What change in the movies ticks you off the most?

Everything I've seen to date indicates that Saruman is killed in The Two Towers. How can one have a proper Scouring of the Shire with no Saruman needing to be scoured....

Hmm.. What about Grima, maybe PJ are making him responcible for the Scouring of the Shire?

I've heard that Eowyn kills Grima in the movie (TT ? )... It does make sence... if the SotS is taken out...

It only makes sense if you totally change the mood of the book and end it with the crowning of the King. What a crock!!! PJ's ruining one of my favorite parts of the book. Darn!!!

Yes, the Scouring of the Shire is needed... err I am as much against these movies as Thorin is! Down wit Pj!!

Aha! We're winning fanatical coverts.

*Darth Vader voice* All is proceeding according to plan, Thorin. */Voice*

I didn't know that so much would be changed.. Hmm.. Even Tolkien fans will get lost while trying to recognize the "line"..

Originally posted by Greymantle
Aha! We're winning fanatical coverts.

*Darth Vader voice* All is proceeding according to plan, Thorin. */Voice*

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Yes, and soon we will crush the rebel resistance, Lord Greymantle...

lol

Now all we need to do is convert Rosie Cotton and the world is ours...

DWPJ!!!!

seriously?

WTF... IS PJ making the film about a book I havent read? Didn`t know all this until I read it here. What about the Ents? Heard that they were taken out of the script as well. This really messes with my mind. LOTR without Treebeard? How does he think to get rid of all the orcs at Helms Deep? The Ents has got an important part in LOTR as well as Bombadil. This is sounding more and more like another Hollywood farse. Is their way of thinking like this: Lets take Really good books and rip them apart? Its starting to look like that. F... Hollywood thinking!!

Ondir, if you'll read through this thread completely, you'll see many of the changes we're talking about. Treebeard and Ents do apparently play an integral part in the FOTR and the TT but are presented much more in a first person. (ie we actually see the Ents attack Isengard as opposed to it being related to the group by Pippin and Merry).

Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest section appear to be completely ommitted. You'll find most of us on this bb are not upset with the ommissions; rather, we're upset with the creation of new characters and added roles of existing characters. (ie new super Urak-hai named Lurtz, Arwen Evenstar in Zena Warrior Princess role, etc.) With a work as detailed as LOTR you couldn't possibly include everything from the book in a series of three movies, but at the same time, it is appalling that PJ is changing the very essence of the characters and story line.

Still.... it should be a good movie. Heck, it's loosely based on the best book in the world.

On the omittion of the "Scouring of the Shire" I fear I must give PJ a pass here. As a reader you are bound to feel a connection with Frodo and the other Hobbits that would not be as easy to reproduce in a film, and so if you take a moment to imagine what a Non-Reader would experience...the long three film buildup to an ending that, after the battles and perils that went before, ends in a run down, burnt out Hobbiton and the chasing out of the now all but defeated Saruman only to have him killed by his Rat-Like accomplice would be a MASSIVE let down. I dunno, that's my feeling on it...I would almost have rather had a visual postscript, kind of the antithisis of the Prolog that will be in the beginning of the first film (The need to fill in the story of Sauron and the Rings of Power BEFORE the Council of Elrond is a given..), something at the end that showed clips of action and expository with Gandalf explaining the events of the Scouring of the Shire, leading to Bilbo and Frodo at the sea and the scene of their parting from Middle-earth.

If it ends with the crowning of the King do we not see Frodo, bIlbo and gandalf sailing to the grey havens? Now that actually IS a good movie-type ending, coz they could literally be sailing into the sunset. Awwww!
Besides does it also mean that Sam doesn't marry Rosie and have their 1 million kids?!?

ReadWryt didn't say that would be left out; he said it would be "jumped" to.
Though if PJ continues his pattern, I wouldn't be too surprised if he cut that as well. Not dramatic enough or something. He'll find an excuse.

Originally posted by Thorin


Now all we need to do is convert Rosie Cotton and the world is ours...

DWPJ!!!!

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I will never be converted!

The cutting of The Scouring of the Shire, is to me the most upsetting change, but I completely agree with RW's post on why it was neccessary. I think that if you analyze why the changes are neccessary for a film adaption, like RW just did, most of them DO make sense.

it is appalling that PJ is changing the very essence of the characters and story line.

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Yes, there there have been subtle changes to characters, and less subtle, but still neccessary changes to the storyline. But HOW CAN YOU SAY THE VERY ESSENCE HAS BEEN CHANGED!!!!! THIS IS STILL LOTR!!!If you asked someone who just saw this movie, and someone who just finished reading LOTR for the first time to describe ME, and the story they had just seen/read, I'd bet their descriptions would be almost identical. Because, the story doesn't depend on the ring being with Frodo during the coucil of Elrond to make the ring the evil thing it is, it isn't about Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, it's not even about The Scouring of the Shire! And the movie won't be about Arwen, or orc-pods. Both are about Frodo Baggins, and the war of the ring; a hobbit faced with a seemingly impossible task that he ends up accomplishing.

