genetically engineered excuses

The Fam and I went to see Return of the King again this evening. I’ve hesitated to say anything about it after I saw it the first time, but so many other bloggers are talking about it, I thought what could it hurt? So, this is not a Rod’s Review of the movie, just some thoughts that I had after my first viewing that were reiterated today. Now keep in mind that I love the movie, I just missed some things that I drew from the book. There are some concepts and truths that the movie never intended to state. I think I’ll toss them out over the next few days so that I can feel free to ramble on about them.
The first one:

The orcs in the movie are mostly portrayed as evil killing machines. As if they are robotic inventions for the sole purpose of propagating evil. In the books, they are thinking, fairly intelligent beings with free will just like the rest of us. They have decided what they will be an act accordingly. In the movie, I think this was intentional because of the amount of violence. If the audience were to sense that the orcs were anything more than machines, they’d have been offended at all of the killing. In the books, one side is willfully fighting for evil and the other is willfully fighting for good.
The ring has corrupted those who could have otherwise turned out to be like hobbits or men or elves. I think this is an important concept that is a sign of the times in our culture. No one is responsible for his choices anymore. We are all genetically or biologically wired to be or behave in a certain way and it is futile to try to be anything else. It is intolerant and judgmental to expect someone to behave in a way that is contrary to his biological make-up.
Evidently we’ve always been like this, even David after having Uriah killed to cover his own adultery, confesses and asks God’s forgiveness with a bit of an excuse thrown in. I am just a man you know. This is how men behave. It’s not entirely my fault. (I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin, my mother conceived me) But David realized that he was to overcome his predisposition as a son of Adam, to sin, and took responsibility and repented. Today, we use these excuses to avoid the need to repent, to shirk responsibility for our own greedy, gluttonous, prideful, attitudes.