May 10, 2002

Entwives, Staff, and Movies
Diana

Kailam and Tomas, I just checked the parts in the book you mentioned about. What Hal saw could have been an Ent or Entwife. Tolkien was never clear on this, and he never got back to it. He also never wrote about Gandalf's staff in Orthanc. Kailam, you are not a loser. Sometimes we pay attention to things people usually don't.

Tavra, I don't think anyone who doesn't like "The Lord of the Rings" would visit this site, or maybe they will to see why people like the books and movie. They should be allowed to visit this site. Everyone has different opinions, and we need to accept differences.

To me, when someone tells me the ending, they're not spoiling the story. I still enjoy watching and reading it, often to know the reasons leading to each event, and admire the authors' and producers' works. In fact, in books, I tend to peek at the end.

Bob the Builder, I agree. As we've been saying, the movie seemed rushed, with a poor job of introductions, and ends with the 1st chapter of TTT. It did appear edited and cut for time and economic issues. Making four movies would have been better. You are probably right: the sections left out must have included the character and location introductions. Another way they could have improved on introductions in limited time was to have a narrator in the background as in some movies and TV shows. They could also have made movies four hours. Now, you are probably thinking that this will be too long, but there have been movies where the time flew by, and LotR could have been one of them. For example, in "Gone With the Wind," "Titanic" and "Saving Private Ryan" the 3-4 hours just slipped away.