Most Tolkien book fans have moaned at one time or another about how the films are different to the books.
Jackson puts the Shelob scene in EXACTLY where it is chronologically in the books.
And now lots of people slag him off for actually following Tolkien's time line.
He can't win, whatever he does............
Now when I first heard that shelob wasn't in TT I was dismayed, and yes, the book has the greatest Cliffhanger in all of 20th Century literature, and I've mentioned this quite a few times in the last couple of years on this site. BUT listen to the extras on the ROTK dvd, and they explain how why they did this to fit in with Tolkien's timeline. In the book, Aragorn was fighting the forces at Pelagir, Theoden was in Drauadan Forest, and Minas Tirith was about to be besieged.
So Jackson was being FAITHFUL TO THE BOOKS. And he still gets a bad time. Oh well.
PS the only way having Shelob at the end of TT and remain faithful to the books is to edit the movies as Tolien wanted them - IE follow the NARRATION of the books. But this would be Movie suicide - it just would never have worked staying on one group of characters for half a movies length.
PPS the movies are all one long 12 hour marathon now that we have the DVDs anyway. Like the books, they're just one long story split up in 3 sections. Just like Tolkien was forced to split the book up into 3 chunks for it to be published.
PPPS - and yes, I know, if you want to be picky, in truth the LOTR is 6 books!!!!
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