December 4, 2003

The Romance of Faramir and Eowyn Should Not Be In
Bob Praz

I'm sorry, I hate to be the one always supporting PJ, but this is also an opinion I've had for quite some time. I never expected the love story between Faramir and Eowyn to be included in the movie. I doubt it was ever even shot. I liked that part of the book simply because it completes the stories of those two characters and provides more of a happy ending (otherwise I could imagine another Shakespeare-type ending where the characters end up miserable and committing suicide; yeah, I really feel good after reading those plays...). However, just like the Scouring of the Shire, I could never imagine it in the movie. It's simply redundant to have it in a film.

First of all, there's already one love story in LOTR (Aragorn and Arwen, of course) and to put in another one would be annoying (especially to the general audience), seeing as this is not a romantic movie. Think about it: how many non-romance movies have more than one love story in them? Not many that I can think of. You can have one main romantic relationship that drives some of the plot, but adding another secondary or "by the way" romance is just pointless.

Secondly, Faramir and Eowyn's relationship, in the end, doesn't do anything for the story. It does develop and complete the characters, true, but in the case of a film you should all know that only the main characters are really important. We're lucky PJ even kept half of the minor characters in LOTR. I find that only war movies have so many people in them (so I suppose we see a pattern here).

Thirdly and finally, the entire part of the Houses of Healing and the romance of Faramir and Eowyn takes place right before the climax. You just can’t do it that way in a movie. You can’t have this separate, soft, romantic sequence right before the colossal climax of an epic movie. Unless it sets up the climax or the plot in any way, no good director or editor would do that. You do need a pause in the action at one point, but the Last Debate will likely fill-in that role in ROTK with a good bit of exposition. All in all, I’d rather watch Frodo and Sam nearing Mount Doom than a love story in Minas Tirith. This is probably also why PJ would have cut out the Houses of Healing completely, if he actually did that.

As a fan, I’d love to see as much of LOTR in the movies as possible, but as a movie-goer, I don’t think I would enjoy a four or five-hour movie that includes EVERYTHING in the book. However, I’m still not convinced that all of the spoilers we’ve heard of so far are actually true; at least I hope not, as some of them seemed for more absurd than this one.

PS: on a note, however, since we won’t be at the Houses of Healing with Faramir and Eowyn, maybe that’s another sign that Merry will stay with the main characters and go to the Black Gate. I hope so, in fact. For the movie I just can’t picture Merry and Pippin being separated so easily at the climax.