Dana, one thing I thought the movies did very well was to convey a sense of the history of Middle-Earth.

Yeah, definitely. Anything where costumes or props were involved, basically.

Will you talk at all about the theatrical versions vs. the EEs? Because the EEs put a lot of book-stuff back in: Galadriel's gifts, and the song of the Entwives, things like that.

I don't know yet. I have two other questions to write, each vaguer than the LoTR one, and I have to figure out how much I can reasonably write and what constitutes a "well developed essay".

I think the biggest improvement in the EEs over the theatrical versions is the extra Faramir stuff in TTT, with maybe the extended hobbit intro in FoTR running second.

A couple other changes that I don't think are entirely necessary and didn't improve it as a movie:

Treebeard not being aware of what was happening to his own forest, and the Entmoot ending with a refusal of help.

Frodo sending Sam away after Gollum set him up.

Sam not being a ring-bearer.

I would have liked to see Sam being tempted by the ring, with the vision of him using the power to turn Mordor into a garden.

A lot of the changes I saw were made to personalize the various conflicts, and to remove ambiguities that would either slow down the action or confuse the viewer. For instance, there's much less looming sense of doom in the movie: there is no Darkness steaming out of Mordor, no gathering of Gondor's forces, and very little competence shown in Minas Tirith.

That, I think, ties back to the need to keep the focus on Aragorn and Gandalf as Heroes who save the day, when in fact it was Aragorn and Gandalf, and the Rohirrim, and Imrahil and the men of Dol Amroth, and the men of Lebennin that Aragorn brought with him on the ships, and the men of the city guard. And the Rangers, who I miss, because they give Aragorn a people and a personal history that isn't just about Elves and isn't just about his Great Destiny.

I don't like the use of the Dead for these reasons as well: they make the final victory of the Pelennor a lot less painful and difficult than it really was. They helped, but then they went away, and it was living men (and women) who won the battle.

Oh, and I'm reminded that a lot of stuff seems to be moved around in order to construct emotional climaxes, if that makes any sense. For instance, they reforge Narsil before they leave Rivendell, and it's not really given much weight in the books, whereas in the movies, it's very tied to Aragorn's own choice and his decision to take on his destiny.

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.

But Matt, wouldn't they have had to change the way she spoke throughout the movies, and then how the rest of Rohan spoke, to make it seem like battle didn't make her break out into Shakespeare?

Would it have worked to maintain more of the speech while losing some of the ancient diction?

I am no living man! You look upon a woman! I am Eowyn, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin, and I will strike you down if you touch him!

I don't think they could use "smite" there.

I think that the greatest loss was the entire interior dialogue Sam has in "The Choices of Master Samwise," but they really couldn't change the entire style of the trilogy to include it, sad to say. It would have bizarre to have Sam suddenly having this entire soliloquy in the midst of tons of Orcs/Uruks, so they had to move his low point to an exterior conflict to fit with the rest of the story, thus "Go home, Sam."

One of the things that they really did a good job of keeping in the pictures was the sense of things passing, of an end to the age of Elves and the rest of the wonders of Middle Earth, especially if you keep in mind the FotREE scene of the Elves travelling to the Grey Havens.

Well, "strike you down" avoids the whole you can't kill something that's undead problem, which we've talked over once or twice.

For me, generally speaking, the problem with the scene wasn't the lines, but the arc and meaning behind it. She could have said kill or smite or tickle-to-death, but movie-Eowyn was on the battle plain for a different reason from book-Eowyn, and I'm a little bitter about that difference. Movie-Eowyn was saying, "Hey, I love that guy, he's mine, you can't have him, although I'm afraid." Book-Eowyn was saying, "Please kill me right in front of my king, so that my death will gain some meaning thereby."

I was always painfully moved when she woke up in the Houses of Healing and realized that she had failed to die.

What is Merry's thought when he sees her, "She should not die, so alone, so ..." gah, what is it! The death itself wasn't the big deal, but the way of the death.

I don't think they could use "smite" there.

And it was "smite" that I missed the most. It doesn't sound right without "smite."

I really missed the Scouring as a way to point up the changes Frodo underwent; I get why it wasn't there, and honestly by that point in the movie if I'd had to see one more battle scene I would've screamed, but I thought it made Frodo's choice to go to the Havens harder to buy.

Playing off of the thing about costumes/sets/etc., one of the things I love best about the movies is how respectful they are of fantasy. I never got the feeling that anyone was snicking up their sleeve about it, you know? The creators took the story seriously.