[radagastly]

Mister Undrhill:

It's interesting how slippery Jackson's grip on POV is this early in the film: Galadriel narrates the prologue, Bilbo tells us about the Shire, Gandalf's POV dominates most of the rest of the scenes up to this point, though we also have a few Frodo-POV scenes to warn us that he will be an important character.

I'm not so sure he loses his grip, so much as setting up the shifting of POV that we inevitably encounter in TT and RotK. He discusses POV in the commentary during the prologue (the POV is from the Ring's perspective), so he's not unaware, or, I think, out of control. I think the shifting is deliberate, at least in the EE.

I don't know -- I think even a successful ensemble film has to pay close attention to POV within its various storylines. And your typical action movie doesn't have nearly so many important characters to handle. But leave that alone for now. I think it's interesting simply on the basis that the book is deliberately written from a very limited, hobbit point-of-view. I'm not arguing yet that Jackson's more omniscient point-of-view is necessarily good or bad -- just making an observation that we're a bit all over the map POV-wise so far, and wondering how this affects movie watchers who are fans of the books. Is this the reason, or one of the reasons, why you don't identify so closely with the hobbit characters?

An omniscient POV tends to distance the viewer, a handy technique, if that's what you want. Very effective in the middle of a film, if it's an action scene, where you want to see everything going on, enjoy the 'eye candy'. It's also the film version of literary exposition short of the old mathom of the one-sided phone conversation, where the speaker repeats everything out loud from the other end of the dialoque. Phones were (clearly) not available in the Shire for this purpose. Not so good at the beginning, though, where you want to grab the audience. The audience needs to relate to someone. I think one of the issues here is that in the theatrical version, our introduction to the Shire is strictly from Gandalf's POV, whereas in the EE, PJ took advantage of the "Concerning Hobbits" narration already done by Ian Holm, inherently shifting the POV to Bilbo at the outset. I think it may have been been a mistake, to start the story from Gandalf's POV, as this story is, ultimately, the story of the end of the Ring, and of the Elves from the perspective of the Hobbits. He should never have decided to tell this part of the story from Gandalf's POV. We should have been more related to at least one of the Hobbits, preferably Frodo. I don't think anyone would argue that he is the hero of the next twelve hours.

For instance, say we didn't have the Prologue, or even Bilbo's introduction to the Shire. We start with Frodo. He's taking a walk around the Shire, so we still get an idea of hobbit-life and what the Shire is like; also, we start to get the idea that Frodo is a bit different than these simple rustic folk.

Then here comes Gandalf.

Frodo jumps in his cart, their dialogue is much the same, except now we focus on Frodo's reactions to Gandalf. Frodo mentions Bilbo's weirdness, sees Gandalf's troubled reaction, presses him on it -- but Gandalf is reticent. "Fine, keep your secrets!" or whatever the dialogue is.

At Bag End, Bilbo and Gandalf greet. Now, when Gandalf gives his "haven't aged a day" line, Frodo is there -- and he takes note of Gandalf's slightly puzzled/troubled reaction. Gandalf wanders off to supervise party/fireworks preparation or something. Inside Bag End, Frodo and Bilbo have a scene that conveys much the same information as the Gandalf/Bilbo scene, but instead it's from Frodo's point-of-view, reacting to Bilbo's "butter scraped over too much bread" line. Certain things are starting to seem strange to him, especially after Gandalf's reactions and mysterious silence...

You should have gotten the Oscar, instead of PJ, Fran, Phillippa. In fact, they say in the commentary that they had abandoned the idea of a prologue until New Line told them they needed one (two minutes long, no longer!). Keeping that in mind, the theatrical version (at least) would have started with the shot of Frodo reading under a tree. That would have at least been close to your version.

Saucepan Man:
Fine, but that's going to require a lot of exposition in the dialogue between characters. Jackson chose (or perhaps just instinctively followed) the course likely to appeal to the greatest number of people. Perhaps he did take the easy option, but who can blame him?

You're probably right, but remember that the best films reqire NO dalogue at all. It should only enhance the experience. Otherwise, leave it out, or at least make it beautiful. It will come up that I miss much of Tolkien's poetry in the film. Just because the words are so beautifully constructed. Despite the fact that I am making a real effort to look at these films AS FILMS, apart from the books that I have grown to love over the many years. Tolkien is an incredible poet, aside from everything else, and I wanted more. More on that as we come to the places where it's missing, though, as I say, I'm trying to approach this apart from the books. My best efforts will inevitably fall short. I'm trying to keep it in mind though.