[HCIsland]

I've argued this in many other threads, but basically the Scouring is a story onto itself and doesn't work at the end of the film. Imagine you could do the rest of the film in, say two and a half hours. The film (plays work in the same way) should be building to it's conclusion. Instead what the audience would be getting is a whole new story with it's own set of characters. Suddenly we are introducing Rufians and hobbits that we barely got a glimps of (or weren't introduced at all in the film) are suddenly important characters in of themselves.<P>You would have to introduce Farmer Cotten, The Sherrifs, Lotho and Lobella all during a time when the story should be getting more simple, not more complicated. Audiences wouldn't swallow it. One of the magical things about these films is that Jackson makes films that are almost three hours long feel like half that. The Scouring could be done in maybe 20-30 minutes, but would end up feeling twice that as the pacing of the film would be totaling thrown off.<P>In a thousand-plus page novel, it works wonderfully. In a movie or play, it simply doesn't work. If someone made a LotR TV series, the Scouring would make a great second-to-last episode as it is a natural story into itself.<P>You can disagree all you want, but I don't think there's a film-maker out there that would not have lopped off The Scouring.<P>H.C.