Last of the Mohicans was a great flick. One of my favorites.
So was LOTR, but I was really disappointed in the Cavalry charges (both in TT and ROTK). Apparently, physics mattered throughout the series, except the orcs must have been massless, becauase the cavbalry does not stop or even slow down as they charge through the ranks.
Well... the audience doesnt notice right away because their swept into the moment. By this point if your heart isn't beating fast, you probably have a pulse rate of thirty. But yeah if you watch it over and perhaps again you see it. Plus even if you are somewhat annoyed that the Orcs with their ridiculously short pikes are being swept away like balloons in the wind its onto the next scene with elephants bigger than Brontosauruses (and a King who reforms his horsemen and orders them to charge "head on"), a skeletal Witch King who wields a Morning Star only a modern day tractor could swing and a ghost army that glides and devours its prey like a swarm of locusts. This movie isnt about Gettesburgh and reinactment methodology. So it's all good.
Getting back to Last fo the Mohicans the director there uses a lttle bit of that when we see Hawkeye holding two flint lock muskets in either hand and blowing away two foes while on the run (a WORLD CLASS feat for those days plus someof those muskets were picked up from dead poorly trained Indians who loaded them)... I mean, don't these guns ever misfire? (not to mention the ninja like knife play throughout the movie).... Not in Hollywood they don't. In real life quite a bit thats why you had to stand pretty still to shoot em. And even then they misfired like bitches, sometimes lethally.
A good director knows that when they got you they got you and they can get away with some stuff.
The "cavalry" charges were really my only complaint. I don't mind suspending belief for things that are "magic", but the charges weren't "magic" based - it was pretty much a straight up cavalry charge. It annoyed me because I'm one of those guys that watches movies for "accuracy" (hahaha - in a fantasy movie, i know i know). Dinna get me wrong, I loved the LOTR movies.
My favorite was Two Towers... loved watching the psychological battle going on in Gollum's head. That was the best part of the movie imho. Second was the battle for Helm's Deep. It swept me up in what it must be like to be under siege, where there is no escape. I was imagining how fearful it must be to be under siege when they showed that shot of the women and chillen hiding when the bad guys were outside stomping and stuff.
Yeah I go for extended version only... and couldn't care less about Tom Bombadil or anythign else that was from the books that was left out... It was a damn great series imho.
And all I have to say about movies...
Pearl Harbor = Worst. Movie. Ever. Worse than Roadhouse.