[Lalwendë]

I think with many of the special effects, in particular with the creation of the various creatures, the film team were lucky as they had a lot of scope to play with. Not all the creatures are fully described in the books and so they were able to bring in some of their creative ideas. I did like how the different types of Orc looked different, but the creepiest for me were easily the Moria Orcs with their huge eyes and their scuttling way of movement. Possibly a reason why the Mordor Orcs were made so grotesque was to make it more 'acceptable' to have them killed in vast numbers. It's one of our most basic instincts to feel revulsion, and if that is stirred then we could accept such events more readily, on an automatic level. But they were still a little too grotesque for me.

I thought that what was done with Shelob was good. My judgement on this was based on whether people frightened of spiders found it scary, as I like spiders, the bigger the better. And as they did indeed find her creepy then I liked what they did with Shelob. That they based her movements on real spider behaviour was all the better.

It was with the Wargs that I was disappointed, as I am sure they are meant to be more wolf-like. Instead they looked more like hyenas. But again, it could be that the team flinched from showing Wargs as slightly dog-like because we might have felt sorry for them being killed. Though how this argument squares with the scenes where horses get trampled (which I find disturbing) I'm not sure.