**The Return of the King Extended Edition**

[Boromir88]

HCI

But it got such a cheer, at least from the audience I was with. Don't take this the wrong way, but if I directed a movie that got that kind of reaction from an audience, I would know I did it right.

Same happened to the theatres I went to. I undertsand why PJ had the Steward punching bag, just don't agree with it.

The Pyre of Denethor (A): One extra line from Denethor before he drops the torch: "You may triumph on the field of battle for a day, but against the power that has risen in the east there is no victory". I really like it.

Yes, that is a great line, and eventhough they didn't show Denethor with the Palantir, that is a hint he had it.

[HCIsland]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Yes, that is a great line, and eventhough they didn't show Denethor with the Palantir, that is a hint he had it.

Yeah, I was hoping to see a bit of the Minas Tirith palantir as well but you would have had to invest some time to make sure it didn't get confused with the Orthanc stone.

Imagine if all of a sudden Denethor just pulled it out, the first reaction from the audience would be questions like, "how'd he get that from Gandalf?". You could establish that they were different (different colours maybe), but then you would have to provide some history as to why there were more than one and how they were distributed. A wizard having a "crystal ball" is something an audience will take without explanation, but when you give one to someone else you have to then get into how he has it.

I would guess the questions Jackson and company have to ask themselves are one, how much time should we devote to a explaining secondary character and two, do we really need to have the second palantir in the film to explain events. Denethor is one of my favourite (if not the favourite) character from the book. I find him so tragic and I love how his own father shuned him in favour of another (ironically Aragorn himself in the guise of Thorongil) and now Denethor cowed by the images from the palantir is doomed treat his own son in the same way.

Obviously, all this (and more) couldn't be brought in so they decided to just take the angle that the eldest son was the favourite of Denethor and that his death has pushed him over the edge - which isn't entirely untrue. This renders the second palantir as a needless complication. This simplifies and over vilifies Denethor but I do believe that the time and energy that would have had to be put into portraying this character with the depth he has would have been prohibitive. In the end, I'm happy with Denethor's portrayal mostly because I loved John Noble's performance and I thought that feeling of despair (which I think is the most important thing to get across) was presented very well, especially with the extended scenes.

By the way, I always took the line, "do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind", to be another reference to the Minas Tirith Palantir.

H.C.

[HCIsland]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Same happened to the theatres I went to. I undertsand why PJ had the Steward punching bag, just don't agree with it.

I hear you. It got an eye roll from me as well, but probably a smile too.

H.C.

[Guinevere]

About those mysterious lines at the end of the credits, thanking all the people that made the movie possible:

Originally posted by Iaurhirwen:

Me Mahara Tonu Tatou Nga Uri-Apakura No Tuanuku Nei,
No te Waoto, te tu kekehua ana o nga Eldarin kua Hohou mai i te Uri-Moaka

Of course, we can all recognize the word Eldarin, but I am curious as to the actual meaning of the phrase. To me, it reminds me more of Japanese than of Elvish, but what do I know. I believe that I got the quote correct, I could never pause the DVD in the right place so the image was always a little blurry. Any ideas as to the meaning????

My guess is that this language could be Maori (the language of the native people of New Zealand) because it was mentioned somewhere in the appendices that there were Maori people working as statists, and even a chorus of Maori somewhere, if I remember rightly.(In Moria I believe)

[Evisse the Blue]

The extra scenes in ROTk and the additions to the old scenes, seemed...rushed, for lack of a better term. There was no enrichment added to the story, although there were notable exceptions, some of them being the scene where Gandalf talks about Minas Tirith and its kings (originally Faramir's lines), the Crossroads scene, the Merry - Eowyn interaction on the way to Gondor (I really loved that scene). But all in all, these new scenes were short or dissapointingly short (Houses of Healing scene, the Faramir-Eowyn scene).

And my least favourite scene -and I guess nobody will argue with that is Aragorn killing off the Mouth of Sauron. That is just so senseless and stupid, in doesn't make any sense, no matter the context you'd want to put it in. There is nothing redeemable about that hollywoodian out-of-character (for Aragorn) scene. That really makes me mad, and I'll never get tired of criticising the guts out of that scene and other bad scenes like that one. Because that scene spoils the following scene for me as well, especially the For Frodo bit. It sounds like revenge now, like yea 'let's kick their butts for doing this to us", not like noble sacrifice.

I wouldn't mind those bad scenes if everything else was as bad or mediocre. But I know that PJ and team can better that, I've seen what they can do. They can do wonderful, in character scenes, even if they don't always go by the book. And in this case, such blatant disregard for a character's personality and esentially for the values the good guys stand for (A messanger is never killed - that is one of the unwritten rules of old that someone would expect Sauron to break but never Aragorn) is inexcusable. Compare this with the dignified attitude that so humiliates the Mouth of Sauron and makes him retreat, defeated, from the book.

The bad scenes muddy the good scenes too, you can't just overlook them.
Imagine for instance, listening to a song of your favourite band and hearing in the background among the sounds you love, 'oops I did it again' or something like that.

[mark12_30]

I thought the exchange between Faramir and Pippin about Pippin's armor contributed a great deal, and made Pippin's awareness of and participation in the rest of Faramir's story make sense.

In the book, it's Gandalf who retrieves Faramir from the burning bier; in the movie it's Pippin-- why? MoviePip's sense that he was wearing Faramir's past makes it more believable.

[AbercrombieOfRohan]

Me mahara tonu tatou nga Uri-apakura no tuanuku nei, no te waotu, te tu kekehua ana o nga eldarin kua hohou mai i te uru-moana

TRANSLATION:
Let us dedicate our memories to the spirits of the Eldar who came to us from the Ocean that lies to the West.

guinevere you are right it is in Maori.

[The Saucepan Man]

Well I liked them all, with the exception of the silly skull avalanche.