The Shrine

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>The dwarf was used for comic relief almost every time he had a speaking part. It got old, and it took away from the drama of some scenes - battle scenes in particular.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>hmm...true, except the whole kill competition he had with Legolas was in the book; I enjoyed listening to that :)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>...which lessened the "shame" I couldn't help but feel during many other stretches of the movie.

Frankly, if it wasn't for Gollum and Gimli, most movie-goers would have been smothered to death by the sheer dorkiness of LotR....

God...everytime I see that movie, the scene with Gandalf summoning the horse makes me cringe...

KO-</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeah, I kinda agree. It did serve as a bit of a distraction and took away from his character quite a bit</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>That wasn't too bad. Could have been implemented better, but the rest of the stuff was worse.</div>

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Gollum doing his back and forth between his two personalities. Holy shit was that funny. :) Now, the rest was awesome as well, but I love a good laugh, especially when I don't expect it.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>heh yeah, that was because of those damned globes he had for eyes...everything he said made people laugh :P</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>and especially during the 'summoning' of Shadowfax. It looked like a horse, nothing more nothing less. Why did they have to play it in super slow motion for 5 minutes? gah.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>That scene was rather cheesey, but it was brief. The Lord of the Rings IS dorky, I don't feel any need to aplogize to general audiences.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>That was excellent. As my brother said, Gollum puts Lucas' work to shame.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The new Yoda? No man, that looked amazing too</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Not as good as this. I believe Gollum was there, even when he had contact with the actors.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Gollum -WAS- there. There was an actor playing Gollum, with facial expressions and all. He had a CGI skin afterwards, but so what.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>I noticed that. The first one didn't quite have the same thing, but maybe he didn't speak much in the first one.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Like Sine said, the vast majority of the shots used were with Serkis in the shot with the actors and Gollum superimposed on top of him. They both look incredible, but to say one looked better than that other....that's stretching it. It's tough to say which is better</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Some of those facial expressions were highly exaggerated by the CG, but I thought that was a great touch. Whoever voiced him did an excellent job; it was the combination of voice and the visuals that sold Gollum.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Does that matter? (That there was an actor and he was replaced.) Yoda has two faces: his stern face, and his stern-and-perplexed face. Gollum acted real.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Definetely. A huge part of an actor's performace is how he/she reacts to the world around them and vice versa. And Yoda only needed 2 faces to stay true to the puppet</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Agreed on the combination part</div>

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>Give the butters's my precious</div>

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>I would have had a problem with it if he hadn't remained an ass-kicking machine. But he was, so... :)</div>