My Favourite of the Three

I love that, too. The sundering of the Fellowship and that first crack in the armour of the fantasy realm is so stinging and tragic.

The other parts are wonderful, of course, and the fading of magic is so sad. Evil is defeated, but the Shire is tainted, Frodo has no hope of recovery in this world, the Elves (and magic) depart, Lothlorien fades... it's a bittersweet ending, which is Middle Earth's appeal in some ways - that constant sense of tragedy and diminishing.

Yeah, there's stuff I love about all of them, but Fellowship has that more personal touch. Thing get more EPIC later on. Those battles would be largely meaningless (cool, but meaningless) without the groundwork of Fellowship.

I re-read the books recently and a lot of new stuff stuck out for me. I've re-read them a bunch of times, but new stuff constantly comes to the surface. This time around, for me, it was Frodo's burden. This very normal, very small, very unassuming person has the Doom of the world and a small band of pure evil to carry with him across multiple countries. Sam gets a lot of credit as being the real hero (and reasonably so), but his is a more overt heroism, whereas Frodo is an almost "everyday" hero who has to just keep going in the face of relentless troubles.

Yes, I'm with you 100%; nothing wrong with Return of the King, The Two Towers is great, but Fellowship is my choice.

The Two Towers was weakest, I felt, partly because of the liberties taken, mostly with Faramir and Osgiliath, but also a bit with Treebeard.

The tragic deaths of heroes...when I resent filmmakers for wiping somebody out, that's always when I know they really made that death count. They made me care deeply. I hate that they killed a favourite character, but if they made me hate that demise, well...good job, filmmakers... Although, I must confess, I wasn't that busted up about Haldir's death. Boromir, though...that's tragic.

He (Tolkien) does such a good job in the set-up, too, taking his time to leave the Shire. We feel it along with Frodo; we really feel, "This is it!" and plunge with him into the wilds. I think every Rings fan has a soft spot for Old Butterbur and the scenes at the Prancing Pony because even that reasonably friendly place feels dangerous and alien and you realize how quickly things get dangerous beyond the borders of Hobbiton and the Shire.

Yes, yes! The ancient things and places they pass! Tolkien's greatest strength might be the richness of his world (I'd say second to the philosophies and ideas he brings forth about faith and sacrifice and friendship), and how the whole thing feels so real. I mean, he made it up, of course, but when Aragorn or Gandalf tell the Hobbits about such-and-such a place or hero, or when Elrond or Galadriel speak of Elvish ways and paths and magic, we get the sense that we're just getting reports of truth and history and culture.

I tend to think of LotR films as the EEs, which brought more character, depth, and world exploration than the theatricals, although the theatrical releases do have a snappier pace which is nice. But Middle Earth is a place I like to stroll through and soak in, whether reading or viewing, so a lightning pace is not necessarily optimal for the films.

Still, either theatrical or EE, I enjoy all three.

Glorfindel got chopped from Bakshi's version, too, replaced by Legolas. I get it. He's like Tom Bombadil. You want a smooth-flowing storyline? Rings is so massive that trims are needed and adding Glorfindel (badass though he is) would make a lot of movie audiences arch eyebrows. "Who's this? Why doesn't he come back? What's going on here...?" I feel you, but I get the cut/swap.

I don't hate that Arwen is given a more prominent role, if only because without appendices and the advantages of prose, it's hard to get a sense of hers and Aragorn's relationship in a film. It's nice to see her as somebody who is heroic and powerful because we get more of a vibe as to why Aragorn loves her and why they connect. I'll always side with the books, but in this case, the books get to dive in through prose-speak, telling us, "This is Arwen and who she is and what she means to Aragorn," but in the films, we can't get that, unless they wanted to hand Gandalf or Elrond or somebody some really clunker exposition lines.

As the middle of the narrative, it does have the fun of being the most dire situations. The muck is building up around the heroes, armies massed against them, the Ring asserting control, Gollum being treacherous, kingdoms who ought to be allied in a state of surly rebellion, and the way out is dim at best. That's a fun place for a story to take you. Helm's Deep is such a good part, too.