Got up early this morning, caught my bus at 10 to 9 and headed into town to see the third and final installment of LOTR. At the cinema we took a look through the times, and more importantly through the screens and decided on the 11.15 showing in screen 17, 4th floor. The biggest screen in the cinema. Then wandered for a while to pass the time.
When we got back to the cinema it was with around 30 mins to go before the start time and the seating was beginning to fill up, mainly with students it must be said. Got good enough seats, free seating so first come first served although I did hear that some people had asked for particular seats and had not been told that it was free, I didn’t really care though.
As the film started there was a bit of a problem; they have a different ratio for the trailers than for the main feature and never bothered to change it, meaning that we were missing out on the bottom of what was going on, including bits of people’s faces, not good. There were complaints and then a teeny little cheer when the projectionist got in gear and fixed it up.
But you don’t want to know any of that, you want to know about the film.
It starts off with Gollum/Smeagal’s backstory and from there draws us into the main tale. I am not going to give away any details, not yet anyway but I will say that it was fantastic. We manage to see Andy Serkis as he really is, before we get the wonderful creation that is Gollum (oscar anyone??), and he is on top form, as indeed are all the cast. I have never come across a more perfect cast in any film. Everyone seems perfect in their respectives roles and I really could not picture anyone else even thinking about playing those characters. Whenever I read the books again I will be seeing Elijah Woods, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Viggo Mortenson et al. And of course Sean Bean, who makes the briefest of appearances. It is hard, I suppose, for a director to keep showing a dead character, but fair play to Peter Jackson & the writers, Boromir has turned up in all three films.
Stand out moments:
* The opening scene with Smeagal & Deagal
* The whole city of Minas Tirith
* The mustering of the Rohirrim & their battle
* The nazgul themselves are simply “gift”
* Shelob of course, creepy, dangerous and believable
* The Paths of the dead
* I could go on, almost every scene I think stands out for different reasons. there are a couple I could mention, but won’t jic they are spoilers for anyone.
And so to the moans (this section will contain book spoilers, so don’t read if you don’t want to know)
* Faramir, once more almost cut out of the story.
* Eomyr finding Theodren & his sister on the battle field. We saw his cries of grief in the trailer; not on the big screen though
* Faramir & Eowyn
* it ended too quickly, and now it’s over.
Still I suppose that the EE will more than fill in any gaps I wanted to see
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