I went to see RotK today and it was so much worse than I ever could have imagined. Not only should Peter Jackson, et al, not win any awards for this travesty, but they should be strung up for destroying one of the greatest literary works of the 20th Century. Here are some of the low-lights from Jackson’s 3.25 hour monstrosity, in no particular order:

• Aragorn is a big ol’ pussy with nothing Kingly about him who wanders around with a bewildered look on his face most of the time
• When Aragorn goes along the ‘Paths of the Dead,’ a place he seems to have vaguely heard of, he doesn’t command the dead to fight for him, he asks them politely if they’d care to join him
• Aragorn does try his best at pretending to be Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn
• Gandalf is a Kung-fu master bo-staff wielding bad-ass
• Frodo is a weakling who trusts Gollum more than Sam
• the ‘secret stair’ that leads to Cirith Ungol is 5 feet away from the entrance to Minas Morgul thus affording Frodo the opportunity to march across the bridge, risking capture by the Nazgûl
• Gollum throws away the remaining Lembas bread then frames Sam for its being missing; Frodo then sends Sam away as he continues to ascend the stair, meaning that he finds his way through Shelob’s
  lair by himself
• Although we don’t see Sam take the Ring from a seemingly-dead Frodo, he does take it. Of course he never puts it on himself, and thus has no clue what Frodo has been going through and doesn’t need it to get past the Orcs, because they’ve all killed each other before he gets there
• Minas Morgul is equipped with a laser beam
• Frodo pushed Gollum into the fire of Mount Doom
• Denethor, after being set on fire, runs out of the door and leaps to his death over Minas Tirith
• The character assassination of Faramir from TTT continues
• When the armies of Gondor and Rohan ride to the Black Gate, instead of an embassy coming out to show Aragorn Frodo’s clothes and Mithril shirt, the gates open revealing 10 bazillion Orcs for yet
  another boring battle scene
• Sam never puts on the Ring and is able to find Frodo in the tower inside Mordor within about 5 minutes. He also pretends to be Dirty Harry
• When the Hobbits get back to The Shire, everything is just as it was when they left
• It’s one long boring battle scene after another; there is NO subtlety from the book that Jackson has left intact

That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I’ll be adding to the list.

To put it bluntly, this movie sucks ass! I hated this movie!!! But some people like it… Some chowder-head stood up when it was over, clapping madly, shouting ‘BRAVO!’ I was thinking, ‘Dude! This ain’t the Met, here…’ I sat there for the last two hours of the ‘film’ constantly checking my watch… It’s that bad. The only tool that Jackson didn’t employ to ruin this film was to have the Hobbits start swearing like
sailors; I’m actually surprised he missed that one… Anyway, I am terribly disappointed. If you love the books, you will hate this movie.

Note: Sorry for the swearing, mom…