**RotK EE - Special Features**

[Guinevere]

listening to the commentaries of PJ, I noticed something he said about that scene when Sam & Frodo escape from the orc-company:

...the movie is so vividly etched into your mind, I get to the point where I can't remember the differences between the book and the film. I can't remember if something was in the book or if it was an early idea for a scene that we dropped. my memory is just so muddy about all this stuff because I hadn't obviously picked up the book and actually read the book for years I only read little bits and pieces of it. Just reading sections of it, you loose the experience of the book as a whole...

Hmm... so Philippa and Fran had even more responsibility as script-writers!

[mark12_30]

Easter egg-- EJW is pretty respectably level-headed under fire. What struck me was, that even when he was beginning to suspect that this odd, awkward german guy might be pulling one over on him, he was still too polite to object, and too kind to embarass the guy or try to make him look foolish in return. (Look at his reaction when Dom breaks the disguise for an indication whether he was stressed.) But until Dom broke the disguise, Wood remained diplomatic, polite, and kind. He steadfastly tried to set the guy at ease, keep the interview on an even keel, and be *kind*.

How many Hollywood actors would have done half as well?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Is is just me, or does it seem like a lot of the conversations that the film-makers had about the book are highly reminiscent of the way discussions go forward on the Downs? I'm not saying that they and we reach the same conclusions (or that we or they ever really do!) just that the film-makers, like us around here, tend to debate and discuss things like evil, power, addiction, free will, etc etc etc and how these 'big baggy ideas' can work (or, in the case of the film makers, be made to work) in a story about characters who look and feel like real people.

[Lathriel]

I LOVE the specials and I've watched them all. At the end some of them moved me to tears (Good thing my family wasn't home cause they would have rolled their eyes)
Also David's comment about the horses, I laughed so hard.
I was also moved to tears,cause it isn't only over for them, its also over for us, the fans.
So when Viggo said Namarie I felt a little lost.

I too agree that the documentary on Tolkien was really good this time. Of course I also saw the easter egg. I fact I have seen it several times now because I keep on showing it to all my friends.
The cast commentary was great and of course Billy and Dom made it a lot of fu. I also liked it when Bernard Hill and David Wenham were questionong the beacons and how people lived up there.
BRILLIANT!!!

I agree there has to be some mega box set for the 25thy aniversary.

[Essex]

Guinevere

Hmm... so Philippa and Fran had even more responsibility as script-writers!

Well said! I've been bleating on about this in various posts for ages! I picked up on it in the FOTR EE commentary where Jackson says something like "Aragorn let's Frodo go in the book", and is quickly rebuffed by Walsh and Boyens!

A lot of the diatribe (sorry for the strength of the word, but to me it IS diatribe) towards Jackson should be passed onto the real scriptwriters, Walsh and Boyens.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I have now listened to the production/post-production commentary on RotK; some of what they say is not new, some is not terribly fascinating to anyone but a tech freak, but occasionally some interesting comments caught my attention. The one that really stands out was the question that the team had asked about Sam and Rosie's wedding - should there be some kind of minister involved? Apparently someone suggested the idea that Tom Bombadil could officiate - with Alan Lee playing him as a cameo!!

[Guinevere]

Apparently someone suggested the idea that Tom Bombadil could officiate - with Alan Lee playing him as a cameo!!

I would have enjoyed seeing Alan Lee as Bombadil though! I think he is very charming.

Another thing that struck me, when I was watching the commentaries:
To the Sammath Naur scene PJ said:

"PJ:...I never liked the idea of Gollum dancing with joy and then accidentally falling into the lava - which is basically what happens in the book- I just personally... I know why Tolkien did it and I know all the arguments for it, but I just never wanted to do that. I felt so strongly that Frodo had to be some part of it." Boyens: "Yes!"

Well! I was rather shocked - but it explains why they first filmed Frodo actually pushing Gollum in !! I am grateful that they at least altered that, thank God.
But it is another example of how PJ thinks his own ideas better than what Tolkien intended. In a way that's natural that he wanted to portrey his own ideas, and if someone does this in a fanfiction it is o.k., but it is a responsability to present something fundamentally different to a large public who haven't read the book. They get quite a false impression.
After all Tolkien wrote in letter #181

I should say that within the mode of the story the "catastrophe" examplifies (an aspect of) the familiar words: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

There is not much about the saving grace of forgiveness and mercy and pity in the film!