It's 4 AM, Do You Know Where Your Movie Reviewer Is?

I almost didn't make it. I hit my bed around 5:30 p.m., after setting my alarm clock for 10. My cats are my saving grace. Apparently realizing I wanted to do something tonight, starting at 10:45 pm they kept licking my face while I slept. For reasons unknown my alarm never went off.

But.. the movie. By far it was the best of the three, clocking in at 3-hours-20-minutes long. (And, it's positively frightening to me that there's another 1-hour-5-minutes sitting on the cutting room floor waiting for the Extended Edition DVD).

I understood now why Jackson left Shelob off the Two Towers cut. The problem comes from how long it takes to write about stuff, versus how long it takes "in real time" as it were. The hobbits' chapters in Return take up half the book, but a mere fraction of the "event time" ... in order to keep the story moving "in chronological order" much of Two Towers' prose had to be moved into Return to match up with what's going on in the rest of the world.

I missed closure on Saruman, although I know that's coming in the extended cut. I also missed that Jackson didn't even bother to film the Scouring of the Shire chapter. I understand that he claims he never liked it, and that it seems completely outside the flow of the story -- and it is to a certain extent. However, one of the things it does afford the reader is the opportunity to see that The Shire was not just completely ignored. While the rest of the world waged war, The Shire had its own problems caused as a by-product of that war. Allowing the hobbits to come back to an idyllic home means that none of the Shire hobbits knows (or cares) about the deeds their four sons did to save their lifestyle.

By contrast, in the books, that chapter puts things in perspective for the Shire hobbits... The four hobbits come home, and become heroes to their friends and neighbors for a completely different reason. Fighting in the far-off war doesn't earn them any kudos in Hobbiton, but kicking the arses of the wartime bullies does, and I personally think the film was a bit weaker for it.

Although, admittedly, when you're already at 3h20m, you may not want to add another 20m of footage... but he still could have filmed it for the DVD. :-)

The Battle of Pellenor Fields was, as advertised, spectacular. Every battle scene in the prior movies was indeed just "software warm-up" for the battle to save Minas Tirith.

Overall, I came away realizing that if this thing doesn't win a metric assload of awards, then it's the final conclusive proof that the Oscars have a bias against genre films (something many of us have known for years).

OK, time to sleep now....