August 18, 2003

There's Wonderful and There's Wonderful
Brett C.

Tinowien, I think if you examine the articles fomr start of year closely, you'll see some things coming up repeatedly with regard to criticims of the movie TTT, by and large from the people who are fluent with the books and who, like myself, had extremely high expectations after FOTR.

The biggest sticking points were probably...

Faramir
Elves at Helm's Deep
Faramir
Not enough Ents
Faramir
detour to Osgiliath
and, that's right, Faramir

As has been pointed out since, the shortcomings in PJ's Faramir in comparison with Tolkien's original are partly to do with alterations in Frodo's character and behaviour, but by and large a lot of us just sat staring at Faramr on screen and wondering to ourselves 'What the hell is this?!!!' The biggest hurdle for those like myself is that in the books Faramir is just the BEST, and the theatical version seems so...inadequate. That said, a lot of people felt the same about Galadriel and she was redeemed on screen by the Extended DVD, so we are waiting anxiously for November. Even with my mixed feelings about the cinema release I still saw TTT 4 times [8 for FOTR] and will probably rent or buy the new DVD later this month.

Hope you enjoy reading the book.

Brett C :)