Just a few thoughts here. I've had a careful think about this whole Arwen business and come to the conclusion that PJ did the right thing. Glorfindel appears twice in the novel - and that's counting his brief appearance in the Council of Elrond. Arwen is the woman Aragorn loves and has waited 60 years for. Why waste a scene on a character who will never appear again when you can show a woman Aragorn might believably love? She may not be Tolkien's Arwen, but she *is* a lot like her much gutsier ancestress Luthien and from the scene around the fire where Aragorn sings the tale of Beren and Luthien, he's half in love with Luthien himself. I agree about the scene by the ford - oh, I did love the bit where Frodo turns around and defies the Ringwraiths! But you can't have it all. Faramir - I said, "Ouch!" when I saw TTT for the first time, but the book Faramir wouldn't have worked as well on screen. I sympathised with him, too - he was desperate, getting one bit of bad news after another, and even then didn't try to take the Ring for himself, only to send it to his father. When he saw what the Ring did to Frodo, he finally got the point and gave up the idea. I loved the portrayal of Eowyn - Miranda Otto convinced me she was a warrior just by the way she walked. Wormtongue was very much Anthony Sher's Richard III portrayal - anyone seen it? - except Eowyn was smarter than Lady Anne. Let's face it, if she'd been left as in the novel, she would have had two lines the entire film and how could anyone have felt for her by the time she does the rest of it? Tolkien could write in things that just can't be shown without giving Eowyn more to do. PJ was right here.
Plenty more to say, but I'll stop here for now, just asking if anyone has heard the BBC radio version? Ian Holm, who, I agree, IS Bilbo, played a wonderful Frodo.
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