[Boromir88]

Again, I have to give kudos to the acting, and I will continue because the acting is one of the stronger points of the movies. I think most of the actors did a great job in making convincing characters in the movies. Chris Lee is no different, bringing in such a beloved Tolkien fan as well as an experienced actor was a big plus for the movies.

morm brings up a good point about the simplification of Saruman's goals. He certainly does seem like Sauron's puppet, a miniature Sauron. He becomes Sauron in TTT as Sauron is in ROTK. In the movies I got this picture that he was like "the lower boss," you know in those video games...to get to the head hancho you have to beat through the lower bosses. Saruman is certainly simplified, I believe he says "We must join with Sauron."

Also, I'm not convinced that the audience could not have seen a different motive. Where now instead of just plain Middle-earth vs. Sauron/Saruman we have Middle-earth vs. Sauron vs. Saruman (which is the way I pictured it in the books). Saruman may have communicated and shared details with Sauron, but I got the impression that Sauron was using Saruman for his own purposes, and Saruman was planning to backstab Sauron.

Now could we have had this in the movies without creating a lot of complexion? I think so. I think it's been done in other movies as well, where we have multiple factions, multiple goals for each side. Each side is in it for a different reason.

Braveheart comes to mind right now where we have the Big Bad English dominating the Scots, but we have the Scottish nobles who can't break away from England because they're fighting amongst themselves. They can't decide who is to rule them, and they can't be united, each "faction" has their own agenda.

So, I think portraying Saruman as this man who comes to Gandalf and says..."Hey, together we can beat Sauron and we can use this Ring to restore Order and overthrow Sauron." And of course, Gandalf being the good guy that he is, saying that's all wrong. But, now we see that Middle-earth also has to deal with Saruman, not just as a mimic of Sauron, but someone who's after the Ring himself for his own power. (And we'll see this used later in Boromir/Denethor/Faramir scenese especially TTT EE. Don't see why it not here).

With all that being said, I think the movies did do a good job of establishing the feeling of "something's not right with this other wizard." Even before we meet him we have Gandalf tell Frodo "I must see the head of my order, he is both wise and powerful. Trust me Frodo. He'll no what to do." Lines like that may seem, ok everything's going to be fine, but it's just a use of irony. Just by using "Trust me, Frodo. He'll no what to do." I don't know about you, but I got a sense of, "Umm, he's not going to know what to do," or atleast what the "right" thing to do is.

Then when we get to the actual scene we start having our suspicions reaffirmed. Once we get to the Palantir, and Gandalf touches it, with the flash of "The Eye of Sauron." We then get the history of the Palantiri and that's basically the climax right there, we now are pretty confident Saruman's not a good guy.