[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

These events are there for cinematic reasons - there is no thought about whether what happens on screen makes sense, only about whether it looks good.

I don't disagree with you. For better or for worse, it's pretty standard with most "blockbuster" films these days. I recall thinking during the second Indiana Jones film, when Indie is running along the mine-cart tracks being shot at, how unbelievable it is that he does not get hit. Even if all of those shooting were the worst shots in the world, the law of averages would dictate that some bullets would hit him. Much the same thought occurred to me recently when I watched the first Star Wars film again and wondered at the inept marksmanship of the Imperial Stormtroopers firing on Luke and Leia in the corridors of the Death Star. And the same issue occurs in FotR when the Fellowship come under a hail of Orcish arrows as they run from the Bridge of Khazad-Dum.

I think that it's much easier to get away with this in films, "bloskbuster" films at least, because they are much more immediate. One can get swept up in the action and have less time to think about the logic of the situation. It is far more important for books to maintain credibility because the reader has time to pause for thought.

But you are right. There are things in the films that don't make sense when you stop and think about them (although I would not necessarily include the Gandalf/Witch-King scene in that category, for the reasons that I have stated on that thread). What can I say? Maybe I just don't think about these things so deeply. I don't think that one is supposed to with these kinds of films.

Originally Posted by Aina

So I watched it from front to back and I was horrified. The original flowyness, the perfect dialog, sounds, and characters, destroyed with the few new added scenes.

Maybe you are just too used to the original. If one is used to a certain "pattern", then it is bound to seem strange if that pattern is disturbed in any way.