Well, there's an awful lot of slogging across the Gorgoroth that doesn't get into the movie.

I would think that The Houses of Healing on their own would be at least 30 minutes.

But as cut, the chronology doesn't hold up.

Yeah, it's odd. They fixed the synch up between Shelob and the rest of the group, in that they now take place on-screen about when they'd take place in time, but then they compressed the hell out of the end-run and threw the timeline out of whack again.

Granted, the endless slog throught Mordor and "I can't go on...I must go on...it's so heavy..." is probably the hardest going for me these days on re-reading the books.

Well, there's an awful lot of slogging across the Gorgoroth that doesn't get into the movie.

No, before that -- the time in between when Frodo and Sam are saying "gee, that's a lot of orcs" and "hey, the orcs are moving, let's go!" doesn't seem to be that long, from their perspective. (Since they haven't moved at all.) But when you look at what happens to the other characters during that time (Pelennor Fields ends, Aragorn changes clothes, they make a plan to ride to the Black Gate, they do so), it just doesn't line up.

Oh. Yeah, that's true. (I'm sorry that they didn't put in the they're-mistaken-for-orcs scene, but then I might've had Where There's A Whip There's A Way flashbacks, so it's probably just as well.)

Lookit! Crying hobbits!

Awww, so sweet.

Granted, the endless slog throught Mordor and "I can't go on...I must go on...it's so heavy..." is probably the hardest going for me these days on re-reading the books.

Just so. 'It's cold. We don't have much Lembas left. My shoulder hurts. This ring is heavy.' When I read it the first time I would keep stopping to wonder if Tolkien was doing it deliberately to try and make reading about it as mind numbingly horrible as doing something about it. Now, I'm just. 'Yeah, suck it up and march, Shire Boy. Let's get to the good stuff.'

Although, let us have a moment of propers for when Sam throws away his pots, and throws them into a deep fissure to make sure Gollum won't get any of them. Like Gollum would know what to do with a pot, but the very idea of Sam crying over his pots, and casting away the last vestiges of his sense of civilization -- sob!

Also,

"Are we nearly there?" "I don't know, because I don't know where we're going."

I don't know how you make clear that it's a (really dry) Bataan Death March unless you make it sort of a death march for the reader, too.

I actually like that whole section quite a bit now. (As a kid I merrily skipped straight ahead to Mount Doom.)