yay for extended editions!
My in-laws have rented a beach house over christmas. We'll be spending close to a week there. one day is set aside just for a Lord of the Rings Marathon. indeed.
As for the scouring of the shire, let me start off by saying that I thought it was a great story. It revealed a lot about what the characters had become.
However, the bigger crime is the fact that Saruman doesn't show up again. at all. Grima should have thrown the palantir at the fellowship like in the book. There's really no reason for that palantir to be in the water down there, since the tower itself was untouched.
Now, as much as I like the Scouring, I think Jackson did an excellent ending, thematically. It's a bit too slow for me though. It is much more subtle int he way it reveals the character changes in the hobbits of the fellowship, but it still does it. What's more, it shows more powerfully that the war, which changed Merry, Pippin, Frodo and Sam so entirely, was fought to preserve the old ways. Hobbits as a whole don't go in for heroism, and since it was all secret, the hobbits of the shire have NO comprehension what these four have done for them. THey admire the pumpkin more than they respect the fellowship's efforts, because they don't understand that without those efforts, there would BE no pumpkin. It deepens the fellowship's sacrifice, because they can never be what they were before, never be seen as the same. They changed themselves from what they loved in order to preserve what they loved.
And it took less time. Frankly, I think he handled it the best way one could expect it to be handled in a film. Yeah, I miss the scouring, but I don't think Jackson erred when choosing not to film it -- though I may disagree with his reasons for doing so.
