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Other interpretations of Tolkien's epic are available from transcripts of the interviews with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, Viggo Mortensen, and Andy Serkis that took place that day. (More transcripts will be posted over the next few weeks.) They are posted here.

Meanwhile, Michael Medved has criticized Rings' star Viggo Mortensen for voicing his own views that are critical of the current U.S. administration. Medved writes off his views as mere "pacifist preening," saying that Viggo is "polluting" press coverage of The Return of the King. When I interviewed Mortensen, it was hard to ignore his strong convictions, but I also found him to be a softspoken fellow with deep concerns about our nation and how it presents itself to the rest of the world. At the root of his opinion is a call for "humility" as a desirable aspect of leadership.

Further, it is worth noting, that Tolkien's own views of America were not entirely favorable. In a letter to Carole Batten-Phelps, written in the autumn of 1971, he said, "The horrors of the American scene I will pass over, though they have given me great distress and labor. They arise in an entirely different mental climate and soil, polluted and impoverished to a degree only paralleled by the lunatic destruction of the physical lands which American inhabit."

Is Medved ready to write off Tolkien as a "preening" Christian artist?

Critics bugged by The Butterfly Effect

Television comedy star Ashton Kutcher (That 70s Show) stars in this week's top-grossing feature film. The Butterfly Effect is an intense psychological thriller that suggests a rather difficult notion: Kutcher as a dramatic actor.

The story is rather far-fetched as well. In it, a young man (Kutcher) traumatized by the death of his girlfriend (Amy Smart) takes advantage of a time travel trick to try and save her life. As he makes several trips forward and backward in time, he sees chaos theory in action—the idea that every inconsequential action has vast consequences. The harder he tries to make things right, the worse things seem to get.

Along the same lines, mainstream critics argue that this movie just gets worse the farther it goes. Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) says, "There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate, so many chapters in the journals, that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around."

Religious press critics also feel a bit jostled by the film—and offended, too.

Loren Eaton (Plugged In) says, "The Butterfly Effect [has] some holes—huge ones, in fact—but it's kept moving fast enough and cleverly enough that most audiences won't notice until they're well out of the theater. What you can't help noticing is this R-rated feature's content. And there it fails miserably." Eaton notes that the film's creators are also responsible for "the pornographically violent Final Destination 2."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) calls it "an interesting sci-fi premise … weakened by a substandard cast and a pair of novice directors. Ashton Kutcher may be amusing in a slight TV comedy series but he proves himself unable to carry a dramatic film such as this one upon his shoulders. The premise of the film is interesting enough to keep us involved but not without the awareness that it could have been so much more intriguing in the hands of more capable artists."

Bruce Donaldson (Movieguide) says the movie "does address sin and its ramifications in the lives of 'real' people. It also resolves itself, nicely, with an act of loving, self-sacrifice." But then he concludes, "We are charged biblically not to set our eyes upon anything evil. The filmmakers are artful in keeping the most extreme violence and kiddie-porn/pedophilia off-screen. Why couldn't they have done the same with the sexuality and nudity?"

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January (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48