Quote Originally Posted by Cuchulainn View Post
I think it's pretty much known that Tolkein was no professional writer. He took not classes nor obeyed the traditional rules of prose and format.
Tolkien was a Professor of English at about 28. At Oxford, he was part of the Inklings, a literary discussion group that included C.S Lewis. As I don't think they had writing classes back in the day, he probably had a pedigree as good as the best.

However, he was an expert in the old stories from back in the day, like Beowulf and all the Old English epic stories. Lord of the Rings is basically very similar in nature to those stories, which is probably why it didn't follow the rules of contemporary literature.

And The Wheel of Time has many more characters. It probably rivals War & Peace in that regard.

Anyway, there probably will be another Ultimate edition of the trilogy released in a couple years. I agree that Glorfindel is bad-ass and think Bombadil should have been included to. As for the Scouring of the Shire, it was more a winding up of several untied plot elements, such as Saruman and the destruction Sam glimpsed of the Shire. I could live without it. Denethor was badly misconstrued.

But overall, the movies were fairly awesome.