Quote:
|
Originally Posted by CSteefel
I still don't understand here, because The Hobbit doesn't reveal anything about the true nature of the Ring. And the prologue recapitulates what you learn in the Hobbit.
|
Forgive me. We may be talking at cross-purposes here. I had understood you to be suggesting that the suspense might have been increased to good effect by the contrast arising from the audience first being introduced to the Ring as Bilbo's seemingly innocent discovery and only learning of its true nature during Gandalf's explanation to Frodo at Bag End. To my mind, that would only have had any significant impact if the audience had had some "emotional attachment" to Bilbo's adventure, either because they had previously read
The Hobbit or because they had seen a
Hobbit film prequel. Otherwise the length of time between the audience's introduction to the Ring and the revelation of its nature is insufficient to have any major impact, in terms of suspense.
As I understand it now, however, you are suggesting that suspense could have been built up to good effect by gradually revealing the true nature of the Ring during the scene between Frodo and Gandalf at Bag End. True, I suppose, but, while
The Shadow of the Past is a wonderful chapter and works exceptionally well in literary terms, I do not think that its equivalent as a lengthy scene in the film would have worked well on screen. It would have required long passages of dialogue and, even with flashbacks, this would have affected the pacing of the film (very different from the pacing of a book). And it would simply have taken up far too much time. I think that they spent just about as much time as they could on this scene. The story had to move on and could not do so without the true nature of the Ring being revealed, since this was the reason that the Hobbits set out from The Shire.