**The Return of the King Extended Edition**

[Boromir88]

Nevertheless, I doubt that any of the points that have been raised will impair my enjoyment of the EE. After all, these films tell a different story from the book, so inconsistencies between the films and the book don't really bother me.

SpM, I'll try to make this from a movie critiquers point-of-view, and not a purists. I won't do any mentioning of what PJ left out from the books .

I thought the acting was splendid, and the scenery, that's what totally catches me about the movies. I thought PJ did a excellent job on those aspects. Even despite my dislike for the slaughter of Denethor's character, John Noble is still a great actor, and plays a really good scumbag you want to punch, like Gandalf....

The problem to me was a lack of character developement. I think PJ tried to focus in on the battle scenes (which are important, but that I don't think is Tolkien's point of the story). He tried to make the battle scenes a focus, and did not focus in enough on the Characters. It's not the fact that PJ missed some concepts that gets me mad (because after all we do miss some concepts, and are still debating over others). Just the simple fact that he made this an action-packed fighting movie, instead of a more sentimental, character focused story. The recent National Treasure movie is what comes to mind. I love this movie, and most people slam it because there is not enough explosions or killing. This, to me, is a wonderful movie, because each character brings their own personality to the table. And we see their character change to fit the conflict they are in. The dialogue in National Treasure, I thought was great. Anyway, I think I rambled on enough.

[Turin]

I agree that there was an over-reliance on battle scenes. Too many battles undermine our (the audience) appreciation of the peril that the characters are confronted with.

There seemed to me to be a lack of depth to the movies. They were too dumbed-down for a start, which shows glaringly in RoTK (Elrond giving the sword to Aragorn, Denethor etc etc etc).

I think movie producers are so arrogant and conceited. They lessen the mood and atmosphere of LoTR to appease the so called "majority" of people who would not have read the book. What they haven't realised is that they have prevented LoTR from becoming an all-time great movie, rather than a slightly-above-average one. My opinion, of course.

Hence, they put in ridiculous things as Legolas the rodeo star; Gimli - making him into a laughing stock (not to mention the appalling jokes), just so that PJ & Co could exploit most people's perceptions of dwarves as being something from Snow White; Gandalf the half-wise, half-blundering buffoon (at times) etc etc. I could go on.

That's not to detract from the good stuff, and there is plenty of it. Though overall the lack of character depth is detriment to the whole "feel" of the movie.