[Thenamir]

On Arwen/Glorfindel:<BR>Tolkien himself is reported to have said (I cannot quote chapter-and-verse, forgive me) that he wished he'd written a larger role for Arwen. If she was meant to be from the same mold as Luthien (who stood by her man all the way to Angband and back), it only makes sense to have a larger role for her in a film adaptation. In a way, it is "more Tolkien" than the books, since Tolkien revised his own opinion of his work after it was written. A master is allowed to improve upon <I>his own works</I>, no? When the <I>author</I> in retrospect says, "I did this part wrong," is there not sufficient grounds to alter that part, at least?<P>on Boromir's death scene:<BR>No matter whether in the theatre or on the DVD, regular or extended, Boromir's death scene NEVER fails to bring tears to my eyes. The book did an adequate job of restoring the fallen hero, but the visual impact and Oscar-calibre acting of both Mortenson and Bean honed that scene to a keen, fine edge and then plunged it into my heart. My opinion (and just that) is that seeing the scene in the movie affected me far more than reading the scene in the book.<P>On JRRT canon vs. PJ Interpretation:<BR>One's a book. THe other is a movie. Two different genres, two different sets of requirements. Tolkien once said that he only took up the pen to write LOTR because he wanted to see if he could continue to entertain people while writing something considerably longer than The Hobbit. If the objective is entertainment, as Tolkien said, then you do different things in the differing genres to produce an entertaining product. Scenes are intercut differently. Plot exposition and character development in a book take place through narrative description, while in a movie everything must be an effective and fast-moving juxtaposition of sounds and images, where the constant decision in adaptation of an existing work is whether to *say* something or *show* it. Saying it takes forever on the screen, but mere moments on a page. You can write a far longer book and keep someone's attention span much more easily, for no extra costs. <P>A movie must be more compressed, for each page of dialogue and description costs you a quarter of a million dollars (sometimes much more) to film. Otherwise you end up with a series of 3 6-hour scripts, which would cost many many times the price of the trilogy as it now stands, be fantastically unfilmable in terms of actor commitments, and would in the end appeal only to diehard Tolkien Geeks. Who's going to drop that kind of money for such a small return on the investment? <P>And that's another thing. PJ is making this movie not out of the goodness of his heart, but by using the venture capital ($150 million plus) of another company's stockholders to produce a PROFITABLE product! If you want to make the movie over again, then start taking up a collection from interested fanboys and hard-core Tolkien-heads all over the world, and do it RIGHT! I bet if you did that, you wouldn't gather enough money to buy a day's worth of coffee for the extras.<P>For Tolkien Fandom, PJ is of course NOT the last word. The movie is a reflection of one man's opinion of what *he'd* like to see in a LOTR movie -- no more and no less. Deal with it. Enough already. Call the movie a different story if you wish, but leave it alone - it's a fantastic movie on its own merits, and won 4 Oscars (and was robbed of at least 6 more), and made something over $800 million for the stockholders of Time/Warner. If you and the other nit pickers want to fume and fulminate over the absence of Glorfindel, then I hereby issue you a challenge: don't go see The Two Towers when it comes out. Just stay away and let the rest of us have fun. <I> It's just a story! </I>