suddenly it hit me that Gandalf knows everything that Frodo will go through, all the suffering, and he has to let him go.

Kate, I noticed today that, when Mt. Doom erupts after Barad-dur falls and everyone at the Morannan understands that Frodo and Sam are doomed, if not already dead, we see Merry and Pippin both sobbing. But we also see Gandalf, with one tear rolling down his right cheek--a neat parallel to Frodo's tear after Gandalf's fall in Moria .

Katie, yes.

His strength failed at the end, but his mission was a success. I'm not religious, but Mount Doom is one of my very favorite examples in literature of God's grace - go as far as you can, and grace will bring you the rest of the way.

Beautifully put. I'm not a religious person either, in the sense of going to church or temple or believing in any specific god or the trappings of any specific religion. I've often felt that I get the same thing from books like LOTR that others get from the Bible. To put it another way: I learn how to live my life from Frodo and Sam and various characters from other books, the way some people live their lives by Jesus's example. I hope I'm not offending anyone, but Frodo and Jesus are both real to me as mythic figures, and Jesus isn't any more real for having 2,000 years of followers behind him.

And on a totally different note from my last post, I thought Figwit stood for "Frodo is great--who is that?" and referred to what some people thought as they watched that scene (oh, Frodo is so brave and wonderful and--hello, hot stuff!).

Kate, that could be it, too. But for some reason, when someone explained it to me on the TORn boards two years ago, it was also to do with the man's expressions during the scene.

I could be wrong, though. It's been two years since I had it explained to me. I'd almost forgotten about Figwit entirely.

Oh, and two other parallels between films:

(1) When Sam rescues Frodo in the tower at Cirith Ungol, Frodo says, "I'm sorry, Sam, I'm sorry for everything," a neat reprise of Bilbo's line after going all CGI on Frodo in Rivendell.

(2) Sam grabs Frodo's hand in Mt. Doom, duplicating the shot of Frodo grabbing Sam's in the river at the end of FotR.

A great series of interviews are available over at chud.com (this is where I got the musical info on Billy Boyd ). Richard Taylor mentions that they were originally contracted to do 840 effects shots for RotK, and they ended up delivering 1,490!

A quote from Ngila Dickson:

Q: Weren’t you designing for Stuart Townsend first before Viggo?

Ngila: You know, it was terrifying. I didn’t know Viggo. It had been a pretty difficult time working through with Stuart. What had happened was the original design for the costume of Aragorn and the costume of Aragorn during the period with Stuart went through a number of radical changes. And at the very end of that process, it became again the original costume. And that was only one of those things that you discover when you find those old drawings again. And it was something that I had really, really loved and suddenly they’re like, “Well, Stuart’s gone and we’ve got this guy.” And so the day, which was a week after the shoot of course, was the day that Viggo walked into my little cupboard of a wardrobe dressing room. And neither of us was sort of saying very much. He’s a very quiet person and sometimes I’m a very quiet person over issues like that. “I’ll just get you to put this on and we’ll see what happens.” And I was standing there and it was like my heart was in my mouth because I was actually willing to begin the whole process again because I know how much it matters. You cannot act a role like that, you could not do a movie that big without feeling like you were in your second skin as that character. And I was certainly prepared to do it, but there was a part of me that was looking out the door of the wardrobe department was knee deep in trouble. And Viggo kind of paced up and down and then he said, “Do you think we could just put a few more ties on these boots?” And it was like in that moment, I had known when he put the costume on that it was 10 times better on him. And that was actually to do with the amount of- - just Viggo’s age and experience in life. He imbued already that costume with its own life. The terrifying thing for me was that I might have an actor that just simply wanted to get rid of it, but he did not do that. All he wanted to do was to add to it. So, I was in love with Viggo from that moment.

Huh. So I'm the only one here lukewarm on EW in this one? (I thought his acting was phenomenal in FotR, and has been getting steadily weaker ever since.)

Figwit is the acronym for the audience's reaction, not the actor's. You can buy his album (with "Frodo" on it) here.

Hmmm... I'd say it was a much narrower range that he was asked to play -- Astin is the one whose range was broadened. In a sense, what is happening to Frodo is that the Ring is eating away at his personality, his character. Gollum/Smeagol got the majority of this character arc in TTT, Sam in RotK.

I didn't want to see more range, I wanted to see more...maturity, I guess. I didn't feel his performance here. It seemed very mechanical to me.

Saw the movie. Did the Grand Nitpick with my brother. Felt the better for it (got it out of my system). Will see again soon.

So many little things I wanted to see, and didn't, but so many other little things I was sadly expecting to be cut out, that weren't. A mix of thrilling and brief WTFery. Don't know why Minas Tirith has a helipad. Very odd, that.

I recognized Christian Rivers just as the signal-fire sequence got underway, and in a strange way it felt more like mine, you know? Like, Oh, I like that guy, I pull for him and for his city, and the sequence had more power than if he'd been Random Gondor Guy. Good cameo. Especially as -- Brother noted this -- in some ways we're not in Minas Tirith long enough to give a care about its inhabitants. No Ioreth or Beregond or anyone small to relate to. Just Christian Rivers, possibly the only other person in the movie who didn't need a wig.

The length of the Minas Tirith Helipad meant that Denethor ran about 2 football fields in flames before taking his swan dive. "So passes Denethor..." indeed, right under your nose, and you didn't offer your voluminous robes to stifle the fire, did you? Minor detail, that on some thought is vaguely funny.

I wasn't expecting them to keep the part where Sam lifts Frodo up on his back. I was so pleasantly surprised when that bit of hauling happened.

Last comment for now, and a snark at that: When Elrond came in and said "Arwen is dying", I didn't go into immediate WTFery. No, I was flashing back to Anya saying, "I'm dying! I only have 40 or 50 years left!!" and it made me chuckle. Till I realized it wasn't that kind of dying that Elrond meant.