Hmm. I was surprised, in that I was less taken with this one than with the others. Maybe it was just that it was a bit rushed - I might be spoiled though from the extended DVD versions (which contain the missing plot elements). And maybe I was just expecting too much! :-)

The change to Denethor really annoyed me though. Instead of being a great man broken by his mental fighting against Sauron (via the Palantir), he became a toddler throwing a tantrum. And the scene of his death, instead of being the great tragedy from the book, is changed to just be an accident. Not impressed.

I was left wondering where the elves went after Helm's Deep - no elves apart from Legolas in the whole thing, but surely some must have survived to ride with Rohan? And correct me if I'm wrong, but there were dwarves somewhere in there in the book as well? And then in the attack on the Black Gates, it's all Gondor and no Rohan - again, *some* of them must have survived. A bit odd really. The army is a bit damn small at the end too, unless the intention is to show how many of them were killed.

The half-assed assault on the Black Gates was a bit odd as well - very little setup for that, and once they get there, the army just sits there like cabbages waiting for the orcs, instead of preparing for a proper battle (plenty of terrain to be used around there, for sure). You're a small army and Frodo might not make it, so at least do your best to even the odds a bit, right? And if you even the odds, although you lose, you'll fight a bit longer and give Frodo more time to get there.

I also agree with Santa - the beacons thing left me cold. You only ever get one beacon at a time, so it didn't work for me - no sense of the message passing on. Now what *would* have been a good shot after the first one or two would be to pan out to the whole of the mountains and see beacons lighting one after the other along the mountain range. That'd establish the scale of Middle Earth as well. If they were clever, they could even have included a sight of the massed orc armies in it. But as it was, it just looked like a New Zealand tourist board advert. After a few shots of the same thing happening on different mountains (and this went on for *minutes*) then you do start wondering when the film's going to start again. I'm not surprised Christopher Lee was livid, when they cut 3 minutes of his acting but left all that beacon stuff in.

It was still a good film. But it's annoying that there's details which stop it being a great film. And I've got an unpleasant feeling that these details are inherent in the film's structure, rather than being something which could be improved with another half hour of character development and plot (like the other two Extended versions).

Graham.