Look what they've done to Middle-earth, Ma

lot of mounted people are rushing through a forest. It was very blurry for me, so I won't make any guesses about what it's supposed to be portraying. But I was very reminded of the attack on Conan's village in Conan the Barbarian (which is one of the best scenes in what is perhaps the all-time best barbarian movie). I kept expecting to see the Pictish warrior jump up onto a rock, breathing heavily in the cold air, but he didn't appear. They also showed something I think is Isengard. It looked a bit too Baroque or Gothic to me (hard to make out). One does get the feel that the artists (Howe and Lee) abandoned Tolkien early on and went in for the Jack Kirby look. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, but if anyone should decide to bring Marvel's Thor to life, they should probably get hold of these guys for some artistic concepts. The bottom line is that we can expect a very active, vibrant Middle-earth in the movies. The scenary and sets should draw the audience in and make them go, "WOW!" in every other scene. Tolkien purists who don't get upset and walk out will probably have a good time and enjoy the fantasy in the movies. And that's what it's really about. It's fantasy. Some people about died of heart attacks when they heard "The Wiz" was being produced. I've seen The Wiz and, though it's not my cup of tea, I wouldn't want it to disappear from our cultural heritage for all the money in the world. Like The Wiz, Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings is going to recast Tolkien's world in a virtually unrecognizable mold for the purists. It's not going to be Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth. It cannot possibly be Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth. Sadly, he is no longer here for us to consult. Yes, they could have been a lot more faithful to his descriptions, but if they had actually tried to be, how much trouble would they have gotten into when they came up to a depiction Tolkien didn't leave us? How consistent could they have been with Tolkien himself? After many months of agonizing over the inevitable medievality of Jackson's films, I've finally come to realize that if we don't let him produce this vision -- this very unTolkien-like vision -- we will never have a visualization of Middle-earth. Is

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