<\/p>\n
As I mentioned last week, my two older grandsons (grammar school and middle school vintage) stayed over last Saturday to watch the trilogy in one sitting. We were gonna sit back and relax and be catered to by their grandmother (Camera Girl) while the War of the Ring unfolded on the big flat screen.<\/p>\n
First observation, that\u2019s a hell of a lot of movie watching time. Even breaking it up for snacks, bathroom breaks and meals, that\u2019s a long time.\u00a0 Even young people started to show the strain of sitting there and watching this epic.\u00a0 It\u2019s a solid eleven hours of Tolkienian viewing.\u00a0 At one point I started to lose consciousness and was forced to splash cold water on my face (a la Sam Gamgee in Ithilien) and down a mug of strong coffee.\u00a0 I think the roughest stretch was the Ents.\u00a0 Their slow monotonous voices lulled me into a stupor.\u00a0 But with caffeine and sugar we were able to persevere and win our way through.<\/p>\n
Alright, how did the movies do on representing the main characters? Aragorn is excellent.\u00a0 Boromir and Faramir are very, very good.\u00a0 Theoden starts out a little weak but finishes off very strong.\u00a0 The Charge of the Rohirrim is one of, if not the<\/u> high point of the movie.\u00a0 Eowyn and Eomer are very good.\u00a0 I especially liked Eowyn\u2019s Dirge for her cousin Theodred.\u00a0 I read afterward that it was sung in Old English.\u00a0 I found it a very stirring lament without even understanding a word of it.\u00a0 Eowyn\u2019s attraction to Aragorn was handled extremely well.\u00a0 It was neither exaggerated nor played down.\u00a0 It worked.\u00a0 Gandalf was mostly very well done.\u00a0 Only a few scenes weren\u2019t spot on and those were still fine.\u00a0 Legolas and Gimli were played for laughs quite a bit.\u00a0 Maybe sometimes that was overdone.\u00a0 But the characters were enjoyable and added a good deal to the action.\u00a0 The overuse of Arwen (e.g., substituting her for Glorfindel in the Ride to the River) was sometimes annoying but the love story between her and Aragorn was on the whole a positive element of the plot.\u00a0 Elrond was pretty good.\u00a0 Galadriel and Celeborn were awful.\u00a0 Treebeard was pretty good.\u00a0 Denethor was a travesty.\u00a0 They turned him into a crass vindictive petty man.\u00a0 He was not that in the story.\u00a0 Sam was good.\u00a0 So were Merry and Pippin.\u00a0 Saruman was pretty good.\u00a0 But the substitution of his death at Orthanc to the Scouring of the Shire was disappointing.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Frodo. Frodo was way too lame.\u00a0 My recollection from reading the books is that his behavior was weak and subdued, especially after the Ring began to get a grip on him.\u00a0 But in the movie he\u2019s in a constant state of stupefied depression.\u00a0 With the exception of the scene in Moria where he gets skewered fighting the Troll he is practically a basket case most of the time.\u00a0 Also the scene of Frodo waking up in Minas Tirith after being rescued by the Eagles is embarrassing to watch.\u00a0 The rest of the Hobbits and the Fellowship are reasonably emotional at the meeting but the expressions that Sam and Frodo exhibit when Sam enters the room are down-right creepy.\u00a0 Granted the hobbits are somewhat childlike in their demeanor and behavior, but this bordered on feminine.\u00a0 Not good.<\/p>\n
In the next part of this review I\u2019ll go into what I thought worked well in the movies and what didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I mentioned last week, my two older grandsons (grammar school and middle school vintage) stayed over last Saturday to watch the trilogy in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[400,388,186],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-lord-of-the-rings-film-marathon","tag-tolkien"],"yoast_head":"\n