[Eurytus]

“The final confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman is tense and exciting and satisfies the wish of the viewer to know how Saruman was deal with.”<P>So if we stick rigidly to the book you think audiences would be happy to see a confrontation with a character they have never even seen? Don’t think so? In the book Saruman only gets a couple of mentions and is never seen before this confrontation so how exactly are they going to make him seem like a big villain.<BR>Answer, they can’t and wouldn’t.<P>“The prologue disrupts the flow of the mood of the film”<P>As someone else has already mentioned it is actually impossible to disrupt the flow of a film when it has not even had a flow established yet. From a story point of view it was imperative to establish background to the story and having a half hour story telling session from Gandalf in front of the fire at Bagend was not likely to cut it.<P>“The fight at Weathertop”<P>Um, in the book there basically isn’t one. Frodo takes one stab and blacks out soon after seeing Aragorn wave a brand around a couple of times. Yep, I can see how that would get the audience on their feet!<P>“Tom's role could have been reduced to the rescuing Frodo from the barrow-wight and been left more or less at that.”<P>And so you are somehow qualified to approve deviations from the text now? And what a change! A technicolour dwarf popping up, saving the Hobbits from barrow wights and disappearing again. <P>“These films have been badly directed, end of story.”<BR>And yet the majority of the public and critics do not seem to agree with you.