August 30, 2002

Too Many Liberties
Justin T.

When I was 11 the Trilogy was very important to me. I wore out my first set reading and re-reading until finally the paper backs were a bodge of scotch tape an Elmers' glue. I didn't take the "veil" if you will, like so many others. It would have been neat, but I knew that smoking pot and searching the woods for Frodo would be fruitless. Regardless of Robt. Plant or Mountain.
So I return to the Trilogy as a middle aged man, and am surprised at the response the film engenders in me. Much has been written already about the serious ommissions and changes in Fellowship. Then I read about Two Towers from the sneak previewers. If you never read the books, these films have got to be home runs. I have to complain about the addition of Elf deeds in the film version. In the books, all the Elves did was sit around their enclaves living apart from Men, and singing songs about the olden days, when they weren't bugging out of Middle Earth. Having Elves stand a suicidal rearguard before Helms' Deep to Save Aragorn and Theoden is BOGUS. Creating story line for Arwen is also bogus, and takes away from a most important and central female character actually written by Tolkien, Eowyn. There's more but these are ruiners in my book.
That would be the one Tolkien wrote