[HCIsland]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>But why do we HAVE to end the two towers on a note of victory? The book does not, it ends with the best cliffhanger in literary history. ie "Frodo was alive but taken by the enemy". Just imagine, as many people did back at the begining of publishing these books, that they had to wait a year for the next installment! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>There is no reason Towers had to end on a note of victory, in fact Jackson makes a point of ending on a rather ominous note with Gollum leading Frodo and Sam to "Her". I wasn't saying you couldn't put Helm's Deep and Shelob in the same film, just that you couldn't intercut them. You would make Shelob the climax of Towers which, as everyone knows, would work wonderfully.<P>The problem becomes, what to do with Helm's Deep? You would have to scale it back considerably as it no longer is the show piece of the film. The other problem is that Tolkien wrote a beautiful climax for Helm's Deep which feels like an ending. You would somehow have to defuse that if you were still to have another 45 minutes or an hour of film to go. Add to this the timeline issues that Jackson brings up on the DVD and the simple fact that getting Shelob out of the way does give Sam and Frodo much less to do in King.<P>I think, with all this added together, Jackson made the right decision. Towers really turned into the Aragorn show, but personally I'm very glad that so much of Sam's and Frodo's material has been pushed back into King. I think ultimately it will make it a much stronger film and will allow Jackson to concentrate more on Frodo's plight, which ultimately is what the movie should be about.<P>In one more month, we will all know how well this worked or not.<P>H.C.