I've only watched the first of the appendices DVDs yet.
I enjoyed the part about Tolkien very much (JRRT, the Legacy of ME) , but there's one thing that annoyed me :
they were mentioning Faramir's dream about "the great dark wave climbing over the green lands (...) darkness unescapable" and that Tolkien himself used to have this nightmare . Philippa Boyens (looking incredibly smug as usual
) explained that she wanted to use these words but "couldn't find how to use it with Faramir", so they gave the words to Eowyn, "otherwise they would have stayed in the book".
I don't see any reason why they couldn't have Faramir use this quote - after all, it only makes sense when
he tells it to Eowyn - he is a descendant of the Numenoreans, and he therefore has inherited this nightmare - (Tolkien wrote in a letter that his son Christopher also had this same nightmare! )
If they let Eowyn have this dream, it has not the same meaning- what would she know of the Sea ?
And why did they have to invent this silly scene with her sleeping all alone on a sofa in the hall and Aragorn coming to her ? I (and many others) would much rather have had more of Eowyn's and Faramir's conversation!!
Sorry folks if am ranting too much
, but this is but one of the many examples where original quotes are used but said by the wrong person in the wrong place, and often giving the words quite a different meaning...
It annoys me that the scriptwriters thought they could do everything better than Tolkien.