I think for me, the film was very good, as good as FOTR, but a few of the discrepancies stopped it from being great. The major problems i had were :-<P>Theodens character - Where was the wise old king? The guy on screen didn't need to be posessed by Saruman, he probably would have listened to Grima anyway. And that created a whole other problem. The need for Grima at all. Why does he need to be whispering in theodens ear, if Theoden is posessed? Didn't make sense to me.<P>Helm's Deep - Elves there? I don't think so. It wouldn't have taken more than a couple of lines of dialogue and/or cutaway scenes of elves and dwarves in there own battles to show why they couldn't come. I don't think that's why they were there. I think PJ didn't think the none tolkien audience would buy the trees saving the day. Therefore he needs a new "7th cavalry", which has to be Eomer. Therefore he needs more troops to make a credible defence, and can't just double the size of Rohan's army. <P>There were a few other things that bugged me a little, but they were the major ones. They didn't spoil the film for me, but they pulled me out of the narrative and spoilt the flow for a little while. Faramir was a different story. Until the end i thought he'd changed a little too much, but i now feel they just dragged out his understanding over a longer period of time, which left too little time to show his good side. I feel we will see him in his true light in ROTK, if not the extended version of TTT.<P>Too the people who don't mind the changes :-<P>The reason i have a problem with them, although i must stress again i liked the film and they did not spoil it, just took it down a notch, is the way Tolkien wrote. To me, he didn't create great stories, he created a living breathing world, and then filled in it's history. One of his greatest strengths is attention to detail. In most cases, if a character mentions some part of history, you can find the story in the silmarillion (or elsewhere). It all interconnects, and it all seems real. To me, it's a history as real as our own. that's why i don't like the Chris Tolkien books which show alternative versions of stories, as it spoils the illusion. So when the film deviates too much from the books, i don't think "that's not what he wrote", i think "that's not what happened", or "that's not what he's like". <P>Someone before mentioned Braveheart, and it's the perfect example. It just depends whether you can accept the artistic licence. To me, Braveheart is flawed, because i lose the sense of the world that has been created when i see things that didn't/couldn't happen for the sake of the story. To others, a good story is the key, and the details are less important. Neither view is right or wrong, it's just what's important to us as individuals, and colours the way we view the films.<P>All that remains is to apologise for the length of the post, although i doubt anyone's still reading by now!
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