[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Pomegranate

And another bit that I didn’t quite agree with that seems to be generally approved was the White Council. Especially Saruman. I mean, he’s supposed to be respected and “the wise” still here, right? And then he keeps going on about how he doesn’t like the dwarves not coming to talk to him and blahblah and is completely ignored by Gandalf and Galadriel who have their secret wee talk. No respect whatsoever. Which annoys me a great deal, because I feel like it’s contrary to PJ’s own works – in LOTR, Gandalf goes to ask for his help, talking about the greatest of his order and so on, and here he seems like a complaining child who wants to stop others from playing because he wasn’t involved in the first place.

The last part is true, however in the context of the books, that's exactly how it was. There was all this dynamic within the ranks of the Council, Saruman opposed everything Gandalf had been a part of just for the sake of it already at the first Councils (being jealous even before they left Valinor - cf. the Unfinished Tales - and all that), and later (he mentions that by the end of LotR when the company meets him on their way back to Rivendell) suspected Galadriel and Gandalf of plotting against him (which was what I approved about the movie, because you can actually look at it from Saruman's perspective and see that he was right!). And as for disapproving the Dwarves, I think Saruman was a bit "racist", too - in the sense that his focus was on Men and how he thought the Elves are basically dead and gone, and so probably pretty much the Dwarves (him being a Maia of Aulë, I think he must have had a reason to ignore them - probably their lack of "activity on the surface").

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Gandalf's line about the blue wizard's gave me a chuckle though I had thought they had been part of ousting Sauron from Dol Guldor.

They could not have been, since they had been lost in the East already for quite a long time at that point. For almost two millenia, actually. (Which also makes it possible for me to imagine that Gandalf would really have forgotten their names at that point.)

The out of the frying pan and into the fire line was misplaced I think, It should have been said in the trees when the fire was actually there(I always thought that was the reason for the title in the first place.

That was actually another part I forgot to mention and which I did not like. It seemed too sudden and rushed. They just ran out of the mines, stopped for like the exchange of two sentences, and suddenly there were more Orcs coming, with no introduction, no change of place and time, nothing.

Also makes you wonder why didn't the goblins start following them out at that point too, since the Orcs apparently could, and the evening was falling...

Maybe Ihave to reread but I always thought of the stone giants as sort of metaphorical instead of real that was a bit shadow of collossus for me.

I always thought them real, but I imagined them as the classic giants, like, huge men, throwing boulders.

My only complaint which is silly(as it has no actual bearing on the movie itself) is Balin's Ear horn, out of all the props that just for me was the most intrusive.

That wasn't Balin (and to be honest, I have no idea who exactly it was, can somebody clarify? Originally I thought it was Oin, but then I think it turned out that Oin was somebody else, so I really am not sure).