I owe an apology to “recent convert”, a regular contributor to the discussions on the Ink Desk. I am often somewhat slow in responding to his excellent comments, and sometimes fail to respond at all. I do my best to be as interactive as possible but sometimes the time available seems to slip through my fingers. Mea culpa!
 
In any event, I agree with him that Peter Jackson’s depiction of evil falters because PJ does the monstrous better than the demonic. The real test will be the way that PJ treats Smaug in the new movies. In Tolkien’s book, as in Christian typology generally, dragons are not just big, like dinosaurs, but bad like demons. I examine this crucial difference between the monstrous and the demonic in Bilbo’s Journey. In light of RC’s incisive observations, my comment that PJ does evil better than he does virtue needs to be qualified somewhat. He does do evil better than he does virtue but that does not necessarily mean that he does it as well as he should and could.
 
RC also asks whether I have written about the PJ movies at any length. I have. There are two essays on this topic in my book, Literary Giants, Literary Catholics. The first is entitled “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Successes and Failures of Tolkien on Film” and the second is entitled “Would Tolkien Have Given Peter Jackson’s Movie the Thumbs-Up?”
 
In closing, I would simply say that RC’s overall appraisal of the LotR films and his reaction when watching them is largely the same as mine.