The Hobbit in July 2007?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

You mean, considering that PJ was too hamhanded to get even Tolkien's own scenes right, Gawd help us with the ones he made up. Eomer and his 2000 Rohirrim on horseback (NOT as in the book) charging down a ZZ-grade ski slope into a forest of polearms is one of the silliest, most groan-inducing moments in all of film. Boromir's death-speech is nonsense invented to go with the angstified, wimpified film-Aragorn. Sam's near-drowning is literally overbolwn- insanely and tiresomely prolonged for cheap suspense. Sam's trite speech at Osgiliath barely touches on Tolkien's original (on the stairs of Cirith Ungol), and doesn't pass up a single cliche. The beacons sequence looks great, but is preciptated by anabsurd scene of *Pippin* starting them, in line with the total reduction of shrewd, stern Denethor to a dribbling lunatic. The end of the Quest on Mount Doom is a device so old and tired and overused and cliched it's even entered the language- cliffhanger.

And of course we haven't touched on Xenarwen or Elves at Helm's Deep or warg attacks or wizard-fu or moronic, pacifist Ents or the Osgiliation or the cold-cocking of the Steward or the gawdawful Filmamir or sword-swinging Black Riders or shield-surfing or electrocution by Palantir or the disappearance of Arnor or the confrontation at the Gate replaced by anime trolls or dwarf-tossing or belches or PJ's complete lack of comprehension of or regard for any of Tolkien's themes etc etc etc etc etc etc etc..........