Sorry to butt in and veer off topic (with my luck everyone willl just ignore this as they continue using big words), but am I developing selective blindness? Or am I turning into one of those "children who can't read good"?
Why does it appear as though nobody on this thread has mentioned the movies' soundtracks yet?
This is going to sound pretty pathetic coming from me (and I don't know as much about music as I ought to, and my snobby composer friends are going to flog me if they read this), but, as someone who has spent several nights crying over "A Journey in the Dark" off the FotR CD, I believe that at least the soundtracks capture the "mood" of myth almost perfectly, especially when related to the C.S. Lewis formula.
Often, I believe, the score in general tends to succeed where the screenplay sometimes falters. Things happen to break the spell, but the music always seems to hold the pieces together somehow. This is especially true for me at the end of the first movie. I am not particularly bothered by Gimli shouting "YEAH!" or Aragorn saying "let's hunt some Orc" in a typical gung-ho action hero fashion, but I could see how a few of our other members might get annoyed by that. And this is where I think the music kind of "steps in" and transforms the entire last scene; mournful and hopeful at the same time, it provies that last bit of oomph that kicks at my heart but still makes me giddy with wonder, like a kid. I think of lost kingdoms, and treasures, and brave studly rangers, and I believe in it all at that moment. And I have to put on my most nonchalant of faces to hide the embarrassment.
So yeah, the soundtracks definitely have that magic feeling. And at the very least, you don't get to hear Gimli belching.
