[Essex]

Originally Posted by alatar

No! It's Merry and Pippin trampling though the cornfield. Can't anyone hear? Pippin comes off not only as a thief but also a glutton. No sympathy being generated for this character. And later, when Gandalf hears of this merry meeting as they all are sitting around in Minas Tirith at the beginning of the Fourth Age, he will say surely something like, “and you were meant to crash into Sam and Frodo…” Farmer Maggot as the hand of Eru.

First use of coincidence in the film, as we do not have the Conspiracy unmasked as 1/ Frodo keeps the ring locked away in his chest and 2/ no gap of 17 years for the hobbits to work too much out about the Ring.

We then have four hobbits caterwauling over the hillside, which looked like a cliff but I guess that it really wasn't - as the real fall would have killed them all. Pippin's near miss is a real miss, joke-wise. What is it with PJ, short persons and slapstick?

It’s called lightening the mood and then BAM! PJ heightens the tension straight away with the Nazgul. And this leads onto….

Luckily we get back to some more seriousness as 'something' is coming down the road, as sensed by Frodo

This also shows the more ‘mature’ character of Frodo which a lot of people say is missing in this film (which I disagree with). The other younger hobbits ‘mucking about’ while Frodo stands apart, looking for trouble.

Sam helps Frodo defy the siren song of the Ring, and this puts off the Nazgul somewhat. The pack or whatever thrown by Merry confounds the creature even more...which seems a bit silly.

remember the nazgul could not SEE too well, and used their other senses to compensate didn’t they. i.e. Hearing – so this works fine.

Note to Nazgul: Next time you find yourself spinning in circles trying to figure out which of four hobbits to trample, just behead one (you know how…), and your decision will be simpler. Repeat as necessary.

wouldn’t the nazgul want to take the bearer of the Ring alive, back to Mordor to be questioned/tortured/slowly killed by Sauron?

Now this is nitpicky, but a horse cannot keep pace with hobbits?

Running through trees in the dark, with an almost blind nazgul after them? Sounds feasible to me. And what an amazing shot of the nazgul on the horse bearing down on Frodo as he runs towards the ferry.

And wasn't Pippin paying attention when Frodo said that he was Mr. Underhill? Didn’t they just try to enter Bree stealthily? See what I mean?

yes, and pretty much taken from the book. We had pippin loudly talking about Bilbo baggins’s party – not quite ‘baggins is over there’ but close

But before we see more of Strider, we have to watch Frodo become stupid and twirl the One Ring under the table. Every time Frodo goes hazy I just want to reach out and give him a shake….. But as far as we know, the Nazgul are miles distant, and so what possesses Frodo to act so stupidly?

We need to show Frodo being affected by the Ring, and without a narrator’s voice, how do we do this? I think this bit works superbly well. He is not doing this CONSIOUSLY therefore he is not being stupid.

The close-up of Elijah’s hands beg the question – does he bite his nails?

I remember something about PJ doing this on purpose – i.e. movie Frodo DOES bite his nails.

Cousin Frodo, not knowing the inherent power of stupidity, attempts to stop Pippin from making more declarations. Pow! And Frodo goes earthward as the Ring sails overhead, and then, as luck would have it, the Ring would jump onto his finger. And into a hole in the floor goes Frodo.

pretty much like the book except we don’t have the Song. And, as mentioned in the text of the book in Bree, Frodo felt - “For a moment he wondered if the Ring itself had not played him a trick; perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command that was felt in the room.”

Now, I know that as this is the first time that Frodo puts on the Ring, and since Bilbo left Bag End less than an hour ago that Sauron has increased in power, but to have the Eye introduced here so overwhelmingly (and then not again) is a little much.

Yep, as mentioned in previous sequence posts, we have the first BIG inconsistency in the movie here.

Speaking of fooling, did anyone think that the hobbits were about to receive acupuncture, Mordor-style? In the books, was it the wraiths or their henchpersons that attacked the beds? But I assume that the cutting back and forth between the beds and the hobbits in their bed tents (just how does one place covers over one’s head so that you have a foot or two of empty space?) works for those who don’t know what is about to happen.

this was no doubt a homage to the Ralph baski version – it’s almost a direct copy of the scene from the cartoon lotr.

I love Viggo’s narration over the images of the Nazgul. It works for me – information via the ear while I get to see eye candy. A little gem from PJ to us.

yeah, that line ‘Sauron the deceiver’ taken from the Silmarillion. Brilliant. Although I can’t help hearing viggo’s voice fall back to American (or at least mid atlantic) in this scene. A bit off putting.

Did you see Bree in the background as the hobbits and Strider come up onto the plateau.

I thought it might be Archet myself.