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Originally Posted by davem
My own feeling is that book Faramir was more aware of Frodo's 'mission' & its 'divinely ordained' nature. Faramir is one of the most spiritually aware characters in the book. It seems to me that he realised that Frodo had been 'appointed' to perform the task of bringing the Ring to the fire, & in that sense his releasing & aiding of Frodo in that task, rather than taking him as a prisoner to Minas Tirith, was an act of 'compassion'. He was making Frodo's inevitable task as easy as possible. He puts compassion before duty, & takes a great risk in doing so. In fact he is putting all he cares for at risk in order to help Frodo as he does.
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Just what I've been trying to articulate all along! Faramir in the films is presented as a ranger figure, a soldier, while in the books he is more of a scholar - he certainly displays an understanding of lore. In the films he expresses the wish that he had spent more time at his studies, implying that he did not spend much time at this task. He and Boromir are carefully crafted contrasts. The words Gimli uses to compare Saruman and Gandalf: "like and yet not like", could equally be applied to the two Gondorian brothers. The films did not contrast them enough, or certainly not skilfully enough. It was as though Faramir as seen in the books was deemed a little too sensitive for a film audience, which is not a pleasant thought.
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Originally Posted by Ainaserkewen
When your analysing situation changes for example, with Faramir, it is unthinkable that any director would expect his fans to get over such a drastic change if there wasn’t a good, logical reason for it.
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But I cannot find a good or logical reason for the changes beyond the stated ones that they thought these scenes might be 'boring'. I can't accept this as a valid reason, as the scenes need not have been 'boring' at all. They were getting towards something good when they had Faramir explaining how he saw the funeral boat of his brother on the Anduin, and then this was not sustained. instead we saw Faramir's men behaving brutally and Faramir himself acting out of character. Properly done, we could have seen some good dialogue, some added interrogation and a little suspense to add drama, seeing as this was a film, yes, but maintaining the integrity of the character by having him see Frodo and Sam off in the wild, and in so doing maintaining their secrecy.