[Kaiserin]

I was just thinking about opening a thread such as this one.<P>First of all, I'd like to say I liked the movies, even if they were not entirely true to the book. I did dislike those inconsistencies, but I still say that FOTR and TTT were amazingly done, they were great as films. <P><B>Arwen / Glorfindel / Flight to the Ford</B><BR>I sure wished Glorfindel would have been in the movie! (Funny story: I have a friend who never read the books. When he saw a poster of Glorfindel warding off the Nazgul at the Ford, he goes, "Arwen is a guy?!")<BR>Anyway, putting Arwen in Glorfindel's place wasn't really that disastrous to the plot; I guess Jackson just needed make Arwen more visible. She didn't do much in the books but was given a lead role in the movie. Like it was mentioned in the above posts, the LOTR movies turned out to be "Aragorn's story", so Arwen needed a more significant role.<P><B>Tom Bombadil / Hobbits at the Barrow Downs</B><BR>Removing this chapter didn't really ruin the plot, though it would have been great to see It wouldn't have appealed to non-readers, and it would confuse them.<P><B>Time lapses</B><BR>I certainly agree that the way the movies portrayed the passage of time would be confusing for non-reader watchers. <P><B>Orcs</B><BR>Great orc costumes / make up! But I just felt like the orcs were "non-characters", more like intelligent animals or something. They did not have the personalities Tolkien conveyed in the books. And there was no distinction between the Isengard orcs and Mordor orcs.<P><B>The creation of the Uruk-Hai</B><BR>This was rather confused too - Saruman's Uruk and Sauron's half-orcs seemed to have been one and the same, though they are not. And of course, it creates the question in vewers' minds : "How did Saruman breed orcs with humans?" and so on. <P><B>The Treason of Isengard</B><BR>What treason? <P><B>Legolas</B><BR>I didn't really like the way he was sort of, er, too perfect, and a little bit of a showoff (mounting a speeding horse; sliding down the steps on a shield...) And I think he was a bit too serious in the movie.<BR>I personally don't mind about him having blond hair; I thought it should be brown but a blonde Legolas was a nice idea. <P><B>Faramir</B><BR>I also don't understand why his character was altered... Now, <I>this</I> change affected the story.<P><B>Elves at Helms Deep?</B><BR>I didn't think this was too bad, though it inspires many questions. If you don't mind me saying, it actually added impact for the film. It looked quite nice... But Haldir's death was just too pathetic.<P><B>Shelob</B><BR>I hope they do justice... Before watching TTT, I thought it would be a great teaser to make people think that Frodo's dead at the end of the movie. But then if they did show that at the end of TTT, people would walk out depressed (like the ending of <I>The Empire Strikes Back</I>), so I guess it was good that they made a not-so-gloomy end.<P><B>The Scouring of the Shire</B><BR>I agree that including this would be anticlimactic. It would make a funny scene, though!<P>We all know that original books are always better than film versions. Jackson still deserves applause for his work - come on, they were great. Of course it's impossible to squeeze 3 great books into the movies. I thought at first PJ should have made 6 movies instead of 3 to accomodate all the detail, but then I realized this would tire audiences.<P>...I'm thinking maybe LOTR would be a great mini-series. That way, all the detail could be put in without boring masses ... Maybe we could e-mail this thread to Peter Jackson? (Just a thought) <p>[ August 14, 2003: Message edited by: Kaiserin ]