To address some of these issues in the order they appear on this thread:<P>Faramir is certainly changed a lot compared to the book - I'm not too fond of it either, he didn't seem to have any mind of his own at all, until at the very end.<P>Elves at Helms Deep? To tell the truth, I sorta liked that! In the books we're told about other people in Middle Earth fighting during the Ring-war - the Elves in Lorien, Dwarfs & Men at The Lonely Mountain (some of it in the appendices I believe). But I think it would seem very strange to the audience if the Elves didn't involve themselves in some way - I always wondered where the Elves from Riwendel was in the books (apart from Elrond's sons)?<P>One of the reasons for the changes might be Jacksons interpretation of the story as being about genicide. In the books Sauron/Saruman doesn't wan't to <I>destroy</I> mankind - they wanna rule it!<P>It was mentioned that all the other things happening took time from Frodo/Sam (& Gollum). I think that's deliberate & a typical 'movie' solution - by deciding to put emphasis on the action/special effects & general grandeur of things, it's difficult to expect an audience to accept over an hours intimite 'champerplay' between Frodo & Sam. Especially a modern MTV audience with an attention span of aprox. 5 sec's <P>It was mentioned that Frodo's character was butchered. Frodo is actually one of the few characters I found a bit hard to accept already from FOtR - it's a combination of two things: the way Frodo is portrayed from the directors side, too weak in my opinion - + the fact that Elijah Wood is too young & too cute! Having that in mind, his behaviour in this movie isn't strange... But I too have wondered about how he's gonna get later!<P>& it's true - the movie seemed a bit 'messy' narrative wise to me too.<BR>In general, I still liked the movie - not as much as FOtR, but on the other hand that's not a fair comparison since I've seen FOtR 40+ times & this one only once (so far).
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