FABIO wrote:

Not counting Frodo and useless elf dream sequences.


The fucking fellowship.

First offense: Moria
[snip]
And don't tell me this is something else everyone rips off from Tolken. How cliche >:(

Second offense: Amon Hen (thanks to the videogames and not the movie for remembering the name)

Okay, this is where it really started to get gay. Tons of goblins that have to squeeze through a narrow door to get to them. Now here they outside surrounded by hundreds of much tougher Uruk'hai, without Gandalf, and seperated. Oh wow they sure look fucked. Oh wait here's Aragorn killing 3 giant tough Uruk'hai at a time with simple backhand fist swings that clearly don't even connect. The first thing I thought of when I saw that was the scene in Hot Shots 2 where Charlie Sheen takes out dozens of guards by throwing handfuls of bullets at them. Then the entire fellowship makes it out without a scratch. Boromir doesn't count because he was evil from the start and evil guys have to die (I was laughing by the point where Lurtz is still firing arrows at him from 10 feet away and prepares to finish him off from point blank). As long as no one turns evil they're never in danger and can't be killed.

Third offense: Helm's Deep

Aragorn and Gimli throw themselves into a sea of Uruk'hai on the drawbridge, come out without a scratch. Then comes the absolute worst moment in the trilogy when the fellowship and Theoden ride out with like 3 guys into the human(orc?) ocean of Uruk'hai and still come out without a scratch. Okay the cavalry came to save them....what about them still surrounded by Uruk'hai?

The cavalry at the end deflated the whole scene. Why was everyone freaking out over 10,000 Uruk'hai? An "army to destroy the world" ? Rohan alone obviously had the military to roll them over. What was Sauruman thinking he could win? He lost (badly) even after the bulk of Rohan's army was exhiled, what would have happened if it was intact?

Fourth offense: Minis Tirinth

Okay, I thought Return of the King was the best of the three. It was the only I really enjoyed. The reason? The least amount of screentime for the fellowship by far. The battles were great until the fellowship showed up. Suddenly you have just regular soldiers struggling against Sauron's hordes. THAT was compelling, not invincible superhero metrosexual elves or disgusting greasy-haired rangers. The orc river crossing to take Osgligoth(?) and the non-superhuman rangers struggling against being overrun before being routed. Even Gandalf wasn't suddenly superhuman; for the most part we was just a regular guy trying to rally the leaderless city together. You have the storming of the city as the regular soldiers and a non-supercharged Gandalf get pushed back.

Then you have the Rohirim cavalry charge, easy the single best scene of the entire trilogy. Theoden and Eyowen were more compelling characters than the entire cast from the previous movies combined, so you actually cared what happened to them (okay so you knew Theoden was going to buy it after his touching pre-battle speech with his daughter but whatever). The cavalry were a bunch of regular joes getting together to give a "fuck you" to Sauron because they wren't going to put up with his power trip bullshit, regardless of the fact they were totally outmatched. You got caught up in their yell for DEATH! The charge was great. You felt for each horseman that fell and got trampled, more than any effeminate elf buying it or even more than a major character like Boromir, because they just regular joes struggling in a hopeless battle and they weren't heroes that wre incincible unless obviously doomed ahead of time by the script. Eyowen standing up to and striking out against the witch king while over her mortally wounded father was more moving than anything in the previous movies, combined, then squared (once you get past the strange concept that a being is immortal as long as it's a penis that's attacking him). So the whole Minis Tirinth part was the best of the trilogy.

...until the fellowship show up and ruin it. The regular soldiers' struggle and sacrifice is swept under the rug as Legolas begins his usual retarded Xtreme snowboarding routine. Gimli hit more orcs in the crotch. The invincible army of the dead zip across at 100 mph and instantly clear the entire evil army from the field (not even any corpses left afterwards). Wow, the entire battle and everyone's sacrifice was for nothing. So the invincible army of the dead can instantly zip anywhere on middle earth and instantly wipe out any army? Why not just tell them "okay, guys, Gondor is still threatened by what's left in Mordor. Just zip through and clean out the remainder of Sauron's forces and then I'll let you rest." ?

And just a few other things everyone who hadn't read the books (and given special insight through 500+ pages of erroneous middle earth history):

-If Sauron gets the ring he'll get his physical form back and be unstoppable? You mean until someone chops his fingers off again (with a broken sword, while prone)?

-Hey wow, giant eagles. They seem like they could carry some sort of ring sized object (or hobbit sized object carrying a ring), to a valcano perhaps, and even to drop it in.

-If Sauron gets the ring back all is lost. Hey, Sauron, I just threw your ring into the ocean and fucked you over. Your army was fucked by ghosts, and you'll never get the ring back. Everyone go home, show's over.