[Estella Brandybuck]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>At the end of the story we find out that the man who captured Frodo and Sam was not Faramir at all. But his evil twin, who had locked the nice Faramir in a closet.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Hey, someone else shares my theory! <P>I understand why PJ & Co. wrote Faramir the way they did. I don't like it, but I understand it. They wanted to keep the tension up, and I guess they felt that he wasn't a very realistic character. What I don't understand is why they felt they had to turn him into Boromir v2.0. I've always seen the brothers as very different people - one is war-loving and ambitious, the other is gentle and intelligent. Movie-Faramir didn't seem like that at all to me. I thought he was a bit crass and almost cruel at times. In the book, Faramir's men comment on how he doesn't like for them to harm any living creature, and yet in the movie he lets them drag poor Gollum all the way to Osgiliath on a leash. I don't mind deviations from the book as long as they're in moderation, but what they did to Faramir was just a bit too extreme for my tastes.<P>That being said, I have high hopes for Faramir in RotK. Mainly because I have a lot of faith in David Wenham to portray the character the way (I feel) he should be shown. There are times in TTT where you can see that shrewdness in his eyes that Faramir posesses in the books (one example is that look he has at the Forbidden Pool - just something about it made it seem to me that Faramir could be a clever guy when he wanted to be).<P>Redeeming him? I like the ideas that have been stated before, mainly a conversation between him and Pippin. (After all, we know that Pippin is really fond of Faramir, since he named his son after him, so might as well establish that early on. ) And I for one will be very willing to forgive everything I thought was wrong about TTT if they just put in as much of the Éowyn/Faramir relationship as possible. Again, I think that Wenham (and Miranda Otto, of course) could pull that off very well if given the chance.<P>That's all from the peanut gallery...