Dunno how many of you are hard core Lord of the Rings fans, but I am so looking forward to seeing this movie. Personally I can't wait to see the Paths of the Dead. Any particular part you are especially impatient to see on the big screen?
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Found this (partially quoted) article in the UK Guardian while searching Lord of the Rings online:
It was the same with The Phantom Menace - I had no choice. When part of your childhood is playing down the road on a big screen with surround sound and popcorn, there's no escape. But as the wonder of discovering that there was more to New Zealand than sheep wore off, something began to worry me.
Maybe it was the way that all the baddies were dressed in black, or maybe it was the way that the fighting uruk-hai had dreadlocks, but I began to suspect that there was something rotten in the state of Middle Earth.
Perhaps Dubya's war on terror is making me a bit uneasy, or maybe it's just good old-fashioned Guardian-reading imperial guilt, but there was something about watching a bunch of pale faces setting off into the east to hack some guys with dark faces into little bits that made me feel a little queasy.
We also get a sneak preview of the army that's going to be representing the forces of darkness in part three. Guess what: "Dark faces... black eyes and long black hair, and gold rings in their ears... very cruel wicked men they look". They come from the east and the south. They wield scimitars and ride elephants.
Perhaps I'd better come right out and say it. The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.
Will someone tell me where they grow these people so I can lobby to have the crop plowed under and the field seeded with DDT? I swear, people can read racism and intollerance into ANYTHING. I even heard that some hypersensitive group of people with nothing better to do than bitch-n-moan were protesting Matrix: Reloaded because they say it promotes a negative image of albinos. Here?s the email address of the putz that wrote the above article if you wanna give him a piece of your mind.