. Even though I generally find Arwen a very annoying character. Maybe because of that.
Great movies are remarkable in not just how they handle the big things -- battles, love scenes, the like -- but how they manage the smaller moments. There were two scenes in this movie that I would go sit through the entire thing again to see, even though they totalled about five or six minutes of screen time.
One was when Pippin sings to Denethor. The pain and sorrow that comes through the song, intercut with Denethor eating and Faramir's charge towards Osgiliath, I found heartrending. (Billy Boyd has a nice voice, too. And according to IMdB.com, Billy Boyd composed the song he sang for the movie.)
The other may well be my favorite scene in the movie (and I'm probably totally alone in this): the lighting of the beacons of Gondor. Not the scene when Pippin lights the beacon at Minas Tirith, although that was a good scene, but the following two or three minutes where they show the spread of the beacons across the frontier. It is visually a wonderful piece of cinema, coupled with that lovely soaring music by Howard Shore.
Sigh. I think this is a very very good, maybe great, movie on its own merits, and combined with the other two is a incredible accomplishment. I can hardly wait for the three movie, extended footage DVD box-set to come out : >
I think it actually would be a better movie-going experience if you had *not* read the books going in. I think Jackson did a great job of maintaining suspense -- at no point did the outcome seem inevitable.
I have decided that Legolas is some sort of litmus test: either you find him sexy and elvishly alluring, or incredibly annoying. I fall into the latter camp. Which is interesting, because a year ago I would have gone the other way.
I wish Gimli had had more screen time -- John Rhys-Davies is a good actor. (And if anyone caught the picture of the Fellowship crew in the year-end Entertainment Weekly, he was the only one not pictured, being replaced in the photo by Liv Tyler -- which is so unfair, as he had pretty much the same screen time as Orlando Bloom. Speaking of that EW picture, most of the cast looks better in the movie than they do in real life -- except for Dominic Monahan (Merry), who looks really hot with short hair and a beard, and Orlando Bloom, who actually is much more attractive with curly brown hair.)
I was highly put out that they left out the fight over the Shire. Given what was shown in Galadriel's mirror to Sam in FotR, I was sure they would include it. My sister, on the other hand, was upset that they left out the meeting of Faramir and Eowyn (she has an Eowyn fetish) in the Houses of Healing.
Gandlaf's moving speech to Pippin about what happens after we die is consistent with the entire mythos of Middle Earth as developed by Tolkien (which was heavily influenced by his Roman Catholicism), but I cannot remember it actually being in the LotR books (it sounds more like something from The Silmarillion).
IMHO, the best acting job for a non-Fellowship role was Bernard Hill as Theoden. (I also really like David Wenham's job as Faramir, but that might be because he is so nice to look at. Yum.) I thought John Noble's Denethor was a little over the top.
I liked the fact that, unlike in the book, Merry knew from the get-go that Eowyn was helping him to battle, not mistaking her for some young soldier only to find out her identity on the battlefield. I think it makes more sense.
Billing for movies continues to mystify me: Cate Blanchett gets pretty high billing for this, even though she has five minutes total screen time, tops.
I liked the "Arwen's dying" minor subplot. Even though I generally find Arwen a very annoying character. Maybe because of that.
Great movies are remarkable in not just how they handle the big things -- battles, love scenes, the like -- but how they manage the smaller moments. There were two scenes in this movie that I would go sit through the entire thing again to see, even though they totalled about five or six minutes of screen time.
One was when Pippin sings to Denethor. The pain and sorrow that comes through the song, intercut with Denethor eating and Faramir's charge towards Osgiliath, I found heartrending. (Billy Boyd has a nice voice, too. And according to IMdB.com, Billy Boyd composed the song he sang for the movie.)
The other may well be my favorite scene in the movie (and I'm probably totally alone in this): the lighting of the beacons of Gondor. Not the scene when Pippin lights the beacon at Minas Tirith, although that was a good scene, but the following two or three minutes where they show the spread of the beacons across the frontier. It is visually a wonderful piece of cinema, coupled with that lovely soaring music by Howard Shore.
Sigh. I think this is a very very good, maybe great, movie on its own merits, and combined with the other two is a incredible accomplishment. I can hardly wait for the three movie, extended footage DVD box-set to come out : >