I keep telling myself to stay away from movie/TV threads, but something brought me back to this one (I'm looking at YOU, CL!
)
The need for a prologue was mentioned a couple of times above. That may be necessary in a Silmarillion movie, but I thought
the one in FOTR was a mistake. I know that "no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of his audience", and all, but I found it to be another example of the "anticipation" that
Tolkien warned about.
One of the things that captivated me, on first reading LOTR, was the sense of
mystery, or actually a series of unfolding mysteries, that we follow
Frodo through, as
Bilbo's ring, which he merely thinks "may be useful", turns out to be
the Ring.
He (and we) learn something of its history and significance from
Gandalf, but then have to experience an entire book of adventures before leaning more of its long story. And those experiences are important for understanding. For instance, Gandalf mentions
the Nine briefly, but does not, of course, know that they have arisen. Therefore, Frodo doesn't connect them with
the Black Riders he encounters, until receiving more information from
Strider, and then at the Council. Until then, they remain a mystery (or to be less anachronistic, perhaps I should say "
riddle", as that's the term Tolkien uses consistently). By then he has had direct experience with them, making the information he receives much more meaningful.
By putting so much of this in the prologue, the movie, it seems to me, "flattens out" the mystery. The solution, if PJ wanted (understandably) to avoid long stretches of expostional dialog, would have been to place the "flashback" sequences in their proper
places, accompanying the stories of Gandalf at
Bag End, and
Elrond at the Council, for instance.