[Kalimac]

I'm still a little torn - it's certainly consistent to have the Ring-claiming Frodo, if he's still conscious, trying to fight Gollum to get it back, but why change it from what happened in the book? (And since having Gollum go over the edge would be the *last* thing that Frodo would want, I can't agree that he'd be even subconsciously trying to do this, even in a fight scenario. He'd be no more responsible than if Gollum had tripped over him and gone off the edge).<P>The only reason I can think of for changing it from "Frodo knocked out, temporarily unable to do anything" to "Frodo conscious enough to try and get Ring back" is that the way the first scene plays out would be very tricky to do correctly on screen. Think about it, here's Gollum dancing around, crooning "My Precious, O my Precious!", and in his joy he's so oblivious to his surroundings that he *trips and falls of the edge of the cliff*. Terrifying if you're reading about it, terrifying if you're in the Cracks of Doom yourself and watching it, but think how it would look to a movie audience? Almost any way that you played that scene out it would be hard not to stir some subconscious suggestion of a slapstick comedian slipping on a banana peel - "Oops!" - or, worse yet, Wile E. Coyote accidentally running over a cliff. What I mean is, there would be every risk that people would laugh, the same way they laughed at Gollum's little fish song at the pool in TTT, even though nobody actually *in* the story found it very amusing, considering the circumstances. <P>That's OK for a minor scene, but Mount Doom is the climax of about ten hours of movie-watching. If the scene somehow turned into a bad laugh - and while it wouldn't *have* to, it would be a big risk - it would be the worst collapse imaginable. If there's any scene which can't admit of even involuntary humour, surely that one is it.<P>Just my $0.02.