Anyway, into the whitefont:

Only crypoint: Aragorn and all of Gondor bowing down before the Hobbitses.

Jagged Narrative Elision: They're in Isengaard and then...they're all frolicking in Rohan. I got confused.

Straight Up Asspull: Arwen has Summers blood? With the ring and the thing. As already noted.

Cheese Factor (with asspull penumbra): I know it's in the books, but "We're horribly outnumbered. It is hopeless. Oh look, fifteen feet away is a bad mountain filled with ghost warriors who happen to owe me fealty. Dude! Let's get some green guys." Also, the eagles were cheesy. I don't know why they were and a giant spider wasn't, but...Gee that's an awfully convenient and unearned narrative conceit.

Foxtrot Factor: So many teen girls in my audience ka-shrieking over Orlando with teenbopper fervor. It was cute and distracting.

Most Beautiful Goth Madonna: When Sam pulled the spider web off Frodo's face. He looked so pale and beautiful and corrupted.

Frodo: Hero or Abject Loserino? Concur with JRRT's description. An impossible task and Frodo is redeemed by his act of mercy. However, when Bilbo asks after the ring at the end, Frodo very tellingly says "I lost it" not "I destroyed it." I thought at first that was to spare Bilbo - which it did - but I think it is also exactly what Frodo felt. Loss.

Vets and junkies: For much of the movie I did view Frodo's relationship with the ring as very junkie-like. Ditto on Gollum as the older junkie. However, at the end I felt the more immediate parallel was that Frodo was like a young man returning from WWI who saw so many horrors that he could never really re-integrate into his small towns. He was darkened. That is the look on Gandalf's face at the Council when Frodo takes up the task. He knows that it is Frodo's innocence and goodness which must be sacrificed (and probably Frodo's life). Frodo will always feel like he failed because he submitted to the ring in the end.

Character Arcs: The three characters whose stories really move in this movie are Pippin, Sam and Eowyn. All three beautifully portrayed - as everybody has already raved. Though I had imagined Eowyn being a little less shaky while facing down the Witch King.

Battles and warrior thrills: For sheer spectacle the Riders of Rohan massing was beautiful. But at a certain point the scale was a problem. I thought Helm's Deep was far more exciting, and the individual fights in FoTR better still. Legolas v. the Oliphaunt was cool only because Aragorn nods at the Oliphaunt, tilts his head at it, says "Legolas!" and SuperElf steps up and takes it out. However, since it was all one big CGI-fest it was much less thrilling to me than Legolas human-sized moves in FoTR. Most exciting feats of bravery with a blade were Sam v. Shelob, and Eowyn lopping the head off the fell beast (moreso than poking the Witch King in the face. Frankly that scene is a big ol' object lesson in how not to be an Evil Overlord).

Raquel says... that Gollum twirling around on invisible Frodo was unfortunately laugh making, and yeah that was bad. Also Denethor's lighting of the Olympic Torch Run Gone Awry. The Eye of Sauron's double-takes were pretty goofy too (as Jessimoon noted).

Which is not to say... that the cheesiness is all bad. I liked very much that they picked a big geeky horror film director for this project because it was juicy and wet. The big emotions and the main themes were there, and the attention to detail was fantastic and an absolute gift. So I can forgive many of the instances of cheese. They're just still cheesy.

Hec: wrod.

Hec, I agree with you re: the asspullishness of the eagles showing up, except for a couple of things, which is (a) that the novel explicitly refers back to their appearance in The Hobbit at the climactic moment, and (b) that they were used once previously in this version, albeit not recently.

That said, I think it would have worked better if Gandalf had had his little visit with the moth more than 30 seconds before the eagles showed up. Like, maybe in Minas Tirith? Set up, it's all about the set up.

It was a fast moth. Jet-powered.

Set up, it's all about the set up.

That's what I'm saying. And I'm pretty sure those set-ups will appear (sometimes subtly) in the extended edition. Even more than the missing scenes, what you get out of the extended edition is more clarity on character motives, and more sense out of narrative pivot points. Ultimately PJ was forced to work with "these things have to happen and I don't always have room for setting them up properly because I've only got three hours."

That noted, the first hour was glacially slow and very little happened. It was, as JessiMoon noted, an awful lot of Portent and Massing.

Oh yeah, the other thing that always improves in the extended editions is the pacing. I thought RoTK had serious pacing problems.

The problem, I think, is that all the stuff that got cut because it's extraneous to the main storylines of the Fellowship characters becomes problematic because in the books those thing make sense in the final battles. Without them it's just... Yay! Ghost Pirates to the Rescue and such. Again, just acknowleding that the 30 hour version was the only real solution for some of these problems. Not a fault so much with PJ or Tolkien.

I thought RoTK had serious pacing problems.

Agreed. Also, a couple of not-plot-related logic problems. Like how cavalry works, O Ye People Of Horses, and why Minas Tirith has a heliport at all. And if it does, why it has no fence around the part of it that leads to a 500 foot sheer drop! Hello!

Actually, in order to include some scenes to a length I thought excessive, other scenes, which I thought more iconic and mythic and cool, had to be chopped or cut entirely. That bothered me. But it does leave open the hope of remedy, for some at least.

(And again, in fairness to Tolkien, I'm as viscerally disturbed by the Grendel's mother stuff, the Fall of Man being Eve's fault, and pretty much all the historical blame shifting to we the womanfolk. It's a thing. Damn it.)

I chalked this up to his Catholicism thing.

I thought RoTK had serious pacing problems.

Me too. I didn't have a problem with the Massing and the Portent, actually -- although Gandalf's endless exposition can get wearing. I thought the pacing problems were in the second half, where all the Things Which Must Happen were kind of jammed in together. And there were bits that I thought deserved more buildup, but I'm getting hung up on my knowledge of the books and where the tension came from there, which is different than the movie, so I'll shutup.

Actually, in order to include some scenes to a length I thought excessive, other scenes, which I thought more iconic and mythic and cool, had to be chopped or cut entirely.

Yes, this. But I am as one with Nutty on much of this.