Okay, so what do you think NOW?

[Sauron the White]

from StW

In the end some filmmaker could film the book page for page and turn out 29 hours of film and miss one speech in hour 12. Some purist on one of these sites would mention it and say it detracts from an otherwise noble effort. I truly believe that would happen. You just cannot please some folks.

reply from WCH

Sauron, will you please give that strawman a rest

In all honesty and sincerity I do not bring it up to disparage anyone or to tar anyone with an extra wide brush. It is nearly six years of reading criticism of the Jackson films that has convinced me of this. Over and over again, on several different boards and in other formats as well, I have seen mounting evidence of this mentality and attitude.

I remember with crystal clear clairty one of the first posts I read from someone who had seen an advance copy of FOTR in which they said something like this.... and I am reconsturcting from a memory nearly six years old ....

I knew something was terribly wrong when the first words you hear in the film are words coming from the mouth of Galadriel but actually belong to Treebeard.

The viewer had not yet seem one minute of actual film but was already poisoned because Jackson and the writers had switched the speaker of a line of dialogue. From that early review it has just gone downhill ever since.

I truly believe that there is no pleasing some Tolkien readers. I would love to be convinced otherwise but post after post, article after article, confirms that feeling.

William - I do not see this as a strawman. I truly believe it and have been convinced of it through repeated examples.