Cherry-Picking the Good Parts

[Formendacil]

A comment on Facebook mixed with my latest stream-of-thoughts in the Episode VI thread has made me realise that I think RoP's writers have spent a lot of time absorbing the Tolkienian ideas: I really like their decisions to include things like the origin of orks (and what this says about them morally), Light and Shadow, the clash of understanding that comes from immortals and mortals interacting, the political tug-of-war and insularity of the King's Men vs. the Faithful. There's a lot of Tolkien in this sort of stuff--more so, I think, than the PJ movies ever invented. It's pretty much never expressed in a plot or dialogue I would call Tolkienian, but it's still there to be recognised.