Actually, I think that they specified that the spiders they modelled Shelob on were NZ's tunnel spiders, not the Australian funnel web ones. Christian Rivers tells about getting some from his home garden and bringing them in, which was an effort on his part considering he himself is a bit of an arachnophobe.

It's pretty clear that the reason why the spider passages are so frightening is that not only was Tolkien arachnophobic but so is Peter Jackson.

Cereal to add: Tunnel-web spider from NZ: [link]

Funnel web spider from Australia: [link]

t avoiding Kathy's links with the fervor of a holy martyr

New Zealand, Australia--big-assed spiders mean no visits from me.

Aww, but New Zealand also has the weta!

Oh, I watched from Book to Script last night and I enjoyed seeing two of the other "endings" -- how people would have complained had they actually had endings for each member of the Fellowship. ( It shows Gimli working with a gem and Legolas wandering in an forest. . .perhaps Fangorn? )

Oh, and watch the Cameras doc for sure, especially the bit about Sam's wedding! Let's just say that Sam and Rosie weren't the only two kissing on set that day...

I just about fell out of my chair. I imagine that the RPS folk are having a field day right about now.

Nutty, why is Aragorn lying in that speech? I'd thought it apparent that Sauron didn't have the ring, because then his army wouldn't actually be massing to fight. It wouldn't have to. So things weren't over.

(In the novel, that battle begins with all of the good guys totally convinced they will be slaughtered pointlessly, and nobody questions the idea that Sauron would slaughter a bunch of upstart humans, just for shits and giggles, before going on to stomp the rest of the world with his might.)

In fact, we don't know what the ring would do on Sauron's hand -- in the movieverse, we know it doesn't make him invisible, and we can guess it makes him pretty scary, and have a nice strong swing. There are certain implications that he can make armies quail, but even in the battle at Barad-dur in the FOTR prologue, it is his army (plus him) against the Last Alliance army, and there's plenty of hand-to-hand.

So even if Sauron did have the ring at that moment, his army would probably still have had a major role to play; and I don't think Sauron would bluff that way except he thought he could pull it off -- so both Sauron and the good guys were presumably on the same page, where the necessity of armies is concerned.

Who was it that said that Frodo wasn't dead? Who yelled that?

Pippin?