Even more RotK
Even more thoughts!
Silly thoughts: sometimes PJ could get too dramatic. Also, the big eye thing as spotlight was kind of silly. My eyes don't do that! I think Sauron has pretty lousy peripheral vision. Plus, when Barad-Dur was falling down and the eye was looking madly every which way, I kept thinking, "He's looking around and thinking, oh crap! Ground coming up! How about here? Nope, ground coming up here too" and pictured Sauron flailing his little imaginary arms like a T-Rex trying to catch himself. And Legolas is a master at stating the obvious. Although his oliphaunt trick was very cool.
Mostly though I was pretty torn apart by the movie because it was big, so grand, so epic. It's the feeling I get when I finish a large book series, like I've been living there for too long and I can't quite let go to continue life in the real world. I don't see very many movies that make me feel like that -- first, the time I spend with the characters is too short, and so the scope isn't as big, unlike TV. And my heart broke because Frodo and Sam were just hobbits who wanted to go home, and their determination to carry on, their hope, especially Sam's, even in a place like Mordor, was beautiful and sad and, well, numinous. It was that, and moments like Theoden's speeches to his men, in which he knows they will die, that they can't win, but that they will die fighting because that's all they can do. It was Eowyn in despair, full of fear, but standing up to the Witch-King anyway, and Pippin having to see war. It was Gandalf's knowledge that he had sent Frodo to an almost certain death, that Frodo was all their hope, and a fool's hope at that. And that last scene in Mordor, when both Sam and Frodo know they can't possibly make it back home and Sam has regrets, tears.
RotK did ten times over what The Last Samurai wanted to do.
It hit me so hard because it had hope in the face of all odds, and when that hope finally died, a grim determination to do what was right regardless. I keep hearing Philippa Boyens' description in the look at RotK in the TT DVD, when she says Tolkien wrote of Sam: "His will was set, and only death would break it" and says that that's what happens to every character in RotK.
And despite the fact that the ending was a little long, I'm rather glad it is -- after all that angst and suffering and sacrifice, I needed celebration and happiness and the Shire. I'm also glad PJ decided to end with Frodo sailing off, even though that part hurts the most. Reminds me of the recently reread Tigana and "hers was a life not meant to be whole."
Silly thoughts: sometimes PJ could get too dramatic. Also, the big eye thing as spotlight was kind of silly. My eyes don't do that! I think Sauron has pretty lousy peripheral vision. Plus, when Barad-Dur was falling down and the eye was looking madly every which way, I kept thinking, "He's looking around and thinking, oh crap! Ground coming up! How about here? Nope, ground coming up here too" and pictured Sauron flailing his little imaginary arms like a T-Rex trying to catch himself. And Legolas is a master at stating the obvious. Although his oliphaunt trick was very cool.
Mostly though I was pretty torn apart by the movie because it was big, so grand, so epic. It's the feeling I get when I finish a large book series, like I've been living there for too long and I can't quite let go to continue life in the real world. I don't see very many movies that make me feel like that -- first, the time I spend with the characters is too short, and so the scope isn't as big, unlike TV. And my heart broke because Frodo and Sam were just hobbits who wanted to go home, and their determination to carry on, their hope, especially Sam's, even in a place like Mordor, was beautiful and sad and, well, numinous. It was that, and moments like Theoden's speeches to his men, in which he knows they will die, that they can't win, but that they will die fighting because that's all they can do. It was Eowyn in despair, full of fear, but standing up to the Witch-King anyway, and Pippin having to see war. It was Gandalf's knowledge that he had sent Frodo to an almost certain death, that Frodo was all their hope, and a fool's hope at that. And that last scene in Mordor, when both Sam and Frodo know they can't possibly make it back home and Sam has regrets, tears.
RotK did ten times over what The Last Samurai wanted to do.
It hit me so hard because it had hope in the face of all odds, and when that hope finally died, a grim determination to do what was right regardless. I keep hearing Philippa Boyens' description in the look at RotK in the TT DVD, when she says Tolkien wrote of Sam: "His will was set, and only death would break it" and says that that's what happens to every character in RotK.
And despite the fact that the ending was a little long, I'm rather glad it is -- after all that angst and suffering and sacrifice, I needed celebration and happiness and the Shire. I'm also glad PJ decided to end with Frodo sailing off, even though that part hurts the most. Reminds me of the recently reread Tigana and "hers was a life not meant to be whole."