[The Saucepan Man]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> The Ents storyline was poorly received in the press when the film was released, and I believe that it was because of the poor ration of time they were granted. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Funnily enough, a newspaper review which I read before I saw TTT opined that the scenes with Merry, Pippin and Treebeard, being slower paced than the rest of the film, dragged somewhat. This was the only criticism in a review which otherwise lavished great praise on the film. Now this is only one review admittedly, but it was a well-written review in a quality newspaper and I can see where it is coming from. Personally, I would have preferred to see much more of Merry and Pippin with the Ents and, in particular, I would have liked to see a prolonged Entmoot with the Ents deciding to go to war themselves. But the review is, I think, indicative of how many filmgoers who have not read the books, or who have read them but are not fans in the same way that we Downers are, would have felt about these scenes.<P>In any event, Jackson has (understandably) chosen Frodo and Aragorn as his main characters. With limited screen time, the development of all of the other characters had to suffer in comparison (some more than others). And Merry and Pippin, being "lesser characters" in that sense, were always going to have less screen time allocated to them. In fact, it seems to me that they have less "book time" allocated to them too, but there is much more space in the book for their development. Again, I would have loved to have seen more of Merry and Pippin in both films since they are probably my two favourite characters, but I can understand why their story is underplayed in TTT in favour of Aragorn's story and that of Frodo and Sam (which I don't think suffers in comparison).<P>That said, I am hopeful of Merry and Pippin becoming much more central in RotK, since they once again become involved in the main story, and they have important roles to play.