O primeiro review do filme por uma fã conservadora, que vc´s chamam de purista... Review desse tipo dou um lida rápida e passo batido. SPOILERS
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I saw it yesterday. (Dec. 1). Purists, wait for the extended Edition next year, there are too many chunks of important storyline missing, sacrificed to expensive and over-long battle sequences. Jackson is too in love with his cgi effects and the fabled Massive program, and overuses both to show ever-increasing ranks of orcs, to little effect.
You won't see what happened to Saruman or Grima, you won't get to say goodbye to TreeBeard, Merry does not swear fealty to Theoden nor discuss pipeweed.
The third film opens with a VERY extended flashback to Smeagal's past, detailing the finding of the Ring and what it did to him. Good information, but the scene went forever, for no good reason.
Arwen comes down with a myterious illness, and Elrond says she is dying because of the power of the Eye. Yuck. Apparently, PJ felt he needed to "add urgency" to the story by striking Arwen with a fatal illness countdown, to make the defeat of Sauron more "important" to Aragorn. (sigh)
Aragorn goes on the Paths of the Dead almost by accident and afterthought, instead of as a plan.
Gollum actually convinces Frodo to tell Sam to go home, and Sam actrually goes... for a while.
Denethor is played as crazy-disgusting-old-man from the git-go, you never get a sense of the stern and wise Steward from him, he's just portrayed as a loon with bad teeth and a squint. Denethor has no Palantir. The line "Did you think the eyes of the White Tower were blind?" is in, but you wonder exactly what he means by it.
There are detailed and endless battles in Osgiliath that aren't in the book, or were such that were mentioned in a single line of exposition. Now we see the battles go on and on and onn-nn-n. Apparently relentless scenes of orcs snarling and orcs roaring and orcs laughing and orcs clashing swords and orcs gnashing teeth and orcs stabbing men and orcs gloating over dead men's bodies were too important to sacrifice, unlike the Houses of Healing and the love between Eowyn and Faramir which went missing without a clue.
Gandalf has to enlist Pippin to sneak over to the beacons and light them, against crazy geek-Denethor's orders.
There are apparently many thousands of horses and riders living in Meduseld (which although impressive on the screen seems to consist of one Golden Hall and about 20 small huts), and the thousands of riders come streaming out of Meduseld like clowns out of a Volkswagon Beetle.
Eowynn gets to do her thing with the Witch King with minimal help from Merry, but never gets to say "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik!" (a favorite line of mine). After Theoden falls and Eowyn crawls over to say goodbye, Theoden is never mentioned again. By anyone. He's food for worms and no-one cares. They do not lay him in state nor bear his body back to Rohan. Merry never gets to say "I'm sorry to have done nothing in your service except weep at our parting", and Theoden never smiles and muses that they'll never get to discuss herb-lore.
Merry and Faramir and Eowyn are all quick healers it seems, because none of them are hospitalized. They show up smiling at the coronation, without explanation. Famamir and Eowyn exchange quick goofy grins while applauding for Aragorn in a cut that's less than 1 second long. We never see Eomer again after the battle, and he never found Eowyn on the battlefield nor led the Riders chanting "Death!" He never becomes King of Rohan.
There is no Rath Dinen. Nor a Beregond. Rather than laying down in the flames with grim determination, Denethor leaps from his pyre with arms a-waving and runs to the edge of the citadel and plunges down in a fireball to the first level, kicking and waving his arms, looking for all the world like a stuntman in a fire suit.
The way the Ring is taken from Frodo and destroyed is not the way Tolkien said it was. Jackson "improved" the final Ring scene.
When Frodo awakes from his sleep after the Ring is destroyed, all the heroes come through the door one by one in an extended cinematic curtain call, and they all laugh too loudly and long.... a little tooooo long to be natural actually, it sounds a little odd. And it takes valuable time away that could have been used to tell the STORY.
The scion of the White Tree is never searched for nor found. The old dead Tree is apparently still standing all forlorn in the pool when Aragorn is crowned. Faramir is not made Steward to follow his father. Aragorn does not send Faramir to Ithilien, nor does he issue any other commands, being lip-locked with the now-cured Arwen who "surprises" everyone by popping out from behind a banner.
Frodo does not bear the crown to Gandalf, but at least Gandalf places the crown. Actually, a circlet instead of the crown described by Tolkien.
The four hobbits end up sharing meaningful glances over mugs of ale at the Green Dragon.
The Shire needs no scouring, Saruman never came there and made it necessary for the hobbits to grow into their own and defeat him without the help of men or wizards.
Then there are four or five oddly edited scenes, each one an ending scene of sorts, followed by another and another, and seperated by a moment of black screen. The audience twitched uncomfortably, and a few even giggled after the third or fourth went by.
After a while everyone shows up at the Grey Havens, some people in the theater shed a tear, but that scene was too brief for my taste, and the destination was never revealed to the non-fan audience.
So, basically, it's swords clashing, battles raging, Mumakil screaming, arrows flying, orcs roaring, Gollum hissing, a real action flick, but the story was hacked out with a rusty axe. Some scenes in the trailer do not appear in the theatrical release.
Too much action, too much volume, too little heart and storyline. Let's hope the Extended Edition will have all the stuff that was cut, wrapping up each major character's storyline instead of abandining them.
Helice"