Their's nothing wrong with a purist viewpoint... just please stop acting like PJ decided to cut Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf out of the fellowship, to replace them with Arwen!

The Lord of the Rings is a great book, and although the Scouring of the Shire is an important part, the book does reach a sense of finality with the crowning of King Elessar, and so I can see why the film would end there. PJ kills off Saruman in the rather infamous (among Tolkien fans like us) 'Wizard's duel'. I am not sure what happens to Grima, but I am not sure it matters too much. PJ might have gotten him to fight on Saruman's side, and he could be killed off by the Ents or someone (although that would make me and many of you mad.)

Saruman, killed in the stupid wizards' duel? If that's true, I'm really furious. It means we never have any scene of parley, and there's no struggle with the power of Saruman's voice, and...good Lord.... Sorry about this, but that bastard.

The cutting of The Scouring of the Shire, is to me the most upsetting change, but I completely agree with RW's post on why it was neccessary. I think that if you analyze why the changes are neccessary for a film adaption, like RW just did, most of them DO make sense.

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No..they do not. I do not believe (and correct if I'm wrong, RW) that RW is supporting the changes, or your viewpoint, just the cutting of the Scourging, which like Bombadil, could be justified from a movie making point of view. These cuts do not, however, justify the ludicrous and annoying changes to the rest of the script that were not sanctioned by Tolkien, nor would they be his wish.

Yes, there there have been subtle changes to characters, and less subtle, but still neccessary changes to the storyline. But HOW CAN YOU SAY THE VERY ESSENCE HAS BEEN CHANGED!!!!! THIS IS STILL LOTR!!!

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Nobody is saying that the very essence of LoTR is being changed. We are angry that PJ does not have enough sanctity for Tolkien's wishes that he changes details that could and should be left alone. We are angry that he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth like he is being so true to the script, as if JRR was working through him in making this movie.

Who is PJ that he thinks that he can go against what Tolkien intended (indeed, how he wrote the plots and it's characters) and decide that Gandalf should act like a sputtering, paranoid, out of control man, or that Elrond's council is not important enough to portray it right (and I'm not talking about cutting out the history tales), or that Boromir should handle the ring on Caradhras. These changes DO have great significance to the story and by altering them, you distort the literary significance of the whole thing.

If you asked someone who just saw this movie, and someone who just finished reading LOTR for the first time to describe ME, and the story they had just seen/read, I'd bet their descriptions would be almost identical. Because, the story doesn't depend on the ring being with Frodo during the coucil of Elrond to make the ring the evil thing it is, it isn't about Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, it's not even about The Scouring of the Shire! And the movie won't be about Arwen, or orc-pods. Both are about Frodo Baggins, and the war of the ring; a hobbit faced with a seemingly impossible task that he ends up accomplishing.

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That I doubt very much, Rosie. ..unless the reader was so influenced by Hollywood, he wouldn't know good literature if it bit him on the rear. All of these events do play an important part. The Scouring, Old Forest, Barrow down, Weathertop; all work together to support exactly what you say they don't: a hobbit faced with a seemingly impossible task that he ends up accomplishing. All these episodes build up to just that: it's called character development. Tolkien wasn''t just some average Joe-story teller. Tolkien spent most of his adult life forming ME, you don't think every part of it interprets and complements itself? You don't think that he had reasons for every thing he wrote about? Of course altering the story like PJ has done will change much of the meaning of the plot and character. The little things in good literature make a big difference to the story, that's the difference between your average author and those like Dickens, and Tolkien. They wrote it that way. Maybe when you take a few more English classes in school, you will see that.

I have to take exception with Rosie's post. The glory of the story is the MYTH. The story is not any one, or even the collection of things that you describe...but it IS the completeness of the universe in which the story unfolds. Indeed the books would not have been hindered had J.R.R. left out Bombadil, or included more Arwen, but as anyone who has read the History of Middle-earth could tell you, he was ALL about consitency, continuity and character. There was an order and purpose to not only the languages which were his first love and truely the real inspiration for the Elves and Dwarves and their complex culture, but the consistency of the characters...the fact that Gandalf was unlfappable, not some blathering half crazed madman one moment and then engaging in a Wizard's duel the next. There was a means by which elves were born and it was implied that Orcs, being a grotesque parody of the Elves would most likely do the same...but probably with whips and chans and stuff..(Just kidding). I think you can see what I mean, it's just that there is a richness and completness to Middle-earth that transends simple Fiction. It's a whole other world for which the author, either overtly or covertly, breathed a coherent life with particular rules, standards and laws...and here comes P.J. and his press department spinning tales of how this Director is going all out to reproduce the books in true form, when he has tossed many of these rules and laws out the window out of fear that an audience would be too stupid...or too uptight...or have too short of an attention span to ever accept, let alone enjoy the story that was voted one of the top ten greatest of the past millenium, and tell it in the manner that the author employed to thrill MILLIONS of readers since it's publication...*Whew* Ok...I'll get off my soapbox now...*Trips getting off the box and spills my coffee*

