www.ditl.org

They had to have a romantic influence in the film, as much as I'd rather them not...
Having the scouring of the Shire would be like restarting the film - even cutting out all that stuff at the end would give a maximum of a 1/2 hour off it - when you've been watching it for 2 1/2 hours and the Ring has been destroyed, you don't expect an all new major sub-plot to start.

They still had a loose end in the form of Saruman (who was still around in the cinema-edition), and they'd foreshadowed the destruction of the Shire in the Mirror of Galadriel.

Losing Bombadill was a blessing, in my opinion. He easily gets the 'Most Annoying Character of the Series' award for me.

In terms of the Hobbits' character development, including the Scouring would have fitted in well - showing them come full-circle to use their newfound combat experience in defence of their home. You could make room by severely trimming the incomprehensible gibberish that the film degenerated into after the destruction of the Ring.

Agreed. Losing the three hours of near-pointless hobbit crap at the end of King, and throwing the Scouring in would have been much better.

They also had the Dead going to Minas Tirith and causing physical damage, which was admittedly unrivalled for the dumbest moment of the film.

Personaly, I found the Elves at Helm's Deep to be more annoying.

The Dead at Minas Tirith really took away from the true strength of Gondor, it was just absurd how weak they were made out to be, with an Orc able to take out a fully armed soldier with no problems. Even Uruks were no where near a match for the trained Gondorians. They had to have some dead army saving them, yet in the book they save their own behinds, after coming in the ships and then later a further 4000 came up the coast to watch Minas Tirith while the rest went for a walk to the Black Gate.
And also at the Black Gate why did it only look like there were about 200 men there, when there were actually 5000 there.

Don't remind me. Although visualy it was very impressive, half of the third film had me rolling my eyes or groaning all the way through.

If I may rant for a moment, did anyone else notice that King seemed to end about a half a dozen times before it actualy did? When I saw it in the theatre (filled up with people), every ten minutes or so after the destruction of the Ring, the screen would fade out accompanied by cheery music. We'd all stand up and begin putting on our coats, and then the hobbits would come back on again. After going through this for about the hundreth time, someone behind me eventualy said, not too quietly, 'for chrisake Frodo, get on the fecking boat!' giving voice to what everyone there was thinking.

Rochey wrote:Personaly, I found the Elves at Helm's Deep to be more annoying.

True, but the whole of the Two Towers was a disaster - Tolkien, I suspect, would be turning in his grave if he knew how badly Jackson butchered that volume.

Bloke in the cinema wrote:'for chrisake Frodo, get on the fecking boat!'

Was this greeted with cheers and applause?

Good point. It's just that one thing which stood out most to me.

Captain Seafort wrote:They still had a loose end in the form of Saruman (who was still around in the cinema-edition), and they'd foreshadowed the destruction of the Shire in the Mirror of Galadriel.

That's true, but at least the Extended Edition dealt with that.

I didn't actually mind the Elves going to Helms Deep too much, it didn't take away from the 'glory' of Rohan as you might expect, and showed that the Elves were doing something during the war, as in the book they were fighting at Dol Guldor/Erebor, but they obviously couldn't show all that in the film.

Was this greeted with cheers and applause?

It was greeted with laughs, and a few muttered "feckin' right".

Seafort is dead on - the Scouring of the Shire was the instrumental denoument to the personal plot of the trilogy (as opposed to the larger, world-view backstory.)

The Elves weren't at Helm's Deep. There was absolutely no excuse to re-write Tolkien, and no good came of it.

And Arwen was Aragorn's love interest - she didn't need to assume Glorfindel's role in order to show that. It actually put her in a different light than that in which Tolkien had written her.

All in all, the films were like a cute girl with no brain - pretty to look at, and nice to experience once, but the vapidness and idiocy gets annoying real quick.

Mikey wrote:All in all, the films were like a cute girl with no brain - pretty to look at,

Honestly, that's the only reason I see book adaptation movies. What has the movie got over the book? Images, and sounds. I want to see a fantastic moving image of how Rivendell looks, what Minas Tirith looks like besieged by orcs, what the shire looks like, etc etc.

In that respect, they did a fantastic job, I thought. WETA imagined and filled in all the little details that my imagination never bothered with, and that's what I appreciated most about the films.

Unfortunately, the films took unnecessary liberties even in that respect. Tolkien is an example of an author whose wrords don't need any license or re-interpretation.

Besides, a film should still create the ambience that its parent book does, and the LOTR films failed miserably at that.

Mikey wrote:Unfortunately, the films took unnecessary liberties even in that respect. Tolkien is an example of an author whose wrords don't need any license or re-interpretation.

Besides, a film should still create the ambience that its parent book does, and the LOTR films failed miserably at that.

You think? I'm in the middle of re-reading LotR right now (just past the re-introduction of Gandalf in Two Towers). When I'm done, I'll watch the movies and see more directly.

The mood most evoked by the books in me is regret. I suppose it's an expression of how Tolkien liked the elves best, as LotR is the era of regret for them.

That regret also flows in the race of Men as well.

Deepcrush wrote:That regret also flows in the race of Men as well.

That's true. But the end of the third age is also the ending of the time of the Elves on middle earth. Their passing is bound up in the tale of the ring, and so that tale takes on much of their regret and wistful sadness, rather than that of Men.

I think Deep was referring to the waning/interbreeding of true Numenorean blood. But the ambience to which I referred was that of the backstory - the identity if Arwen with the unknown (within the trilogy) Luthien Tinuviel, e.g. That depth of history behind the story was absent from the films, while it could be felt in the books without having read The Silmarillion et.al. first.

Mikey wrote:I think Deep was referring to the waning/interbreeding of true Numenorean blood. But the ambience to which I referred was that of the backstory - the identity if Arwen with the unknown (within the trilogy) Luthien Tinuviel, e.g. That depth of history behind the story was absent from the films, while it could be felt in the books without having read The Silmarillion et.al. first.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Though as far as the dwindling of Numenor, the fourth age was The Age of Men, wasn't it? The return of the king heralded a new golden age in Gondor.