Lately I keep waking up with music in my head. I can’t remember what else I’ve had going this week (just a dream yesterday that involved a rare transformer which turned into an intergalactic movie screen), but this time it was the Heatman theme.

As I idly bounced into consciousness, my thoughts ran to clothing. “I should wear a vest when I go to E3. And bring my umbrella. And find that fedora. And… buy a handkerchief.”

Okay. Aside from the bit where the ring falls onto Frodo’s finger and he slips into the wraith world? (I just realized that this scene reminds me a lot of when John Cusack first slips into John Malkovich’s head. Same kind of critical turning moment, where everything is suddenly, violently reframed — and in a sense the movie really begins.) The other scene which really sticks with me from FotR occurs just after Bilbo leaves, near the beginning.

Gandalf is sitting in the foreground, immersed in thought (and pipe smoke), scowling into the fire. Frodo bolts into Bag End in the background, screeches to a halt, and innocently picks up the ring along the way. He notices Gandalf and continues into the foreground. After being addressed a couple of times, Gandalf slowly, creakily turns to Frodo. His eyes drift downward. “…Bilbo’s Ring!” he chimes; quickly, calculatedly putting on as innocent and comforting (yet nevertheless distinctly odd) a smile as he can conjure.

There’s something about the effortless, logical grace of that scene which does a lot to me. “Bilbo! Bilbo! Oh… a… ring? Huh. Hey, Gandalf. Where’s Bilbo? Gandalf? … Hey. Gandalf.” “Oh. Um. Oops. You… have the ring? (Mustn’t show how terrified this makes me…) Hello!”

Part of it is in the framing. Part of it is in the acting. Part of it’s the script. Really, Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen both do so much acting beyond the comparatively corny dialogue they’re often given. They do far more acting with their faces (particularly Frodo’s eyes) than they do with their voices. Christopher Lee, whose dialogue is by far the hammiest, just seems to revel in it. He’s pretty much expressionless; the only interesting glance I can recall out of him is in response to Gandalf’s “Tell me… friend,” line in Isegard.

All of this is why FotR wins me over so much — powerful character and plot moments like these. TTT is relatively absent of them. Just action. And… Ents. And absolutely, thoroughly unneeded flashbacks.

The moment which I remember best from my single viewing of TTT so far? When… the… elf guide fellow from Lothlorien unexpectedly shows up at Helm’s Deep. His presence there. His expression. The way he reacts when Aragorn tries to hug him.

Other than that, it’s mostly just individual shots which I admired for their grace or general beauty — the long shot near the end, when Gandalf and Eomer’s men are charging down the hill; the shot by the graves in Rohan, with the flower in the foreground for about half a second; the shot where Frodo wigs out and pulls Sting on Sam.

I just didn’t have much of anything to lock onto in this movie. Again, maybe if I see it again now that I know what to expect… But I mostly just felt like I was… observing actions rather than intimately taking part in something increasingly important, along with interesting characters.

It’s the acting, and it’s the beats which sell the experience. There was too little and too few, here.

Water. Yes.

Edit: All of that? That’s partially why I said we need more Eomer. He was a really interesting character, but barely used. He needed another scene somewhere before his reappearance. So did Gandalf. And we needed more Frodo. And more for Merry and Pippin to actually do.

Aragorn and Legolas are frankly boring on their own. Some people complain about his use as comic relief, but Gimli provided some of the only actual personality in the film. And it was greatly needed. I can’t imagine the movie working as well (and it really didn’t work very well!) without Gimli being so… Dwarfy. Sam was kind of interesting, but abrasive. Frodo didn’t do much other than walk into walls in the annoyingly few scenes he was actually in; he did little really interesting or involving acting at all. Gollum was a selfish scene-stealer; I think he needed to be brought down a notch or two, to blend in better.

Really, the only bits of absorbing personality in the film come from Gimli, Eomer, and what little Gandalf we see. Considering that the movie pretty much uses them as decoration while it focuses almost entirely on the boring characters and on special effects — well, you can see how it might fall a little flat.

This is aside, again, from the editing. Gah. Not going to get into that mess again.