Really? Who are Legolas and Gimli? What's their motivation for joining the Fellowship? What was their life like before they joined? What more do we know about them other than "They're an elf and dwarf who get along"? And no fair answering with info from the books.

My problem with the later two movies is that they don't really spend much time on character development but rather just present the characters and rely on familiarity with the books to fill in the characterization (or the promise of 23-hour extended editions on DVD).

Now, while I love it when an action movie develops characters and motivations and I'll always have a better opinion for it I also don't necessarily require it any more than I dock a character-drama for not having a quality car chase.

Sigh. I just offered opinion. I even said it wasn't a very movie-critic-like -educated opinion. Considering the immense number of side characters in these movies, I think an amazing job was done.

I was never a fanatic for the books, though I enjoyed them when reading them in jr. high. I know many have read them over and over and are certainly more educated on them than I.

NA mocks a typo?????

Hey, I'm allowed.

Not attacking, just discussing. This is a disccion board, right?

I give action movies far less leeway regarding character development if they insist on throwing an ensemble at me. If you're gonna go through the trouble of making me sit through a dozen different characters' dialogs and make me have to remember their names, they'd better be interesting and not some shallow cliche.

Atlantis is a good example. I really would have enjoyed the movie, with the same plot and action, if I didn't have to deal with every annoying sidekick cliche under the sun in the meantime.

Sorry, for critics (and people like me), part of the reason I love movies is the desire to discuss them. That is another way critics differ from the "average movie-goer" in that I think the average person's desire to think about a movie doesn't extend much farther than "thumbs up/thumbs down."

Most certainly.

As far as the motivation, looking at the movies alone without bringing the books into it (though it was been well over 20 years since I read them and wouldn't remember anyway and a few years since I watched the first), it seems to me that they were at the original meeting where the fellowship was established as representatives of their particular...race? It was an issue of pride to Gimli to not be left out of the quest, and an issue of duty and loyalty to Aragorn for Legolas.

But that's as far as it went. Where does that loyalty for Aragorn, a human, come from? What did Gimli leave behind when he went? Nevermind that from that point on, the two of them became nothing but comic relief.

How far do you take things like that, though? Why was Aragorn in love with Arwen and vice versa? What was the history of their relationship? When did Sam and Frodo first meet and why is Sam so loyal to Frodo in the face of their conflict over Smeigel? Etc.

Of course there are things we aren't told and aren't present. When you have limited constraints in terms of time in a movie (and they were pretty long already), how can you address all such issues?

I don't think you can. So you do your best to move the main characters along. Frodo and the burden of the ring and the final overwhelming of him by its power when he refused to destroy it at the end. Aragorn accepting who he was. Etc.

I have no vast knowledge of movies, but I can't think of another in the action genre that did as good of a job, except perhaps the original Star Wars.