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Originally Posted by alatar
By the by, when watching RotK with the kids in the room, we skip this scene as it’s a little too brutal.
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I know what you mean, it is hard to watch indeed. The way we hear Deagol's last heartbeats we not only know he died, but we ultimately feel it. I'm sure this is what Jackson intended and he superbly achieved it. This silent death is more effective than a thousand of brutally and noisily slaughtered orcs. If only more of the movies had this intensity.
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The Ring here doesn’t give him power, and he’s no better off for taking it. We don’t see him living the high life, then as the Ring takes hold and his family can take no more, the addict falls from the good into the sickness of the addiction. There’s no indication that the Ring corrupted his heart, and gave him delusions of grandeur. It’s as if the Ring and the murder make Gollum look as he does, not all of the subsequent actions and life choices.
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Considering they didn't have that much time to show the transformation, it was okay to me. I've already said I don't like the simplified Gollum that much, not only because it, naturally, took depth and isn't true to the book, but because I think a more complicated Gollum would have been scarier and more effective. But, well...
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Originally Posted by Trotter
The whole scene was rushed and stupid and shouldn't have been at the beginning of ROTK anyway.
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If you just mean the transformation, I agree. Though I'm not sure how it could have been done much better in the same amount of time.
If you mean the whole beginning, I disagree. When I first saw it in the cinema I was very positively surprised, because I didn't expect this scene to be included at all. Smeagol didn't look 'proto-hobbitish' enough, Deagol's dive wasn't that well-made and the transformation, well...
..otherwise, I really like the scene.
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The whole 'ring addiction' thing that they had going in the trilogy was ridiculous. It should have been portrayed much more subtly.
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The problem with subtlety is always that the general audience, unfortunately ever the target audience of big budget movies, might not get it. And if you don't get why everybody is attracted by the ring, or don't get what this ring is about at all, you don't understand the movie. Then you don't like the movie and then you don't go and watch the two sequels. You have to put yourself in Jackson's place: He couldn't afford the trilogy to not be a success.