God, do you people EVER stop ranting? It is frustrating to read the continuous stream of anti-PJ posts appearing here. Principly because almost all seem to continuously disregard the fact that the film is a SEPERATE work within itself, and isn't (nor could it ever be) a direct recreation of the novel...

"It has been mentioned above how it would impossible to fully create Tolkien's work on the screen without extending it to 20hrs in length. I would argue, further to this, that it is not possible to reproduce some areas of the book at all. The literary devices that Tolkien uses (such as the speeches given in the council of Elrond) would simply be absurd if reproduced to true the book. They would be far too long, and quite frankly tedious. It seems as if some members of this forum would only be satisfied if - on paying the entrance fee for the cinema - they had the novel recited to them in their seats! Scenes have to be different, Tolkien did not write LOTR as a screenplay. Different things may be said and done but provided the film stays as close to the book as reasonably possible I will be happy. I will not, however, as this stage proclaim my outrage about a film I haven't seen; there is no sense in it. "

"I loved the book for it's magnitude and depth, but when I watch the film I will be watching it as just that: a film. I acknowledge that some things appear to have been "created" and their effect in the film shall be interesting to see. But such speculation as to the effect of these on the film (as it can only be for the trailer and the odd pictures released are no way near enough to evaluate an entire film) is fruitless. The orc pods for example, if the creation of Saruman, could be entirely justified. Saruman didn't produce such creatures as a mockery of Elves but altered them so as to stand sunlight. The pods therefore could be part of this modification. This, WE HAVE YET TO SEE. Please, people, have an open mind. See the film and then judge. "

Please forgive me for repeating myself in the above two passages, it is simply that the arguements so far contain the same flaws and misconceptions as before.

Mac

Originally posted by Maclock
God, do you people EVER stop ranting? It is frustrating to read the continuous stream of anti-PJ posts appearing here. Principly because almost all seem to continuously disregard the fact that the film is a SEPERATE work within itself, and isn't (nor could it ever be) a direct recreation of the novel...

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I would disagree with you Maclock. That to me sounds like a cop out for a badly done movie. The movie would not be made, were it not for the publication of the book. When the movie is made, it is taking the book and putting it in pictures. The director has the responsibility to be as true to the book as possible. Other wise they could do an entirely different movie with the books title if there is no responsibility to the book. I think that that is a given when you make a movie from a book. It is about JRR. When you stick his name on the title, and put his name in the credits, isn't it quite obvious that it is not a separate work, but an embodiment of the creator of that story?

"It has been mentioned above how it would impossible to fully create Tolkien's work on the screen without extending it to 20hrs in length. I would argue, further to this, that it is not possible to reproduce some areas of the book at all. The literary devices that Tolkien uses (such as the speeches given in the council of Elrond) would simply be absurd if reproduced to true the book. They would be far too long, and quite frankly tedious. It seems as if some members of this forum would only be satisfied if - on paying the entrance fee for the cinema - they had the novel recited to them in their seats!"

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Maybe you would like the novel recited to you we wouldn't. Nobody is asking for a word by word quotation, Maclock. We would like the characters, who were made by Tolkien the way they were for a literary reason, and the plot changes which all enhance the story to be left in tact the way Tolkien intended them. Good grief, don't you get it yet?? You do not have to include all the speeches at the council of Elrond, but you should leave the rest as Tolkien intended. Taking the ring out and leaving it on a pedestal for all to gaze at it, then having Gimli try to destroy it with his axe, takes away from the power of the ring over the individual. It was needless, fruitless and takes away from the STORY! The STORY Maclock! There is a story to be followed here. It is not about PJ. It is about JRR Tolkien!! There did not need to be a change here, nor in many other places.


[/B][/QUOTE]"The orc pods for example, if the creation of Saruman, could be entirely justified. Saruman didn't produce such creatures as a mockery of Elves but altered them so as to stand sunlight. The pods therefore could be part of this modification. This, WE HAVE YET TO SEE. Please, people, have an open mind. See the film and then judge. "[/B][/QUOTE]

As stupid as that concept is (all orcs multiply like all other creatures), certain allowances, however annoying and farfetched, for what is not specifically stated can be overlooked. However, Maclock, if you've even been reading our posts or even listening to us, that is not our main beef. If you haven't got that by now, it's not worth babbling about again.