[Quempel]

I think this is where the problem lies for me. It’s not the plunge of Denethor that is so ridiculous to believe, it’s the fact that Jackson felt changing it from the book is what is unbelievable (to me). Yes I can suspend my disbelief with the plunge, what I have a hard time with is believing Peter Jackson thought his version of Denethors death was better than Tolkiens. It’s not the actual scene that is so hard to believe, it’s that Jackson actually thought he could do it better.

The bottom line is one can take Jackson’s billion dollar Oscar winning movie out of Tolkien’s world, and Tolkien’s world remains. However, one can not take Tolkien’s world out of Jackson’s work. If Tolkien had not written LoTR exactly what would have made Jackson his billions and won the awards, that’s right nothing. This is this and that is that.

Jackson interpreted Tolkiens work, and some of us backwards Appalachian inter-bread doofs actually think that Tolkien did a better job on the story. Call us backwater inbreeds dumb but we actually think the person who invented Middle Earth probably did a pretty good job with it. Some of us are not saying that Jackson did a bad job, but some of his changes were unbelievable, not because of the scene itself, but because the book simply did it better. Case in point Denethor’s death. It has absolutely nothing, nada, zilch to do with him running three miles on fire, it has to do with the fact that Jackson changed the scene completely, that is what is so unbelievable. The scene in the book was great, why change it. The change is what is unbelievable, not the actual scene. It has nothing to do with suspending our disbelief in fantasy, it has to do with our suspending our disbelief into thinking that Jackson actually interpreted the scene from the book they way he did.

To me at points in the movies and with some of the character changes Jackson did, I often wonder what book he read. I like the movies just fine, and it matters not to me how much money or awards they made and recieved, they are good movies. But they are Jackson interperation and some of his interpertations leave me wondering what I watched and why it was so far from the book when it didn't need to be.