Will Lord of the Rings do to epic battles what the Matrix did to action?
Now emideatly after the release of the first Matrix movie there was a large 'epidemic' if you will of just totally unbeliveble, craptacular fight scenes. Movies that with no justification defied the every rule of physics with no reason, other then they just wanted to one up the matrix, which was never done, the fight between Neo and Smith in the subway was the best done fight that will ever be.
Right after the matrix though, MI:2, The Medallion, Kill Bill, The One, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, thats just off the top of my head emerged, movies that just decided "Hey the matrix had people jumping 20 feet in the air and jumping off of walls, if we don't do it we won't be as cool" the problem is that not one of these movies did it well.
Now that Lord of the Rings is out will that be the standard, if you don't have 500,000 people going at it in your movies do you fail? We are already starting to see this trend with Troy. You don't have to have to create your entire battles on CGI because you have so many people you coulden't hire that many actors, some of the best battle scenes in the world have had 2000 or so people, Spartacus, Braveheart, The Last Samurai (Took me 5 diffrent trys to spell Samurai).
Yes RotK did it, and did it well, but if you send 1 million people to fight in a battle that only had 5,000 you will most definatly fail.
I had another thought, while watching Gladiator today I realized there hasent been one real 'Strategy' based RTS out there. I think Myth probibly came the closest. Every RST is who can build what the fastest. Who thinks a RTS based around the Spartans would do well? Instead of build build build, attack attack attack how about a RTS where you use terrain, use different formations depending on what you are up against, instead of building Barracks that produce a full grown soldier at the click of a button you build walls, set up ambushes, and lay traps.