Grab,

I noticed the same thing about the battles in ROTK -- all men. I *think* the point was being made that this is the beginning of man's dominion. It's hammered home repeatedly in the stacks of original prose, but there's only so many times Pete could have a character say it in the movie. I thought this was reinforcing that.

The last battle seen... yeah, kinda pathetic.

Having already said a bunch of the stuff I didn't like, perhaps I ought to mention some of the stuff I thought was really well done. The special effects were spectacular -- even better than the other two. With the exception of the ghost army (which was going to look like an effect; no getting around it), you could only tell the effects because you knew they must be there. The oliphaunts were extraordinary.

Really, all of the battle for Gondor is good.

The soundtrack and soundeffects were much more effective in this movie. If you notice the music playing in the background, that's soundtrack badly done -- both bugged me in FOTR and TTT. It's excellent in ROTK. All the technical aspects are over the top in the trilogy, which IMO is entirely appropriate and used well. The sound effects in ROTK are particularly outrageous, but it works magnificently. The technical aspects serve the story; they aren't an entity in themselves.

And Pippin's song during the last charge of the cavalry of Gondor was positively eerie, and it probably is the most emotional scene in American cinema in... well... a really long time.