[Lalaith]

I abase myself humbly to those who accuse me of nitpicking about Theoden's line at the tomb. They are absolutely right - it is nitpicking. (Although it wasn't the grammatical subtlities of "their" or "its" or "his/her" that bothered me)
But I also still maintain that this line, while full of truth and resonance to us, in the 21st century - and my especial respect and sympathy to those of my fellow Downers for whom it has personal meaning - is still not the right thing for a king of Rohan to say. He is the king of a people who would have seen so many of their children die of disease, their young men die in battle, and so on. What I was trying to get at, by talking about this line to illustrate my point, is that it seemed to me one of those moments, if not perhaps the most obvious one, that was shoehorned in for the sake of Relevance To A Modern Audience.
But do you want to make a classic, timeless piece of art, or something that might, in 20 years time, feel too much 'of its time' to be anything other than a dated if charming period piece? I'm not a snob about film, I think it can be art in the same way as literature, music or painting. But if you spend too much time listening to the focus groups about how it's going to play to the 15-17 year olds of Armpit, Arkansas in December 2003, then you're going to lose a lot in the process.
There were many moments in the movie trilogy when I felt moved, in the way that I do by great art, and I pay tribute to the creators of the films for their achievement. The trilogy is a masterpiece, I think, but nonetheless a flawed masterpiece.