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Originally Posted by Essex
It's called suspense! or building the atmosphere up..... didn't gandalf turn up at night in the book too anyway? ok so he didn't grab him, but does this really matter?
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Yes, it does in this case. In the minutes of film preceding the Frodo-grabbing scene, we see Gandalf as a wise caring old wizard man, beloved both by children and at least two older hobbits. We've seen him actually hug both of these characters. He could have simply yelled back to Frodo, "See ya!" as he ran out the door for Minas Tirith. But PJ has this character stop, turn and take a moment to reassure Frodo. And he places a hand on his shoulder. That touching is important, as it did not need to be in the film. This same touch on the shoulder would later be used to shock.
Nothing in the film (we hope!) appears by accident - we're not watching live footage but a medium in which there might be 29 individuals 'pictures' every second, and each of those pictures is what the producer/director wants us to see. This group made sure each of those pictures had the right color, brightness, computerized effects, etc. Now, to zoom back out, we have a main character
doing something. Then, moments later, this same character does something that to me is out of character, and the only reason that I can posit for the action is cheap thrill.
If we are to have suspense, use a cat.
My guess, as stated previously, that we
here could have written the scene to include suspense yet allow for the characters to remain internally consistent and also to show some 'traveling time.'