May 12, 2003

Mount Doom
G

Spoiler Alert - if you don't want to know about THE key scene of RotK then read no further - you have been warned!

First of all, thanks to all of you who have helped allay my fears that some of the major scenes in RotK will be altered. However, I still have doubts over Mt Doom.

The problem is this: Frodo did very little in either of the first two films and looked particularly weak and unheroic in The Two Towers. Although I'm sure Peter Jackson would like to leave things as they are, he may, for this reason be coerced by the money-men into making the following change. While Frodo absolutely MUST initially refuse to destroy the Ring and Gollum MUST take it from him by force, Gollum DOES NOT have to then overbalance and fall into the fire with the Ring. Instead, Frodo could overpower him and cast him into the fire with the Ring and thus redeem himself. This may only be a small change but I can see it happening and I would not welcome it.

As an afterthought, in the film version of The Two Towers the titular towers were clearly introduced by Saruman as being Orthanc and Barad-Dur but when I read the book I was of the opinion that the towers referred to were Orthanc and Cirith Ungol (Barad-Dur is, of course, never actually visited at any point in the book). And now that I think about it, the Two Towers book ends up with Aragorn, Gandalf and co. headed for Minas Tirith and Frodoi and Sam being led dangerously close to Minas Morgul, so could these be the towers? Or (admittedly unlikely) could Dol-Guldur be the second tower, along with Barad-Dur as both of these towers were strongholds of Sauron. This is quite a large afterthought isn't it? Sorry - next time I have one I'll make it a seperate post.