LotR2-TTT-Seq04

[doug*platypus]

Also, I think Grishnakh was mistreated in the movies as well. As he seems more driven to eat the hobbits than him being intellegent and knowing about the Ring. First off this displays the cunningness of Pippin in getting Grishnakh to believe that he has the Ring, and this shows the intellegence of Grishnakh, and not all Orcs are mindless cannibals. Which is how I felt about them at this part in TTT.

Good call! I had the same feeling when first watching TTT. Why PJ left out Grishnákh's Ring hunt I have no idea. It would have made the orcs more believable as characters, and evil in a more cunning way. But I suppose since they're just the evil guys' cannon fodder, PJ didn't really give a d@mn about giving them an extra dimension. You have to go to the book to read more about the real orcs, such as Shagrat and Gorbag.

The battle of the riders with the orcs is pretty good, although it's quite hard to see anything. Throughout the movies, it's pretty much standard that quick camera moves and wobbles make it difficult to see blow-by-blow what is going on. I prefer static camera positions in fights, so you can actually see what is going on, a la most kung fu flicks or the lightsaber duels in Star Wars. The rider with the bow was really, really cool.

The spear ring seemed a little staged, but quite a nice looking shot, and yes as someone has already said, well done on the part of the horse wranglers and riders. I wonder how many takes it took? Or how many Tooks it takes... speaking of which, I was so scared when Pippin was about to be crushed by a horse. I thought that they were going to kill off one of the Fellowship by having him squished. On the lighter side, I can imagine alatar giggling with glee as it seems Pippin's fate is secured! Oh, yeah, back to the spear ring. It loses a bit of its potency as Rohan has already been set up as opposing the orcs and Saruman, so we already know that these guys are goodies, whereas in the book we were not so sure:

"What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?" he said. "Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?"

Regarding the shirtless orc tree chopper(s), perhaps PJ just wanted to show that they could do orcs without their shirts on. They look pretty good... well, pretty disgusting, but you know what I mean!

OK, just a short post from me. Must dash...