[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Originally Posted by Boromir

Either, when there should be crying/tears jokes are being spouted off, or there just is no time for crying.

First you have to define, what the situation is, when a viewer should cry. Is it when someone dies, when an actor shows a sad emotion or perhaps when something really good happens to a character? Are there moments when the audience should cry, or are the director and actors just offering emotional impulses for the viewers to take or dismiss? Even if the impulses are accepted, people's reactions to them are different depending on many factors, like how well they can relate to the characters, how many times they've seen the film, their current mood, with whom they're watching the film and whatnot. Also, in LotR's case - what if you hadn't read the books before the film? Or what if you had? In any case, different people consider different moments on screen worth of tears, whether they are tears or sadness or joy, and I personally don't feel that PJ would have been "shy" when dealing with emotions in RotK. For example, when I watched the movies for the first time, I didn't shed a tear during FotR and the only thing in TTT that made my eyes a bit watery was Gandalf and Eomer riding down the hill to Helm's Deep. It was RotK that really gave me a new kind of a viewing experience.

TTT and ROTK there really is no room for emotion. It's like Jackson went with the laugh over the tear and is that necessarily the right thing to do? Should the movies have been more emotional (I guess I should say the last two). Not as in happy/laughter, but as in sadness/crying.

I don't feel that there is laughter in the films just to amuse the audience or to create a happy atmosphere, but it's a chance for the viewers to take a breath. Without a little lighter moments every now and then, the films would be very tough to watch. Showing in detail the horror of a war would be rather anxious, and although the wars are a big part of the Lord of the Rings, I've never got a feeling of anxiety from the books, so I'm glad that the movie makers weren't carried away with glumness (of course, it wouldn't even have sold as much, I guess...)

Also, I wouldn't necessarily classify crying with sadness. I cry more easily when something happy happens, and if the scene is visually beautiful and it's combined with a good score, it's all the better. Therefore, to me the litting of the beacons and the arriving of Rohan's army are two of the most emotional moments in the trilogy.

However, I agree that there's a certain feeling in FotR that the other two films lack. FotR's atmosphere is more Middle-earthesque - it's closer to what it was in the books than TTT and RotK's, but I think it's not as much due to the amount of jokes or humorous moments but the quality of them. For example, I loathed Gimli's burping scenes with many other of his "funny" moments in TTT and RotK, but his line in FotR, "If anyone was to ask for my opinion, which I note they’re not...", was humorous in a way that would be more appropriate for a decent dwarf. Perhaps PJ and his team stayed true to the books in FotR because it was the first of the three, but after seeing that people liked it, they felt more confident to adapt the story telling to more commercial.

Originally Posted by Alatar

My observation is that PJ took more time developing the charaters in FotR and much much less in TTT and RotK

I agree, but on the other hand, it's understandable. In FotR you are sent to Middle-earth with nine strangers to journey with them to destroy a ring. Of course, you must be told, who your companions are. When traveling miles and miles slowly towards the destination, you have time to get to know them, but in the heat of a battle there's not time to start discussing their backgrounds, relationships and such. It's not an excuse to make the characters act like stereotypes, though. So, I guess that to me the films are emotional enough, but I would have loved to see more different sides of the characters.