April 8, 2002

Re: Can't Find Anything Nice to Say?
Jazmin

I must say that I strongly agree with Cat101 and Janelle. Why are we focusing on putting down the movie when we can concentrate on all the wonderful and astounding interpretations of Tolkien’s literature, so brilliantly portrayed by Peter Jackson? We all, like PJ, are fans of Tolkien’s publications, do you really believe that anyone else could of handled the making of this movie better than PJ? I don’t, and it wasn’t all him either, there were many other people involved that had some say in things like the cutting out of Bombadil and the whole ordeal with Gimli asking for a lock of Galadriel’s hair, or expanding Arwen’s role. If PJ would have included all of the scenes that you all seem to be so disappointed in not seeing then the movie would have been too long. People were already begging PJ to reduce the film’s running time before it came out last year, can you imagine what it would have been like if the film was even longer. Luckily, some of your desires will be fulfilled when the special DVD versions come out in November, which will include many scenes that we all yearn to see.

Regarding, Arwen’s expanded role: I do believe that she will have a collection of scenes in The Two Towers, sorry Janelle, but the TTT preview seems to foreshadow more of Arwen coming up. Although, I don’t find that at all unpleasant I really liked Liv Tyler as Arwen. IF there is more of Arwen I believe in PJ enough to know that he won’t blow her character out of proportion. The only reason he might emphasize more on her would be regarding her and Aragorn’s relationship because if he doesn’t, there will be a lot of watchers that will be particularly unhappy about that. Most of whom have not read the book, ultimately not understanding why the relationship was left out.

Furthermore, I wanted to make another statement. It’s the first time I post a forum of any kind and it’s also the first time that I have discussed anything about Lord of the Rings online. When I first saw the movie I was mesmerized and fascinated by the intelligence and astonishing storytelling of J. R. R. Tolkien, even though I had not read his book yet. Never before had I heard of The Lord of the Rings much less the author. I know, I know, you’re thinking where have you been? But it’s only because I’m 15 years old and like any typical American teenager I was never a big fan of reading. It has always taken something special and unique to get me to read something out of my own will and now I’m glad to say that this movie persuaded me to start reading the book. The only reason I wanted to say this was because I wanted to make clear how much of a magnificent, excellent, and marvelous experience LOTR was for me. And like every other person that went to see the film before reading the book, I ran to my computer and started to search everything regarding LOTR and Tolkien. I was also surprised when I found out the date when the book was published. Just more proof of how great Tolkien’s writings are: it still manages to draw in younger readers even though the book was written so long ago. That’s truly amazing. He’s like the Shakespeare of this past century.