I’ve heard some students are being forced to read some novelization of the movies in their literature classes. Ridiculous. Does Hollywood run our classrooms now?Hollywood can’t make a movie these days without crapping out a sequel the next year to squeeze more cash out of the proverbial sheep. After Two Towers made its money, did anyone doubt Rocky would come out of retirement one more time?

Quality Control at New Line.

Millions of copies of the LOTR DVDs have thick black bars at the bottom and top of the screen throughout the film. Didn’t anyone catch this? You know what happens at the end, in the extreme foreground and extreme upper sky? Neither do I. Bush league, gentlemen.

They switched Darrens on us!

Look closely in Fellowship and you’ll notice the human member of their party is played by two different actors at different points of the movie (it takes a sharp eye to notice, but one of them has red hair, one black).

Quality Control at New Line, II.

In the massive Mt. Doom battle scene at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, a Air Jordan DMP DVD pause reveals at least half a dozen of the 50,000 Air Jordan 5s Orc Warrior extras are wearing modern tennis shoes.

Speaking Air Jordan 6 Rings of Orcs.

The Orcs were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Meanwhile the black skinned antagonists and their black crow spies and Air Jordan 6s their black glass seeing ball inhabit their black towers and perform black magic. One would have to be blind to miss the symbolism.

Gold: The Stretchy Element.

The ring, which is seen to be at least two inches in diameter at the beginning to fit the polish sausage sized finger of Sauron, suddenly fits Frodo’s child sized finger later.

Horse sense.

Why didn’t they take horses on their quest? Or even better, why didn’t Gandalf’s giant flying bird friend haul them into Mordor? Watch out, Frodo! All of your methods of transportation have been swallowed by the Dark Lord of the Plot Hole!See below.

Return of the Living Dead.

In FOTR, if you watch closely during the Inn scene, Frodo and his crew are shown getting stabbed by the Ring Wraiths. Then, five seconds later, they are fine again. Note to the director: try proofreading your movie before you release it to the public.

Did someone say plot Nike Air Foamposite One hole?

Liv Tyler’s character is seen easily defeating nine strong supernatural beings, even though she is clearly a woman.

The Battle Droid Syndrome.

The mutated muscular soldiers of Mordor turned out to be hilariously ineffective fighters, a dozen of them held off by a single dying human. Apparently they made the beasts by crossing Orcs, Goblins and the French.

Sloppy CGI.

Gandalf’s smoke boat at Bilbo’s party is pretty impressive, but smoke cannot be made to travel horizontally, thus revealing it to be nothing but a cheap special effect.