[Lord of Angmar]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> The final confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman is tense and exciting and satisfies the wish of the viewer to know how Saruman was deal with. The whole breaking of the staff could have been moved from Orthanc to the Shire if time was a problem.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I absolutely agree. I do not agree, however, with many of the other points you made. And I do not agree that Peter Jackson is an entirely unsubtle, action-obsessed buffoon as you are unambiguously implying. Tolkien's works are not exactly studies in subtlety, nor do all of the devices in his plot translate well onto the big screen.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>These films have been badly directed, end of story.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>No, that is not the end of the story. Though I may have started this thread to point out the faults of the <I>Lord of the Rings</I> moviemakers (mostly directed towards New Line Cinemas as opposed to Peter Jackson), I now grow weary of the bashing that Peter Jackson has been taking on these fora and, for that matter, all over the web. To say that he has been utterly incompetent in the creation of these movies is a statement of ignorance. Peter Jackson faced the difficult challenges of dealing with skeptical, profit-mongering executives and trying to keep an enormous, unprecented group of actors and professionals focused for an extremely extended period of time, all while trying to please mass audiences as well as Tolkien purists with source material whose complexities and pacing make for an immeasurably difficult translation onto celluloid. The films contain a high level of technical and personal achievement from special effects/costume and set designers and cast members, respectively. Although Peter Jackson did take many (often, granted, seemingly unwarranted) liberties with the storyline, the themes, character motivations and overall feeling of the books, in my own humble opinion, still shine through. To say that these films by Peter Jackson were badly directed, especially without having even seen the final and most important installment, is absolutely ridiculous.<P>End of story.