August 3, 2003

Faramir and TTT Changes
Elfowitz

I know what you mean Tina about Faramir. The problem that I think they had with The Two Towers movie is that apart from Helms Deep what really happened? They had already decided to put Shelob into ROTK because that is practically the last bit of excitement which happens to Frodo and Sam before they get to Mount Doom. So they obviously had to raise the tension levels otherwise the Frodo and Sam bit of TTT would have been a bit dull compared to Helms Deep and the Ents. Also of course in the book it was Sam who accidentally blabbed about the Ring that Frodo was carrying while in the movie Faramir amazingly deduces from Gollum's use of the words, 'my precious' that Mr Baggins is carrying the Ring of Power. Move over Sherlock Holmes! That was stretching credibility I thought. I quite liked the Warg attack as it gave us a chance to see Legolas doing the most awesome horse acrobatics ever seen plus it allowed them to introduce the Arwen dream sequence and bring in Aragorn's death bed scene from the appendix. Hopefully this means that there will be no downbeat ending to ROTK as they've got this important but gloomy scene out of the way. My biggest bone of contention was how they changed Theoden's character. I understand how they had to make him more confrontational and arrogant than in the book to up the tension again but I think it went a bit too far. Having said that Bernard Hill (from my home town Manchester, England) was absolutely brilliant. I still loved Two Towers despite the differences as they had to inject more suspense into this part of the story and overall I can understand the changes.