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Originally Posted by Lush
I agree. But when you're on a tight shooting schedule, there are many things you simply never get to try out, let alone conceptualize. I think the sheer enormity of the project essentially doomed them to making certain clumsy moves. When you're in charge of something that huge it's hard to keep all the pieces together.
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Well, they were working on the scripts for years before production began, so they did have time to work out a proper storyline. But even if we assume they really didn't have much time why make so many changes & introduce so many new ideas? I would have thought not having much time would mean they'd lack the luxury of inventing new stuff & have to stick to what was on the page...
My own position is that they should either have told the story the way Tolkien wrote it, making only
absolutely necessary changes, like running scenes together or missing out some of the lesser characters
or written a new fantasy story of their own & filmed that & then they would have had all the freedom they needed to tell the story they wanted to tell. My problem with the changes they've made to the story is that they simply
don't work. One thing that springs to mind, among many loose ends which make no sense, is Mery & Pippin's finding Pipeweed in the storeroom at Isengard. Why is pipeweed from the Shire there? In the book it is for a very good reason - it sets up ominous questions in the readers mind about what is happening back home, especially in light of what Sam saw in Galdriel's Mirror. In the movie its left completely unexplained & seems only to have been left in so that they can have the scene of the meeting of the Hobbits with the Three Hunters as it is in the book. This is where the movies so often fall down. The writers/director want to have certain episodes from the books on screen but they change the story at other points so the context & meaning of the book episodes they do show is absent & for an audience who hasn't read the book they create confusion. Its the same, as I said, with Faramir's sudden change of heart & mind at Osgiliath. They want a 'threatening warrior' Faramir in film 2 & a 'caring philosophical' Faramir in film 3 so they have to try & write themselves out of the hole they wrote themselves into in a couple of minutes at the end of the film. Basically, we have
two Faramirs in the movies & it would have been much more believable & convincing if they'd had two different characters - have the Hobbits captured in Ithilien by some thuggish Gondorian general, brought to Osgiliath by him & there brought before Faramir who plays the role he has in the book. But as I said, they want to make some (major) changes & at the same time keep some scenes exactly as they are in the book. We don't so much see an example of 'character development' in movie Faramir as a kind of Gollum-Smeagol transformation. The guy is clearly schizoid & doesn't know his own mind or have a clue what to do if he can do a 180 on the basis of Frodo flashing the Ring at a Nazgul & Sam's sudden (& seemingly interminable) bout of platitudinous Logorhoea...
(OOOOH That felt GOOOOOD!!!)