April 24, 2002

Re: Elrond's Council and Moria
Brett C.

Pj actually discussed the difficulty of filming the council scene on the LOTR movie site before the film came out, saying in the book it is 30 odd pages of exposition which is a great read but would not traslate well to film. Before seeing the movie I had thought they would beef things up by having the 2nd age scenes at the front of the movie put in there. Actually I was a bit disapointed the game was given away so early about Bilbo having the one ring. Of course all the fans knew already but I thought it might have been more interesting if it would not made clear Bilbo had picked it up - then all the shots where he is fiddling with something in his pocket would have built more suspence, and there may have been some more apprehension as Gandalf has Frodo test the ring in the fire. Or maybe not.

Anyway, the two elves either side of Elrond could either be Elros and Elrohir, Elrond's twin sons [my personal opinion] or they could be his 'peers' Gildor and Erestor named in the books. One of the dwarves would I suppose have to Gloin, Gimli's father, who is expressly mentioned in the text, and the others would be from the Lonely Mountain as well. No idea who the Elves with Legolas are meant to be. One of the men either side of Boromir is supposed to be from Lake Town, according to an article by the New Zealand actor who played him, and does actually have a line or two which was edited from the cinema release but may turn up on the DVD.

Actually, going back to the dwarves, it always seemed a little odd to me that in the movie [a] Gimli had no idea something might be seriously wrong in Moria, even though it was obvious from the look of the place it had been ruined for some time, and [b] Gandalf DID have some idea of what had happened, but seemed to deliberately avoid mentioning it. Any thoughts