So Billy Boyd can make me cry again.

I hate him. I really do. Running around in the extras acting all bouncy and chipper and stuff, and goofy Pip in the first two movies.

And then wham. Bring in da angst, bring in da pain.

Bastidge.

You know what else wasn't in the movie? The "We shall see the Shire again" line from the trailer. I think it was supposed to be in the scene where Merry says goodbye to Pippin before he rides off to Minas Tirith with Gandalf.

That was replaced in pickups with "We'll see each other again soon...won't we, Merry?" "I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen." Which I think is better than "We shall see the Shire again." Especially since Merry was so damn pale here.

Someone over at C-O-E mentioned "the way that the Ring floats on a bit of -- oh dear how to put it -- roast Gollum, so that the mountain doesn't explode until after Frodo get pulled up," and someone else made a very good point:

>Which I don't think was a coincidence. I like to think that the Ring was still floating there and sort of "calling out" to Frodo even as he hung there, and the decision to reach up and grab Sam's hand at last (I think that *is* a very conscious decision on Frodo's part) is Frodo's real act of freeing himself from the Ring. In a way, it makes the movie Frodo even stronger in that scene than the book Frodo, who has it totally taken out of his hands by Gollum.

kathy in the book, if I recall, after Frodo has the ring taken from him, he pretty much just falls down in a heap and Gollum cavorts himself off the edge. Frodo fighting for the Ring was a wee bit upsetting--I'm invested in cute-rumpled-Frodo, sue me, Evil!Frodo isn't as pretty for me as one would hope--but it makes more sense that two beings that have given themselves over to the Ring would fight for possession.

Sam's "Don't you dare let go", said in that no-nonsense, I'm-giving-you-an-order voice--damn shame I was out of Kleenex by that point.

No to the first one; it wasn't even filmed. Yes to the second one.

I can live with that. Thanks for the information.

Entertainment Weekly's new issue is the Entertainer(s) of the Year, and guess who's #1? Yes, the cast from Return of the King!! Very cool.

Kathy, thanks for quoting that Mippin exchange. NOT. Now I'm all squiggly again.

Dom just totally sells that line, and like I said, Merry's paleness is so obvious--he's completely freaked over the danger to Pippin.

To lighten up the tone and quote a certain wizard: "Hobbits!"

WRT the choreography at the end, you should never ever do in the movie what they did in Bored of the Rings, and it got perilously close. But honestly, I rewrite that scene for Tolkein a bit too.

I've been reviewing all the inconsistencies in the movies with some diehard Tolkeinites, and don't really need to share them here. But we all agreed that we belong to the Church of Tolkein, and learned how to live and behave as people from how the characters comport themselves, and a lot of that was lost in the translation to screen. As a key point, my non-fan friends that went to the Trilogy thought that the Rohirrim were morally ambiguous, due to running the wild men off their land, and that the orcs were equal to the heroes for being willing to die for a cause and trying to bring about the time of the orc (vice the Age of Man).

Going back to the discussion point we talked about upthread ( about whether Frodo failed or succeeded in his quest ) I've since realized that my theory wasn't original. In one of JRRT's letters, he states in no uncertain terms that the task of destroying the Ring was an impossible one and that Frodo’s success was in his pity for Gollum.

In one of the History of Middle Earth books, there's a great quote from Gandalf about Frodo and Sam: ""... I name before you all Frodo of the Shire and Samwise his servant. And the bards and minstrels should give them new names: Bronwe athan Harthad and Harthad Uluithiad, Endurance Beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable." This was reflected so well in the movie, I thought!

Also to do with tone:

GANDALF: "I will not say do not cry for all tears are not an evil."

Oh, Merry/Dom was brilliant there. He'd definitely become very aware of the import of everything, and couldn't even lie or waffle to be reassuring.