Yet again I step in to clarify that which has been posted by most of the people distainfull of Jackson's interpretation of this Literary Work.
It's not WHAT he's done with the film that has most people upset, it's what he's done with the Media in the promotion of the concept that he is making what Coppola did with Puzo's work, as direct a representation of the original work as is possible.
Secondly, the other thing that is annoying beyond New Line and Peter Jackson trying to spin the accuracy and literalness (is that a word?) of the film in relation to the
books is that too many of the changes are not abhorant simply because they are changes, or because we have some rediculously tenacious grasp on what
Tolkien WANTED the movie to be, although he made his feelings on that subject quite clear in his writings to Forrest J. Ackerman when he was reading the Disney Treatment of their crack at it, it's that so many of the changes like
Uruk-Hai being spawned from Maggots and
Arwen being all over the movie...like
Gandalf talking a Moth into helping him escape
Orthanc and
Boromir comming into possession of
the Ring are not merely cinematic expediencies which were neccesitated by the constraints of taking a book full of deep descriptions and narative to the Film medium, nor do they make any sense in the framework of the STORY, and are not true to the CHARACTERS. They are flights of fancy that the director has seen fit to invent for his own amusement and in some cases actually detract from the logic and fundimental historical fabric of
Middle-earth...
This is not merely a complaint by geeky people who have nothing better to do then count the braids in
Gimli's beard and decry inconsistency in the wearing of boots by
Elves in the Snow, for that would indeed be silly, and it's not some anal retentive gripe fest because someone never pictured Arwen's dress to be a particular color...it's rational dissapointment that when faced with the chance to merely exclude some element that was merely eluded to in the books, like the origin of Uruk-Hai, Jackson has chosen not to bother excluding their birth but instead has invented something ALIEN to the Mythical Universe NOT because it makes for better story telling, but because it sells more toys...Why is it so important for someone other then
Frodo to have the Ring? How does it relate the story better to undermine
Elrond's flood at the ford by having Arwen in horseback in a place she never was reciting an incantation to wash the
Nazgul away? What would have been so wrong with explaining, as they did in the book, that Elrond was behind that event, and to have the marvelous character development of Frodo gaining the courage to face the Nazgul from across the water?
It's not so much the Changes, like giving one person a line that was originally spoken by another character, it's the INVENTION of things that have nothing to do with Middle-earth that are the most prepugnant...
