[Saraphim]

Wow. Exellent topic, and very well written. I'm surprised no one else has replied yet! <P>My take on this is that although Tolkien was Roman Catholic (and by all acounts, an extremely devout one), he created LotR as a mythological story, comparable to Beowulf or the Nibelung saga. LotR has examples of morality, such as the fidelity of Aragorn to Arwen. These may well have been because of Tolkien's Catholic background, but then again, it could have just been his, and society's views on what was good in humanity.<P>I think Peter Jackson did quite well with what he was given. Unfortunatly, the majority of movie-goers do not live by Socrates' maxim : <I>the unexamined life is not worth living</I>, so he had to work with potentially bored audience members if his movie was going to make any sort of material profit at all. (Sad, really, but money makes the world tick.) So I think Jackson severely dumbed down the philosophical messages in the book to make a marginly deep movie. <P>Well, I hope I made some sort of point, and didn't ramble on for ten minutes. But that's my two cents.