DVD Polizei

Did anyone notice Frodo is still wearing the ring AFTER Sam has left because Frodo tells him to leave? During his fight with the spider, there are a few obvious scenes with the ring still around his neck. Then, when Frodo is spun by the spider, and orcs take him up to the tower, and are about to kill him, Sam shows up with a knife in an orc, saying, "not if I get you first."

Well, Frodo now says, "Sam, they got the ring." This was because the orcs took all of his clothes.

Sam, says, "No they didn't Mr. Frodo. I've had it all along." And he then brings it out of his pocket...

WTF? Did I miss something? I'm assuming the only chance Sam had to take the ring was when Frodo was asleep and Gollum was framing Sam to be the bad guy.

DeputyDave

I always assumed he took the ring from him just before his capture (while he was cacooned) by the Orcs. They didn't show it because they wanted to build tension in making you think the bad guys got it.

huh?

This is correct.

DVD Polizei

Hmmm. I guess I'll watch it again and see if it makes sense. I also have an issue with the way disc 1 ended. Seemed kind of harsh. They should have faded the Wolf's Head intro, not just cut-to-black. I have to say, I have an issue with all of the LOTR movies. The editing is not as good as I would have preferred it. The human CG motion was very good, probably the best I've seen and this is where Weta and PJ's crew shine, but in the editing department, I'm hesitant. Anyway, that's another thread.

The Infidel

I thought from watching it the very first time that it was pretty obvious how it happened:
Sam thought Frodo was dead, all wrapped up...he heard orcs coming...cut to the orcs...they take Frodo...Sam shows up in the tower and gives him back the ring. You then realize he took it before the orcs came.

And he didn't say "I had it all along."

Frodo: "They took the ring!"
Sam: "Beggin' your pardon, but they haven't. I thought I'd lost you, so I took it...only for safe-keepin'."

Jackskeleton

yup, always seemed obvious when it happened.

Duder

The disc breaks were done this way (immediate cut to black) so it was obvious that the break was not meant to be part of the movie like an intermission. If one were so inclined, one could rip the video from both discs and edit them together on a computer and it would be seamless. This would not be possible if they faded out on disc 1 and faded in on disc 2. When the LOTR movies are re-issued on the next format, they should be able to fit each extended movie on one disc, without a break.

As far as the overall editing goes, I think it was very good most of the time, with just a few abrupt or unnecessary cuts here and there.

For instance, I always felt there were too many back-and-forth cuts between Galadriel and Frodo just before the mirror scene in FOTR. In ROTK after Faramir goes on his suicide charge, there is this one short shot of orcs moving their siege towers over bridges in Osgiliath before it cuts to the people of Rohan. It always felt like there should've been more there, but the EE didn't add to that.

I also thought the end of Aragorn's palantir scene transitioned too abruptly to him on the road to the Black Gates. In the documentaries, they mentioned that they filmed some montage-type footage of him being fitted with the armor of Gondor, and I wonder why that wasn't put there, as it would have made that much smoother. Maybe they weren't happy with the quality of the footage, I dunno.

Otherwise, I think the editing was exceptional, considering how many separate storylines they had to follow and jump between, particularly in the second and third films. They managed to strike a balance between conveying the most information and having it flow--two things that are often at odds when adapting a pre-existing work of such complexity.

Kevin M. Dean

The cut at the end of disc 1 wasn't a totally abrupt cut. The audio kind of echoes and quickly fades out at the point that the video cuts.

glassdragon

He did take the ring after shelob bit frodo and before the orcs found him so that he could take it and dump it into mount doom hisself. at least that's what happened in the book