[Aratlithiel]

littlemanpoet, I found myself nodding in agreement throughout your post and thinking to myself, "Fianlly! Someone who understands it completely! Someone who GETS it! Yay! I'm not insane!"<P>Then I read the subsequent posts and I have to say (and here I will probably incur the wrath of Saucepan Man again) that you all are just not getting it. True to the spirit? Sorry, but uh uh. Commercialization and film-budget worries? Dumbing-down to please the masses? Please!<P>How many Tolkien fans do you think there were out there before the movies? And how many of those fans would have sat through FOUR hour movies if they had been true to the real spirit of Tolkien? And how many of those would have gone multiple times? Very close to all of them. With the money they were sure to get from Tolkien fans alone, these films were already assured block-busters before they hit the screens. These guys were going to make their $270 million back plus much, much more based on Tolkien fans alone, so why change fundamental characters for the benefit of non-fans and so anger the very fans they claim to have made them for? I say fundamental and mean it. These movie characters - Faramir, Frodo, Theoden, etc. - these are NOT Tolkien characters. I defy you to find a single character in LotR who resembles any of these people. Each one has been stripped of their nobility and for what? So some yahoo sitting next to me in the theater with his finger up his nose can follow the story a little better? Sorry, but if you don't have the intelligence required to pick up a book until some movie director tells you to, I don't feel like I should have to suffer for it.<P>Am I being a bit selfish? You bet and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I am a Tolkien reader and these films were supposed to have been made for ME. So how come people who haven't read the book can enjoy the films more than I can? No fair!!<P>It's like ordering General Tso's chicken and being handed beef and broccoli and told to like it. Sure, beef and broccoli is good, but it's not what I ordered and I really felt like chicken! How's that for dumbing down? LOL<P>Something else has been bugging me lately, too. OK, I saw the movies, I own the ext. FotR DVD and will probably buy the ext. TTT. I will also go to see RotK and buy that DVD as well. I like them. I don't love them as I hoped I would, but I do like them. I'm disappointed by them but will learn to live with it. So why is it that people are so disturbed by my disappointment and insist upon telling me that I'm wrong to be so? I don't care about budgets and time worries - I only care that these are not the books. So what? Why is that bothering you so much? I'm not forcing my opinion on you, merely expressing it - why am I wrong? No one (that I have seen so far) has told anyone who enjoys these films that they shouldn't, so why are you all so intent that we who are disappointed in them not be?<P>And if one more person tells me to read my book again, I'm going to come over and beat them with it!! And it must weigh a good 5 pounds, so look out! LOL