"Floop," suggested the tar pit.

Just watched LOTR:ROTK/EE.  Not sharing the Blue-Eyed Infidel's Eomer obsession (but agreeing with her regarding Foul Ol' Sauron's Creepy Lawyer), I offer a few observations of my own here:
First, as one would expect from the first two films, it's a great movie if you haven't read the book.  If you're a Tolkien geek, the plot and character changes are horribly distracting.
For one thing, The Scouring of the Shire is missing.  That's an important part of the story!  The hobbits need to learn that they can stand up for themselves, without the help of wizards and kings!  There are a lot of hobbits in the world today who need to learn this!
OK, so (1) that chapter maybe didn't fit in the theater version, and (2) it's precluded by having Wormtongue kill Saruman at Orthanc.  However, (1') the extended edition could have had room for it, and (2') as I understand it, Saruman wasn't in the theater edition anyway, so there wasn't an existing scene that would have needed rewriting.
With Frodo all webbed up, it sure looks like Sam didn't take the Ring.  Yes, having the audience, as well as Frodo, think the Ring was lost is good drama, but we miss The Last Temptation of Samwise, and showing Frodo still so webbed up that Sam couldn't have taken the Ring is cheating.
Gandalf speaks to Pippin of what is beyond death.  Eh?  Even the Valar don't know what becomes of Mortals after they die; I would presume this to be true of Hobbits as well as Men.
I guess Sauron's Lawyer must be an undead, as must the Nazgul King of Angmar's flying beastie: neither bleeds much when his/its head is lopped off.  (Yeah, I suppose it just wouldn't do to have fountains of blood from the villains when the heroes kill them.  Untidy.)
Character changes... Denethor seems crazier than I remember from the book.  The whole Arwin/Elrond Aragorn-antipathy complex is weird and unnecessary.  Also, after establishing Arwen as a strong character, by substituting her for Glorfindel at the beginning, why then make her so weak for the rest of the story?
The special effects were, as expected, spectacular and well integrated, and nothing struck me as out of place or overdone (in contrast to the notably overdone FX for Galadriel in FOTR).
Hint for Aragorn: sheathe your sword before running on a pile of tumbling skulls.  You'll trip and put somebody's eye out with that thing.
So maybe I'm in a picky mood today.

(Foo faddle.  I found a link to "Nazgul King of Angmar" (tune of "Bastard King of England"), but it's 404.  I think I have hardcopy around somewhere, but that's not hyperlinkable.)

Update: serious nitpickery here.

Comments

[Tom]

Even all these years later, the Arwen/Glorfindel thing is still irksome. The one thing the Ralph Bakshi animated LOTR did right was substituting Legolas there. It eliminated the need for an extraneous Film Glorfindel without having to create an extraneous Film Arwen, and it slightly broke up the flood of new characters at the Council of Elrond. Doing something WORSE than Ralph Bakshi is an embarrassment of the first order.

But I guess I should really just let it go.