January 21, 2003

The Change to Faramir
Peter D.

It seems a lot of people are frustrated by the changes made to Faramir's character from the book to the movie. I was so myself when I saw it the first time, but apart from the blunder of having Frodo AND the ring revealed to a Nazgul (doesnt make sense), the departure from the storyline of the book makes sense.

Imagine you have a tale where the fundamental theme is to show the absolute corruptive power of the ring - with unique and powerful individuals being tempted and some even lured by this ring, individuals such as Galadriel, Saruman and Boromir
and then have some so far unknown character being completely resistant to it? That is of course very heroic, and good ole Tolkien pulls it of in the book, but in the movies this just would not make sense, even more so because things cannot be explained to the same degree in a movie where the pace is so much faster than in a book.

I personally do not agree with every change PJ and the rest have made, but quite a few of them actually makes sense in movie-terms.