January 13, 2003

TTT Failure
Ichibo780

Is anyone talking about how terribly TTT the movie departs from the book's original storyline? Most of those I have spoken to who have seen the movie believe that Jackson and New Line change the story for the worse. Of course those who believe so, myself included, are usually people who read the book prior to seeing the movie. I'm interested in knowing how many people feel this way. I thought I saw a petition on petition.com regarding this.

From what I can tell so far, this is the issue. On the one hand people supporting the movie argue that PJ's movie is an adaption of the book, and that a movie which had followed the book's original storyline more closely would have been unfeasible. On the other hand what I hear from those who were disappointed is that many of the additions to the story that were made were time consuming and unnecessary. Two examples from the movie are the Faramir/Frodo/Osgiliath episode, and the Aragorn/Arwen/Elrond sequence. Both were serious departures which not only Tolkien did not write, but were arguably completely unnecessary and ate up valuable screen time.

My concern is that PJ and New Line changed the story from the heroic epic that Tolkien ment for it to be, to a typical Hollywood romance-action film. The time they wasted adding to or changing the story might have been spent sticking to the orignial. Anyone else think so? Shall we put it to a vote?