Eee-yikes! Calm down...

Got my hands on the extended edition DVD of "Return of the King." And yet, for all my excitement, I haven't been able to finish watching it. Not because I find the extended and newly added scenes boring. No - I just keep on insisting on attempting to watch it at the end of the night, fully aware that I'll probably fall asleep at some point.

Anyway. Here's an excerpt from a review posted on Amazon.com:

Far less satisfying was "The Witch Kings Hour". Something obscene and profane happened within this scene; something impossible within the context of the universe that Tolkien created. I can imagine him revolving in his grave like a turbine. When the Witch King swooped down into Minas Tirith to confront Gandalf, I expected something similar to the scene [the much ballyhooed showdown between the Fellowship and Saruman after the Ents go medieval on Isengard] described above. I expected a physical confrontation, although it did not exist in the book, and for the Witch King to be harmed, to an extent. Instead, the Witch King broke Gandalf's staff and Gandalf was thrown from his horse. Jackson, as a rabid fan of Tolkien's work, and surrounded by others who were also rabid fans, should have known better.

Laugh if you will, but I almost shut the movie off at that point, so great was my frustration. It's one thing to alter events to try and broaden the appeal of a movie (e.g., the inclusion of Arwen), one thing again to include things that didn't happen in the book to offer some form of structural symbolism (e.g., Gandalf being engulfed in flame), but it's another thing entirely to have something happen that could not *possibly* have happened. The Witch King of Angmar was no feeble opponent, to be certain, but he was only a man. Gandalf was not only of the race of the Maiar (within Tolkien's mythos, I analogize the Maiar to angels), he had also been reborn, sent back to Middle Earth cleansed and "greater". No man, regardless of his form, regardless of any ring he may wear, regardless of the power that runs within him, *could have possibly broken Gandalf's staff*. It disgusted me, as it should every fan of The Lord of the Rings. It was impossible, and entirely unforgivable.

Hmm, I guess I'm not a true fan, since I didn't find that scene offensive at all. After I read that histrionic passage, I started to think about my reaction to the first ten minutes of "Van Helsing" and how badly I wanted to walk out of the theater. (I didn't, but I was tempted.) But then I remembered how God-awful atrocious "Van Helsing" was and I didn't feel bad anymore.