semperfiona | Comments, nitpicks, raves...Lord of the Rings

The spoilers get worse as you read down the page.

On the whole, fannish nitpicks or not--and I am a fan, I've read the series over 30 times through--it was absolutely wonderful and I'm delighted by the results. I want to see the next two NOW! I want Peter Jackson to film The Hobbit! I want to go back and watch the movie five more times so that I can just enjoy it without comparing it to the books scene-by-scene.

Yes, I would go to a theatre to see all three in a row. And yes, between this and Harry Potter I am buying a DVD player, no matter what I have to do to pay for it.

A plea to all the gods: let this thing set the bar for future fantasy movies. Don't let its success produce a sudden flood of dreck.

Viggo Mortensen is gorgeous as Aragorn. I didn't think so at first, but he grew on me.

The scenery was absolutely breathtaking. New Zealand just moved way up on my list of 'places I want to go someday'

If you've read this far and you haven't seen it yet, stop reading and go to the theatre!

I thought the introductory history segment was very well done and appropriately placed. Drew complained that Gil-galad and Elendil were missing from the battle, but I think they were there, we just didn't know who they were. There were several people who died at Isildur's side just before he took the Ring, and we saw him take the crown. We didn't specifically have Gil-galad pointed out, but I'm sure he was there.

Why on earth would our local reviewer have said stupid things like "As brave Aragorn, whose father had been corrupted by the ring, Mortensen embodies the swashbuckling might of the righteous, while as his ambitious kinsman Baromir, Bean conveys the eternal anguish of the tempted." Isildur wasn't Aragorn's father, a) they said it was 2500 years ago, and b) they gave Aragorn's father's name! And it's Boromir, damn it!

"Let's hunt some orc" isn't nearly as ringing a phrase as "Forth the three hunters!"

I'm glad they added the detail about Saruman and his plots, even though it was entirely off-camera, so to speak, in the original. Saruman was spooky scary, just as he should be.

I have no problem with giving Arwen the actions that belonged to Glorfindel. It helped to make her a more real person than what Tolkien gave us. If there are any faults in his novels, it is the lack of female characters overall. Arwen is pretty much a cipher; Galadriel appears briefly, has some wise advice and then does nothing, despite being a wielder of one of the Three; Eowyn is really the only woman who does anything or grows and changes in any way as a character.

Goblins and orcs are the same thing. Saruman didn't cross goblins and orcs, he crossed humans and orcs.